Mesa Hills Bible Church

Pastor Tim Dane: Daniel Chapter 2 brings us to a passage that tells us about God's plan for this world. There are a lot of reasons why people get afraid of the future. Sometimes they are afraid because of a money problem, a relationship problem, or what their health is going to turn out to be. Let me just assure you of this: you're going to get old, sick, and miserable, and then one day you're going to die. Just accept it.

We worry about the future for all kinds of things. There are lots of reasons why, but we see from the Bible that God has a plan for this world. Our God is a sovereign God. When I use that expression, what I am saying is that God has a plan he is working out for good. It says in Romans 8:28 that he is working all things for good for those who know him, those that love him and belong to him. This plan he is working out, he promises that it is going to be good, ultimately good for his people. We sang a song a few minutes ago: "If God did not spare his own son but delivered him up for us all, how will he not also give us all things through him?" God has a plan that he is working, and he says so. It is a plan that is good for you and good for me.

Here in Daniel Chapter 2, we come to one of these prophecies of the Bible that shows us he is a sovereign God. Daniel Chapter 2 shows us the future of world history. Interestingly, when God gave this promise right here, he revealed it first of all to a pagan Babylonian king by the name of Nebuchadnezzar. It was curious that God willed to first make this known to Nebuchadnezzar, but he also revealed it to Daniel, and Daniel is the one who was able to explain it.

God is telling us what the future is going to be, not every certain detail from that perspective, but it is a vision that God gave both to Nebuchadnezzar and to Daniel that tells us the future of world history. What we see is this: God is in control of the future. This is one of the most profound prophecies of the whole Bible. It is not the only one that tells us the future of the world, but it is a very profound and significant part of this whole plan that God shows us.

This is a huge chapter and there is a lot to tear apart in this passage, more than what we can rightly take in one message. What we are going to do is break this down with six lessons about God's prophetic plan and why we can trust him. This morning, we are going to look at the first three lessons in verses 1 through 30, which is still a big chunk of Scripture to deal with, but it is better that we deal with some of this as a unit.

There are six lessons, and the first one here in verses 1 to 13 would be this theme: when we look at God's prophetic truth, here's the first lesson. It is the impossibility of knowing what this is. When I say impossibility, I am saying it is the impossibility of knowing what the future is unless God reveals it through one of his prophets. People try to find the future through different means. When we look at the occult, you have people going to psychics and different kinds of occultic witches or sorcerers to try to find out the future. Do not touch that with a ten-foot pole. Have nothing to do with the occult or magic.

I remember one of my professors back at Masters, Ken Sarles. He said to the theology class, "Guys, don't even look at these things like horoscopes or astrologers in the paper." I have never gravitated toward any of those things to begin with, but when he said that, I thought, "Good advice. Don't touch those things. Don't get near them." I won't even look at those astrology things.

Tragically, we have a lot of people that are sucked into the same kind of thinking in the charismatic world because there are a lot of people in this charismatic Pentecostal world that have the false idea that they have a bunch of prophets running around and they themselves can be a prophet. They are looking for messages from God, kind of like looking for love in all the wrong places. They need to be going to the Word of God. Instead, they are trying to find some kind of hidden knowledge and thinking that they can get this.

We do not have prophets here today. You may come from a background where people say, "Oh, yeah, we've got prophets here." This is not good. It is very much so just like the problem in the occult where people are trying to find messages that will give them some kind of power for the future. If you have questions about this, please come and join this dinner that we are going to do on Friday night, the 28th, I think it is, Friday night at 6:00. We are going to have a dinner next door to reach out to our college students and the colleges, but it is open for everybody. Let me know; you can sign up for that if you want to sign up for it on our website.

Do not have anything to do with these attempts at trying to find hidden knowledge apart from God's Word. This is what we see here in verses 1 to 13. A message has come to King Nebuchadnezzar and they are trying to find out what this is all about. Look at verse 1: "In the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams and his spirit was troubled and left him."

