Below is a transcript of a bible study on the book of Daniel chapter 7 by Dr. William H Shea, a renowned Bible scholar, and archaeologist. This Daniel 7 commentary is one of the most informative and educative ones you will ever hear
Book of Daniel chapter 7 commentary and study
Some of you may be old enough to remember Franklin Delano Roosevelt as president and he used to broadcast to the nation using fireside chats. So when I’m sitting here like this I kind of feel like I’m having a fireside chat with you.
Well we’ve come to the end of our series of Daniel. But we have only come to the middle of the book. Because we seem to be doing things a little out of order and I hope by the time we finish today you’ll see why we have done them in this order. So we’ve come to Daniel chapter seven and Daniel gives us a date as to when he received this vision. He says the first year of Belshazzar. And we told you the story of Belshazzar on Tuesday and it’s a remarkably detailed historical episode. We know about both his coregency with his father Nabonidus and his direction of the troops in the city of Babylon the night of the fall.
And as I mentioned we have the text, the Nabonidus Chronicle, which tells about the fall of the city. And you may notice as we discuss that the city fell on the sixteenth day of the month of Tishri which is the seventh month of the Babylonian and Hebrew calendar. And that’s just six days after the Day of Atonement. And you remember that the day of atonement in the camp of ancient Israel was a day of judgment.
And you may remember that when the handwriting on the wall was deciphered it said you’ve been weighed in the balances and found wanting. Judgment has come upon Belshazzar and the Neo-Babylonian dynasty. So in the first year of Belshazzar, this is ten years earlier, the year 548 B.C., Daniel is asleep on his bed and God wakes him up and he says Daniel I’ve got a message to give to you. And he sees a great sea. And you know from the Book of Revelation that seas and waters represent nations and multitudes and peoples.
I suspect it probably really means the great sea which for people in the ancient world was the Mediterranean Sea. This is so because you will notice that all four of these these kingdoms touched upon the Mediterranean Sea.
Daniel 7 Commentary and study: The Lion
Daniel 7:4 “The first was like a lion, and it had the wings of an eagle. I watched until its wings were torn off and it was lifted from the ground so that it stood on two feet like a human being, and the mind of a human was given to it. And as he looks, he watches the first beast coming up out of the water. It is a lion. Well that’s kind of interesting isn’t it because a lion is not a water beast. But remember we’re dealing with symbolic prophecy.
And I have a friend who’s written an article about the Island of Patmos and he says there’s one sandy beach on the west coast of Patmos. Patmos is a small island that’s like about eight to twelve miles long it and a curved like a hook. Well I was there just a month ago with the group and we tried to get to that beach but it’s a long hike over a narrow trail so we never did made it. But anyway the point is if you look at Revelation 13 verse 1, the correct translation is, “I stood on the sand of the sea”.
Now some translation have the beast stood on the sand of the sea, but it’s John in the Book of Revelation. He’s standing on the sand of the sea and he’s looking west and he sees the beasts coming up out of the Mediterranean, west of where he’s looking.
So Daniel now says the same thing. Or you could say Daniel saw it first and John saw it later and so he sees this lion and of course the lion is the king of the beasts.
And it’s interesting that in the explanation of this vision by the angel there are no national identifications given in this case. There is in Daniel 2. There is in Daniel eight. So we use those and do cross correlations and we find out that the first beast is Babylon and from Daniel chapter eight where we find the identifications of Medo-Persia and Greece we identify the next two beasts.
So you make a grid and you plug in the metals and the beasts then you have a chart that gives you these kingdoms. And the first one, of course, is the one that Daniel identified to Nebuchadnezzar saying “you are this head of gold”, the kingdom of Babylon.
And the lion is very characteristic of Babylon. I may have mentioned a little bit about the great Ishtar Gate which was the main north gate coming into the city of Babylon. There was a professional way and on the processional way, they were colored enameled bricks. And these colored enameled bricks were also used to represent animals and there would be a lion, a bull and a dragon, a lion a bull, and a dragon. One hundred twenty of them.
And these beasts faced outwards so that if you came into the city you would face the beasts. And these beasts were about six feet long on colored enameled bricks, very beautiful, and if you ever get to Berlin you can see that some of them in the Berlin museum. And I didn’t realize it but the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul where we visited on the same trip that I just mentioned they too have about five or six of them.. The idea is that a goddess or god rode on the backs of these beasts. It wasn’t just that the Babylonians like these animals. They were to represent the gods that they carried.
And the lion represented the goddess Ishtar and she interestingly enough is the goddess of love and war. It’s interesting how those two go together. But anyway so here’s the fierce lion of Babylon in the courtyard of the palace when it was excavated by Robert Koldewey.
Robert Koldewey was a German man who lived in Iraq for ten years. You know today if we have an excavation we go to the Middle East by plane and we dig for six weeks and then we come home. This man Robert Koldewey lived there, built a house there and worked there for ten years from 1904 to 1914 and when World War One broke out he had to leave because he was German. So Belshazzar is the last ruler of the Lion Kingdom. The weakness of the lion in its later stages is shown by the fact that its wings are plucked. It stands on its hind feet and it’s given the heart of a man.
