El Shaddai Ministries

Pastor Mark Biltz: I can tell you right now, I have way too much material. I don’t think we’re going to get it all covered, but we’re going to start and I’ll kind of watch the clock. If we can get it all done, we’ll get it all done, but we are going to continue decoding the book of Daniel.

Now, I have here on this first slide, and I also have it on your notes, where you can see how the book of Daniel should be read. You want to read chapters 1 through 4. They are all about Nebuchadnezzar. Then you want to read it in this order: chapter 7, and then 8, and then chapter 5. They’re all about King Belshazzar. Then you want to read chapter 6, and then 9, and then 11, and then 12. You will find they are all about King Darius the Mede. Then you want to conclude with Daniel chapter 10, which is all about Cyrus. You’re going to see over the next several weeks why you need to read it in chronological order because you’re going to discover things you never would have known if you did not read it in this order.

Now, last week there was something I didn’t really expound on that I had some emails and calls saying, "Would you please expound on those 2300 days mentioned in the book of Daniel?" So, I don’t know if this made it on your notes, but it’s from Daniel chapter 8, verses 13 and 14. Just reference this verse and listen. This is from last week. That’s why it’s not on your notes for this week. But Daniel 8:13 and 14 is where it talks about—you have to understand this is the King James Version, which is wrong. I don't mean to offend any of you "King James only."

It says, "I heard one saint speaking, and another saint and said unto that certain saint which spoke, ‘How long will be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice and the transgression of desolation to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot?’ And he said to me, ‘Unto 2300 days, and then the sanctuary will be cleansed.’" How many have heard of that verse before? And how many have tried to figure out the 2300 days? I can tell you right now, it’s not 2300 days. That’s the first problem.

Listen to this next verse, and I’m going to put the verses up on the screen so that way you guys can follow along since it’s not in your notes and you can reference it. Listen to Exodus 29:38 and 39: "Now this is that which you shall offer upon the altar: two lambs of the first year, day by day, continually. One lamb you shall offer in the morning and the other lamb you shall offer at dusk, or in the evening."

Now, I’m going to just read Daniel 8. We’re going to go back to that. Let’s look at verses 8 through 10 to give us the context of all of this 2300 days. Here’s how it begins, and you should remember from last week what this is talking about. It talks about the he-goat magnified himself exceedingly, and when he was strong, the great horn was broken. The he-goat was what country? Greece. The great horn is Alexander the Great. This is talking about historically the Babylonian empire being destroyed by the Medes and the Persians, and now it’s Greece’s turn. It said in instead of it, there came up the appearance of four horns toward the four winds of heaven. And we know that refers to the four generals who took charge of the area after Alexander the Great died.

Out of them came forth a little horn. And who does the little horn represent? Antiochus Epiphanes of Hanukkah. And it said it waxed exceedingly great toward the south, east, and the beautiful land, referring to Israel. It waxed great, even to the host of heaven, referring to Israel, and some of the host and of the stars it cast down to the ground and trampled upon them.

Now, here we come. Let’s go to the next slide here so you can follow along. Listen to what it says, Daniel 8:11 through 13: "Yea, he magnified himself, referring to Antiochus, even to the prince of the host, and from him the continual burnt offering was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down. And the host was given over to it together with the continual burnt offering through transgression, and it cast down truth to the ground, and it prospered. Then I heard a holy one speaking, and another holy one said unto that certain one who spoke, ‘How long will be the vision concerning the continual burnt offering?’" How many of you know they’re talking about the continual burnt offering? How many you know the burnt offerings are to be every evening and every morning?

Daniel 8:14 in King James said "2300 days," but that’s not what the Hebrew says. The Hebrew says, "And he said to me, ‘Unto 2300 evenings and mornings, and then the sanctuary will be cleansed.’" He’s talking about the sacrifices. Let me show you. Here is Genesis 1:5, where God says, "Evening and morning, day one." And "erev"—you can see the first circle—"erev" and "boker." "Boker tov," good morning. "Erev" is evening. "Boker" is morning. Here is in Hebrew—you can see in red, "yom" is day. That’s the Hebrew word for day. And there’s "erev" and "boker," evening and morning, day one.

Now, here’s Daniel 8:14, and you will notice it doesn’t say "yom." It says "erev" and "boker." So the King James is wrong. What he’s really saying is there will be 2300 evening and morning sacrifices. And the concern was the continual burnt offering. So we say and we can see in one day you have two sacrifices: there’s a morning sacrifice and an evening sacrifice. So if that’s the case, the 2300 evenings and mornings is 1150 days because there’s two sacrifices every day, so you cut it in half, and it’s not 2300 days. It’s 1150 days. Does everyone follow me? Now, I’m going to show you something else that will be mind-blowing.

