Daniel Lesson 42

Background of Daniel 10 Vision, – Daniel 10:1-9

Daniel was written to prepare a group of believers for postponed blessing and therefore the book of Daniel is included among the wisdom books of the Scripture. It is not primarily a book in the prophetic section. As such, Daniel is the focus and the source of divine viewpoint for history. The book of Daniel is one of several books of the Bible that ought to be the starting of all studies in history. All studies in historiography ought to begin utilizing the data from such books as Judges, Samuel, Kings, Deuteronomy, and most of all Daniel. These are the books where God reveals His viewpoint of history, and until we have his viewpoint of history we are going to be open to idolatrous human viewpoint concepts of history. Today we have various academic viewpoints of history; we have the communist dialectic of history which is nothing more than a Christian heresy that Karl Marx stole from Hegel.

We have more popularly an evolutionary philosophy history that is ultimately grounded on chance and the mysterious force of upward development. Then in the less cultured areas we have a sort of dime-store Calvinism, sort of a Bible-belt fatalism which argues that we don’t have to do anything because everything will work out all right in the end and this is a barren version of Scripture, it is wrong, it is a heresy and it is thoroughly refuted by Daniel. In the Bible-belt we have certain beliefs that are derivatives of Scripture but not Scripture, and that is because as the country goes this is the one area that has had the most teaching of Scripture. But wherever you have teaching of Scripture you can Satan will distort the teaching of Scripture and therefore you can expect that Scripture will come across in garbled and corrupted ways, and one of the ways has been through fatalism, through the idea that God will somehow take care of us regardless of what we do. And that is not Scriptural.

Inactivity, prayer-less-ness are corollaries to this heresy of Bible-belt fatalism. In fact in recent studies shown how people in this area respond to disasters, disaster for disaster and damage patter for damage pattern, there is no other area in the country that suffers as many casualties from people who refuse to take cover as the Bible-belt area of the United States and it’s showing inactive everyday experience, the fact that people refuse to do things to make cause/effect work in history. In our own Christian circles the heresy appears as I don’t need to do anything as long as I attend a church where the Bible is taught. I have no obligation to that local congregation, I don’t have to undertake on my own during the week to get my own soul immersed in the Word of God, somehow I have an eternal life insurance policy due to my participation in the 11:00 o’clock service, and this is the outworking of a heresy.

Daniel is in total conflict with this; Daniel is a man who faced history, he faced suffering, and he was determined to do something about it. As a result of his determination we have some of the great doctrines that we have in this book. Through Daniel God revealed great doctrines of sovereignty and details of prophecy that He did through no other man up to that time. Later of course through John the Apostle we have even further information. But keep in mind Daniel revealed all this doctrine to transform faith into hope. The faith technique was used in the ancient centuries of Israel but when 586 BC came around the people would face a disaster, from their point of view, that would go on and on and on. Gabriel told Daniel at least 940 years would transpire before the kingdom came into history; 490 years plus the gap between the 483 years and the 7 years to follow. The Church Age still is involved in that gap of time. But Daniel was preparing his people for long-term enduring persevering faith. And the Bible term for long-term faith is hope. And this is a word, be careful how you use it.

Hope in the Bible is not used the way it is usually used in surrounding culture. Today most people who aren’t sure of something, who claim that something might or might not be true but “hope” it is true, use the word that way. We as Christians do not use the word “hope” that way. For us hope means that God will be true to His Word if it takes 1900 years for it to come true, but it will come true. That is our expression of hope; our hope is certain, and the certainty of Bible hope is something that offends modern people, for if there’s one thing most modern people agree upon it is the fact that you can’t be certain. And that is a self-refuting concept. They are certainly agreed that you cannot be certain, and as with all human viewpoint it has an internal conflict within itself. Only in the Scripture do we have a base, I can be certain of the hope that is within because the Holy Spirit through Scripture reveals it in history.

The basis for Daniel is to develop the hope. This concept of a long-range, century after century after century type faith should be an encouragement to you. Many of you face pressure and problems but regardless of whatever the situation is, the same technique that Daniel employs is the technique that you ought to use. It’s that day in day out, week after week, month after month faith that goes on and on and on because it focuses in, not upon some human gimmick, but upon God Himself. So we ought to pay attention to what Daniel has to say.