Now God has spoken through different means to different prophets throughout the Old Testament time period. God was there in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. That was the Messenger of the Lord; that was Christ himself in the garden. Christ is the one that made the universe. It says that in John 1:1. Christ is the one that made Adam and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Adam wakes up freshly made, hot off the press, and God says, "I just made you, and you need a wife. I'm going to give you a wife, too." That was Christ in the garden and he spoke directly to Adam and Eve.

We can see God appearing to Moses as a flame in the burning bush at Mount Sinai. It tells us in Exodus 3:2 that was the Messenger of Yahweh. That was Christ in the burning bush. We can see that God inscripturated by inspiration through his prophets and God gave us the Bible. Right here, we see God speaking by his Spirit to a pagan. God actually spoke to an unsaved pagan king by the name of Nebuchadnezzar.

Let's make a couple of observations about this right here. First of all, when we look at the timing of this, it says that this took place in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. We know that Nebuchadnezzar came to the throne and invaded Jerusalem in 605 BC, so we might automatically think, "Well, this must be 604 BC, the second year of his reign." But there are a couple of questions involved in this and none of it really changes the meaning of the whole passage.

Remember that Daniel and his friends, when they were captured, God put them, or Nebuchadnezzar put them, into a training program. We call it the Wise Man College, Wise Man U. It was supposed to be a three-year training program. So when you look at what is going on here in Chapter 2, it kind of looks like Daniel and his friends are already considered wise men. But the third year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, if Daniel was put into this program in 605, you might say that would be 602 BC. There is a little bit of question about the dates right here.

One thing that we do see is this: it is very possible that these guys were already considered part of the wise men because they were in Wise Man University. A second possibility here is that the Babylonians typically did not count their first year of being a king, their year of accession. So it is possible that they are still in the three-year program but they are still about at the end of their three-year time period. This doesn't affect our understanding of what's going on here, but it could be that they are still in the training program but it is getting near the end of their three-year time period.

What we do see happening right here is this: Nebuchadnezzar had a dream that God gave him and it terrified him. It says here that he had dreams and his spirit was troubled and his sleep left him. It was a nightmare to him. So notice what he does in verse 2: "The king then gave orders to call in the magicians, the conjurers, the sorcerers, the Chaldeans."

You had Merlin and Gandalf, anybody that you can think of in terms of some kind of magical background. The Babylonians were known for having a lot of occultic magic and this kind of stuff. So he calls in his experts and it says they came in and they stood before the king. Then the king said to them, "I had a dream and my spirit is anxious to understand the dream." This is not uncommon. Basically, everybody in the ancient Near East was extremely spiritual. That doesn't mean that they had a right relationship with God, but they were very religious people. So when you have something like a dream, nobody disregarded dreams.

So he called in four of his experts. The first two have already been mentioned back in Chapter 1, verse 20. These are the magicians and conjurers. The magicians were astrologers with occultic knowledge. The conjurers were similar kinds of magicians. These were necromancers, or you could call them incantation priests that used to utter different kinds of incantations.

These were two of the groups that he called in, and then he had this group called the sorcerers. That referred to those that would use magical charms and hidden powers. Then lastly, we have this group called the Chaldeans. At a general level, the word Chaldean spoke about an ethnic group that lived in the area of Mesopotamia. But we know that there was also a more narrow use of this term Chaldean that spoke about, basically, your wise men. So Chaldeans is kind of like a term that refers to a class of priests within the nation of Babylon.

Nebuchadnezzar calls in all of his big shots, all of his experts, because he wants the best of the best to find out what is going on. Now here's something you've got to understand: when you go into the law of Moses and you look at God's commandment to Israel, he says those things are to be absolutely outlawed and forbidden. Don't touch them with a ten-foot pole. In Leviticus 19:31, God said, "Do not turn to the mediums or spiritists; do not seek them out to be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God." It was absolutely forbidden to touch that stuff at all.

