El Shaddai Ministries

Pastor Mark Biltz: As we now jump into decoding the book of Daniel. All right, so here is this chart again that I just want to remind you of. The first four chapters of Daniel all have to do with Daniel. But what many don't realize is almost 70 years go by before the rest of the book of Daniel is penned or even happens.

And you'll notice it's not in order chapter-wise. We see Daniel chapter 7 is the first year of Belshazzar when he has the vision of the lion and the bear and the leopard and the monster. And then Daniel 8 and 5 are both the third year of Belshazzar. This time he has the same repeat vision of the first year, but this time Persia is a ram and Greece is a goat and it has the four horns. And then, of course, the final year is chapter 5, which is with the handwriting on the wall.

Well, then the next four chapters, 6, 9, 11, and 12, all happen the first year of Darius the Mede. This is where he's thrown in the lion's den. We have the vision or the explanation of the 70 years of judgment and he prays and he has a vision of the 70 weeks. And then, lastly, set aside all by itself, the book of Daniel really ends with chapter 10, which is the third year of Cyrus and there is this great warfare with Persia.

Now, we've already covered Daniel 7, but I just want to set the stage again. Daniel 7 is the first year of Belshazzar, you'll see in 1 through 3, king of Babylon, and Daniel has a dream and the visions of his head upon his bed. And then what does he do? He gets a pencil and paper and he writes down the dream. And then he told people all about it. And Daniel spoke and said, "I saw in my vision by night, behold, the four winds of the heavens strove upon the great sea and four great beasts came up from the sea and they were all diverse one from another."

And then in verse 4 through 7, he describes these beasts, these four great beasts. The first one he says was like a lion. Now I'm going to go to this little picture here. If you remember, about 70 years earlier, Nebuchadnezzar has a dream of this image. He was going to kill all the wise men, but Daniel said, "Hey, wait just a minute, give me a chance." And God reveals to Daniel Nebuchadnezzar's dream where Nebuchadnezzar is the head of gold, which is Babylon. The two arms represent the silver, represent the Medes and the Persians. Then we have Greece followed by Rome. And this is all the second year of Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel chapter 2 and 3. We now jump to Daniel chapter 7, the first year of Belshazzar, and we see the first beast was a lion, and we're going to find the lion represents Babylon.

So now, rather than interpreting Nebuchadnezzar's dream, Daniel's having his own vision of the very same thing but with animals rather than a statue. Okay, so it says in Daniel 7:4-7, "the first one was like a lion and had eagle's wings. He beheld until the wings were plucked off and it was lifted from the earth and made to stand upon the feet as a man and a man's heart was given to it."

Then it says there was a second beast like a bear. Here's our bear. And it raised itself up on one side, three ribs in the mouth between its teeth, and they said, "Arise, devour much flesh." After this there comes a leopard. Here's our leopard, and this leopard has four heads. Okay, that's what it says. And dominion was given to it. After this I saw in the night vision a fourth beast. Now this fourth beast represents Rome, and it was like a monster, okay? And it says it had ten horns.

All right, let me see where I am at here. Okay. Then in Daniel 7:23-25, it says, "Thus he said, the fourth beast will be the fourth kingdom on the earth. It will be diverse from all kingdoms. It will devour the whole earth and will tread it down, break it in pieces. And ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that will arise and another will arise after them. He'll be diverse from the first. He'll subdue three others. He'll speak great words against the most High. He'll wear out the saints of the most High and think to change times and laws. They will be given to his hand until a time, times, and the dividing of time."

All right, so let's go into that. But first, Daniel chapter 8, where we're going to jump into, is now the third year of Belshazzar. And at this time the Babylonian kingdom is basically over. So this time he doesn't have the vision of Babylon and the lion. He jumps to the Medes and the Persians, which are represented by the two horns of the ram, followed by Greece being the goat with the notable horn being Alexander the Great, okay? And then the four horns become the four generals and the one overthrowing three is Antiochus overthrowing the other three generals. I think everyone is familiar with that.

But I want you to see this from Daniel 7:23-25. It talks about this fourth beast, which represents Rome, right? That's the big monster. I think everyone knows that refers to Rome because Rome was the next kingdom that destroyed Israel in 70 AD. I mean, it's obvious it was Rome. No question. But here's what I want you to see. It says there's going to be someone who thinks to change times and laws. And they will be given to his hand until a time, times, and the dividing of time.

How many times do we hear time? A lot. Okay, here it is in Hebrew. I want you to see this. Let's look at the very bottom in red where it says a time, times, and a half a time. Do you see that? If you go right above it in the transliteration, you see in red: idan, ve-idanin, u-flayg idan. And then if you look up at the Hebrew, the bottom three, you see the same thing. And that Hebrew word for time is the ayin-dalet-nun, okay? Idan, idan, idan. Does everyone see that?