So far, in chapters 7 and 8, has had a vision; we have the evening and morning vision. In chapter 7 Daniel gave us the moral character of the four eras of history. He gave us the four kingdoms, the Neo-Babylonian kingdom, the Medo-Persian kingdom, the Grecian kingdom and the Roman kingdom, all under the symbology of animals. Why did Daniel use animals to depict kingdoms? The key is when he goes to depict the fifth and final kingdom of history, the kingdom of God, not of Rome, not of Greece, but of Jesus Christ. And when Daniel goes to picture that fifth kingdom in history he no longer uses an animal, he uses the Son of man. Why is that? Because only the fifth kingdom has the moral quality of truly being human. All the other kingdoms of history, all of man’s human viewpoint schemes to erect the perfect social order are degenerate forms worthy only of animals. Marxist Leninism is part of the fourth beast, the Roman beast concept, and it is unfit for human occupancy. The West has its own corruption that is unfit for human occupancy. Thus Daniel insists that the moral character of the fifth kingdom alone is sufficient for moral occupancy.

In chapter 8 he gave us a portrait of the antichrist and Christians say what good is that, I’m not going to live to see the antichrist. It’s because the 8^th chapter gives you wisdom on antichrist-like leaders. Daniel 8 can be applied to every point of history, not just in the final point of history when the antichrist himself occurs, but Daniel 8 can be used by the Christian citizen in seeking the correct way to vote and not vote, by analyzing people running for office in the light of the portrait of antichrist and seeing the person’s character and his program and his promises; do they or do they not seem to reappear in Daniel 8. If they do, then you are talking to a person who is degenerate spiritually and you should not vote for such an individual.

Then we have Daniel 9 where Daniel is given the additional information that reconciles his problem. In Daniel 9 Daniel had tension between two things; on the one hand he wanted the immediate kingdom of God, he wanted an immediate fulfillment of the kingdom of God at the end of the seventy years. He wanted Israel to be restored to the land in all the glory, he wanted all the Jews to return to the land, he wanted the Shekinah glory to dwell in the temple, so he wanted an entire restoration of the lost kingdom. But this was set in tension against his previous dreams of Daniel 2, Daniel 7 and 8, all these dreams depicted a long-term delay. So Daniel prayed and he prayed God, how can this be, on the one hand you’ve promised us restoration at the end of seventy years, yet on the other hand you’ve promised us that we must prepare ourselves for century after century of dispersion and suffering while the Gentiles have their moment and while the Gentile kingdom of man does its thing in history. How can we get the two together? So the angel Gabriel was sent from God’s throne to reveal to Daniel the answer to the problem. And the answer was Daniel, there’s going to be a new era of history and it’s going to extend from the end of the seventy year period on down through the end, dividing into a four hundred eighty three year period when Messiah will come, Messiah will be cut off and one seven after that, and so Daniel receives from Gabriel the rational, non-contradictory resolution to these two things that looked like they were in tension.

Now we come to Daniel 10 and as we come to Daniel 10 we come to the last part of the book of Daniel for Daniel 10, 11 and 12 all form one unit together. And this entire unit is the climax of the book. Now the way the book is normally taught in prophetic conferences you would think the climax of the book was the last three verses of Daniel 9, but that’s not so; the climax of the book is Daniel 10, 11 and 12. Why? Because here for the first time in the history of man you have the human race clued in to the plot of history, the satanic details. This is an intelligence report, Daniel 10-12, direct from Go to the human race on why He is taking so long to end history. This is the answer, the answer that is even looked for in the Christian era—why does Jesus Christ not come again and end the whole thing. Why does this thing drag on and on and on? Why doesn’t God give relief to the Christians that are being tortured in the pagan lands of Africa? Why so long? Daniel 10-12 is the answer. This is the intelligence report direct from God as to why He is postponing the end of history, so it’s obviously quite central in any philosophy of history and quite central in your daily life; why go on believing?

