Today, I am reading and commenting on  Daniel 11-12.

The prophecy in chapter 11 looks much like what the people of Maccabean Judea may have understood of world events from the time of Daniel to themselves.  Or to put that another way, it looks somewhat like what happened with the conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great and the wars between the Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms which followed him, but not quite.  Or, in other words, it sounds like what someone knowledgeable about world affairs living in Judea at the time of the Maccabees might have thought had happened.  I want to state that, considering the degree to which the records left by the people of the time were self-serving (just as the records being left by people today) I am not convinced that it disagrees with actual history by as much as modern historians generally conclude.  This prophecy tells us that powerful rulers will make many plans, but they cannot foresee every eventuality and those unforeseen things will cause their plans to work out differently than they intend.  On the other hand, for God there are no unforeseen eventualities, so His plans always work out as He intended.

Then we have the finale of the Book of Daniel which discusses the main point of the latter half (approximately) of the book. Daniel did not understand (and neither do I) so he asked, “My lord, what will the outcome of all this be?” The answer he received was this: “Many will be purified, made spotless and refined, but the wicked will continue to be wicked. None of the wicked will understand, but those who are wise will understand.”  So, throughout history many things will happen, some good, many terrible, and those who seek God will be purified by these events, will be inspired to do ever more good.  While the wicked will continue to miss the point and not understand that doing God’s will would bring them greater joys than all of the selfish actions they choose instead.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Daniel 9-10.

I want to start by focusing on Daniel’s prayer.  In particular, this line, “We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy. ”  God does not answer our prayers because we deserve it, because we are such good people.  In fact, we deserve for God to reject our requests, even those we make for the benefit of others, because we are such sinful people.  Nevertheless, God is merciful and He will grant our requests (I am not going to discuss today those times when He seems to reject our requests).  I just said I was not going to discuss when God seems to reject our requests, however, Daniel gives us a hint as to what we should do before we make requests of God.  Daniel admits to his own sins, and to the sins of the people for whom he is about to make a request.  One final point about Daniel’s prayer: our sin brings shame on both ourselves and on God.

When I read chapter 10 here I am reminded of Ephesians 6:12. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

Before I get to what I want to write about this I want to state that it is not clear to me if chapter 10 refers to a distinctly different occasion from chapter 9, or the same one.

The messenger who came to answer Daniel’s prayer tells him that he started on his way immediately when Daniel began praying, but the “prince of the Persian kingdom” resisted him for 21 days until Michael, “one of the chief princes”, came to help him.  When I compare this with what Paul said in Ephesians it strikes me as suggesting the the kingdom of Persia had a spiritual being which represented it in the spiritual realm, and that this being opposed God’s messengers.  This leads me to the understanding that all human organizations (nations, businesses, non-profits, etc) have spiritual beings associated with them.  Further, those spiritual beings will generally oppose God.  My conclusion from looking at organizations of which I have knowledge is that we need to work very hard to ensure that the spiritual being which represents organizations of which we are part do not oppose God.  It seems the longer an organization is around the more likely it begins to serve itself and not its members or whatever goal it was established to promote.  Some organizations take longer to reach such a state than others and that appears to me to be a result of key people actively and knowingly working to prevent that from happening.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Daniel 7-8.

We usually interpret Daniel’s two visions in today’s passage together, and there is some merit to doing so.  However, they are separate visions, with separate interpretations provided in the passage, for a reason.  So, I am going to look at these two visions separately. In the interpretation of the vision we are told both that the four beasts are four kings and that the fourth beast is a fourth kingdom.  I am unsure if this represents two different things, or if the writer was just using “king” and “kingdom” interchangeably.  I will note that I have had dreams where things in the dream make that kind of transition: when they first appear they are one kind of thing, but later in the dream they are something else with no point in the dream where they change, I just knew they were one thing and now I know they are something else.  More importantly, we have the horn which overthrew the three other horns.  Both in the vision and in the interpretation we can see it as a ruler who claims power over God’s people while denying God’s power.  Yet, the rise of such a ruler presages God sitting in judgement over the world.  When a ruler or government ruler or government puts itself in the place of God, we should look for the great work which God is about to do.  I am not referring to where the government tries to co-opt the worship of God in support of its agenda and plans.  This refers to those times when the government seeks to replace worship of God with its own rites and rituals.  I intended to write something about the vision of the ram and the goat, but this has gone too long already.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Daniel 5-6.