How serious was it? In Leviticus Chapter 20, verse 27, it says, "A man or a woman who is a medium or a spiritist shall surely be put to death; you shall stone them with stones and their guilt is upon them." God doesn't want you and me, God doesn't want anybody, but God in particular does not want any of his people to be looking for occultic hidden kinds of knowledge. That's out of bounds.

That is why when you look at the entire Pentecostal charismatic world, where people are just clamoring to get some kind of message from God, thinking, "I want God to speak to me," that is wrong. You want God to speak to you? Read the Bible. You want God to speak to you audibly? Read it out loud. Do not seek out occultic knowledge.

In Deuteronomy 18, he says, "There shall not be found anyone among you who casts a spell or a medium or a spiritist or who calls up the dead, for whoever does these things is detestable to the Lord." By the way, the same thing would hold true when you try to pray to dead people. This is what you get in Catholicism, praying to Mary or praying to other kinds of so-called saints in Roman Catholicism or in the Orthodox world. It is absolutely forbidden to try to communicate with the dead. Don't do it. Don't touch it.

In Isaiah Chapter 8, verse 19, God was rebuking the people for doing this. He said, "When people tell you, 'Let's consult the mediums or the spiritists who whisper and mutter,' should not a people consult their God? Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living?" That's what happens when you try to ask saints to pray for you. You're attempting to ask a dead person.

God says, "No, you don't do that." And by the way, a person's ability to intercede for someone else is possible while they're living. So if you say, "Hey, could you please pray for me? I'm having a really big struggle right here," you're asking for intercession. But death prevents anybody from being an intercessor for someone else. It says in the book of Hebrews Chapter 7 that death prevents anybody from continuing on in an intercessory role. So when you're trying to go to a dead person, whether it's Mary or Peter or whoever, you're violating something God says, "Absolutely do not do this." Isaiah Chapter 8 says, "To the law, to the Word of God, and to the testimony. And if somebody doesn't speak according to this word, it's because there's no light in them." Just don't do it. Go to the Word of God.

Notice what happens, though. Nebuchadnezzar, of course, is a pagan, so he is calling in all of these experts. In verse 3, the king said to them, "I had a dream and my spirit is anxious to understand the dream." What we are going to see in verses 4 to 11 is that these guys are going to come in and say, "Okay, well what do you need us to do here?" because that's their job, to do magical kinds of interpretation and so on. But we're going to see that three times they utterly failed.

Look at verses 4 to 6. You see the first failure. "Then the Chaldeans spoke to the king." Your translation says, "in Aramaic." When it says "in Aramaic," this is a note that Daniel put into his prophetic writings because what happens from Chapter 2, verse 4, all the way through Chapter 7, verse 28, this entire section of the book of Daniel goes into the Aramaic language. Aramaic was the language of the Babylonian world at that time; it was basically the international language at that time.

Chapter 1 is written in Hebrew, which is what all the Old Testament is written in, and then Chapters 8 through 12 are written in Hebrew. Now there are a couple of places in a small couple of paragraphs that you find, like in Ezra and Nehemiah, where you see a few statements in Aramaic. But Aramaic was the language of the Babylonians. So from this point on until Chapter 8, it's in Aramaic.

Why was it in Aramaic? Well, we can't be certain. If somebody says, "Well, Chapters 2 through 7 are mainly for the Gentile world," that argument doesn't hold up because it all talks about the Jews as well. If you look at Chapters 8 through 12, it talks all about the rest of the world as well. We don't know precisely why this portion is in Aramaic, but let's just say for the sake of argument there is a wide, worldwide message here in 2 to 7.

Notice what happens here in verse 4: "The Chaldeans spoke to the king: 'O King, live forever. Tell the dream to your servants and we will declare the interpretation.'" The king replied to the Chaldeans, "The command from me is firm. If you don't make known to me the dream and its interpretation, you will be torn limb from limb and your houses will be made a rubbish heap. But if you declare the dream and its interpretation, you'll receive from me gifts and a reward and great honor. Therefore, declare to me the dream and its interpretation."