Daniel 10:1, “In the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia a thing was revealed unto Daniel, whose name was called Belteshazzar; and the thing was true, but the time appointed was long: and he understood the thing, and had understanding of the vision.” “In the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia,” now God is always very careful when He writes the word. When He puts a historical notice in Scripture He intends that we look at that historical notice; He has a reason for doing it. God does not waste words. Note this particular thing had to happen, not the second year, not the fourth year, not the tenth year, but the third year of Cyrus. Why the third year?

All right, correlating with other passages of Scripture we can find out what was going on in that third year. What was troubling Daniel? What was troubling the believers? If we find out what was troubling them then we can understand the answer that God gives here in Daniel 10, 11 and 12. To find out what was happening in that third year of Cyrus turn to Ezra. Ezra is a book of history written during the time of the third year of Cyrus. So if we want to find out what’s happening in the third year of Cyrus the obvious place to turn is the book of Ezra. We’re only going to look at a few verses in Ezra, just enough to acquaint ourselves with what was the mentality of Daniel, why was he such a frustrated man.

Ezra 1:1, “Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, so that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, [2] Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia: the LORD God of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and has charged me to build Him a house at Jerusalem which is in Judah. [3] Who is there among you of all His people? His Gold be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the LORD God of Israel (He is the God), which is in Jerusalem.” So we learn at the first year of Cyrus we have the decree to return to the land.

We’re in the third year of Cyrus so obviously we are looking at a post-decree year, which means by the third year of Daniel people must already have been returning to the land. Daniel didn’t, Daniel stayed back at headquarters, but pioneers began moving west and finally recolonized the land of Palestine for the Jewish faith. This has been going on for two years. By while this western colonization by the westward moving pioneers was going on, something else was also going on.

Ezra 3:1, “And when the seventh month was come,” this is of the first year, “when the seventh month of the first year was come, and the children of Israel were in the cities, the people gathered themselves together as one man to Jerusalem.” And there you see them in the land, during the first year and they are meeting together for a challenge from the Word of God. Now Ezra 3:8, one more year has passed, the people are still in the land, the pioneers are still moving westward to gradually recolonize the land. “Now, in the second year of their coming unto the house of God at Jerusalem, in the second month, began Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua, the son of Jozadak, and the remnant of their brethren, the priests and the Levites, and all they who were come out of the captivity unto Jerusalem; and they appointed the Levites, from twenty years old upward, to set forward the work of the house of the LORD.” So by the second year they’ve got a reasonably strong colony and they begin the final rebuilding of the temple, the second temple.

But no sooner does this movement begin but Ezra 4:1, we have a counter movement, “Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the children of the captivity built the temple unto the LORD God of Israel, [2] Then they came to Zerubbabel and the heads of the fathers, and said to them, Let us build with you’ for we seek your God, as ye do, and we do sacrifice unto Him since the days of Esar-haddon, king of Assyria, who brought us here. [3] But Zerubbabel, and Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of the fathers of Israel, said unto them, You have nothing to do with us to build an house unto our God; be we ourselves together will build unto the LORD God of Israel” a house, in other words, here you have the doctrine of religious exclusivism. “I am the way, the truth, and the life and no man comes unto the Father but by Me.” And this was as offensive to men then as it is to men in the ancient world. The whole point is, they were prepared to believe that 2+2 = 4 except in the area of religion. Then 2+2=whatever you want to come up with as long as you’re sincere.

Ezra 4:4, “Then the people of the land weakened the hands of the people of Judah, and troubled them in building, [5] And hired counselors against them,” those are lawyers, “to frustrate their purpose,” they began lawsuits to stop the work on the temple. And finally in verse 6, “And in the reign of Ahasuerus, in the beginning of his reign, wrote they unto him an accusation against in the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem. [7] And in the days of Artaxerxes wrote…” and so on, it goes on and tells about the letter that was written. And finally Ezra 4:21, the king comes back from headquarters and in response to the legal proceedings and the lawsuits that had been filed by these opponents of the temple, he says, “Give ye now commandment to cause these men to cease, and the this city be not build, until another commandment shall be given from me.”

