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.