So there’s probably a couple alternatives as to what that may mean. Some people think that it refers to Nebuchadnezzar’s madness. You remember in Daniel chapter four that we didn’t talk much about, Nebuchadnezzar was out in the wilderness with the animals suffering from mental illness. And at the end of that period of time he repents and he glorifies the true God and he’s converted. Most remarkable.
EGW says Nebuchadnezzar is going to be in heaven. You get to ask him about all this stuff you know and walk up there and say ‘Hey Neb how did that go’. He may have a different name.
So perhaps this weakness of the lion is shown by it being given the heart of a man. You know A human being is a much weaker physically than the lion. The lion is the king of the beasts. And it’s not good to encounter a lion normally unless they’re very well pacified. Give them a shot of thorazine before you meet up with them. So the lion kingdom shuffles off the scene of action.
Daniel 7 bible Study and Commentary: Bear
Daniel 7: 5 “And there before me was a second beast, which looked like a bear. It was raised up on one of its sides, and it had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth. It was told, ‘Get up and eat your fill of flesh!’.
Next comes the bear and the bear is very appropriate for a mountainous country such as Iran. There’s a high mountain plateau and the mountains are especially in the north and Media. Remember it is a combined kingdom of Medo-Persia. And it shows you this combined kingdom because the beast, the bear is lifted up on one side and down on the other side.
And you remember we looked at that feature in the ram in Daniel chapter eight where one horn comes up later but it comes up higher. And Persian power came up later but it came up higher because the Persian power overcame the Median power and combined it into be the Medo-Persian Empire.
The two families of the Medes and the Persians were related. So some of the Persian kings were half Mede through their mothers or what have you.
So here’s the bear and the bear has three ribs in his mouth and he’s told to arise and devour much flesh. And so you may remember when we discussed Persia yesterday the directions of conquest of the ram. Chargr to the north, in the West and in the south represented conquest in Anatolia or Asia Minor and Babylon and Egypt. These three are represented here as the three ribs of the devoured animals that are in the mouth of the bear.
Daniel 7 Study and Commentary: The Leopard
Daniel 7:6 “After that, I looked, and there before me was another beast, one that looked like a leopard. And on its back it had four wings like those of a bird. This beast had four heads, and it was given authority to rule.
So the third beast which follows is the leopard and the leopard has features just like the goat in Daniel chapter eight. The goat has four horns on his head and this leopard has four heads and he also has four wings.
You may remember that the goat flies off the ground representing speed of conquest. Alexander conquers the Near East in three years. And here is the leopard in Daniel chapter seven which has wings also and the text says he was given dominion.
Now one way to study the Bible is to look for key words. How do you look for a key word. Well you study the word frequencies and the word “dominion” is a key word in Daniel chapter seven because it’s used seven times.
And so the point is that these earthly powers have temporary transitory dominion but then they have to pass it along to the next conqueror. So Babylon had dominion for a while and lost it. Persians had dominion for a while and gave it to the Greeks. Greeks had dominion for a while and gave it to the Romans. And the Romans had it for a while and gave it to the Holy Roman Empire in the medieval period. And the Holy Roman empire had it for a while and they passed it along.
So this is the ordinary normal human experience and as I mentioned we live under this round of rulers and kingdoms and so forth. And often times you’ll get a worse one the next time around a good one and so forth and so forth. And so we suffer from that and so you can look at different places in the world.
The poor country of Zimbabwe is now currently suffering under the terrible rule of this man named Mugabe and he’s putting opposition people in prison. He had an election recently but he won’t agree with the results of the election. And so that’s the kind of rulers we may be prone to get at any given time.
And the question is, does God have a remedy for this? Yes, he does and it comes a little later in this chapter because there eventually will arise and very soon the kingdom that will have the dominion forever and ever and ever.
Daniel 7 Commentary and Study: Fourth Beast
Daniel 7:7 “After that, in my vision at night I looked, and there before me was a fourth beast—terrifying and frightening and very powerful. It had large iron teeth; it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left. It was different from all the former beasts, and it had ten horns.
But there’s one more kingdom we need to look at and that’s the what we call the nondescript beast you see the lion is a natural animal. We know what it looks like. The bear is a natural animal and we know what it looks like. And we have a leopard which is also a natural animal and we know what it looks like.
But the fourth beast seems to be a mixture. In fact if you look at Revelation 13, where the same beast is described, it has all of these elements of the previous kingdoms mixed into it. So the fourth beast seems to be a little more worse. Dreadful is the word used here and he seems to have more crushing power.
And I want you to notice the connection with the iron legs because this beast now has iron teeth. So you have iron legs, iron teeth, so you have an iron beast so we know we’re down to Rome and the same parallelism with the image of Daniel 2.
So let’s read the description here of the fourth beast in Daniel chapter 7 verse seven “After this I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrifying and extremely strong; and it had large iron teeth. It devoured and crushed and trampled down the remainder with its feet; and it was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns”
The Romans were very thorough in their conquests and you can see a classic example of that in their conquest of the city of Jerusalem. In 70 AD when Jerusalem was conquered the Roman scraped the ruins of the city off the top of Jerusalem.
Jerusalem sits on a slope of the hills called Mount Ophel as it extends north and the temple areas at the North End. And Jerusalem used to have three valleys on the west, the south and the east side. When the Romans defeated the city of Jerusalem they scraped the ruins into the western valley and filled it up. So that western valley was called the Toiropeon was made invalid, doesn’t exist today, it’s full of the destruction debris of the conquest of Jerusalem.