So what has happened by the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia? What has happened? The entire restoration movement has been stalled by legal proceedings. And this has frustrated Daniel and when we turn back to Daniel we can understand why he mourns for three weeks in prayer; he says now God, You told me that the seventy year restoration wasn’t going to be the millennium, and You told me that we were going to have a long time of struggle, but God, do You really mean that we can’t even get the building off the ground? Are things going to be that bad? Are we going to receive that many obstructions, so to speak, to our sanctification? Why is it when we proceed to do something that You order us to do that we have all these obstacles? So obviously Daniel faces a position that we face in our Christian sanctification. Isn’t this the same kind of thing? Why is it when we set forth to do the work of God, set forth to apply doctrine to our lives, why is it the opposition begins. So Daniel is not asking a question you don’t ask, it’s the same question asked at a different moment in history under different circumstances but the question is the same. Why are there obstacles when we set forward to do the work of God with God’s Word, we seek to be obedient and it seems like the more we are obedient the more we’re opposed? Why is that? That’s the question, and that’s the question God is going to answer in this chapter.

So back to Daniel 10:1, “In the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia a thing was revealed unto Daniel,” in the Hebrew the word translated “a thing” is dabar and it’s the word for word and it means something verbal, it means something that can be understood, it wasn’t just an ecstatic experience, it was a contentful thing. Daniel walked away from this thing that was revealed with new doctrine in his head. God taught him something new here in Daniel 10. So a matter that had content was revealed unto Daniel. Now this is a complete difference from the usual charismatic tendency in our certain evangelical circles to go for ecstatic experiences, anti-content all the way. True ecstatic experiences in Scripture are like Daniel 10; here you have an experience that has doctrinal content to it.

So, “a thing was revealed unto Daniel, whose name was called Belteshazzar;” now this whole verse 1 is written differently from verse 2 and following because verse 1 apparently is the head of a document that was subsequently enclosed in the book. “… and the thing was true, but the time appointed was long:” we’re going to change the translation there a little bit, it’s an ambiguous translation, it’s difficult but in the Hebrew this is the way it would look if I translated it literally: “truth was the matter, and a struggle great,” that’s a literal rendition; now we have to smooth that down and make it sound like something in the English but word for word, translated directly from the Hebrew text that’s what you have here, it’s not talking about some appointed time, “appointed time” is a tradition that crept in when interpreters tried to smooth out this translation. But the original translation is not talking about any appointed time. The word translated “struggle” in the Hebrew is the word for army; it’s the word for warfare. The modern Israeli army is called [gives Hebrew words] and it’s talking about the armies of the defense of Israel. So it’s a military term. When you see the word “lord of hosts” it’s Yahweh Sabaoth, and that’s what Martin Luther put in A Mighty Fortress is Our God, “lord of armies.” So the word is army here and can also mean, besides army, the battle of the army, and hence the word struggle. So how are we going to smooth this out so it comes out sounding like something in the English? “The truth was the matter,” that emphasizes that this thing was a reliable event that occurred on which he could place his trust. So the word “truth,” the noun acting here as an adjective, modifies the event, it tells us something about the event. This event that happened to Daniel was true; it was credible, trustworthy, worthy of faith, of supporting someone’s hope, someone’s trust. And so after you have the word “and” you would expect another characteristic of the same event. So “a great struggle” also describes “the matter.” Truth and the great struggle was the matter. Or we would paraphrase it as “the matter was reliable and was a great struggle.”

Now what does he mean “the matter” or “the thing was a great struggle,” because you’re going to see the angelic conflict is taught in chapter 10. The entire unseen forces of history that operate behind history, the great struggle, this is God’s answer to why history goes on and on and on. So “truth was the matter, and a great struggle.” Now having modified that, that takes us up to the last part of verse 1, and we just have that last clause to deal with. It says he, Daniel, “he understood the thing, and had understanding of the vision.” This points out something that Daniel says about his vision in chapter 10 that he doesn’t in his other visions. We’ll tie it together at the end, we just want to note in passing that this, for the first time, he says I understand; for the first time in the book, I understand God, now I understand. So we’ll note this and return to it. Daniel understands. Remember, seventy years have passed since his first vision, back in the days of Nebuchadnezzar. Seventy years Daniel has sought to understand; seventy years… and we get frustrated when we study a doctrine two or three years and don’t understand it. It took this man seventy years to understand something. Add 70 to 1975 and figure out how old you will be and you’ll get an idea of the time perspective of Scripture, how long it took him to understand.