At this point here, Nebuchadnezzar had already made the message clear when he sent and called these guys in. He already told them, "You have to tell me my dream and what it means." So they already knew that this is what he wanted out of them.

Now here's another little comment I'm going to make aside from the fact that 2 to 7 is in Aramaic and the rest is in Hebrew. It's interesting that every one of the sections of Daniel has dates attached to it: first year of Nebuchadnezzar, second year, etc. I'm just going to throw these dates out to you so you can at least be aware of it because it's interesting. Chapter 1 takes place in 605 BC, Chapter 2 about 603 or 602, Chapter 3 probably about the year we don't know, 590 or 600, Chapter 4 maybe around the year 570, Chapter 5 is 539 BC, and Chapter 6 is 539 BC.

But then when you come back to Chapter 7, it takes place in about 553, Chapter 8 in 551, then Chapter 9 goes back to 539 BC, and Chapter 10 about 536. What happens is that the events that take place in Chapters 5 and 6 in 539 BC, those events are taken out from the flow of how Daniel arranged his prophecies, and the end result is it ends up bringing Chapters 8 and 9 together in the flow of how his scroll is written. What is the significance of why he brought it together where Chapters 8 and 9 come together? I think there are some reasons why, and we'll talk about that later on when we get to Chapters 8 and 9.

Anyhow, what happens is these guys come in, they give the customary greeting, "O king, live forever." You want to follow good protocol to not make the king mad. "Tell your dream to the servants and we will declare its interpretation." But that's not what Nebuchadnezzar had told them.

So verse 5: "The king replied to the Chaldeans: 'The command from me is firm. If you do not make known to me the dream and its interpretation, you'll be torn limb from limb, your houses will be made a rubbish heap.'" We see examples of this happening from the Babylonians and the Persians. "We're going to rip you to shreds and then we're going to destroy your family forever. We're going to take your house and we're going to destroy it so that your entire family suffers if you don't do what I tell you to do." Verse 6: "The good news is, if you tell me the dream and its interpretation, you'll receive gifts and a reward and great honor." We don't know what this reward is. "Therefore, declare to me the dream and its interpretation."

All right, good news. Tell the king what he wants to hear and you're going to get a really, really big reward. Now one of the things that we see going on right here is this: Nebuchadnezzar was not too keen on these wise men. He had good suspicions that they were a bunch of frauds. Just like we look at frauds today and we go, "That guy's a fraud." Nebuchadnezzar knew that these guys were frauds.

Verse 7: they tried once in verses 4 to 6 and it didn't work. They're going to try it again. Here in verses 7 and 9, we see a second failed effort. "They answered a second time and they said, 'Let the king tell the dream to his servants and we will declare the interpretation.' The king replied, 'I know for certain that you're bargaining for time inasmuch as you've seen that the command from me is firm. That if you do not make the dream known to me, there's only one decree for you. For you've agreed together to speak lying and corrupt words before me until the situation has changed. Therefore, tell me the dream that I may know that you can declare to me the interpretation.'" He knew that these guys were frauds. One thing is clear: they're not going to get anywhere trying to argue with Nebuchadnezzar.

Whatever you think about it, if you watched when Zelensky met with Trump here a few weeks ago, Zelensky found out it doesn't work well if I try to argue at all with Donald Trump. That much was for sure. Same thing with Nebuchadnezzar. You're not going to get anywhere if you try to argue with this guy.

What we see is that unless God reveals prophetic truth, you cannot know it. So they failed again. Verses 10 to 11, we see a third failed attempt. "The Chaldeans answered the king and said, 'There's not a man on earth who could declare the matter for the king, inasmuch as no great king or ruler has ever asked anything like this of any magician or conjurer or Chaldean. Moreover, the thing which you, the king, demands is difficult, and there's no one else who could declare it to the king except gods, whose dwelling place is not with mortal flesh.'"