There was a lady archaeologist, her name was Kathleen Kenyon, and she wanted to probe and see where the bedrock was on that side of the city. And there was a Lutheran school being built and she asked for permission to dig a deep probe in that lot before the school was built and she did.
And what she found was seventy feet of destruction debris that the Romans had scraped off the top of Jerusalem and poured it into the valley to fill it up. So this beast this precious and tramples there is a classic illustration right there in the fate of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
As you know Titus intended to preserve the temple but the Jewish rebels inside the city retreated into the temple and therefore there was fighting that took place right at the temple. And during the fighting back and forth the temple caught on fire and so it burned and it was destroyed.
So I pointed out to the other classes who were studying the sanctuary Matthew 24 the first two or three verses. Jesus is leaving the temple area and his disciples point out to him the great beautiful temple. And they’re looking for words of praise from Jesus about what a wonderful sanctuary this is. But Jesus says not one stone will be left standing upon another and that is literally true today.
You see when you look at the Temple Mount it’s a platform of twenty acres enclosed by walls and the wall that you’re probably most acquainted with is the Western Wall which is also called the Wailing Wall. In that twenty acres we do not presently know where the second temple or Herod’s temple stood.
No evidence. What there is today is a dome of the rock which is a memorial building with the golden dome and the Silver Dome which is a mosque where the Muslims worship. The theory is that the rock which is in the Dome of the rock may have been the base of the altar a burnt offering for the temple in Jesus’ time. That is not certain at all.
You see when archaeologists excavate a temple they they can tell it’s a temple because the stumps of the walls are left and they can see the outline of a temple but that doesn’t exist on that temple platform. So the main theory is the temple probably was west of where the Dome of the rock is and it was facing towards the east towards the Mount of Olives.
Other people think it was farther east and another group thinks it’s farther north but we don’t know because there’s no stumps of any walls left. You can’t tell where it was, so it’s pure theory.
And because of that Orthodox Jews will not walk on the temple area. You can walk there as a tourist whereas Orthodox Jews will not because they’re afraid they will step where the Holy of Holies was. So here is the crushing power of Rome.
But as I mentioned when we had our discussion of Daniel 2 Rome does not last forever either. As strong and as powerful as it was it too crumbled and breaks up into these divisions represented here by the ten horns, the ten kings or ten kingdoms which come out of it.
And these represent first of all the tribes, the barbarian tribes who had circulated around through Europe. And these eventually evolved into the modern nations of Europe. And so the vision of Daniel 7 agrees with Nebuchadnezzar’s of Daniel two that the fourth kingdom will not stand forever. Nor will it be succeeded by another universal empire but it will break up into pieces and the pieces will remain. And that’s what we have in Europe today. The broken pieces of the Roman Empire. And so we have the modern nations of Europe today.
Daniel 7 Study: The Little Horn
Daniel 7:8 “While I was thinking about the horns, there before me was another horn, a little one, which came up among them; and three of the first horns were uprooted before it. This horn had eyes like the eyes of a human being and a mouth that spoke boastfully”.
After the break up another little horn comes along an eleventh horn. And it’s interesting to note that we’ve already seen a description of the little horn in chapter eight and we discussed some of its characteristics. And you can compare those characteristics.
And it’s very obvious that Daniel the writer wants you to know this is the same little horn because he does an unusual thing. He uses the same word for “little” in the two languages in this the two prophecies of Daniel 7 and Daniel 2. You may remember I said there’s two languages in the Book of Daniel. Daniel chapter seven is written in Aramaic and Daniel chapter eight is written in Hebrew. So he takes a common word for a little in Aramaic and he takes it over into his Hebrew. He doesn’t use the normal word for little in Hebrew.
He uses the same word that he gets from Aramaic so he uses a linguistic identifier to tell you and show you this little horn is one and the same in chapter seven and chapter eight. And it has some of the same characteristics too. It persecutes.
Daniel 7:25 And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.
We talked about persecutions yesterday we don’t need to dwell on them especially since they are well known. One we didn’t mention yesterday that’s common and well known as Martha St Bartholomew’s Day massacre of the Huguenots in France in the year 1572.
I had an interesting experience in South Africa when I taught at Helderberg College. There is a place about twenty miles away from Helderberg called Lefranschoek which means French corner and so one of my hosts took me over there and showed me this place. There is a museum for the Huguenots. You see in 1685 the French king revoked the decree of tolerance and so the Huguenots had to flee and some of them fled to the West Indies. Some came to North America. Some went to England some went to other parts of Europe some went to South Africa.
And these French Hugueonot immigrants Protestants who were kicked out of France came there (Lefranschoek). And the interesting thing is in the museum they have all their implements from the seventeenth century, their books and diaries and so forth.
But right beside the museum there’s a statue of about twenty five feet high. And it’s a statue of a woman and the woman has the scars around her head. It’s the woman of Revelation 12 and you may remember in Revelation 12 it says the woman fled to the wilderness for 1260 days or a time times and half a time. The Huguenots saw themselves filling that prophecy. They saw themselves in the prophecy of the woman fleeing to the wilderness when they were expelled from France. So here’s more evidence for the kinds of persecution of this power.