Okay, what happened, what led to his understanding? Daniel 10:2, “In those days I Daniel was mourning three full weeks.” The word “mourning” is a participle; it means he was constantly doing this for the whole twenty-one days. He was discouraged by the obstacles that occurred to those exiles that we just read about in Ezra. He was disturbed that after God told them, yeah, the restoration isn’t going to be the millennial kingdom but it will be something, and then we go ahead in the restoration we find an obstacle and Daniel is frustrated. And so unlike most of us, unlike the Bible-belt fatalist who says let’s do nothing because everything will turn out all right in the end, Daniel does something. What does he do? He takes a leave of absence from his job for three weeks, that’s the force of this whole thing and I’ll show you why in a moment. He takes a leave of absence; he gets out of a frustrating situation because it is so pressing on his soul, he takes off, uses his vacation time or what have you, leaves the capital building, walks out, goes some place where he can be quiet with the Lord for twenty one days of concentrated prayer. We saw him start doing this in chapter 9, he did it and in six minutes he got an answer. However, in this case he didn’t get an answer for over twenty-one days.

This shows you Daniel is not a fatalist; he goes to the Lord with his problems, he sits there, with his own prayer petitions until an answer comes. That shows determination; that shows positive volition; that shows a man who is not a fatalist; he does do something because if we don’t do something everything will not come out all right. Daniel does something.

By the way, the word shib^eiym, same word for seven used in chapter 9 but do you know how we can tell this is days and not years? Because in the Hebrew it says “three sevens of days,” so Daniel 10:2 distinguishes the use of the word “seven” or “weeks” from the use of the word “weeks” in Daniel 9. So we know it’s three literal weeks. And during those three literal weeks he said:

Daniel 10:3, “I ate no pleasant bread,” this is the word for the bread of royalty, and that’s how I know that Daniel left the palace, he left and took a leave of absence for three weeks so he would not be participating with royalty; he got out of the whole mess. Why do you suppose he did that? Because for years, that second and third year of Cyrus they were involved in litigation and where would the litigation be done? Where would all the hearings, the royal hearings on whether or not we should continue the building project in Jerusalem be held? Wouldn’t it be held in the capital where Daniel was, and high up in the administration? Yes, and maybe you can visualize Daniel walking along the hallway and walking in the room where they had the hearing and sitting back and saying Lord, why is this occurring, why are all these hearings occurring. And then you can imagine the despair as finally the king gets up and passes judgment that this hearing is closed, there will be nothing else, I prohibit the construction of the building of the temple. This case is closed, and the court was dismissed. And Daniel left the court as a dejected man, why is this happening. And so he goes and he mourns for three weeks, not in the sense oh God, oh God, why did this happen to me, in a despairing trivial sense but Lord, there must be a reason why this is happening; this must fit Your sovereign program and I want to know why.

So he takes a leave of absence, he refuses to participate socially in the circles of royalty, “I ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine in my mouth,” this would be the diet of that group, “neither did I anoint myself at all,” this includes shaving, washing and so on, it’s the same old mentality we saw in Daniel 9, that in the Old Testament they acted out physically what they were going through spiritually, they tore their clothes, they put dust on their heads because this depicted in a physical way their spiritual position. “I did not anoint myself at all till three whole weeks were fulfilled.”

Daniel 10:4, “And in the four and twentieth day of the first month, as I was by the side of the great river, which is Hiddekel,” now the twenty-fourth day of the month, of the first month, tells us something that happened here. This is the month of Nisan. Today’s Jewish calendar begins the new year in the fall, but back here in the Old Testament the new year began in the spring. Nisan would be equivalent to our April or thereabouts, March or April. So it was during the Rosh Hashanah back then that Daniel began this prayer. But we know for the first two days of Nisan, days one and two were devoted to festivity, celebrations, and Daniel apparently did not try to have a quiet time with the Lord during all the noise of the celebration. The Jewish community had a lot of celebrations the first two days. So therefore, beginning on the third day he started his twenty-one day mourning, which gets us to the twenty-fourth day.