Kind of interesting, huh? They're admitting only God can make this known. So what you're asking is really, really outrageous. Now the Babylonians were famous for their astrology. Babylon, you read Isaiah 47, they were noted for all of these kinds of things. But what we see here is this: they could not do it, and they admitted only God can reveal this.

But this is where they made a pretty serious tactical error. Regardless of what you think about the Trump-Zelensky meeting, if you offend Trump, it's not going to get you very far. Offend Nebuchadnezzar and it's not going to get you very far at all. What they said to this guy is this: they said, "What you're asking us to do is outrageous. Nobody's ever asked something like this before. You're being unreasonable."

"What? You're calling me unreasonable?" Look at verse 12. Because of this, because of what they said, "the king became indignant and very furious and gave orders to destroy all the wise men of Babylon." So the decree went forth that the wise men should be slain. Then they went out and they looked for Daniel and his friends to kill them.

It's interesting we see that Daniel and his friends, whatever their status is at this moment in terms of their training program, they were not there immediately. They were not part of the group that came in at first. So the command went out to kill all the wise men and they said, "Okay, go out and get the guys that aren't here right now." That included Daniel and his friends.

So what we see is this: Nebuchadnezzar was a man of many talents. He was a tremendous military general, conqueror, administrator. He built a massive, beautiful city. He was a builder, he loved religion, he loved the arts. But clearly, patience and humility were not part of his virtues. So when these guys insulted him, he was absolutely furious and said, "Kill them all."

Just think about history when we look at this idea about people trying to claim that they speak for God. Think about just some of the things that have happened throughout human history. We go all the way back to 622 BC, and a guy by the name of Muhammad comes up and says, "Hey, God's talking to me." Was God giving prophetic messages to Muhammad? No, he wasn't. Muhammad was hearing voices, but those voices were not coming from God. Now, 1,400 years later, we have a religion called Islam, the scourge of the earth, a really, really devastating satanic religion because somebody said, "God talks to me."

We can go back 200 years ago and we look at Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism. "Hey, I'm God's prophet. God talks to me." Now we've got 200 years of false teaching in Mormonism. Don't fall for this idea of people saying, "Oh, yeah, God told me." Don't fall for this. It's people using the name of Jesus Christ to get rich.

How rich? Oral Roberts, a fraud, a spiritual fraud, died and he was worth about $117 million. That was a few years ago. $117 million by telling people, "Oh, God talks to me, so send your money in." I may have been born at night, but I wasn't born last night.

I've told the story before; I'll tell it again really quickly here just to illustrate it at a first-hand level. This was about 40 years ago. We had some lady that came into our church Sunday school back in Las Vegas and my pastor was teaching Sunday school. At the end of Sunday school, this lady stood up and said, "This man is teaching you lies." She says, "I'm a prophetess. God speaks to me in dreams and visions. And Ronald Reagan is the Antichrist and the Pope is the false prophet."

She was a false prophetess; she wasn't real. But she was convinced, "I'm a prophetess." Don't get sucked into these lies, my dear friends. Benny Hinn, still alive, worth over $40 million by sucking money out of people, telling lies. Kenneth Copeland, still alive, Kenneth Copeland's worth $760 million. He says, "I'm a prophet, so send me your money so I can go get another private jet."

There was an interview that was done by Lisa Guerrero, a reporter for Inside Edition, and she asked Copeland why he won't fly on commercial planes. He has multiple private jets. He defended the practice and said that it's vital for his work. When she asked about why he purchased another private jet from the filmmaker Tyler Perry, he said, "Well, that's none of your business." He owns a massive property with his own private airport. She grilled him about comments he had made in the past. "Why aren't you willing to fly on a commercial plane?" He goes, "Flying in a long tube with a bunch of demons? That's deadly. I can't fly in a plane with a bunch of other people and all those demons." Listen, don't get sucked into these things.

