Daniel Lesson 23
The Great Sea – Daniel 7:1-2
Here’s a feedback card that says I had a debate with a medical student who read my notes on the four reasons why creation is mutually exclusive of evolution, the point being that the Genesis text gives the text out of chronological sequence for evolution, such as the special creation of the woman, which I then pointed out was related to or is shown or suggested by the derivation of the female hormones from the male hormones. This medical student said all hormones of the female type and testosterone must be added to give a male, thereby implying that the male hormones are chemical derivatives of the female. Where did you get this information so I can check out the validity of the statement?
We had one of our people who is an organic chemist work on a chart for you, and there’s the sequence, and this is why what we said is correct, and partly what the medical student said was correct. The answer is that progesterone, which is a pregnancy, obviously female but it’s a pregnancy hormone, produces a chain to testosterone which the male sex hormone and the immediate follower from the male hormone is estrogen, which is the female sex hormone. And that doesn’t prove that the Genesis 2 story is true, we’re not using it as proof; we’re just simply saying isn’t interesting that the chemical structure of the human body reflects in a way the story of Genesis 2, in that the female is a physical derivation of the male. And that’s the way the text presents it if you’re going to take it literally; there’s no other way of taking it, it’s got to be that way. So my original statement is totally valid and if you want a sequence, any endocrinology textbook will give you the same sequence. So refer your medical school friend back to his own textbook.
In Daniel 7 we start a new section of the book; this is a very difficult section. All the previous chapters were kind of warm ups to the last part of the book of Daniel. It’s difficult; I’ve spent two days on about one and a half verses so it’s a difficult portion of Scripture to interpret. And we are going to start today with the section that begins with Daniel 7:1; Daniel 7-12, this last section of the book, follows logically from Daniel 2-6. Daniel 1 was that Daniel entered Gentile politics; chapters 2-6 is that Daniel has a successful career in Gentile politics, you notice prophecy is not prominent; the issue there is Daniel’s participation, his skill in politics. Then Daniel 7-12 will be entitled: Daniel learns the connection between the divine viewpoint outline of history and Israel. Up to this time he’s got the panorama of history; that’s Daniel 2, but now he’s going to learn the connection between that panorama and his own nation, his own people, Israel. So 7-12 is written to the insiders; 2-6 deals with Daniel’s dealings with the outsiders.
The 6th century, in which Daniel was written, is characterized by a tremendous shift; a shift between what had happened before in the kingdom of man to what happens afterwards. It began in 603 BC with Daniel 2. In 603 BC Daniel 2 we have the shift of political supremacy from Israel to the Gentiles. That’s signaled by the dream of Daniel 2. It is empirically seen in history by what happens beginning in the 6th century. Beginning in the 6th century, if you’re a student of history, you know there are all sorts of changes and readjustments all over the world. There was the rise of Confucianism, the rise of Buddhism, the rise of Hindu reforms, the rise of philosophy in Greece, you have tremendous things and all back to this trying to obtain unity concept. So intellectually and politically changes occurred in the 6th century.
The second indicator we have as a tremendous shift in God’s program is given in 598 BC; in 598 BC God speaks to Jeremiah, Jeremiah 22, and He announces the end of the Solomonic dynasty. The Davidic dynasty, no; the Solomonic dynasty is ending. Never again will a son of Solomon sit on Israel’s throne. This is why in the genealogies of the New Testament Jesus’ Davidic lineage is not traced through Solomon, it is traced through another son of David by the name of Nathan, because Jesus Christ, if He is the son of Solomon, in a physical sense, then Jeremiah 22 is an error in the Bible because Jeremiah 22 prohibits any son of Solomon proclaiming kingship.
In 591 BC a third signal went up that God was changing the ballgame. In 591 BC according to Ezekiel 8-11 the Shekinah glory left the temple. This was a new thing, a third evidence that radical changes were forthcoming in the game plan for the world.
And then in 586 BC a fourth signal; a signal that persisted on down for centuries, the fall of Jerusalem according to 1 Kings 25. So we have these four very, very clear indications, not only to the Jews but to the Gentiles, that God’s program shifted and that from this point forward in history things would be different. How would things be different? Well, the kingdom of man, which is that social organization of humanity based on human viewpoint, the incarnation of the human viewpoint faith, the social order that Satan tries to establish on earth, he’s attempted it again and again and again, in our own generation it’s being attempted through welfarism, socialism and communism, this kind of social organization that Satan has always tried to promote down through history in order the separate man from God’s grace, this new kind of order would take on three characteristics, beginning in the 6th century, characteristics it did not previously possess; characteristics which are under the control of Romans 8:28, that “all things work together for good,” but nevertheless, very, very dangerous characteristics, characteristics which continue through our own day.