So, “in the four and twentieth day of the first month, as I was by the side of the great river,” in other words, he’s finished; during this three weeks of mourning he never got an answer; maybe he got assurance that everything would be all right, but he didn’t get an answer like he got before. This shows us something very interesting about how God answers prayer, a little footnote for every day Christian living. Back in Daniel 9, when it was purely a matter of information, God responded quickly to the prayer petition; within six minutes. How do we know that? Because if you read it in the original Hebrew it takes you six minutes to get down to the point in Daniel’s prayer where he’s interrupted by the angel Gabriel, so if he started praying, he was six minutes into his prayer, and Gabriel shows up and gives him the information. So his petition there was for information; God gave Him information. Now here he starts to petition for information but in a different context and God doesn’t answer. The angel is going to explain later on why it comes this way, but we can learn a valuable lesson about prayer and that is it’s not what the answer is but how God answers your prayer is also a key in what He’s trying to teach you. How God answers your prayer, not just what He does to answer your prayer, how he answers this prayer is by delay.

Now doesn’t that fit the content of the answer to the prayer, because what is the answer to the prayer going to be? That history is going to be delayed, there’s going to be a great struggle in history, Daniel, before you’re final answer comes. So therefore on a small scale picture of the big scale thing God says now Daniel, I’m going to put you through the wringer just a little bit here to give you a feeling for all history. So in answer to this one prayer petition I’m going to hold up the answer and I’m going to let it come to you with great struggle, for three full weeks I’m going to make you struggle with it, then I’m going to give you the answer. Then when you’ve gone through the struggle with it, and then when I’ve given you the answer you’ll appreciate the answer more, you’ll see what I’m trying to communicate to you. So not just the “what” of answered prayer but the “how” of answered prayer.

So after the three weeks Daniel apparently went back with his boys, on a lunch break he went down to the river, he’s back in the palace now, he’s come off his leave, and we presume he would be on a lunch break or something down by the river where it’s cool, and he was with some friends. The river, “which is Hiddekel,” which is another name for the Tigris, ran through the capital city of Babylon. Daniel is still in Babylon apparently at this time, not Medo-Persia; the administration had great areas of concentration in Babylon as well as the capital city. Babylon was the secondary administration center. So he went along the river during the daytime sometime.

And Daniel 10:5, he looks up. I want to read verses 5-6, pay attention to the details of what he sees, then we’ll go to another passage in Scripture for a little surprise. “Then I lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold a certain man clothed in linen, whose loins were girded with fine gold of Uphaz, [6] His body also was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in color to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude.”

Turn to Revelation 1, another man, another older man, another old man under a suffering situation, looks up one Sunday morning in Revelation 1:13, verse 12 to get the context. “And I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks. [13] And in the midst of the seven candlesticks, one like the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girded about the breasts with a golden girdle. [14] His head and His hair was white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire.” Notice the detail. Verse 15, “And his feet like fine bronze, as if they had been burned in a furnace; and his voice like the sound of many waters.” It doesn’t require a doctorate in theology to see the parallels between these two visions.

We know who it was that appeared to the old man, John, on the island of Patmos. It was the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. Who is it, then, that appeared to Daniel but the preincarnate Lord Jesus Christ. And so we have a Theophany, an appearance of God, an appearance of not the Father but an appearance of God the Son, to Daniel. We have Daniel’s prayer now answered in the most dramatic way that Daniel ever seen, and he’s probably about 90 years old now, figuring he was a late teenager when he was captured, it took seventy years to go from Daniel 2 to here, so he’s about a 90 year old man and now he finally sees the Lord Jesus Christ face to face.