These guys are kind of like the more notable ones right here, okay? I'm mentioning a few of these by name. Don't get sucked into the lies of people saying, "I'm a prophet." God had his prophets, people like the Apostle Paul, people like Daniel. We don't have them here today. Come to the dinner if you have questions about that, or ask me.

Okay, verses 14 to 18. Here's a second lesson. It's the need for God to give us a prophetic messenger if we want to understand God's prophecy. So in verses 14 to 18, notice what happens. There's the order to kill all the wise men. When Daniel hears about it, verse 14 says Daniel replied with discretion and discernment to Arioch, the captain of the king's bodyguard, who had gone forth to slay the wise men of Babylon. He said to Arioch, the king's commander, "For what reason is this decree from the king so urgent?" Then Arioch informed Daniel about the matter.

Notice the wisdom of Daniel. Now remember, Daniel at this point is probably about 17 years of age, roughly. He's probably still a young Jewish teenager. He's been taken captive by the Babylonians two or three years ago to serve Nebuchadnezzar, but he's wise. He answers, it says, with discretion and with discernment.

There's a great lesson for practical application right there. Listen to Proverbs 15, verse 1: "A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. The tongue of the wise makes knowledge acceptable, but the mouth of fools spouts folly." Proverbs 15:28: "The heart of the righteous ponders how to answer, but the mouth of the wicked pours out evil things." How many of you can look back at your life and you say, "Man, I can look at so many times when I should have just stayed quiet and shut up"? I tell you what, you look back and you say, "I was just kind of like I just had to spout out my thinking." There's a whole lot of times for you and me when you're just wise when you stay silent. Then everybody will look and say, "Oh, man, that person is so smart." Open your mouth and they say, "Oh, you're not so smart." Proverbs 16:21: "The wise in heart will be called discerning."

Verse 16: Daniel went in and requested from King Nebuchadnezzar that he would give him time in order that he might declare the interpretation to the king. Daniel must have been really well-liked and highly respected that he would be able to go into the king and that he would be able to ask this permission, and that's the fact of the matter.

Verse 17: Daniel went to his house and informed his friends—Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah—about the matter. That's Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He went and he asked them that they might request compassion from the God of heaven concerning this mystery so that Daniel and his friends would not be destroyed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. First thing they do is they say, "We need to go to God. We need to ask God for grace."

You have a trial? Go to God. Now if you have a trial and you go to God and you pray to God and ask for God for grace and help, does that mean, "Oh, God says I'm going to take away your problem"? No, it doesn't. Sometimes God will take away that problem, but we don't have guarantees that God is going to take our problems away. What we do have is this: we have a guarantee that God will use trials to mold us into the image of his son if we stay faithful to him. We do have the promise that God will use trials to glorify his name so that when we stand in his presence, our own victorious Christian living will bring honor and glory to God and he's going to bless us with rewards for faithfulness.

Sometimes God will take that trial out of our lives, but we don't have that promise that God is going to take away the trials. We don't have the promise that God is going to take away the sickness. Wouldn't it be nice? Abracadabra, the sickness is gone. In glory, it'll all be gone, so there is a promise of ultimate restoration, but we don't have that promise here and now. This is what it is to walk by faith, it's trusting God.

Now what it says right here is this: it says that Daniel was asking that God would reveal this mystery. This idea of mystery, this is a big biblical idea here. The Aramaic term "raz" is the idea of something that's hidden, secret, and yet God can make it known. What they're doing is they're going to God and saying, "Lord, we need you to come and show us what you've spoken to Nebuchadnezzar." They're asking God for the truth.

That brings us down to verses 19 to 30. This is the third lesson that we see. It's the power of God to reveal prophetic truth. Look at verse 19. They prayed to God, and then look at verse 19: "Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a night vision. So Daniel blessed the God of heaven."