The first characteristic of the new form of the kingdom of man is that it will be based on imperialism, that from this time forward, whenever you have a movement in the world it will always be imperialism. Imperialism is the modus vivendi of the international community. This means that world government cannot occur in history, not on the democratic basis foreseen by Kant and other thinkers since him. It will be attained, if t all, by one nation subduing other nations. And since the 6th century there have been four major power blocks that have controlled the world: the Neo-Babylonian Empire, the Medo-Persian Empire, the Grecian Empire, the Roman Empire and its cultural derivatives, Western Europe. We said that Western Europe still controls the world, basically, it controls the world financially. Russia is basically financially controlled by the banks of the west. So therefore Western Europe still holds the key to the control of history. The Bolsheviks won in 1917 only because of a gold shipment from Manhattan and because Trotsky was able to take American currency, borrowed from American banks, to finance the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the Bolsheviks won. Had the American’s not financed the 1917 revolution Russia would never be where she is today. Had Detroit auto manufacturers not made the Russian factories in Siberia that are now cranking out their tanks and army trucks, their military would not be where it is. Russian technology is derivative of American technology and we are doing everything we can to help our enemies, as usual.
Imperialism is the order of the day; one powerful nation will dominate the world and the change after 600 BC is that none of the Gentile powers that, by imperialism try to rule the world, need fear Israel. Israel is sidelined politically. Before this century Israel could have, herself, controlled the world in theory. But after 600 BC Israel would be relegated to a minor role. Even today the modern state of Israel legally exists only because of Gentile mandates, not because she herself has done something. So we have the first characteristic of the new form of the kingdom of man. It is imperialistic.
A second characteristic that was new in the 6th century is that the Word of God is carried to all nations by the Diaspora. The Jews are scattered throughout different cultures. What does that mean? Well that means that if you are a Roman you can obtain Bible doctrine from a fellow Roman citizen; you don’t have to go to another nation to get the Word of God. If you are a Greek you can obtain the Word of God from Hellenistic Jews, you do not have to go to another nation. If you are Nebuchadnezzar you can obtain Bible doctrine from people dwelling inside your own kingdom, so there doesn’t come up the nationalistic problem, well if we accept the Jewish God we’ve got to bow to Israel. There’s nothing of that after 600 BC, no nation has to bow to Israel to accept Israel’s God because Israel legally and politically is nonexistent. There’s no bowing, there’s no nationalistic pride that has to be overcome as an obstruction to the Word of God. Every Gentile nation has access to the Word of God through the Diaspora. That is, Jews were scattered throughout the world, taking the completed canon of the Old Testament with them. Wherever they went they always testified to the divine viewpoint framework. The Romans made special legislation allowing for the Jews to celebrate Sabbath and so on.
The third characteristic of the kingdom of man after 600 BC is that it becomes a training ground for believers in one concept, the concept of hope. Up until this time the faith technique had been applied but not quite the same way. In the past believers in the Old Testament would trust that God could bring in the kingdom. They never knew but that it may be a generation or two or three or four generations ahead the kingdom would come. So the faith technique was a technique directed toward a promise that could come within a reasonable amount of time. But after 600 BC God postpones massively the fulfillment of His promises. Now the fulfillment of the promises goes way, way, way, way, way far in the distance, and now the faith technique is stretched and stretched and stretched so that the believer sits in a pressure situation and must trust way, way, way on down the line that the promises will come true. So there’s a stretching out of the faith technique beginning in 600 BC. The kingdom that shall come, the peace that shall one day come is something far in the future, and the believer then must have patience and hope. So these are the characteristics of the spiritual life that are emphasized after 600 BC.
We could name some more but these are the major characteristics: imperialism, the rise of imperialism; the clear testimony of the Word of God by the Diaspora, and the training ground of hope for believers. And of course that introduces us to that tool of training that was used after 600 BC and that is a new kind of literature called the apocalyptic literature. Apocalyptic literature has reference to basically three books in the Bible: Daniel, Zechariah and Revelation. They are books that most people are intrigued about, they’re very difficult to interpret but the reason they are difficult is that they are full of symbols, much more so than any other books of the Bible. And if you’re going to specialize, as we will today, working with a symbol and trying to define what that symbol means, you have to interpret it according to how the symbol is used in Zechariah, how the symbol is used in Daniel, how the symbol is used in Revelation.
Symbols are always used the same way. So you don’t have to worry about somebody coming up to you and saying, well that’s just his interpretation, or that’s just so and so’s interpretation, as though the Bible is a mirror and whoever looks at it comes away seeing himself in the pages of Scripture. That’s the mirror theory of literature. True, a lot of modern authors are no better than a mirror, but the Scriptural authors did think and the Scriptural authors had a great Author behind them, and so the Bible is not a mirror and cannot be treated by the mirror theory of interpretation of literature. You don’t interpret it by reading into it, you read out of it. If someone talks to you they don’t expect you to take it 8,000 different ways. If you write a letter to somebody you don’t expect whoever receives your letter to sit there and dream up 45 different ways to interpret what you’ve written. The act of writing something down denotes that you are interested in communicating something definite; not two things but one thing, that words are not ambiguous, and even symbols are not ambiguous.