But look at this. Where he says above he wants to change the times and laws, it's a different Hebrew word, and yet in English it's the same word. Okay, that's actually Aramaic. But look at this, the word you'll see in black at the very bottom, times: zimnin. And then you'll see on the far left over there, zimnin. And then in green is the dot, which is laws. So I want you to notice in English you see the same word, but in Aramaic it is a different word with a different meaning, obviously, because it's a different word.

So what is it? Zimnin, the equivalent would be the Moed. Here is someone who wants to change the appointed times. Someone from Rome is going to want to change Passover. They're going to want to change all the appointed times and create new religious holidays because that word "dot," which is translated as law, means religion. It's not civil law he wants to change, but religious laws. So someone from the Roman Empire is going to think to change the appointed times and religious law. And this is someone who is not good.

All right. This is why they, to me, if you're changing religious law, this is a spirit of lawlessness. One of the first ones to exhibit that would be Jeroboam, who wanted to change when the Feast of Tabernacles was from the seventh month to the eighth month. Now, Antiochus tried to stop the appointed times, but Constantine, the one who wanted to change the appointed times, he thought to change when the Sabbath was. He thought to change when... and now have Christmas, and now have Easter. This is not good.

Okay, and then that's chapter 7, which is the first year of Belshazzar. Two years later we're at the third year of Belshazzar, and now he has a new perspective, same dream. And in Daniel 8:1, look at this. In the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar a vision appeared to me, even unto me Daniel, after that which appeared unto me at the first. What does that telling you? That is telling you the third year the dream he's having is patterned after the same dream he had the first year. In other words, it's the same story, different characters. You follow me? That's important.

Listen to Daniel 8:8-10. What do we see? Therefore the he-goat waxed very great and when he was strong the great horn was broken, which refers to who? The great horn is Alexander the Great. And for it came up four notable ones. Who were they? The four generals. So again, this Daniel 8 is a repetition of Daniel 7 two years later, same dream, okay, just a little different scenario.

And it goes on and it says, and out of one of them came forth a little horn. This was Antiochus Epiphanes, which waxed exceedingly great toward the south, toward the east, toward the pleasant land. And it waxed great even to the host of heaven, cast down some of the host and of the stars to the ground and stamped on them. We always know that refers to Israel. Israel will be as the stars of heaven, okay? And that's who he stamped on.

As a matter of fact, look at Daniel 8:11-16. It says he magnified himself even to the prince of the host and by him the daily sacrifice was taken away. That's what Antiochus Epiphanes did. And the place of his sanctuary was cast down. A host was given him against the daily sacrifice by reason of transgression and it cast down the truth to the ground and it practiced and prospered. It says, "Then I heard one saint speaking and another saint said to that certain saint which spoke, 'How long will be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice, the transgression of desolation, to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot?'"

And he said to me, 2,300 evenings and mornings. And as you know, that is not 2,300 days. That refers to the evening and morning sacrifices, which are two a day. So you cut this in half, it's 1,150 days, which historically was exactly the number of days from when they set up the idol to when the Hanukkah event was celebrated and it was cleansed.

Now look at this, though. It says then will the sanctuary be cleansed. "And it came to pass that I, even I Daniel, who saw the vision, I was looking for the meaning and behold there stood before me as the appearance of a man. And I heard a man's voice between the banks of Ulai which called and said, 'Hey, Gabriel, help this guy understand the vision.'" Okay, now let's look at Daniel 8:20-22. Daniel's in his 80s, he's not a kid at this time, but he's explaining the vision.

And he says, "The ram that you saw having the two horns are the kings of Media and Persia. There it is. The rough goat is the king of Greece and the great horn between his eyes is the first king, Alexander the Great. And that being broken whereas four stood up for it, four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation but not in his power." In other words, four other kingdoms are going to come, they're not going to be as strong as Alexander the Great. And again, this refers to his four generals. I think historically everybody knows this. So we see Daniel 8 is a repetition of Daniel 7.

Now look at this, how Daniel 8 ends in verse 26 and 27. "The vision of the evening and the morning which was told is true. Wherefore shut up the vision, it will be yet for many days." And look what Daniel said. "And I, Daniel, fainted. I was sick certain days. But afterward I got up and did the king's business, and I was astonished at the vision but no one understood it, even though Gabriel's told to explain it to me. Dog-gone it, I still didn't get it. And not only that, I've gotten sick, I'm fainting. Maybe it was from the king's food, who knows."

All right, now here's something I want to show you that you haven't seen before, this next slide. As the slide I previously showed you, I'll go back to it... not that one, that one. Okay, now I have here kind of the orders of the chapters, but I want you to realize 6, 9, 11, and 12 are all the first year of Darius. So in one sense they could be read parallel. You know what I mean? They don't necessarily have to be read in a specific order like I have. That's just the order that I put them in.