This power speaks great words against the Most High and this we can identify as blasphemy. And we don’t need to dwell on a lot of the titles taken by this power but I recently saw one on television and I was astounded. It was a couple of weeks ago and I was channel surfing on the religious channels by Sky Angel and I came across a service in the Polish Catholic Church in Chicago and there at the altar above the altar was a replica of the Ark of the Covenant. There was a big oversize box and they have the Ten Commandments in the Catholic version with three on one table and seven on the other table and they have the two cherubims and they even have the holders and so forth.
Well that’s not exceptional. I mean we make models like that occasionally when we have set up a tabernacle. But in this case where the Shekinah glory would be over the mercy seat there is Mary. I was astounded! I spent three years in a central american country of that’s predominantly Catholic and saw quite a bit of what I would call primitive Catholicism but that even shocked me.
So there are great claims made by this power. I had an interesting experience in the city of Denver where we had what was called the first international conference on the Sabbath. It was organised by the Adventist Church department of religious liberty and the Department of Judaic studies of the University of Denver.
So we had a week of studies. Forty different papers given by anybody and everybody all over the spectrum of religious thought. We had Catholics. We had Nazarenes. We had Baptists. We had Reform Jews. We had Orthodox Jews. We had seventh day Adventists.
Samuele Bacchiocchi was there and he gave a presentation. Sure most of you know of him. And so this went on for days. We had these papers about sometimes 8 papers a day sometimes less.
But the one that interested me the most was the presentation by the Jesuits from San Francisco because they said and freely admitted that the New Testament church kept Sabbath. They didn’t mince any bones about it but they said the church has been given the teaching authority, the Magisterium. Therefore because of the teaching authority of the church they have the authority to transfer what used to belong to the Sabbath to Sunday. So this is a bold claim.
So they admit right up front that the early church kept Sabbath but they say that the Sabbath was changed to Sunday by virtue of the teaching authority of the church.
There is quite a bit of research being done these days on the early Sunday laws and we have emphasized that the Sunday law of Constantine was probably the earliest in 321 A.D.
This Sunday law that Constantine passed might be called secular from my point of view. He doesn’t say this is a day for worship or anything like that. He just says this is the day when people aren’t supposed to work The courts aren’t supposed to meet. Prisoners aren’t supposed to be tried in court cases. Markets aren’t supposed to be open but the farmers in the countryside can work.
So he just calls it the venerable day of the sun and prior to his conversion to Christianity Constantine was a worshipper of Sol Invictus the sun god. The victorious sun god.
Now we have found an interesting and earlier Sunday law and it comes from Pope Sylvester in Rome. And the year is 316 AD just five years before Constantine’s law and it’s very explicit and much more religious. He says what used to be done on Sabbath we now transferred to Sunday. And it gives list of things that aren’t supposed to be done on Sunday. There is therefore a religious obligation for this Sunday law.
Now the interesting thing is the year 316 AD. Why don’t we have any earlier Sunday laws than 316 AD? And the answer is because it was only in 314 AD that Christianity came to be tolerated legally in the Roman Empire. You see there was constantly heavy local persecution. And as the centuries went on the persecution that started out locally became empire wide. And it became worse as you progress through the early persecutions under the Roman Empire.
The last persecution was under an emperor named Diocletian and it lasted for ten years from 303 to 313 AD. And then in 314 AD when Constantine comes to the throne he proclaimed religious freedom for Christians that they can no longer be persecuted. And so it’s accepted as a tolerated religion and sect in the Roman Empire.
And then of course later he himself converts to Christianity and he converts the Empire to Christianity. So here is the Edict of Milan in 314 where Christianity becomes a tolerated religious body. And two years later Pope Sylvester in Rome proclaims the Sunday law which has recently been dug up by one of our researchers in Illinois.
So when the text here in Daniel 7:25 says he shall think, please notice that qualifier, to change times and law, he thinks he can do it but he really doesn’t because in the heavenly sanctuary the ten commandments are intact and the creator’s day is still the creator’s day.
So when we come to the Book of Revelation and John is receiving his vision on the Lord’s day. By the late second century by about 180 AD they began to use that phrase Lord’s day for Sunday. And then it blossoms so that in Greece today the Lord’s Day is Sunday.
And so the question is not what did the early church fathers do. The question is what does the bible say. Our theology is not derived from the early church fathers as interesting as they may be and some of them were on the right track and some were beginning to get off the track but our theology comes from the bible. Sola Scriptura. What does the Bible say?
The Bible says Mark 2:27,28 “The Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath day”. It’s his day. It’s his possession. And the Old Testament text which parallels that, Isaiah 58:13 and 14 “If you turn your foot away from my holy day…”. So the only day in the calendar that we have that God says he possesses is the seventh day Sabbath and that cannot be altered by man much though they may like to.
On the issue of the Sabbath, the magisterium, the teaching function of the church which thinks it has the authority to change does not have that authority resides with God Himself.
Now so we have these identifying characteristics of the Little Horn. Blasphemy. Persecution of saints. And coming up after the division of Rome.
Daniel Chapter 7 commentary: Little Horn Uproots 3 Horns Before It
Daniel 7:8 “….and three of the first horns were uprooted before it”
Then we have the religious wars of the sixth century. Three of these horns are plucked up because you see there was a very zealous missionary group of Christians who were called Arians. They had a different view of the nature of Christ and so they were anathema to the Orthodox in Rome.
