Daniel 8: He's Got This Series

HE’S GOT THIS—Daniel 8

Do you sometimes feel like the world is spinning out of control? The safe and secure life some of us remember seems more chaotic, less innocent, and somewhat scary. Family and cultural values are changing—not always for the better. Religious freedom is under attack in many parts of the world. People are polarized about politics, race, immigration, and economic policies. Governments are controlled by a powerful few, for their own benefit.

Often, we feel powerless to change the direction of history, since so much is beyond our control. Perhaps we are fearful, frustrated, or confused. Perhaps, in our darkest thoughts, we wonder whether even God has things under control.

That is one reason to study the book of Daniel. Daniel reminds us:

NOTHING IS A SURPRISE TO GOD.

Daniel is a Jewish exile, living in Babylon, because of the sin and rebellion of God’s chosen people, and the breakdown of the kingdom which God promised would last forever.

On the surface, Daniel is doing fine, but his mind is seeing visions—troubling visions from God.

Read Daniel 8:1-14.

This is a weird vision, and in a couple of minutes we will read the interpretation which the angel Gabriel gave to Daniel. Daniel did not understand the interpretation, but we have the benefit of looking back over history, and the interpretation has eerie similarities to events almost 300 years after Daniel died.

(Preacher: Project 3 maps: Persia, Greece, and the division of the Greek reign into 4 parts)

Daniel’s vision came in the Babylonian Empire, which was overwhelmed by the Persians in 539 B.C. (Daniel was in the palace when the Persians came, interpreting the writing on the wall.) The Persians had earlier taken over the kingdom of Media in 558.

Alexander the Great invaded Persia in 334 B.C., annexing the empire. When Alexander died of unknown causes at age 33, his Greek empire was divided into 4 parts. Judea was in the Seleucid territory, and after King Seleucus Philopater was assassinated, Antiochus Epiphanes seized power.

In 169 B.C., some Jews rebelled, and Antiochus Epiphanes returned to Jerusalem to crush the revolt. The apocryphal book of 2 Maccabees 5:10-14 describes the horror: “When these happenings were reported to the king, he thought that Judea was in revolt. Raging like a wild animal, he set out from Egypt and took Jerusalem by storm. He ordered his soldiers to cut down without mercy those whom they met and to slay those who took refuge in their houses. There was a massacre of young and old, a killing of women and children, a slaughter of virgins and infants. In the space of three days, eighty thousand were lost, forty thousand meeting a violent death, and the same number being sold into slavery.”

Antiochus looted the temple, and installed the worship of Zeus. He sacrificed an unclean pig on the altar—“an abomination that causes desecration.” (See Daniel 9:27, 12:31)

A group of Jews, led by Judas Maccabeus, rebelled. After a bloody and cruel 3.5 years of war, the Jews took back Jerusalem. The temple was rededicated in 165 B.C., the first celebration of Hanukkah.

Knowing the history that came after Daniel, we read the interpretation of Daniel’s vision:

Read Daniel 8:15-27.

Everything fits: the four parts of the Greek empire, the arrogance and cruelty of Antiochus, and the desecration of all that was holy.

The interpretation of the vision is an uncanny description of events far in the future for Daniel, causing some people to speculate that it was written after the historical events. If it was, it was not written dishonestly, but as a kind of historical fiction; the original readers would have been aware that it was a reflection on God’s hand in history.

Others point out that there is no textual or historical support for dating the account hundreds of years after Daniel. Daniel had a unique gift from God to see visions, and God was, of course, fully able to reveal the future to Daniel.

Either way, looking forward or back in history, the point is the same: God has his hand in everything, as we see in verses 23 and 25: “A fierce-looking king, a master of intrigue, will arise. He will become very strong, but NOT BY HIS OWN POWER…Yet he will be destroyed, but NOT BY HUMAN POWER.”

Nothing is a surprise to God, and nothing is beyond his control:

Political movements do not surprise him, and they will not overwhelm his plan.

Wars, disasters, and economic downturns do not catch him off guard; he is still in control.

No religion, cultural influence, or threat to human decency leave God scrambling how to respond.

Daniel’s vision reveals that God was in control of all events—even events 300 years later than the vision.

We might think that if we could have a vision of the future, like Daniel did, it would set our minds at ease. Yet Daniel had a quite different response: (Read Daniel 8:27.)