Again, we see this Aramaic little word, "mystery," a "raz." When you go into the Greek language, it's translated by the word "mysterion." Of course, we get "mystery" out of that word. But this God revealed this to Daniel. Notice that Daniel had two things that he needed to do as soon as God revealed this message that Nebuchadnezzar had received. Daniel says there are two things I have to do.

First and foremost, verse 20, he says, "I need to thank God." Verse 20: "So Daniel said, 'Let the name of God be blessed forever and ever, for wisdom and power belong to him.'" We need to thank God and praise God for who he is. Wisdom and power, and when he says "wisdom and power," this is especially because God is the one who can tell us the future.

Verse 21: "It is he who changes the times and the epochs; he removes kings and he establishes kings." This is a very significant and fascinating verse. It says God is the one who changes the times and the seasons. Give you another couple of words here; you won't remember them, but that's okay. The word for "times" is this Aramaic term "idan-ya," and then the word for "seasons" is a word "zim-naya," "idan" and "zaman." The first word, "times," kind of talks about time in more of a general sense. And then that second word, "seasons," is a word that speaks about particular points in history.

So what it says is, God is the one who has a plan for all time. He's the one who's in charge of how this unfolds. You say, "Well, in what way could this be true?" We see it in the parallel statement because he says right after that, "He removes kings and he establishes kings."

How does God demonstrate his sovereignty that he has a plan he's working out? He changes the times and the epochs; he removes kings and he establishes kings. I believe that, like him or dislike him, I think I can say with absolute 100% certainty that it was God's plan that Donald Trump become the president at this moment. How can I say that? He is our president. And it was God's absolute sovereign plan that Joe Biden was our president for the last four years.

But what we have to understand is that the unfolding of time and history is God changing the times and the epochs. He removes kings and he establishes kings. Now when we talk about our own human responsibility, our human responsibility would be to do things like love God with all of our heart, soul, and strength, to serve him, to try to live for Christ, to pray, to trust him. But when we look at what's going to happen in this world, you and I are not going to change the destiny of this world. We do our part in terms of moral responsibility, but God is the one who controls the flow of history.

Gleason Archer, in his commentary on Daniel, says God determines when in history events are to take place and how long each process or phase in history is to endure. He's absolutely right. You think about something like the fall of the Nazis and the rise of Communism and the Berlin Wall. You had from basically early '60s until 1989, for 38 years or something like that, you had the Communists controlling a part of Berlin. Then all of a sudden, November of 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall. This was God, because God's at work in everything.

You look at these two expressions right here. So here's for Nebuchadnezzar, here's the significance: Daniel is telling Nebuchadnezzar, "Nebuchadnezzar, yes, you just became the king of the world, so to speak, the ancient Near East. God's the one who put you here. And by the way, in Jeremiah Chapter 25, verses 11 to 12, God said through Jeremiah, 'Yeah, I'm going to let him be in power, the Babylonians, for 70 years, and then I'm going to remove them and I'm going to raise up another nation.'"

So you look at this expression, "the times and the epochs." Sometimes your translations might say "the times and the seasons." But when you look at the idea of "the times and the epochs," this is the flow of world history. What is the next phase of world history going to be? The Son of God, the King of kings, is going to return and he's going to say, "The party is over. The sin party is over. I am going to bring my kingdom to this world."

That's "the times and the epochs." Jesus spent 40 days with the disciples after his resurrection and he took them all from Genesis to Malachi and he showed them, "Guys, I had to be rejected and crucified. You were kind of like blown away by this whole thing that I was taken away and killed and it really shocked you, but it was all part of God's plan."

So for 40 days he took them through the scriptures showing them, "Look, here's what it says here, here's what it says here. I had to be killed and rise again." After 40 days they said, "Oh, yeah, you're right. We didn't really catch on even though you told us." So after the end of the 40 days, listen to what happens in Acts Chapter 1, verses 6 and 7. They said, "Lord, is it at this time you are restoring the kingdom to Israel? Is it right now? Because we realize you had to first be crucified. So okay, there's only one thing left. Is it at this time that you are restoring the kingdom to Israel?"