Apocalyptic literature, though symbolic, therefore is not ambiguous. Apocalyptic literature has definite lines of interpretation. But here is why apocalyptic literature seems so difficult and hidden; apocalyptic literature is deliberately difficult, it is literature only for the club, it is literature to be read only by believers. Apocalyptic literature is private literature of the Christian. Apocalyptic literature is deliberately written to frustrate the foreigner, the unbeliever, the skeptic who would peak into the Scripture, hoping that in those portions he would find something that he could criticize, and apocalyptic literature is designed to totally frustrate the unregenerate person. And thus it is difficult, it requires that you have personally trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ; it also requires that you personally have a background in the divine viewpoint framework. Apocalyptic literature came last in the progress of the Bible. God gave Genesis, God gave the Law, God gave the Psalms, God gave Proverbs, God gave prophets, and then God gave apocalyptic literature which tells you something, doesn’t it. It tells you that you must become proficient first in the other books of the Bible before you can understand, at least these three, Daniel, Zechariah and Revelation.
Now contrast that with the usual approach in Christian circles today. What is the usual place that is emphasized first after someone becomes a Christian? It’s Revelation and Daniel, and that again, as is typical of our evangelicalism today, is the cart before the horse. Apocalyptic literature is the private literature of mature believers. It is not even open to the novice believer. Apocalyptic literature is not for the new convert. And if you are here and you’ve personally trusted in Christ I’m not trying to discourage you, I’m trying to encourage you if you have a difficult time with this just stay with it, you’ll get it, but the longer you’ve been in the Word the easier this becomes. If you have difficult, it just takes time, there’s no magic pill that you can take for instant spirituality, there is no treatment you can get to speed up this area of illumination. You just have to take time and more time and more time of exposure to the Word of God. So apocalyptic literature is private literature, just for mature believers.
Daniel 7, each of the chapters in Daniel 7-12, except the last one, deals with a vision. Daniel 7 is vision number one, the panorama of history viewed as to its basic motive. The theme of Daniel 7 is the ground motive, the motive that drives the various kingdoms of the world. There is a tremendous amount of doctrinal insight into history. On some of you it will be lost because your attitude toward the Word of God is sub par. Others of you will enjoy this like probably you’ve never enjoyed a passage of Scripture before. It depends completely on your background and your desire to learn the truth of God’s Word. If you’re one of the electricians that enjoys studying the fluorescent tubes at 11:00 o’clock then apocalyptic literature won’t send you too far. But for those of you who are alert enough to realize that there are needs in your life and that they are connected to where history is going, apocalyptic literature should be your bag.
Daniel 7:1, each of these visions has a certain form to it, and since we’re going through this very slowly, learn the format so you can read this by yourself; not that you’ll understand everything by yourself but at least it will give you some tools to read Scripture with properly. All the visions are dated as to time and usually place. John, when he writes the book of Revelation says, “I was on the island of Patmos, on the Lord’s day, and I turned behind me and I heard a great noise, a noise as of mighty rushing waters, and I turned and I saw Jesus Christ.” So John dates it, that these were not happening at any place, they were happening at certain points. The book of Revelation was written to a man who was exiled. Tired of slaughtering the Christians the Roman Emperors decided on a new, special treatment for Christians by the time John got his; John was an old man and the Emperor decided he wasn’t going to make him a martyr out of John, he was going to do something very, very cruel to John. He said you’re an old man, and I notice something about you John, you like to have fellowship with believers. John’s past writings always emphasized having fellowship with believers. So the most cruel punishment I can devise for the Apostle John is to exile him to Patmos where he has no fellowship whatsoever. So John, the man who craved Christian fellowship, wound up his last days on a barren island with no fellowship. But the Lord compensated because who did he have fellowship with on the island of Patmos? The Lord Jesus Christ Himself. So again God’s grace overruled.
Now Daniel is another old man; I’m mentioning this because there’s a tendency in Christian circles when somebody gets 65 or something they think they’re over the hill. That’s because the secular world arbitrarily sets 65 as retirement. You never retire from the Christian life, no matter how old you are. You go on and on and on and on and on, the greatest times you’ll have as a believer are in your latter days. The older you are the more maturity you will have, the more experience you have in applying the Word of God. So you’ll notice that these great apocalyptic visions come primarily through older people. And Daniel at this time is in his 80’s, he’s way beyond retirement age, and he doesn’t sit around and say I’ve got nothing to do except count my social security. Daniel is interested in knowing more about the Lord. He never gives up.
