Author: Richard Sipes

The Interpretation of the Vision

Daniel 7:15-28

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Daniel chapter 7, what a blessing and a challenge it has been for us as we have considered its prophecy over the last couple of weeks. We have seen Daniel’s vision of the four beasts representing four beastly kings and kingdoms of men. We have seen Daniel’s vision of the throne room of heaven as Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, receives the kingdom from His Father, the Ancient of Days.

Today we will consider the last half of chapter 7 in which Daniel is given some details about the interpretation of the visions that he saw that night. As we have seen these visions are prophecies that are expressed in apocalyptic language. They are in signs and symbols which stand for real persons and events in history and in the future. But as we have seen, some of the details of what all this means is hidden from Daniel and from us.

The good news is that Daniel was at least as troubled by the visions as we are. So Daniel asked about the meaning of the vision. So starting in verse 15 and going to the end of the chapter we have a divinely inspired interpretation of the vision which gives us some help and some more details in understanding this prophecy. More →

Your Kingdom Come

DANIEL 7:9-14

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Last week, we saw that Daniel had a vision of four beasts arising from the Great Sea. We saw that these four beasts represented kings and their empires – Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. As I said last time, these temporary beastly kingdoms of man serve as a backdrop for the coming of the eternal kingdom of heaven. God is giving Daniel a picture of future history and its consummation.

Daniel was God’s prophet in a time of Israel’s captivity. God had set apart Israel from the other nations to be His special people. God made a covenant with them to bless them with His loving kindness as they observed His commandments. They were to inherit the land and reign in a kingdom.

But because of their continued sin and the breaking of God’s covenant, they had been taken captive to Babylon. Their land was in a shambles. Their temple was destroyed. Their walls of their city were broken down. They were really almost a nonexistent nation.

And the question naturally comes to their mind, “Has God forsaken us?” Have God’s promises failed? From the human perspective, I know that it looked to them as though God had set them aside and was through with them.

But God was not through with His people, Israel. As we will see when we get to chapter 9, there had to be a 70-year purging. There would have to be some time of restoring and rebuilding.

But here God is giving them a message in the midst of their deepest hour of trial that He had not permanently set them aside. And so He gives this vision through Daniel that there is yet a glorious and marvelous future for them. More →

Daniel’s Vision of the Beasts

Daniel 7:1-8

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Last week we began to study Daniel 7 and his vision of the four beasts. I gave an outline of the chapter, gave some principles by which we should interpret the vision, and summarized the message of the vision.

I summarized the message of this prophecy this way:

Daniel 7 teaches us that the course of humanity is determined in the throne room of God Almighty. Before the kingdom of God is established on the earth, four earthly kingdoms will rise and fall. These kingdoms go from bad to worse. Arrogant, boastful, and even blasphemous kings will reign over the nations, opposing God and oppressing His saints. All of this is by divine design. When the sin and oppression of evil men reaches a predetermined point, God will remove them and establish His promised eternal kingdom. Then the saints will receive the kingdom which will never end.

We are now ready look into the details of the vision and what they mean. First of all, in verses 1-8 we see the vision of the four beasts and the significance of this picture is the apparent power and the evident depravity of the world empires. Daniel sees a panoramic vision of world empires but it serves merely as the backdrop of the inauguration of the reign of the Son of Man in the kingdom of heaven. The central section of this passage, of the chapter, and of the book of Daniel itself is verses 9-14 where we see the coronation of the Son of Man as king and His heavenly kingdom. More →

Introduction to Daniel 7

Daniel 7

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As we come to Daniel 7 we have come to the second major section in the book of Daniel. Remember that chapters 1-6 were historical. They happen in chronological order and tell us of some major events during the lifetime of Daniel. They take place during the time of the Babylonian exile when the Jewish nation has been destroyed and many of its people were forcefully carried away to captivity in Babylon. Daniel himself was one of those Jewish exiles.

The events in chapters 1-6 take place during the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, kings of Babylon, and during the time of Darius and Cyrus, kings of the Medo-Persian Empire. In those chapters we saw that the theme of Daniel is the sovereign rule of God. God controls history. The kingdoms of this world are in the hand of God and He does with them as He wills for His purposes. As King Nebuchadnezzar learned: “the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever He chooses,” (Dan. 4:25);  “For His dominion is an everlasting dominion, And His kingdom is from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing; He does according to His will in the army of heaven And among the inhabitants of the earth. No one can restrain His hand Or say to Him, “What have You done?”” (Dan. 4:34b-35).

So we saw God in control in promoting faithful Daniel and his friends in chapter 1. We saw God sovereign over the kingdoms of the world in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the statue in chapter 2. We saw God powerfully rescue the three Hebrews from the fiery furnace in chapter 3. In chapter 4 Nebuchadnezzar testifies of God’s sovereignty after God humbles him and restores him. In chapter 5 the handwriting on the wall showed Belshazzar God’s sovereign power to judge the kingdoms of men. And in chapter 6 we saw the saving power of God when Daniel was miraculously delivered from the lion’s den during the reign of Darius the Mede.

