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.)
Daniel had a glimpse of the future, and it was scary! Even though he could see God in control, Daniel could not see how it would all end.
That is the scary thing as we look at our world: Where is it all headed?
If God would give us a vision like Daniel had, would that be enough to settle our fears and doubts? Instead, God gives us a greater vision.
In Matthew 24:1-3, Jesus told his disciples about an event in the future: “Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. ‘Do you see all these things?’ he asked. ‘Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.’ As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. ‘Tell us,’ they said, ‘when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?’”
The disciples could not imagine anything more disastrous than the temple being leveled, for that would mean that everything Jewish was gone: government, religion, even culture. Certainly that would be the time of the end of the age, as Messiah would return to mop up the mess.
Jesus was not talking about the end of the age, however. The temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D., never to be rebuilt. (Even the famous Wailing Wall in Jerusalem consists only of foundation stones; the rest is gone.) It was a traumatic event in the history of Judaism.
Yet the destruction of the temple fit into God’s plan, as Christianity was no longer centered around the temple in Jerusalem, but the temple of the church universal. Paul described the church in Ephesians 2:19-22, “You are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” The temple—the church, of all nations and races—spread across the entire world.
The destruction of the temple was not the end of life on earth. When Jesus’ disciples asked to know the details about the end, he said, (Matthew 24:4-9) “Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places…. you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.”
Not too encouraging! Natural disasters, wars, frauds and deceivers. False religion leading people astray. Persecution and hatred of Christians. It happens in our world, all the time.
Yet we should not be discouraged. After some instructions about how to respond to the events of 70 A.D., Jesus jumped to the end of the story:
Matthew 24:29-31, “Immediately after the distress of those days, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken. Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.”
The future might be rough, but the end is glorious!
GOD IS IN CONTROL.
We don’t always know how to makes sense of history, and we don’t always see how the events of history fit into God’s plan. We don’t need to know those things.
What we need to know is that, even if we are confused and frustrated, God plan and purpose will not be frustrated. Nothing is a surprise to him. Nothing is spinning out of control. No person, power or movement is taking over God’s plan and purpose. Someday, we will see how it all worked out.
For now, we live by faith—faith in the One overcame even death, to rise victorious and ascend into heaven. He is the Son of Man, who will come with power and great glory to gather his children into his eternal kingdom.
Jesus Christ, the One who guaranteed the fulfillment of God’s plan, gives us his word Matthew 24:35, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”
When we look at the world, filled with confusion, worry or fear, we have much more than a vision like Daniel had: We have Jesus…crowned with glory and honor, who will come at the end with power and great glory.
When doubt arises, we will look to Jesus, who took the key role in God’s plan of redemption, and will bring it to the glorious end the Father has already determined.
When we feel powerless to the events of history, we will find our place in the plan of God to make all things right, in the kingdom of Christ our Lord.