Daniel 7:1, “In the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head upon his bed; then he wrote the dream, and told the sum of the matters.” Now “the first year of Belshazzar” was 553 BC apparently. 556 BC was the beginning of the reign of Nabonidus; Nabonidus ruled with Belshazzar, and so the third year would be 553 BC. This places chapter 7 out of chronological sequence with the rest of the chapters. Chapter 2 was written in 603 BC. Chapter 3 was written some time between 603 BC and 562 BC. Chapter 4 was written some time between 603 BC and 562 BC. Chapter 5, we know that, that was written about 539 BC when Babylon fell. And chapter 6 had to have been written, since the Persians ruled, 638 BC or later. So chapter 7 is a complete break with the rest of the book. Chapter 7 chronologically fits in 556 BC or between chapters 4 and 5 in time. By the time of chapter 5 chapter 7 had already been known to Daniel. By the time of chapter 6, when Daniel was in the lion’s den, he had already known and seen this great vision of chapter 7. Daniel knew this. And the reason these chapters are out of chronological sequence is that the first half of Daniel is all written about his political career and his dealings with the outsiders. Now chapter 7, like the Gospels, contract, it comes in and says now we’re dealing with the private club; now we’re dealing with information given only to the mature believer. Now we’re dealing with God’s secrets, secrets that are not to be shared openly with the world, secrets that are to be known only by those who are interested in God’s secrets. And so this is a literature of privacy.
The kingdom of man is depicted in chapter 2 with emphasis on God’s sovereignty. The kingdom of man is depicted in chapter 7 with God’s justice. There’s a shift; I’ll list some of these characteristics. In the early part of the book the emphasis is on God’s sovereignty; now the emphasis shifts on is God righteous, is He just? Is evil going to be eradicated? Now why do you suppose there’s a shift? It’s simple; the first part of the book is written to the world and the thing that characterizes the Biblical God to the world is that He’s a big God and sovereign and you have to meet Him there. But for the private literature, they already know God is sovereign, that’s not their problem, the problem isn’t that God isn’t in control of history. The problem the believer has in times of suffering is God just? And so the theme now shifts over, is God truly a just and merciful God as history goes on. Is He merciful to maintain this tremendous pressure upon us as we suffer and suffer and suffer and suffer, and His kingdom never seems to come, it’s all the way into the future. Is God just? There’s a shift from His sovereignty to His justice.
Another shift is in the recipients of the dreams and the visions. In the first dreams and visions in the first part of Daniel the Gentiles receive the vision. In this part of the book only the Jews receive the vision, and one Jew in particular—Daniel. And then there’s a shift in who does the interpreting. The first part of it was that Daniel would always seek the Lord and the Lord would give Daniel the interpretation of the vision and dream. The last part of the book Daniel looks in his vision and he’s sleeping but in the vision he’s awake, and he sees this as though God has a tremendous movie screen, and this portrays upon a three dimensional type thing, hologram or something and we see this three dimensional color presentation in front of us
And as Daniel is watching this thing there’s an angel standing by him. The angel is standing by him and Daniel turns to what is called “the interpreting angel.” That’s his name. Zechariah does the same thing and so does John, typical of apocalyptic literature, wherever these visions come there are angels that tell what the vision means. Their job, they are teaching angels and they are to teach men what these symbols mean, the implication that you can’t guess the symbols apart from revelation. That’s why the keys to this book are wrapped up and locked and only mature believers can understand. The unregenerate cannot understand because the unregenerate cannot find the key to the symbols; it requires the teaching angels that communicate this. So from this point forward the teaching angels are deployed to see this.
You’ll also notice a tremendous emphasis upon angels and angelic warfare. This is not a topic that is thrown out to the world; the world barely understands the nature of God, leave alone angels. So this is a truth that is more private to be circulated within the circles of mature believers. We know about the angelic forces of history; they do not necessarily know as it doesn’t concern them. To go with the details about the angelic phenomenon of the unbeliever is to cast your pears before swine. So Daniel 7 deals with private truth.
Daniel 7:1, “In the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream” and notice it occurred at night, but it is also a vision. So it is not the same thing as just any given dream, it’s something odd that happens. We don’t know what happens but apparently the human spirit under the call of the Holy Spirit is able to have these visionary encounters with God, only at certain times and in certain places. “Daniel had a dream and visions of his head upon his bed; then he wrote,” that is Daniel; Daniel “wrote the dream, and told the sum of the matters.” This is again characteristic of apocalyptic literature, that the interpreting angels, as they stand by and they say that symbol means thus and such; that symbol means thus and such; that symbol means thus and such. And as the interpreting angel turns to the person having the vision and gives him a definition of the symbols and explains it to him, after he explains it he says now write this down. You do not understand fully what I am teaching you now, but I want you to write it down for other believers.
So the interpreting angels have a ministry. They had a ministry for hundreds and hundreds of years ago to you personally if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. When the interpreting angel turns to Daniel and he says write them down, that angel had you personally in mind and he knew believers for centuries later would require this information. So he says Daniel, this motion picture is going to be run only once, a once for all showing; you are the single viewer, we are not going to show this film again, no person will ever see this vision again, you alone Daniel, therefore you have an obligation to the rest of believers down through history, write this down.