I want you to notice a progress in the book of Daniel. In Daniel 2 we have revelation by a dream to a Gentile king; a dream through a Gentile king. In Daniel 4 we have a vision given in the daytime to a Gentile king. In Daniel 5 we have a public appearance of the angel in Belshazzar’s feast. In Daniel 7 we have a dream given not to a Gentile king, not in public, but to Daniel himself. In Daniel 8 we have a vision in the daytime that happened to Daniel. In Daniel 9 we have a direct encounter with the angel Gabriel. And in Daniel 10 we have an encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you see the progress, you see how as the godly man matures, as Daniel struggles to master the Word of God he is brought into an ever deepening relationship to Christ.

[tape turns] And how as this goes on and on he finally makes a breakthrough, or Christ makes a breakthrough to him, and he’s rewarded for all those seventy years of concentration, of attention, of mourning, of seeking, of questioning, of going over and over and over and over and over the Word of God until finally the Lord Jesus Christ Himself appears to Daniel.

There’s something else about this Theophany that’s parallel to Revelation 1 that we ought to think about. Why did Jesus Christ appear to John on the island of Patmos? Well, many reasons but at least one of the reasons why the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to John was to close off revelation and to give John the assurance that while the canon of Scripture was closed, God had His loved ones on His mind. And so in the last dramatic revelation of the New Testament era, John saw Christ face to face and Christ commissioning a group of angels, the audio visual experts, gave John a complete read out on future history. Jesus Christ, before He shut the great doors of heaven and cut off direct revelation, personally appeared to a believer who was a leader to assure him that though the doors of heaven would be shut, and though God would speak no longer in a miraculous way, all of history was under his control.

Now why would Jesus Christ appear to Daniel? Isn’t it for the same reason? This is one of the last encounters in the Old Testament chronologically speaking, one of the last visionary experiences of the text. Shortly the doors of heaven will close. for four hundred years God will not speak again to Israel; for four hundred years believers must live with a silent heaven, with no direct revelation and for four hundred years believers are going to have to learn to trust the Word, trust the Word, trust the Word, without the fireworks, without the additional revelation to help them out of this problem, with the additional ecstatic experience to help them out of that problem, the doors of heaven slam shut with a lock, but before they’re locked Christ wants to assure believers, here is My plan, it’s all under My control, you trust Me, here’s what I can tell you about what’s coming. So both in the Old Testament and New Testament, before historical revelation terminates Christ shows up.

Now having said that, there’s one more deduction we can make from this. Now only does Christ show up to give the plan of history, He shows up as the author of history. The author of history is Jesus Christ. That’s why Christ is the one, not Gabriel, not Michael, not another angel, not a dream, not a vision, not a Gentile king, but Jesus Christ Himself shows up He is the author of history. If you want to know about history, take it up with the author; Jesus Christ is the author of history so obviously He is the spokesman and He makes this statement here.

Now this explains something else. I said in verse 1 the most remarkable thing about this was that Daniel heard and saw and understood the vision. Now if you turn back and look at Daniel 7:28 what does it say there? “Hitherto is the end of the matter. As for me, Daniel, my cogitations much troubled me, and my countenance changed in me; but I kept the matter in my heart.” He doesn’t know quite what’s gone on here. Daniel 7:28 tells you he doesn’t understand. Daniel 8:27, how does that vision end? “And I, Daniel, fainted, and was sick certain days; afterward I rose up, and did the king’s business; and I was astonished at the vision, but I didn’t understand it.” Now we come to Daniel 10, “I saw,” I saw Jesus Christ and I understood. That doesn’t mean Daniel understood every little detail of history, but it suddenly clicked, all the revelations fell into place when Christ Himself appeared; He was the key to the whole thing. He’s the author of the whole thing. And so as we go on in this passage keep this in mind, what a magnificent thing we’re having here.

Daniel 10:7, “And I Daniel alone saw the vision: for the men that were with me saw not the vision; but a great quaking fell upon them, so that they fled to hide themselves.” that’s a good old King James expression, what it’s talking about is a horror fell on them, these people started trembling, they couldn’t see what had happened, they were just strolling along the side of the river bank and all of a sudden they noticed Daniel look up, and they knew that he could see something because they could see his eyes and his eyes were concentrating on something, and until he fell to the ground, which he’s going to describe in a moment, he was standing there looking up and seeing this thing and these other men knew something was happening, and they had uncontrollable horror, the word means to violently shake in your body; these men all began to shake and tremble, they were terrified but they couldn’t see anything. They were just terrified that this thing had happened.