And so the armies of the Emperor and the armies of Clovis of the French defeated several of these arian tribes. And those were considered victories for the bishop in Rome as the Arian powers were politically and religiously defeated.
It was a political military defeat for the powers that engaged them and it was a religious defeat for them in the eyes of the Church of Rome. So these three horns were plucked up also. And the little is given three and a half year prophetic time. Remember this great three and a half year prophetic time and once again we invoke the year for a day principle. So we’re dealing with twelve hundred sixty years. That’s that’s a long time that this power held sway and had dominion.
And the year 538 AD was the year that Rome was liberated from the Ostrogoths. They were defeated by the army of Belisarius who was the general for Justinian. He arrived there in 537 AD took the city of Rome with relatively little opposition because the army of the Ostrogoths was up north.
The Ostrogoth had come down and encircled the city of Rome. They were much more numerous than Belisarius army He was outnumbered by far. So he was shut up in the city of Rome and the Ostrogoths siege outside the city.
And then the Ostrogoths did a very foolish thing. They said we’re going to get these guys out of there by knocking down the aqueducts. That we’re going to deprive them of water and so they knocked down all the aqueducts to Rome. And what that did is it made the outside of the city of Rome a swamp. And the swamp bred disease and the disease decimated the army of the Ostrogoths.
So there it backfired and so they retreated up north and Belisarius went in hot pursuit and now with a decimated army they were an easy conquest.
And so Justinian had just completed his law code which proclaimed the bishop of Rome the head of all the churches . And now that Rome had been liberated from the Ostrogoths,J ustinian’s law code goes into effect. And in essence the bishop of Rome becomes a ruler of the secular ruler in the city of Rome.
So this is the beginning of this great time period and the time period. The end of the time period is when General Berthier marches into the Vatican and takes the pope prisoner.
I had an interesting experience relating to that when I spent a week in Italy. And there we had meetings with the Italian pastors which took place about halfway between Rome and Florence. And my driver was the pastor of the of the church in Rome and he said I have a cousin who is bibliographer or the librarian for the Vatican libraries.
You know they have papal libraries just like we have presidential libraries. And this cousin of his was the librarian for the libraries of Pius the sixth and Pius the seventh. Pius the sixth was the pope who was deposed by the French and Pius the seventh was the one who succeeded him in 1801 when the Napoleon installed him with a concordat
And he said there is a letter and this librarian has shown to the pastor and I told the pastors about it and said well we all know that. So there is a letter from Pius the seventh. I don’t remember who he was writing to but he says as Pius the seventh the new pope was looking back on the events that transpired.
He says in this letter “it looks like we have almost received the deadly wound” Right out of the prophetic literature! So we have all these characteristics of the Little Horn.
And so this is another stage, another power, that has another period of dominion but it doesn’t last forever. It’s time limited.
Judgment is set
And then we come to God’s answer and God’s answer we see when the prophets view is taken from earth to heaven. You remember in Daniel 8 we saw earthly conquest and then he looks to heaven. And we have the same thing here.
Daniel 7:9-10
“As I looked,
“thrones were set in place,
and the Ancient of Days took his seat.
His clothing was as white as snow;
the hair of his head was white like wool.
His throne was flaming with fire,
and its wheels were all ablaze.
10 A river of fire was flowing,
coming out from before him.
Thousands upon thousands attended him;
ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.
The court was seated,
and the books were opened.
So we have these four beasts one two three four Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, divided Rome 1260 days. And then his eyesight is taken to heaven Daniel 7 verses nine and ten and he sees the Ancient of Days which in New Testament terms is God the Father.
And the Ancient of Days comes in to a place where he was not located before. His throne, notice the portable throne, very interesting, like a flying throne comes to a new place for a new ministry. And he takes his seat and the flames and glory around the throne around the person of God are evident to Daniel. And the Angelic Host assembled before him,
And it says The books are opened and the judgement was set. So here we have the judgment scene number one.
Daniel 7:11 I beheld then because of the voice of the great words which the horn spake: I beheld even till the beast was slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flame. 12 As concerning the rest of the beasts, they had their dominion taken away: yet their lives were prolonged for a season and time.
Then his eye comes back down to earth and he sees the fourth beast and the little horn are burned. But he says in Daniel 7 verse 12 something that has confused people a little bit. It says “as for the rest of the beast their lives were prolonged or a little bit a little time and time and a season”.
And so the question is what does that mean? Well what happened here is this power lasts till the end and is destroyed here but the others were not instantaneously destroyed. You see when Babylon was conquered by the Persians, the city of Babylon wasn’t destroyed. The Persians took it over and used it as a capital another capital. The last person left babylon about seventy five A.D. So it goes down hill but it lasts.
And the same with Persia and Greece as they lose their dominion they still continue. Iran is a country today. Greece is a country today. Italy is a country and so forth. So their lives are prolonged for a season because they are not the last in the sequence. The last in the sequence is destroyed at the end but the others had a life that lived on a while longer. That’s what that Daniel 7:12 means.
Daniel 7: 13 I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. 14 And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.
But then his view is taken back up to heaven again in verses thirteen to fourteen. He he sees another scene of this judgment in heaven and here he sees one like a son of man come on the clouds to the Ancient of Days. So there is a transit in heaven, And when he is presented before the father to him is given glory and power and dominion forever and ever that all nations and languages and tongues should serve him.