So we have the command in Daniel 12:4 and you see the angel telling him. “But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” So the angel is telling Daniel that there are some things about this apocalyptic vision that are intended for believers in the latter days; that history has not evolved, not developed, not progressed far enough that men have the categories defined.
Now in the 20th century we can understand more of Daniel’s apocalyptic literature than any other generation of believers and here’s why. First of all in the 20th century we have a global mentality which we have never had; a global mentality forced upon us by deprivation of energy resources, by world wars, by the threat of a nuclear holocaust and so on. These are factors that God the Holy Spirit is using to slowly develop in the minds of men everywhere a global mentality. Now this is a prerequisite to receive Christ as the millennial dictator. Apart from a human generation with global mentality Christ could not come; it wouldn’t have done [can’t understand word/s] for Christ to come [can’t understand] in the Middle Ages; people didn’t even know the western hemisphere existed. But now that we know and map the earth, and we have a global mentality tied together with communication, we have got the prerequisite for a global rule. Now it makes sense for Christ to come and to set up His worldwide government.
Another factor we can understand in our generation that the Jews particularly could not understand before is the rise of the state of Israel since 1948. So we’ve had events in our own generation that allow us to benefit from these writings. So the angel had us in mind when he said this to Daniel. Daniel lived, say approximately 550 BC; we live approximately 2,000 years beyond the other side of the calendar, so there is 25 centuries separating this command in verse 4 from our edification today. Similar commands to write down apocalyptic visions are given by John in Revelation 1:19 and Revelation 21:5. The interpreting and teaching angel instructs John on the island of Patmos, though this old man may die on that island, he may never leave the island of Patmos, still the angel says write it down John, put it on a parchment in Greek, that believers down through church history will benefit from this vision.
Daniel 7:2, here is the beginning of this vision. “Daniel spoke and said, I saw in my vision by night, and, behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea. [3] And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another. [4] The first was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings; I beheld till its wings were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man; and a man’s heart was given to it. [5] And, behold, another beast, a second, like a bear, and it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between the teeth of it: and they said thus unto it, Arise, devour much flesh,” and so on, and he describes these beasts. We’ll get into each one of those but before we can we’ve got to set the base in verse 2.
There are certain primary symbols being used here, symbols which will occur again and again; we won’t repeat them, we’re going to go through them now, get the symbols down and then we’ll use them over and over and over. I beheld “the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea.” It’s a hophal participle in the Aramaic and Daniel is describing a motion picture, he’s watching something happen. He watches these four winds and it says these four winds strive upon the sea. But the word in the Hebrew if we’re careful to check it out does not mean strive and is never translated strive. The Hebrew is a sister language to Aramaic. The word looks like this; giyach, with a hard “h” and giyach is nowhere used of striving in the Bible. The primary meaning of giyach is given in Judges 20:33 and means to burst forth. It is used in the context there of a group of people in ambush and as the column of people come by they spring out of ambush, giyach, they burst out, that’s the primary meaning of this verb, bursting forth. And the primary cite for this Judges 20:33.
The usual picture, however, of giyach if you trace it down in a concordance is physical birth. It is used of the waters that fill out during physical birth from the woman’s womb. It is used of physical birth in Psalm 22:10; it is used of the waters present at physical birth in Job 38:8, and it is used of childbirth in Micah 4:10. So this verb carries the basic meaning of bursting forth and carries the connotation of birth or creation. That’s very important because of what’s coming up. Keep the flavor of the word in mind; the basic meaning is bursting forth, the basic usage over and over again in the Bible is always in a birth motif. That invests the verb with some meaning here. Whatever these four winds are, they are not striving together at all; the picture is of a placid calm sea and all of a sudden the wind blows from the east, from the north, from the south, from the west, and you have a tremendous chaos of wind blowing and it stirs the waters up. That’s the picture that Daniel sees. One minute the sea is like glass and the next minute the waters begin to heave in tremendous ways because blown there by the wind, and first the wind blows one way and then the wind blows the other, and it’s a complete chaos, there’s no steady wind, thus there’s no particular wave chain, the waves are chaotic, all which way. So the picture is the start of chaos and turbulence; the irritation of the sea.
The four winds, then, are beginning to burst forth upon the water. There’s something new that’s happening in history, and this sets very well with what we’ve seen in Daniel 2-6, there’s something new happening in history. Before it was all calm and now the sea becomes agitated under these four winds, whatever they are. But before we get to the four winds we’ve got to see what “the great sea” is about, therefore we’ll spend the rest of the time defining and working with “the great sea.” It’s no great mystery what the sea means because the angel tells us in the vision.