In the story about the writing on the wall I noticed that when the hand wrote on the wall the king was terrified.  As I read the passage, he was not frightened just by the disembodied hand, but by the writing itself.  So, he knew the message was bad before he even knew what it said.   Which brings me to something I realized a few years ago.  We often say that someone left some place before things there went wrong because they “saw the writing on the wall”, referencing this story.  However, in this story, it was too late for King Belshazzar when he saw the writing on the wall.

Then we have the story of Daniel being thrown into the lion’s den.  Daniel’s political enemies could find nothing wrong in his actions.  So, they changed the rules to make his religious practices illegal.  They presented the change in a way which made it seem like it was innocuous and disguised the fact that it was aimed at Daniel.  When the new law was passed, Daniel made no effort to hide his now illegal worship of God, nor did he make any effort to make a scene.  He continued to worship God as he had always done. I want to note that Daniel had no need to “make a scene” about his worship of God because he had always done so publicly in a manner that anyone who knew him knew that he did so.  Let us strive to live such lives that when our enemies look for something to “get us” on, they must make faithfully serving God illegal.  I will say that I believe we see such things happening in the world today.  Perhaps not yet by passing laws, but more and more our society is declaring being faithful to God to be “beyond the pale”.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Daniel 3-4.

I have always loved the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the fiery furnace.  Certainly much of that love goes to my childhood hearing of the story and the safety it made me feel.  As a young child the message which I was taught by this story was that God could, and would, protect me from any danger, no matter how great.  Then, as I got a little older it gave me the confidence to understand those who willingly gave up their lives to do God’s will.  Here, the trio tell Nebuchadnezzar that God WAS able to save them from the furnace, but that they would serve Him even if He did not do so.  Their service to God was not conditional on Him saving them from danger. We should have the same attitude in serving God: He is able to save us, but we should willingly serve Him even if His plans mean that He will choose not to do so.

However, today I was struck by something I never noticed before, King Nebuchadnezzar’s arrogance.  He rhetorically asks of the three, “Then what god will be able to rescue you from my hand?”  His statement there was more than denying that their God was powerful enough to thwart his will.  He was claiming there was no god which could do so.  He had come to believe that he was accountable to no one and to nothing. The dream, its interpretation, and the events which followed in the next passage give a similar message of a ruler who believes nothing will hold him to account for his actions.  Those who make up our government today believe that no one and nothing will hold them to account.  They are demanding that we bow down and worship their “gods”.  If we do not, they promise to punish us in ways from which they are sure that no god can rescue us.  In the face of this threat, let us remain faithful to God, even if He chooses not to rescue us.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Daniel 1-2.

I really like the story of how Daniel and his friends chose to eat only foods which met Jewish dietary laws.  The first aspect of the story shows us four young men who were brave enough to request of their captors a less enjoyable experience in order to remain faithful to their beliefs.  The second aspect of the story shows us that God rewarded them for their faithfulness by making healthier and more capable of learning than their counterparts.  From what is written and what we know of the diets of the elites of the day, the diet chosen by Daniel and his companions was probably healthier than that of their counterparts.  But the moral of the story is NOT that they excelled because they ate a healthier diet.  The moral of the story is that they excelled because they were faithful in honoring God.

I have often spent a lot of time considering the meaning of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream.  However, today I want to focus on what this story tells us about our relationship with God.  When Nebuchadnezzar made his demand on the wise men present, their response was that only the gods can meet that demand and they are not available to us to ask.  Daniel had a different response.  He agreed with the other wise men in stating that only a god could provide what the king asked, but he saw it differently.  First, Daniel took the position that there was only one God, not many gods.  Second, Daniel believed that God would communicate with those who sought Him.  Therefore, Daniel turned to God in prayer, and asked his friends to do likewise.  The other wise men viewed the gods as beings who were inaccessible to men.  Daniel and his friends viewed God as one to whom they could turn for guidance.  Let us be like them: faithfully honoring God in the face of other’s skepticism, and prayerfully seeking His guidance.

I want to make one other point.  In the book of Daniel, his friends are mostly referred to by the Babylonian names they were given, but Daniel is mostly referred to by his Hebrew name.  Related to that is the fact that Ezekiel refers to a man by the name of Daniel who was legendary for his wisdom and righteousness.  So, the reason Daniel was not referred to more in the book of Daniel as Belteshazaar was so that people would see that he was similarly wise and righteous as his legendary namesake.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.