How many of you know on the biblical calendar sometimes there’s 12 months, sometimes there’s 13 months? You have the 12th month is Adar, sometimes you add Adar II. This rule is based on the Metonic cycle, which shows within 19 years you have 235 lunar months. This is what keeps Passover in the spring. And so, just like how every four years we add a leap day, on the biblical calendar, every 19 years they have seven times 13 months to keep it in the cycle. So as far as the Hebrew year 5700, there’s an Adar II. 5701, 5702, there’s only 12 months. 5703, there’s 13. 5704 and 05, 12. 06 is 13, 07 is 12, 08 is 13, 09 and 10 are 12, 11 is 13, 12 and 13 are 12. Do you see what I’m saying? So it’s not always every other year. Sometimes there’s two years in between.

Guess what? If it happens to be in this particular time frame, here, 06 has 13 months, 07 has 12 months, and 08 has 13 months. Right? So if you’re counting the days in that time frame, well, there’s 38 months. Now, listen to this. In 1 Maccabees—this is a historical record, I’m not saying it’s inspired—but in 1 Maccabees chapter 1, verse 54, it tells us that at Hanukkah time, in there, the abomination was set up on Kislev 15. That’s when the abomination was set up on Kislev 15 in 167 BCE. And then 1 Maccabees chapter 4, verse 52 and 53, tells us the temple was rededicated on Kislev 25, which is why it’s called what? Hanukkah. And that was in 164 BC. Well, guess what? If you take Kislev 15 to Kislev 15 during that time period, you take 38 months times 30, you get 1140 days. You add the 10 days from Kislev 15 to Hanukkah, Kislev 25, you get the 1150 days, which is the exact count of the 2300 evening and morning sacrifices historically.

Now, you don’t have to figure it out because, first off, it’s past, not future anyway. But we do need to remember history often repeats itself. But don’t get caught up in that. And now what’s fascinating, I have a little picture there. This is the wonderful book that I got from ArtScroll on the book of Daniel. Now, I don’t agree with everything in this book, for heaven’s sake. But one thing I have found, just like every spouse should want the other spouse’s perspective to help round things out, I like the Jewish perspective on things. I don’t agree with everything they say, but guess what? I don’t agree with everything the Christians say either. So I like to get both sources and then I throw out—I know how to eat chicken. I can throw out the bone and eat the meat. And so what we need to do is know how to sort. But anyway, I wanted everyone to know that, and someone asked me about the 2300 because they were concerned, and now you know the answer.

Again, Daniel 1, 2, 3, and 4 is all about Nebuchadnezzar. Then 60 some years, 70 some years go by. The next three chapters that we’ve already looked at are chapter 7, chapter 8, and chapter 5. And now in the first year of Belshazzar, he has the vision of the lion, the bear, the leopard with four wings, and then this monster, which we know is just a repeat of his dream 70 years earlier that Nebuchadnezzar had that he interpreted. Then in the third year of Belshazzar, he has the dream of the ram, the goat with the four horns, the notable horn. Same dream, different animals.

Then the handwriting on the wall. Well, today we are going to start looking at Darius the Mede and next week as well. Chapter 6—all three of these are the first year of Darius. How many of you have ever heard of a Bible called the Parallel Bible where they take the Gospels and they have all four Gospels but they intertwine them together so you can kind of fill in the gaps? You really need to look at 6, 9, 11, and 12 as intertwined. You can almost intertwine them together. So even though we’re reading them in different orders, we need to understand logically—and this is mind-blowing when you see this—they’re all happening at the same time in the same year.

6, 9, 11, and 12 all happen in the first year of Darius. Then when we’re done, we’ll go to Daniel chapter 10, which has the great warfare concerning Persia, Iran. That’s where it ends, Daniel does, with chapter 10. So now we’re going to start with today’s Daniel message.

But I’m going to start with Daniel 5:31 because that’s where we ended the last time. See, Daniel 5 is the third year of Belshazzar, if you remember the handwriting on the wall. So now we’re going to pick it up with Daniel 6, but I want to conclude from last week with Daniel 5:31: "In that night, Belshazzar the Chaldean was murdered, and Darius the Mede received the kingdom, being about 62 years old." He was younger than me.

