In a cartoon, a man was phoning his pastor during a crisis. With a fraught look, the man asks the minister: "My wife has left me, my kids are on drugs, and my life is falling apart. Can you explain to me the difference between amillennialism, postmillennialism, and premillennialism?"
We have and will be looking at the prophecies of Daniel in the Bible study but there is also lessons that we can learn for our lives in these stories as well. We are going to look at one this morning.
I warned you it was coming, so here it is a Harry Potter illustration – Professor Sibyll Trelawney – Divination teacher. Old fraud, in the story she does make 2 predictions that turn out to be accurate however, most of the time she claims to have known what would happen after it happens and then keeps predicting that Harry will die a horrible death shortly, he doesn’t. Then Harry and Ron don’t ever have time to do their homework, what with playing Quidditch, hunting dark wizards and serving detentions, so when it comes to Divination they simply make it up. They know that Prof. Trelawney likes to predict doom, gloom and death, so they make up as much bad stuff as they can that is going to happen because that’s what the teacher wants to hear. They usually get top marks. Then comes judgement day. In the lastest book, don’t worry I’m not going to tell you who dies or reveal any great plot points. Anyway in the latest book, Professor Trelawney has to face an inspection of her teaching and she is asked to predict something, to demonstrate her second sight. She is unable and is shown to be the fraud she usually is.
That is what King Nebuchadnezzar is doing in the story. Anybody can hear a dream and make up an interpretation which you think the King would like to hear. In fact in the time of Jeremiah this is exactly what happened. God gave Jeremiah a message of doom, destruction and submission to foreign powers. But the other prophets knew that people didn’t want to hear this and so they prophesied resistance, God would be with them and prosperity. They were listened to and believed but they weren’t right. And so Nebuchadnezzar wanted to be sure that what his prophets were telling him was true and not just made up to please him. So he tells them that he will believe them if they can not only interpret his dream but also tell him what it was. Then he will know that they are not frauds. The problem, they are all frauds. They can’t really tell the future and they could guess at what the dream might mean.
Except, that is Daniel, only he has no more clue what the King’s dream was or what it means than anyone else. However, rather than submitting to despair like the rest of the King’s wisemen he does something that none of them do, he prays. And God answers. Daniel is given told not only the dream but also the interpretation as well. Daniel thanks God. He tells the King and all is well. The wisemen are not killed and Daniel rises to power along with his 3 friends.
Ah, the vision. Nebuchadnezzar dreamed of a statue with a head of gold, upper body of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron and feet of iron and clay. He is told that each different part of the body represents a different empire or kingdom, with Nebuchadnezzar the head of Gold. We are not told what the other Kingdoms are here. However, based on history and the rest of the book, the silver was the Medes, the Bronze the Persians, the Iron the Greeks and the feet of iron and clay the fractured Greek empire after the death of Alexander the Great. If you want to know the details, we covered that in the Bible study last Wednesday. We will be continuing to look at the visions in Bible studies as we not only look at what they mean but what they don’t mean. If you’ve always thought that the Bible teaches that a confederation of 10 nations with the anti-Christ at its head before Christ returns and even identified this empire with either the EU or the UN, then come along to the Bible study and learn why the Bible doesn’t teach that and what the prophecies about the 10 nations and a little horn really refer to. And if you don’t think this is practical good but you’d be amazed at the effect on US foreign policy that wrong interpretations of the visions of Daniel have had. If you thought that the UN or the EU will be the seat of the antichrist and is to be resisted at all cost while the Jewish temple must be rebuilt on its original location in Jerusalem and daily sacrifices could resumed before Christ returns. Well, lets just say it explains certain actions and attitudes.
Commercial over, back to the message of Daniel chapter 2. The key point is here is Daniel’s pray and God’s answer. Later in our series we will look at not compromising on prayer but now lets look at another aspect. The first key to understanding is found in verses 10-11. “The astrologers answered the king, "There is not a man on earth who can do what the king asks! No king, however great and mighty, has ever asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or astrologer. What the king asks is too difficult. No one can reveal it to the king except the gods, and they do not live among men." ” No one can reveal it to the King except the gods and they do not live among men. Well, admittedly I don’t know how they split the duties of wisemen, astrologers and priests in ancient Babylon, but I thought that was the job of the astrologers and wisemen and their sort. To be the ones who knew what the gods wanted and to tell the King. However, this incident, rather like the Prof. Trelawney’s inspect that shows them to be the frauds they are. They are quite happy to get their salaries and show wisdom, give opinions and make dream interpretations. But when it comes down it, they are shown to be the frauds they are. They have no connection with the gods. When it really counts they come up empty. The gods don’t live amongst men.
There is of course one man who knows that that isn’t the case. Daniel was a Jew, who although he was taken from Judah when he was a young teenager, knew about the temple in Jerusalem, which was either destroyed or about to be destroyed, the temple that claimed to be the dwelling place of God on earth. Although God was omnipresent, he was everywhere, there was something special about the temple, where God’s presence dwelt in a way that it did not dwell anywhere else. The glory of God filled the temple and made it so holy, that if an unclean person went into the Holy of Holies they were killed. The “gods” might not dwell amongst men but God did and Daniel knew how to get in contact with him. He prayed all night and God answered. There is a God who lives among us. And the vision, interpretation and Daniel’s prayer of thanksgiving, tells us that this God not only lives among us but is also in control and able to aid those who seek him out.