The interpretation of the vision is always given; in Daniel 7:17 it says, “These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth.” So there’s no mystery as to what the sea is, the sea in some strange way becomes typical of the earth, and not just the literal earth but the earth where men dwell, the inhabitable portion of the earth; society in other words, where men dwell, human society. So “the great sea” is a picture of human society. And there’s not any debate over this, no major division of opinion among interpreters that “the great sea” is the society. We could go on from here, but we’re going to use this as a training ground and lesson so we can train ourselves and prepare ourselves to what’s coming up, I want to show you why you can go from the sea to people and why there is a consistent theme in Scripture that always pictures humanity or a group of people as a body of water. There’s a reason for it and there’s a reason why the body of water is a source of the beast, why the body of water is that which gives birth to this new movement in history that Daniel is about to witness.
So we’ve got to into other passages of Scripture and get into the strange world of Biblical cosmogony, strange only to the evolutionist, not strange to the creationist.
To make this easier, the way I think to apply this is I’m going to give you five principles showing why you move from “the great sea” over to human society. We’ll discuss each one of these principles then we’ll go on to another principle and discuss that and so on. So there are five principles we’re going to give.
The first principle is that “the great sea” is the source of the habitable world at creation. The inhabitable world, the dry land, comes out of the sea at creation, Genesis 1:1 on down through about the third day, about verse 10. God called forth the dry land to emerge up out of the sea. So the source, it’s always the source, the sea is the source of the inhabitable world. This is reconfirmed by 2 Peter 3:5, when the Apostle Peter tells us that in the latter days men will be ignorant of the fact that the land has come out of the sea. The sea is the source of the inhabitable world. To an ancient man it meant that the sea was the source for his farmland, the place where he grew his vegetables, the place that provided him with his capital, the place that provided him with production, all the result of coming up out of the sea. The sea is the great source of it all.
The second image, the second reason in Scripture connected with the sea, and these principles all fit together, is that the waters of physical birth, when a baby is born and the cushion of water is removed from the womb, the waters of physical birth remind us of our creation. Now the evolutionist always talks about ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny and by that he means that supposedly the development of the embryo goes through the same phases that the human race went through during its evolutionary development, and have (quote) “gills” (end quote) on the fetus and all the rest of it. And that principle is called ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. But there is another principle that looks at first glance somewhat like this. And in the Bible, we could say ontogeny recapitulates cosmogony in that there are certain connections between the two. Two in particular, one in Job 38:8 which definitely identifies the waters in a pregnant woman with the waters from which the earth came. And a second analog is found in Psalm 139:15 where the woman’s womb is called the earth. Now in the hymn this morning we sang about mother earth; Psalm 139:15 is where that expression got started, “mother earth.” Mother earth is a symbol given to the earth because from the point of creation on the earth, out of which man comes, is the womb. And so David says in Psalm 139:15, I was created in the inner parts of the earth, not the inner parts of my mother but the inner parts of the earth because the woman’s womb is considered as an analog to the original earth that God used to mold the man’s body. In the original creation God had the earth and he molded the body and breathed into the nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living soul. During nine months of pregnancy a woman’s body produces another body inside it, and then at the point of physical birth, that baby, when it’s severed from the mother takes its first breath, and when it does the human spirit begins and it become a living person. There’s an analog between the two. So the waters that are involved are also part of this and so that’s why using Job 28:8 we say there is a parallel between ontogeny and cosmogony and the Scripture writers are sensitive to it.
The third principle, and this requires some extensive areas of reference. The sea is the source of the inhabitable world after the flood; like the first principle, the first principle was that the sea is the source of the inhabitable world at creation; the third principle is the sea is the source of the inhabitable world after the flood. Obviously you know the story in Genesis 8, but there are other passages that refer to this. Turn to Job 26:8. Our first three principles on the sea and the water is that they are the source, the imagery is that the sea is the source, so already you see something. It’s not at all unusual for Daniel to talk about the kingdom of man coming up out of the sea, that’s not unusual; that’s a symbol that’s rooted all the way back to creation.
Job 26:8-10, “He binds up the waters in His thick clouds; and the cloud is not rent [torn] under them.” This is talking about the postdiluvian atmosphere. Verse 9, “He holds back the face of His throne, and spreads His cloud upon it. [10] He has compassed the waters with bounds [a boundary] until the day and night come to an end.” That refers to the Noahic Covenant. So we have a seal placed upon the boundaries of the waters. Now that introduces us to something peculiar with this third point. The waters are the source of the postdiluvian world and when they are they are limited, or the waters are bounded. God’s decree says you are bound.