Our Millerite forefathers prior to 1844 believed this was a picture of the Second Coming. It is not a picture of the Second Coming. After October 22, 1844 they went back and studied it. They saw that it was not as picture the second coming. It is a picture of a transit in heaven where Christ is presented before the Father and he is awarded the kingdom.
Now if I give you the kingdom what does that make you? The king. So here is the son of man. And we know the Son of Man is Jesus in the New Testament. Jesus uses the title for himself, “Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost”. “Son of Man doesn’t have a place to lay his head” so on and so forth.
And the people of his time knew what he was doing when he used that title. They knew that was a messianic title. And they knew when Jesus referred to himself as the Son of man he is in essence saying I am the messiah. I’m not only the messiah I’m the messiah of Daniel 7 verse 13 and 14.
Now the interesting thing it says is he comes with clouds. And these clouds bear him up and bear him to the Ancient of Days. So we have God, the Father and God, the Son. If you take a concordance and you do word study on the word cloud and you discard the references to ordinary atmospheric clouds you will find the references to cloud as an attribute of divinity.
Psalm 97 describes the throne of God in the clouds around his throne. Clouds and thick darkness around him and so forth. So the clouds demonstrate an attribute of divinity. Now the title Son of Man is used in a very interesting way here. It’s used with a comparative preposition, one like a son of man. You see when Jesus uses the title Son of Man. It is just that. It’s a title from now on for him.
Here it is a comparison and the comparison is that when Daniel looks in the heaven he sees one who looks like a human being. So what you have is the Son of Man demonstrates his humanness and the clouds represent his divinity. So you have a divine human being.
Now this is unusual. You see heaven is the place for God. OK. God is there. That’s normal. That’s his normal habitat. The Angels gather about his throne. That’s normal too because that’s their home. That’s where they belong. So God and the angels normally belong. But here’s a human being or someone who looks like a human being but has attributes of divinity in the heaven. And he above all is entitled to receive the kingdom forever and ever.
And as we look at Jesus in the New Testament, our doctrinal statement says he’s one hundred percent human one hundred percent God. So we have this one like the son of man. The only being in the whole universe that fits this description is Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate Son of God.
And here he is after his incarnation. After 1798 when the twelve hundred sixty days end. Sometime after the judgment takes place. It doesn’t tell us exactly when. You get the precise date 1844 from the next chapter.
So you see we have a picture of the judgement in Daniel 7 and we have a date for the judgment in Daniel 8 and the two correlate. So here’s the Son of man and he makes a transit in heaven. This is not the second coming. The Second Coming is posterior to this.
And so we have this interesting sequence in Acts chapter one. He goes up to heaven in the clouds in Daniel 7 he makes the transit in heaven in the clouds. And in Revelation 14 he makes the transit down to earth again on the clouds. So you have this the sequence of the Ascension, the transition and the return. We don’t know how long this judgment lasts. So here is the beginning and the end of the judgment.
Now when I was on the Andrews campus we were getting ready for the great Glacier View conference. And Desmond Ford had three meetings with a small committee to give him suggestions about how to sharpen or prepare his manuscript. And it so happened that the committee happened to meet on the Andrews campus.
I was not a member of the small committee but they invited me in because I was supposed to know something about the Book of Daniel. And of course there was much disagreement of points of view about this. So as we were walking out of the afternoon meeting, I was ahead of Des and I turned to him and I said you know when we get to Glacier View this will be fought more over Daniel 7 than over Daniel 8. And he said to me that’s OK let it come.
So he did not have the floor on the Monday of the glacier view conference but Tuesday afternoon and the rest of the afternoons. He had about two hours of question and answers from the floor. And Tuesday afternoon the second person up was Elder Heppenstall and he read this text and he says Des doesn’t this represent a change of ministry in heaven?
Now that requires only a simple yes or no. And the obvious answer is yes. Something new was happening here. Here’s human history and here’s God’s answer to human history. Here’s the dominion that’s going to be given to God’s kingdom forever.
Well Des had been trained for his first Ph D. in rhetoric or speech at Michigan State. And one thing they tell you is when you don’t want to answer a question talk around the bush. And so he went round robins barn for forty five minutes without ever answering that question when the answer to the question is obvious this is a change of ministry.This is going on the evening mornings here the sanctuary day and this is what we call the daily. And here we get to the annual or the yearly the antitype of the day of atonement. The yearly, So we have a daily through this era and the yearly take place the annual the antitype of the judgment in the camp of ancient Israel.
So we have this magnificent picture of the glory of God in the commencement of the judgment. And a magnificent picture of the Son of man when he comes to the father to receive the kingdom. And the final answers in Daniel 7 verse 27. What’s it all about? What happened? So let’s read that.
Daniel 7:27 And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him.
Please notice the correct translation of the independent pronoun at the end. Serve and obey him. Some translations I have seen say serve and obey them and that is to say serve and obey the saints of the most high. That’s not what it says. The antecedent of him is the Son of Man.
They, the saints of the Most High who go into the kingdom will serve and obey the Son of man because he is the eternal king forever and ever. And this is a dominion which will never be destroyed nor deterred nor divided or given to anybody else. And so that’s that’s what we’re looking for and it’s going to come soon.