One lesson that we can learn from this story is that God aids those who seek him out, who bring their problems to him in prayer. That is still true today. God is still capable of giving big answers to big problems. Nebuchadnezzar’s wise men in all their scrabbling about got one thing right, the King had asked an impossible thing. However, Daniel presented that impossible thing to God and God made the impossible possible. God is still in the business of performing the impossible. Now some of you will know that I don’t particularly like some of the Christians faith healers out there like Benny Hinn and various others. However, this is due to the way he acts, his methods and the message he preaches, not because he claims that God can heal through him. Some within the Christian church seem to withdraw from the supernatural and find natural explanations for everything. They think Christianity will suffer criticism and leave itself open to being discredited by science if it clings to much to the supernatural. You can have faith in God, believe what you like and draw inner strength from God as long as you don’t claim that God acts in real life especially in supernatural ways. Well, I’m sorry God performs the impossible. This is just the beginning of the supernatural in the lives of Daniel and his friends. They will face fire, lions and disembodied hands as well as angels and visions, all supernaturally. But here God simply reveals the contents of a man’s dream and the interpretation to Daniel. Perhaps it is appropriate that this first incident of the supernatural in Daniel, is not so much showy as simply showing that when he needs to, God will intervene on behalf of his people even if he has to do the impossible.
And God is still the same. When he needs to, God still answers prayer with the supernatural. God will intervene supernaturally on your behalf if you ask him. And yet, I always find myself having to preface this with warnings. God does not always intervene in the ways we want him to. Remember the context of Daniel. Daniel is living in exile after a foreign King has conquered his people and destroyed God’s temple. When we look at the later stages of Daniel it is full of predictions about he suffering of God’s people and how God waits before intervening on their behalf, until it is time. God doesn’t always answer yes and he doesn’t always give us a supernatural response. But he can and does, when it is in his will, the Bible also seems to teach that we can influence God by praying and asking him to intervene. I don’t claim to know when God will intervene and when he decides that it is best to wait or not act in the way we want. I do know that he always acts from a basis of love, not just for us but for all and that he does have the power to act and sometimes he does. Contrary to popular belief and King Nebuchadnezzar, God does live among us and is available to be questioned, asked, pleaded with and begged.
But God doesn’t just live among us he lives in us. God is not out there, he is in here. Not in the way that the New Age teaches, that you just have to find the divine in you, but rather that when you come to God in repentance and turn to him, he forgives and comes and dwells in us. If God was able to answer Daniel, how much more is he able to answer us, when we ask. We look back at Old Testament characters like Daniel and sometimes think, if only God was with me like that. If only God would show me visions, send me messengers by angel. If only God would appear in a great pillar of fire or a burning bush then it would be so easy. Yet, while we were studying John we learned that God is with us in an even better way. That the Holy Spirit living in us gives us a connection to God and an advantage that Daniel, Moses, Abraham, David and all the rest never had. We have God living in us, guiding us and giving us power.
I can’t tell you what God’s answer will be when you pray. I would love to claim that if you just prayed enough, it would all work out, but I can’t. What I can tell you is that nothing is beyond power and that he tells us, he commands us to ask. Maybe God won’t intervene supernaturally, maybe he will but you’ll never know unless you ask, believing that he can and believing that he will act from love.
The final thing we can learn from this story and the book of Daniel, is an encouragement, God is still in control. If the stories in the book of Daniel teach us about not compromising on the essentials, then the visions tell us that God is in control. Nations and Kings may rise. Dictators may be evil and commit atrocities even against God’s people. But God is in control. He causes and allows Kings to rise but he also brings them down. We might look at the world and not understand what God is up to, but we can trust that he is still in control. Those who have power may think that they are powerful and can do what they like, but they are wrong. God is control and when he decides that someones time has come, it has come. Nations and Kingdoms may rise, fall and be replaced with others. They may conquer all in their path, rule the world. Act cruelly or benevolently. Show mercy or not. But they are all destroyed by the rock that grew to be a mountain that covered the earth, the Kingdom of God.
The most remarkable thing about this vision, is the identity of the rock, the Church. As we looked at when looking at John, Jesus did not come and announce that he was going away and when he returned in 1000’s of years the Kingdom of God would be established. But that the Kingdom of God is here. It wasn’t the Kingdom that the Jews were expected. It might not even be the Kingdom you would expect from reading Daniel, but it was God’s Kingdom, the Church. Nations, dictators cannot stand before God working through his church. We are the rock that became a mountain and covered the earth. Oppressed and persecuted, the victims of many attempts to destroy it, we are still here and still growing. Despite growing secularism and new age religion in the UK, the Church is still here. Despite slipping standards and liberalism with the Church, the true Church is still here. Despite the attempts of communism to wipe it out the church is still in Russia and China. When the Iron curtain fell and communism ended, the West did not take Christianity to the East, it was already there, kept alive by the faithful. Yes, the West helped but it was always there. Despite still being outlawed the Church is still there and growing in China. Despite the attempts of Islam to wipe it out, the Church is in the Middle East and Muslim world, a lot of the stuff that goes on we can’t here about it because it would endanger the lives of the Christians there, but the Church is there. The Church is in South America, Asia, Africa and growing at rates unseen over here since the time of John Wesley or the Welsh revivals. The church is still here, from pole to pole and east to west, the Church is still here and growing. It was the rock that has become a mountain and covered the earth. Despite the persecution, because of the persecution. God is in control and the Church is here to stay.
Conclusion
Take encouragement from this vision of Daniel. The Kingdom of God, the Church is here to stay. God is in control. God is working his purposes out in the nation. But just like he was concerned over the fate of Daniel and his friends, so he is concerned with us. He is willing to use that power that move and shatters the nations on our behalf, if we but ask him. Again I cannot tell you what God’s answer will be but I can assure you that God is able and is waiting to be asked.