But I want you now, all of you lovers of prophecy, to read the book of Daniel this way. I want you to take a look at this here. Okay. The first year of Belshazzar is Daniel chapter 7, and there we see the Medes and the Persians are referred to as a bear. Now we go to the third year of Belshazzar, and Daniel 8 and Daniel 5 are parallel. They're both the third year. Now if you remember, Daniel 8 is where Persia is now represented by the ram instead of the bear. And Daniel 5 is the handwriting on the wall and it's all over for Belshazzar. So in one sense we know the entire chapter Daniel 5 happens within 24 hours. That would be typically the last chapter, but I just want you to know you can go from Daniel 7 to 8, which seems normal chronologically, but you can also go from Daniel 7 to 5. But here is what happens next because these four in red are all the first year of Darius. They can actually be read in different orders, but I found there were two streams that seemed to be connected.

The way I would read this, I would go from Daniel 5 to 6 because we know Daniel 5 is actually the last one. But then not only can you go from Daniel 5 to 6, then go from chapter 6 to 9. Daniel 6 is where he's thrown in the lion's den. And then 9 is, if you remember, he was thrown in the lion's den because he was praying. Well, chapter 9 tells you what he was praying. That's why Daniel 9 is connected to 6 because he was thrown for his prayers and supplications and Daniel 9 says these are my prayers and supplications. And then from 9 you can go right down to 12 because 12 is then the vision of the 70 weeks and then also the final top-secret seal it up, don't let anybody hear about it, okay? So in one sense you can go Daniel 7, 5, 6, 9, and 12. They seem to be tied together.

Now the other stream is Daniel 8... I mean, if you want to read 6 you can, but what's really cool is if you read Daniel 8 and go right to Daniel 11, because in Daniel 8 he's feeling sick, right? And he's fainting. Well, what happens? In Daniel 11 someone comes along and strengthens them. So that seems natural that that would flow. And then you go to Daniel 12 at the very end. He's almost like Superman, "I'm strengthened."

Okay, so it's kind of an interesting way that you actually can read these chapters. If you remember, what do we say at the end of every book of the Torah? Chazak, Chazak, ve-nitchazek. Be strong, be strong, be strengthened. That basically comes from Daniel 10. That's how Daniel 10 ends, with him saying to him, "Be strong, be strong, and be strengthened." And he says that I was strengthened. So anyway, there's a couple of ways to read the book of Daniel. So I just wanted you to realize that.

Now also I want you to know again those four notable horns had to do with the four generals of Alexander the Great who then became the political leaders of these four different areas. Okay, let's see where I am at on my notes. Okay, see, Daniel 8 what we just read, he said, "I, Daniel, fainted. I was sick certain days." Correct? Now look at Daniel 11:1. Now think about this. If you did not read Daniel 8, if you just opened your Bible to Daniel 11 and you start reading Daniel 11 without knowing anything else and you read, "Also I in the first year of Darius the Mede, even I stood to confirm and to strengthen him."

Who's the I and who's the him? Unless you know where to connect it, you don't know if this is Daniel confirming Darius, is this Gabriel confirming Darius, or in this time of transition is Gabriel strengthening and confirming Daniel who was sick and needed understanding? This is why you'll also notice at Daniel 11 there is no vision. Daniel 11 is just a further explanation of a previous vision.

As a matter of fact, let's go to Daniel 11:2 and 3. It says, "And now," he says, "I will show you the truth." So you can see this is someone who's explaining a vision. So it isn't Daniel and it isn't Darius, this is Gabriel explaining things to Daniel here. And he says, "Behold, three more kings will arise in Persia, a fourth will be far richer than all of them. And when he's become strong through his riches, he's going to stir up all against the kingdom of Greece. And then a mighty king will arise, Alexander the Great, who will rule with great dominion and do as he wills."

Now, how many of you like history? There's all kinds of history, American history, world history, whatever. I love history. Now, Alexander the Great is on the move. He's conquering the whole known world then. There, what happens when he comes to Israel? He wants to conquer Jerusalem, right? Get a load of this. This comes from a book that was written 2,000 years ago, Josephus, in his book "Antiquity of the Jews," Book 11, Chapter 8, Section 5.

Listen to this. Alexander the Great is coming, right? When he saw all the multitude at a distance in white garments, all the priests had their white garments on greeting Alexander as he's coming. And it says and the high priest in purple and scarlet clothing. So he's got the high priest garments on. This is how he's being greeted as he approaches Jerusalem. And he had his miter on his head having the golden plate whereon the name of God was engraved: Holy to the Lord.