In Job 38:8-11, it is an important passage. God challenges Job to answer the question, “Who was it that shut up the sea with doors, when it broke forth,” there’s the work, “broke forth, as if it had issued out of the womb,” the rupturing of the waters of a pregnant woman. “When it broke forth, as if it had issued out of the womb,” that’s a picture of the waters breaking through the antediluvian earth surface and causing the flood. All of Noah’s flood did not come from rain, obviously. That’s the fountains of the great deep that broke open. Verse 9, “When I made the cloud its garment, and thick darkness a swaddling blanket [band] for it,” there’s the picture of birth, see it’s the flood but it’s also the birth of the new world. The womb verse 8; verse 9 the swaddling blanket of the new born infant. Verse 10, “And I broke up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, [11] And said hitherto [thus far] shalt thou come, but no farther; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed?” And God seals the sea so that marine intrusions upon the continents are prohibited from the postdiluvian world, not the antediluvian world. Apparently this is why we have certain stratigraphy in our geological formations, from marine intrusions. But in the postdiluvian world marine intrusions are bounded by the Noahic Covenant. We could quote a bunch of other verses: Psalm 104:6-9 is another reference.
We find here in this third point something else that we’ve got to handle, and that is the sea is not only the source, in the third thing we [can’t understand word] see the sea as limited or bound but you sense from these passages that there’s a threatening, there’s an ominous thing about the sea, that is has to be suppressed, God has to say stop, your proud waves stop here. Now why is this sinister nature of “the great sea” mentioned? This becomes important because it’s out of this sinister nature that the kingdom of man is going to be formed and a very important spiritual principle comes. It takes times to develop these symbols; this is the kind of intensive Bible study that demands maturity, concentration and attention, and this is why new believers don’t get too much out of apocalyptic literature.
In Revelation 21:1 we find the sea is missing from the new creation. [“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there was no more sea.”] John says it’s great, the glory of God illuminates it, there’s no more crying, there’s no more tears, and with a sigh of relief, no more sea, as though there’s something sinister about the great sea. Now what is it? In the Ancient Near Eastern mythology the sea is always chaos, the god of chaos, it’s always a monster, and the heroic god always has to vanquish the monster, the sea god. Sometimes he’s called Yam, sometimes he’s called Mat, the death god, other times he’s Tiamat or she, Tiamat is feminine, but the god is always a god that threatens to destroy, and the heroic god comes and he slays the monster. And when he slays the monster the hero then has the means of creation in his hand. So that motif was picked up and circulated in the ancient world.
So we have to ask ourselves, why is “the great sea” so sinister, that it has to be limited and bounded? One explanation has been that the fall of Satan preceded Genesis 1:2; I find that explanation faulty because the curse begins in Genesis 3 and the curse is not removed until Revelation 21 and in order for the curse to be removed it requires a complete regeneration of mortal history into immortal history, and I find that a pre-Genesis 1:2 cursing of creation to be out of line with Scripture. When the curse comes upon nature it comes through man, not through an angel, Romans 5 and Romans 8. So there’s problems with that and I don’t accept that.
Therefore, what is the source of the sinisterness of water? The sinisterness of water isn’t that there’s a moral fall but the sinisterness of water is what it pictures. When you went to school and the teacher asked you: what is the difference between a liquid and a solid, and they asked the class the definition, obviously one of the definitions that came up in those early years was that a liquid is formless, it takes on the form of whatever its container. And so that very simple childlike definition of liquid is the Biblical definition of water. Water, the chief characteristic is that it is formless, it has no shape and that is what gives it its sinister character.
Turn to Genesis 49:4, Jacob is dying and he gives a will to his children. And he says to Reuben in verse 3, “thou art my first-born, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power. [4] Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.” So there Jacob uses the water imagery, as a liquid it has no shape, it takes on the shape of its container, it has no shape of its own. It can be influenced, it can be moved, it can be blown, it can be thrown into turbulence by the mere breath of wind. Water has no shape to itself. And the Bible takes this very simple imagery and increases it down through the Scripture.
So the third point is the water, “the great sea” becomes the source of postdiluvian civilization, only because of one thing… only because of one thing! What is the one thing that makes this atmosphere and this planetary system inhabitable today? It is the Noahic Word, the Word of God that holds the formless shapeless water in its place. And if that Word were to crumple tomorrow then the entire geophysical system would be upset. See, in the Bible way of looking at it there’s no such thing as natural law. If you’re thinking of natural law forget it, you’re thinking in non-Biblical categories. There’s only one law, it’s God’s law, and it can be imposed or it can be withdrawn according to these commands. And if God were to withdraw the Noahic Covenant, then the shapeless water would become again uncontrolled within the system.
So the third point is that the inhabitable world is inhabitable only because of the restraint of the Word of God on the water.
We come now to the fourth principle and closer to our symbol and understanding Daniel. This may seem like a long procedure for some of you and wonder why we are spending so much time; the reason is that once you learn this you’ll be all set up for Revelation because Revelation uses the same symbol. You’ll be set up for Zechariah, he uses the same symbols. It’ll set you up for probably half a dozen chapters and 3-4 books of the Bible just by going through this and understanding it.