Now we’ve got something very interesting. Back when God made His major appearance at Mount Sinai, what happened to all the people? They quaked with horror. On the Damascus road when the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to Paul, what happened to the other men who were going along the same Damascus Road with the Apostle Paul? A horror fell upon them, so that the uniformity of these experiences, if the Bible is just a compilation of various religious experiences isn’t it strange there’s such uniformity from one place to another. It sounds like these observers did know what they are talking about; there’s a continuity of the same kind of thing, it always happens, when Christ appears He appears to a central spokesman and everybody around, whether they’re Christians or not Christians just take off, they cannot stand His presence, which is another interesting thing that not all believers would have been prepared to see Christ face to face; some Christians but some other Christians would not be. At this point only Daniel was of the qualified believers that were ready to meet Christ on a face to face basis.

Daniel 10:8, “Therefore I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me: for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength.” In other words what he’s saying here, the word “comeliness” means vigor or inner strength, and the word “corruption” just means it just weakened out, he just lost all physical strength, and he collapsed, as he says in verse 9, “Yet heard I the voice of his words: and when I heard the voice of his words, then was I in a deep sleep on my face, and my face toward the ground.” He just passed out. Remember what happened to John the Apostle on the isle of Patmos? He passed out. Remember what happened after John on the island of Patmos passed out? Jesus Christ said stand up and sure enough, He got him up on his feet. In verse 10 a very humorous thing, “And, behold, an hand touched me,” actually the Hebrew means [can’t understand word, sounds like he slaps something and says something] Daniel is on his tummy, face down on the ground, and on his back wham, this thing hits him, and then he says, “the hand hit me and set me upon my knees and upon the palms of my hands.” The angel reached down, picked him up and sat him down, now I want you to listen, I’ve got your attention, now I’m going to teach you. And as always in these visions, as we’ll see next week, this vision shifts now to an audio visual type technician type angel that continues the vision.

But notice in verse 9 a strange thing, he doesn’t say he understands the words God is speaking, he says I only “hear the voice of His words,” and the Hebrew word means the noise of His words. Compare that with the last of verse 6, “the voice of His words like the voice of a multitude,” what’s the voice of a multitude? It’s kind of like a murmuring. John was on the island of Patmos, he didn’t have a crowd of people around him and the only thing he could think of in his environment that would communicate to us what it sounded like was he says, “like the voice of many waters.” Patmos has a rocky shore, and as the waves break you hear the roar of the waves smashing against the surf, smashing against the rocks. And John knew that and he said the only thing in my every day experience that sounds like when the Lord speaks it’s like that.

Daniel says in his every day experience he would think of thousands of people milling around the capital; he says I want to communicate to you what it sounded like, and the only thing I can point to that would sound like what I heard when this happened was like the voice of thousands of people talking. In other words, God’s voice seems to fill, it’s not necessarily that loud, the surf on the sea when you hear it isn’t that loud; the surf on the sea just seems to go forever into the distance. And it’s the same with the crowd, it’s not that the crowd is that loud but it just seems to go off into space and it doesn’t seem to be localized at any point. So he says that’s how it sounds when Christ shows up in a Theophany, He has this voice that just seems to go on and on and on.

So Daniel sees a Theophany. Daniel, therefore, is about to receive the answer to his question, and Daniel starts the answer to his question with a principle that we will now close with and that is Proverbs 1:7. Proverbs is also a book of wisdom and all wisdom begins with a starting point. As we conclude we want to understand Daniel’s starting point. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,” the starting point for all knowledge, academic or non-academic is a trust in God. Augustine said “I believe in order to know,” understood properly and not in the modern sense he was right. All knowledge, all answers, all problems which are solved start at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ, the author of all history, the author of our personal history. Daniel, then, begins on his hands and on his knees at the feet of Jesus Christ, and when he gets to that spot, isn’t it interesting, then he says he understands. Not until.