Now, I’m going to jump ahead for just a minute to Daniel 9 also, which does happen the first year, because I will be intertwining these to help us get all this. Look at Daniel 9, verses 1 and 2. We see it was the first year of Darius, who was the son of who? Ahasuerus. Now, this is not the Ahasuerus of Esther. This is a different one. This is a different generation earlier. By descent, this guy was a Mede who was made king over the realm of who? The Chaldeans. Well, that’s Babylon. So if Darius has the reign over Babylon, is it really a new reign or is it the final reign of a king of Babylon? That’s something we’re going to consider.

But let me go to this slide. I’m going to show you something that is totally amazing. How many of you know not everyone agrees on what happened in history? How many of you know history is always written by the victor? And it can change. That’s why in our school system history is constantly being changed depending on who has control of the curriculum. Not everyone agrees with what I’m going to show you, but I got it from this book so you know I’m not making it up. There are some scholars who believe this, there are some scholars who don’t believe this.

But here we go. We have the Medes and the Persians. We know that they ruled. We have Darius the Mede, that’s who we’re reading about. Darius had a daughter and Darius the Mede had a son. What was Darius the Mede's father’s name? Ahasuerus. That’s what we just read. Now, how many of you know the next king to take over was King Cyrus the Persian? Well, guess what? King Cyrus married the daughter of Darius the Mede. In politics, sometimes there are marriages, especially back then. That’s how they solved treaties. That’s what Solomon did; he married all these other kings’ daughters. So here you see King Cyrus married the daughter of Darius the Mede, which is why it was easy for him to transition.

Now, guess what about his son? His son was named King Ahasuerus after grandpa. And this is the King Ahasuerus who married Queen Esther. And guess what? They had a son, and his name is King Darius of chapter 6, verse 1, the one that wanted to rebuild the temple. You can see why, because it’s through Esther’s line. Now, this is what comes from this particular book. So I just wanted you to see how it’s kind of interesting when you see the family relationships historically, what is happening.

Listen to Ezra 6:1 through 3, that bottom King Darius. But know this isn’t Darius the Mede. He was grandpa. Darius the king made a decree. A search was made in the house of the rolls where the treasures were laid up in Babylon. There was found at Achmetha, in the palace that is in the province of the Medes, a roll, and therein was a record thus written: "In the first year of Cyrus the king, the same Cyrus the king made a decree concerning the house of God at Jerusalem, ‘Let the house be built, the place where they offered sacrifices, let the foundations thereof be strongly laid, and the height was 60 cubits and the breadth 60 cubits.’" So this Darius, why is he so much willing to rebuild the tabernacle? It is because that’s what King Cyrus says and what Darius the Mede, grandpa, wanted. It’s all in the family.

Now, now let’s go jump to Daniel 6, and we’re going to look at verse 1 through 3. It pleased Darius—and again this is Darius the Mede—to set over the kingdom 120 governors, let’s say, who should be throughout the whole kingdom. And over these 120 governors were three presidents, so each president would cover 40 governors, of which Daniel was one of the presidents. Talk about a promotion. Daniel is one of three presidents that these governors might give account to them. Kind of sounds like Moses and Jethro. And that the king should have no damage.

And now look at this: "Then this Daniel distinguished himself above all the presidents." So you got three presidents and Daniel is the top dog. He’s next to the king. Why? It says, "because a surpassing spirit was in him, and the king thought to set him over the whole realm." Now, let me ask you something. If you are a religious conservative and you’re going to be set over the whole realm, you’re going to have some that don’t want you, other presidents that don’t want you over everything because they have a different view.

So look what happens in Daniel 6, verse 4 and 5: "Then the presidents—obviously this doesn’t include Daniel—and the princes sought to find occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom, but they could find no fault in him. Forasmuch as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him. Then said these men, ‘We’re not going to find anything against Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the laws of his God.’"

Now watch what happens here, Daniel 6:6 through 9: "Then these presidents and princes assembled together to the king." So that means there’s like 120 people there. All these governors, everyone’s there before King Darius, and they said to him, "King Darius, live forever." Now, look at this: "All the presidents of the kingdom want this done." Hello, liar, liar, pants on fire. Daniel’s one of these presidents. He’s not even in the room, but they’re hoping that King Darius won’t see him among the crowd of 120 people. And they say, "All the presidents of the kingdom, the governors, the princes, the counselors, the captains have consulted together to establish a royal statute and make a firm decree that whoever will ask a petition of any god or man for 30 days save you, O king, he will be cast into the den of lions. Now, O king, establish the decree and sign the writing, that it be not changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which alters not."