The fourth point about “the great sea,” is the sea in the Bible eventually becomes the symbol of unstable human society in the kingdom of man. The first three principles dealt with the physical water, now the fourth principle starts the symbolism. Just as the water is unstable, so now in the fourth point it becomes the symbol of unstable human society in the kingdom of man. It’s unstable because it lacks doctrine; it is unstable because it is not rooted in absolute revelation. It is unstable and takes on the container of any force that is applied against it. The winds and the spirits blow upon the doctrine-less people and they are tossed to and fro, just like water. And that’s what’s sinister. Why is water sinister? You say so what if water is tossed around? Have you ever been out in a boat in a windstorm? Get out on one of these freshwater lakes and you’ll get a fast surprise about what can happen in a small body of water.
Do you know the most dangerous bodies of water you can ever be on are fresh water, not salt water? The reason is that the fresh water has a much, much less stable stability in wind than salt water. Salt water is more dense. And the worst possible place you can be in the ocean is along the Texas coast because the Texas coast goes off very, very slowly, it’s very, very thin. The safest place to be in a storm is on a coastline that drops right off quickly, like the West Coast. On the East Coast, particularly along the Gulf Coast you have the land goes out very, very slowly and this becomes highly treacherous in high wind because the layer of water that’s near the beach is so shallow that when the wind reaches a certain velocity the water cannot recirculate and it literally picks the water up and friction locks down on the water and just moves the whole thing. In the early part of this century thousands and thousands of people lost their life in the Galveston hurricane, and in Florida, Lake [not sure of word; may be: Okeechobee], there was one entire lake that was picked up, literally, by a hurricane and moved about five miles, simply because the wind reaches a critical velocity on a small thin body of water, recirculation cannot accomplish the stability of the water and the water just goes, the whole thing, just a sheet of water starts in in one big tidal wave and takes everything ahead of it.
That’s why water is unstable, because it has no form in itself it becomes destructive. And because fallen sinful humanity, Daniel says, human spirit no truth, has no doctrine, that under the spirits can become converted instantaneously to mobs that crush and destroy everything ahead of it. And the kingdom of man is going to be built out of mob desires, out of mass movements that grip the heart of shapeless humanity; unstable because of no doctrine, they are like Lake Okeechobee, they’re like the Texas Gulf Coast, get the wind up to a critical factor and you can just move the whole mass, and not only that it acts like a snow plow, it plows everything ahead of it. That’s why “the great sea” is used.
Specifically there are some three characteristics in the Bible that authors use in this fourth point. Why? Things that they see in humanity that remind them of the water. One is the noise of a mob; the noise of an invading army with a shout, thousands and thousands of people shouting. This is mentioned in Isaiah 17:12-13 and Jeremiah 6:23, the shouts of the mob, the roar of the mob, that reminds them of the roar of the sea. Some of you are landlocked and have never been out in the ocean in a good storm, you don’t know what it is to hear the roar of the sea.
The second characteristic between the sea that reminds them of people is that as water overflows so invasion and conquest are pictured as armies overflowing the land, Jeremiah 46:7-8. The armies overflow the land as water overflows the land. And finally the third characteristic is the lack of stability, Isaiah 57:20, “the wicked are like the troubled sea,” that cast up mire and dirt and can never rest. Total instability, total instability!
The fifth thing, and this is the application of the symbol that Daniel makes; “the great sea” is a pathetic picture of fallen humanity because they are victims and vulnerable to satanic influence. Just as the water is vulnerable to wind, so fallen humanity is vulnerable to Satan. And that’s why we’re going to see those four winds burst upon that calm sea and in five minutes it’s tossed to and fro, and out from the sea come the four beasts. See how it all makes sense; the symbols, when you understand them it makes sense. Not only do they make sense but they give you a clue as to how history functions around you. After you emerge from Daniel 7 you’ll have an insight into what makes history tick.
Let’s conclude by turning to Ephesians 4:14, the remedy for instability. Ask yourself the question; are you part of the sea this morning? Are you part of Daniel’s symbol of the sea, a drop of water, formless, shapeless, that takes on the shape of your environment, shaped totally by your environment, at the whim of every little wind here and there. In Ephesians 4 Paul picks up the same imagery, it underlies verse 14. Why do we have pastor-teachers teaching Bible doctrine to believers? It says in verse 14 “That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, by which they lie in wait to deceive.” Who are those that are lying in wait to deceive but Satan inspired author of the lie? And who is it that they deceive? People without Bible doctrine. This morning you have a choice; you can take your stand with the Word. Many have testified when they get in the Word after one or two years they find themselves thinking like they’ve never thought in their life before, pieces fall together, they find new stability in their life. It all comes about because of the indwelling Holy Spirit, the personal relationship with Christ made valid by doctrine in the soul. That’s what keeps you from being part of the sea, that when the four winds of heaven blow upon it, you won’t be one of the waves.