Summary of the Prophecies of Daniel 9, 8 and 7
Now I want to give you a summary of the three chapters that we have looked at in prophecy, Daniel 9, Daniel 8 and Daniel 7 and you’ll see why we have done this in reverse order.
Each one of these prophecies climaxes with a picture of Jesus. And the picture of Jesus in Daniel 9 is Jesus Christ as sacrifice, and the picture in Daniel 8 is Christ as priest and the picture in Daniel seven is Christ as king. So the way we studied was to study it out is the order in which it comes. But there’s one thing wrong isn’t there. What’s wrong? Well it’s wrong from our point of view. There are in reverse order.
So let’s give the outline Daniel 9, Daniel 8 and Daniel 7. In the first place each one of these prophecies has a particular length. This one is the short prophecy. Five centuries 490 years, day years, seventy weeks. Daniel 8 is the medium length prophecy. It starts with Persia and goes to the end of the twenty three hundred days.
But you may remember in verse twelve of Daniel chapter 8 when the vision stops, the little horn is still practicing and prospering. The final end of all of the answers not yet given but in Daniel 7 we have a long prophecy which starts with Babylon and goes all the way into the end. So we have a short prophecy in Daniel 9 medium length prophecy in Daniel 8 and a long prophecy in Daniel 7 the longest.
And we have three pictures of Christ. We have Christ as a sacrifice, Christ as a priest. And Christ as king.
Now you can see they seem to be in reverse order according to the way we think. Today we use the scientific method which says we collect all the data and then we draw a theory out of it and then we test the theory and we get a conclusion. We reason from cause to effect.
Now they could do that in Bible times. They did it, they would give things in chronological order but very often you’ll find them reasoning from effect back to cause
As a simple example. Jesus says where your treasure is there where your heart be also. Is that true? Yeah, it’s true. Is that the order we would give it in? No. We would say where your heart is, where your motive is, that’s where you going to put your treasure.
Jesus says where your treasure is, the result, is where your heart is. That’s the cause. But that’s reasoning from effect back to cause.
And we could give you a number of examples of this in the Old Testament. Jeremiah chapter four gives a picture of the destruction of Judah. We use this to show how bad things are going to be during the millennium. How the destroyed earth is going to look like.
And the question is why is Judah going to be destroyed in this way? And the answer is given in the succeeding chapters. Because you are a wicked and rebellious people who have broken your covenant with God and so on and so forth. And so that’s reasoning from effect i.e. the destroyed Judah and back to the cause, the sins of the people.
And so that’s what we have here. Here’s the effect. The long term effect. The ultimate result, Christ is king. And so when you read this you’re supposed to ask a question how did he get to be king? He is got to be king because he ministers for the people who went into the kingdom. And so the priest is the one who saves the people into the kingdom.
Well, how did you get to be a priest? You may remember the book of Hebrews says every priest has to have a sacrifice, He has a sacrifice, all right? Himself. So he’s king because he is a priest and because he made the sacrifice.
Now these give us, in theological terms, aspects of the plan of salvation and from the sacrifice, we get atonement and forgiveness and we call that justification. And then Jesus is ministering as our High Priest today. He sends the Holy Spirit and the angels to help us and guide us and direct us. He receives our repentance and intercedes for us. And that’s an active present work going on in our hearts and minds and lives and we call this sanctification.
Pretty soon the whole ball game is going to be over and we get to stage three when the king… we just had the song at the end of the family worship, “We’re going to behold him. And when the king comes and the kingdom is established that will be the glory”.
So we have three pictures of Christ and these three pictures of Christ give us three of his works in the plan of salvation: justification, sanctification, glorification. And from our present point of view, here we look back to this in the past and we look up to heaven now and the present. And we look forward to this in the future, the very near future.
So now you see it now you see why we’ve done these chapters in reverse order. This is Semitic thinking. And God commonly speaks to his people in different ways as we heard in family worship today.
God has his own language to speak to different people to different times and so he speaks to the ancient Semites twenty-five hundred years ago in this order Daniel 7, 8 and 9. And he speaks to us today in the order, Daniel 9, 8 and 7.
But the culmination and the climax is that the kingdom is coming. This is in the past. It’s done with. When we look back to the cross we receive the atonement through the blood of Jesus. This is going on today as you intercede as you repent as you pray as you plead for the Holy Spirit to be given as a present action and that prepares you for his second coming. And we shall behold him when he comes. So this is a summary of Daniel 9,8,7 or 7,8, 9.
Learning From Daniel’s Spiritual Experience as He gets Closer and Closer To God
And I want to do just one more thing and it’s not about prophecy and it’s not about history it’s about Daniel. And I want you to think a little bit about Daniel’s own personal spiritual experience because you can follow this through the book of the way in which God came to him.
Little by little, he came closer and closer and closer. So think of him as an eighteen-year-old dragged off as a captive walking for five-six hundred miles in the desert to get Babylon. And at this time God is hidden he’s behind the curtains. He doesn’t see it.
Later when he reflects on that experience he says God gave, God gave, but at the time the curtains are drawn and he doesn’t see God behind them.
Then Daniel chapter two. The dream was given to the king and not to Daniel and Daniel is given the dream secondarily. And he goes to the king and interprets the dream.