Now as we come to the second half of the book of Daniel we will see the same theme, God is sovereign over all. But now, that lesson is given in a different form. The book changes from history to prophecy. In chapters 7-12 we have a series of dreams or visions that Daniel receives from God during the last 20 years of his life. These visions center around the nations and empires of the world, especially as they relate to God’s plan for Israel. The vision of Daniel in chapter 7 ties these two halves of the book of Daniel together. It is both a summary of what has been revealed before, especially in the vision of Nebuchadnezzar in chapter 2, and also the outline of future world history with which the last half of Daniel is primarily concerned. Chapter 7 reveals in broad terms what the future holds from the time of Daniel to the end of time. More →

Daniel and the Lions

Daniel 6:1-28

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If there is any story from the book of Daniel that most people know it is the wonderful story of Daniel in the lions’ den. Many of us first heard this story as children in Sunday School or when our parents taught us Bible stories. 

Daniel’s deliverance from the lion’s den is not the first great deliverance in the Book of Daniel, but it is the best loved. Daniel and his three friends are divinely delivered in chapter 1 from a confrontation with the Babylonian government and Nebuchadnezzar its king. God granted these men favor in the eyes of their foreign superiors, and they were allowed to eat vegetables, rather than the food set aside for them by their king. Because of their faithfulness, God gave these men an extra measure of wisdom, greatly impressing king Nebuchadnezzar, who gave them positions of influence and responsibility in his kingdom. More →

The Handwriting on the Wall

Daniel 5

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“The handwriting on the wall” is a phrase so familiar it has become a modern day cliché. We use that phrase to refer to something that is obvious, ominous and imminent. There are clear signs that something unpleasant or unwelcome is going to happen. Today in Daniel 5 we will see the origin of that phrase and the message it brings. More →

From Pride to Praise

Daniel 4

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Daniel chapter 4 is the story of a king, with a lesson for kings and presidents just as valid today as it was twenty-five centuries ago. But I hope you will see today that it’s also a story about every one of us. Every proud sinner must learn Nebuchadnezzar’s lesson or perish. John Piper says that “What Daniel describes in this story is the pathway of a man from the pride of self to the praise of God through the valley of humiliation. And that’s a pathway that every person in the world must walk if he wants to get to heaven and have eternal life.”

Ever since Adam’s first sin we have all been born with his disposition. Do you remember what the essence of that first sin was? It was the abandonment of childlike dependence on God in favor of God-like dependence on self. And ever since then, all people everywhere have been born with this sinful nature of pride. More →

Faith in the Fire

Daniel 3:1-30

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Go with me, 2600 years ago, to the plain of Dura near Babylon, where King Nebuchadnezzar had summoned every leader – the satraps, the administrators, the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the judges, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces – from his far-flung empire. Imagine the sight – multitudes of people from various nations, speaking many languages. And they all had gathered for one purpose – to honor King Nebuchadnezzar and his gods!

Ever since Daniel interpreted Nebuchadnezzar’s dream for him, the king could not stop thinking of himself as that head of gold. I’m sure it must have bothered him greatly to think that his great kingdom would be left to others inferior to himself. The king was attempting to consolidate his power and test the loyalty of his subjects. Could Nebuchadnezzar reverse the scattering of the nations and the confusion of the languages that happened so long ago in Babel? Surely he could unite all these diverse people, nations and languages and ensure that his kingdom would never fail.

So Nebuchadnezzar had erected a huge, golden image ninety feet tall. And now these leaders, having made their way to the great plain of Dura, were compelled to bow in worship as soon as the royal orchestra began playing. It was that or death!

But three Hebrew men – Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego – refused to bow. More →

The Kingdoms of the World

Daniel 2:31-49

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Daniel 2 is one of the pivotal chapters of the Bible. It contains important truth about world history from God’s point of view. One writer calls Daniel 2 “the Prophetic Alphabet” because in it you find the ABCs of Bible prophecy. Many people are wondering if we are living in the Last Days. Some misguided Bible teachers are even insisting that the rapture of the church will occur in September of this year. In times like these we need to know exactly what God says about the future. More →

Faith in a World of Uncertainty

Daniel 2:1-30

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We live in a world of uncertainty. People today look around and see potential disaster at every turn. With layoffs at work, economics slow-downs, climate change and terrorism, our world seems out of control. There is uncertainty in the job market…uncertainty in the housing market…uncertainty in the stock market. In uncertain times people seem to slip into a mode of fear. We fear failing at our jobs, or losing our families, or getting cancer. We fear going broke and getting older. People try to cope with their fears by financial investment plans or sophisticated military defense systems or by escaping into substance abuse. Our generation is addicted to more mood-altering drugs than any generation in the history of the world. (See Max Lucado, Fearless: Faith in Christ Through the Storm).

But I want to make a bold statement, which will serve as kind of the premise of our study today. Faith can thrive in times of uncertainty. More →