Daniel Chapter 7a Series

Daniel – Chapter 7a

Chapter 7 Outline

I. Introduction to the Dream (7:1-3)

a. The Date of the Dream (7:1)

b. The Detail of the Dream (7:2-3)

1. The Four Winds (7:2a)

2. The Great Sea (7:2b)

3. The Diverse Beasts (7:3)

II. Information about the Dream (7:4-14)

a. The Earthly Empire (7:4-8)

1. The Lionlike Beast (7:4)

2. The Bearlike Beast (7:5)

3. The Leopardlike Beast (7:6)

4. The Terrible Beast (7:7-8)

b. The Heavenly Empire (7:9-14)

1. God’s Sovereignty (7:9)

2. God’s Sentence (7:10-12)

3. God’s Son (7:13-14)

III. Interpretation of the Dream (7:15-28)

a. Daniel’s Troubled (7:15-16)

b. Dream’s Truth (7:17-27)

1. The Five Kingdoms (7:17-18)

2. The Fourth Kingdom (7:19-26)

3. The Fifth Kingdom (7:27)

c. Daniel’s Thoughts (7:28)

Message

The first 6 chapters of Daniel are about Daniel and his personal friends and are essentially historical in character. The remaining chapters are about Daniel and his people’s future and are mostly prophetical in character.

There is a natural division between Chapters 6 & 7 and here we enter Part II of the Book of Daniel. During his dream, he is given a full view of “The Time of the Gentiles;” beginning with Babylon and ending with the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and the establishment of His kingdom.

I. Introduction to the Dream (7:1-3)

a. The Date of the Dream (7:1)

The vision came to Daniel in the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, which would have been 553 B.C. Chronologically, this dream belongs between Daniel chapter 4, which deals with the humbling of Nebuchadnezzar, and chapter 5, which deals with the overthrow of Belshazzar, which occurred in 539 B.C.

No wonder Daniel showed such contempt for the gifts and promotion that Belshazzar had promised him if he could interpret the writing on the wall. Daniel had known for some time that the Medo-Persian Empire would replace the Babylonian Empire on the world stage.

b. The Detail of the Dream (7:2-3)

1. The Four Winds (7:2a)

The four winds of the heaven symbolizes four great angel princes Revelation 7:1-3 And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree. [2] And I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God: and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, [3] Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of God in their foreheads.

These are the principalities of Satan who rule over the four nations that were to seize world power. They are the powers of the air the forces of the evil one Ephesians 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Ephesians 2:2 Wherin in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. They are subject to Satan and through them he holds the nations of the earth in chains.

Daniel saw them strive for mastery of the prophetic earth. Each in turn was able to parade his own particular wild beast kingdom as his prize exhibit.

2. The Great Sea (7:2b)

The significant geographical location of Daniel’s vision was the great sea, which in the Bible refers top the Mediterranean. All of the world empires of the Bible eventually, if not initially, held territory on the coastline of the Mediterranean. As Gentile world power began to move westward the Mediterranean became increasingly more important until.

The kingdom of Babylon embraced the shores that stretched along the eastern and south-eastern edge of the Mediterranean; Medo-Persian did the same; while Greece also took in the north-eastern shores, by the time we come to the fourth world empire, “the great sea” was little more than a Roman lake, as they had completely surrounded the sea.

The name Mediterranean means “midst of the earth,” and that is the sea Daniel was looking at in his vision, and in a very literal sense every one of these empires seems to spring up from the great sea.

Revelation 17:15 And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.

Isaiah 57:20 But the wicked are like the troubled sea, When it cannot rest, Whose waters cast up mire and dirt.

We can clearly see from the Scriptures that the sea is a picture of the troubled nations. In other words, out of the unsettled nations surrounding the Mediterranean Sea these great empires will arise.