So he functions as an inspired wise man and he does the same thing again in chapter four. Nebuchadnezzar’s dream about the great tree which represents Nebuchadnezzar and the tree is cut down. When Daniel is called in to interpret it and he does.
Not good news for the king he’s going to be a madman for seven years out in the with the animals and so Daniel, of course, is a little worried about this and says “O king may the dream be for your enemies”. But it happened and Nebuchadnezzar fulfilled that prophecy. But Daniel again functions as an inspired wiseman.
Now Daniel chapter seven. A new phase of his work. He himself is directly involved. The vision is given directly to him in a night vision, night dream. He says he was lying on his bed at night when this vision, this dream came to him.
In Daniel chapter eight, two years later it’s a day vision. He is transferred to Shushan in the east where he sees the vision of the ram and the goat and so on and so forth.
Then when we come down to the time right around the fall of Babylon, we have an angel writing on the walls of the palace, and Daniel interprets it. And we have an angel shutting the mouth of the lions when he’s down in the lion’s den.
So we also have the personal appearance of the angel in Daniel chapter 9. This is the first year of Darius, the first year under the Persians. And the angel comes and talks to him directly. Oh, Daniel greatly beloved understand the word that I bring you and understand what the vision is all about. Personal appearance of the Angel.
So you see there’s a progression from zero presence at least as far as he could see. An inspired wise man; inspired wise man; night dream; night vision; day vision; the personal appearance of the angel.
What’s the cap what’s the open up experience in the book of Daniel? Daniel chapter ten verses five to seven. The last vision of the book. Daniel ten eleven and twelve are all together. Daniel 10 is the introduction, twelve is the conclusion, and eleven is the body of the prophecy.
But notice what happens. He’s out praying morning and fasting for three weeks about a problem. Probably the delay in the construction of the Temple in Jerusalem.
Daniel 10 verse five, “I lifted my eyes and looked, and behold, there was a certain man dressed in linen, whose waist was girded with a belt of pure gold of Uphaz. His body also was like beryl, his face had the appearance of lightning, his eyes were like flaming torches, his arms and feet like the gleam of polished bronze, and the sound of his words like the sound of a tumult. Now I, Daniel, alone saw the vision, while the men who were with me did not see the vision; nevertheless, a great dread fell on them, and they ran away to hide themselves. So I was left alone and saw this great vision; yet no strength was left in me, for my natural color turned to a deathly pallor, and I retained no strength”.
And he falls to the ground and then an angel comes and taps him on the shoulder and helped him up. So the angels are here but there on each side of the river. This is not an angel. This is God. This is God making a personal appearance to Daniel.
We call this a theophany. They don’t happen very often in the Bible but once in a great while a personal appearance by God. So you see as he walked in his spiritual life over seventy years God comes closer and closer and closer and closer.
And finally when he’s ready to lie down and sleep the sleep of death and the rest of the resurrection morning God shows himself to him and says Daniel here I am. You’ve been looking for me. You’ve been walking with me and here I am.
And the final token of the personal presence of God is manifested in this glorious vision of God in Daniel 10, the third year of Cyrus. Probably the year he died or maybe the year before he died right around that time.
So here’s how Daniel’s walk with God starts out. At first, he can’t even see Him, gets it indirect. Then he gets it through a vision. Then he gets it through an angel and finally, he meets Him face to face.
Well, that’s a model for us. You may not have the experience of a prophet. But this should parallel your experience too. That everyday day by day in your own personal spiritual experience with God you should be walking with him and you should be coming closer to him and closer to him and closer to him until we shall behold him.
I love the modern parable about Enoch. I’m sure you’ve heard it. You know Enoch got just one or two verses in the Bible. But how would you like to have those verses that Enoch got? So “Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him”(Gen 5:24).
So the parable goes like this, each day God would come to Enoch’s house, tap on the door “Enoch it is time for a walk, come on out”. So they walk a little way and they commune and they talk and Enoch’s heart is warmed because of the presence of God, And then God leaves; goes back home to heaven.
And a few days later he comes, knocks on the door and they walk a little farther this time. Years and years go by in their walk. You know we think it’s hard to be a Christian for five years or ten years. How about Enoch who was a Christian for three hundred sixty-five years. How’s that for faithfulness! How would you measure up on that kind of a time scale.
And so late towards the end of his life God comes and they have another walk and they keep walking and they walk and they walk and they walk and they walk a long long way. And he’s way far away from home and God turns and tells Enoch. “I tell you you Enoch, you’re really closer to my home than you are to your home. So you might as well come on home with me”.
Well, I guess my final counsel is, walk with God; walk in His word; come closer to him every day; develop a better understanding of what he has to tell us for these modern days. And then very soon and very soon we shall see the King.
Let’s stand as we pray. Loving heavenly Father we want to thank you today for what Jesus has done for us. That He died as our sacrifice. That he serves us our priest. And we look up to Him today to give us strength and courage and your Spirit so that we may walk with you day by day and come closer and closer. And we look forward to the great day when we can walk through the gates of the city of Jerusalem with Jesus at our head. And may that great day come soon and may each one of you be there. I ask in Jesus’ name, amen.
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I have really been blessed by this study, Book of Daniel chapter 7 Commentary and Study by William H Shea. Please share your views in the comments section below.