And what did Jesus tell them? "It is not for you to know the times or the epochs which the Father has fixed by his own authority. Your job, as soon as the Spirit comes upon you, your job is to preach the gospel." But he said, "It's not for you to know the times." Now here you have the Greek New Testament. It's the word "chronos" and the "kairos," specific times. This right here comes right out of Daniel Chapter 2, verse 21. "The times and the epochs" are referring to God's plan for this world.

And what's the next thing that's going to happen? He's going to purge the world of ungodly, wicked, unsaved powers that rule the world, and he's going to bring Christ in and Christ is going to bring God's kingdom to this world. So all of this in the statue of Daniel Chapter 2—as you remember from the statue, there was a head of gold, chest of silver, thighs of bronze, legs made out of iron, and then a time period when there's ten toes that are there, right?

These ten toes have not come yet. This is when ten nations bind together in the tribulation period and the Antichrist gains control over those ten nations, symbolized by the ten toes. But what happens when the time period of these ten toes comes into the world? It says in this vision, we're going to see this next week, a stone comes and it strikes the statue on the ten toes and demolishes the whole statue. Then it says the stone became a mountain that filled the whole earth.

Daniel explains this, we're going to see next week. Daniel says that's the kingdom of God. Jesus Christ is coming back, and we're not going to have a bunch of wicked leaders in this world. We're not going to have wars ravaging the human race. We're not going to have disease ravaging mankind. Daniel says God is the one who establishes the times and the seasons. He removes kings and he establishes kings.

This is God telling you and me: don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. I'm going to fix this mess. Now these two words are used again, these words that you have here, "the times and the epochs," Greek word "chronos" and then "kairos," specific times. In 1 Thessalonians Chapter 5, right after Paul was teaching the Thessalonians about the second coming of Christ, first thing that's going to happen when Christ returns, he's going to resurrect his church. All of the dead saints are going to be resurrected and we that are living are going to be resurrected instantaneously in a moment of time, and we're all going to be caught up with Christ in the rapture of the church.

It says this in 1 Thessalonians and Corinthians 15. We're going to be resurrected in a moment of time. Paul says this is what's going to happen at the end of the age. "When is this going to happen?" If you read in 1 Thessalonians Chapter 5, Paul says this: "Now as to the times and the epochs"—same words, the chronos and the kairos—"as to when these things are going to come about, as to the times and the epochs," he says, "you Thessalonians don't need me to write anything to you because you know full well that the day of the Lord is going to come just like a thief in the night. For while unsaved Israel and the rest of the world is saying 'Peace, safety' because of the Antichrist, destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains and they will not escape. But you believers," he says in verse 4, "you brethren are not in the darkness so that the day of the Lord should overtake you like a thief."

He says in Chapter 5, verse 9, "God has not appointed his church to be here when that coming wrath comes crashing down on the world in the day of the Lord. God has appointed us to obtain salvation." 1 Thessalonians Chapter 1, verse 10 says that we're waiting for his Son from heaven, Jesus, who delivers us from the coming wrath. So you don't have to worry about the day of the Lord. Don't worry about who the Antichrist is. Don't worry about the day of the Lord. We've got enough problems to worry about, don't we? And God says, "Don't even worry about those." He's got it all wired.

Well, this is what Daniel is telling Nebuchadnezzar right here. Verse 21: "God is the one who gives wisdom to wise men, knowledge to men of understanding. It is he who reveals the profound and hidden things; he knows what's in the darkness. Light dwells with him." Verse 23: "To you, O God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise, for you have given me wisdom and power. Even now you've made me know what we requested of you, for you've made known to us the king's matter."

So Daniel first of all, he praises God. But then there's a second important matter, and we close with this. In verses 24 to 30, he says, "Okay, God has shown me what the dream is. We've got to get the message to Nebuchadnezzar." Look at verse 24: "Therefore, Daniel went to Arioch, whom the king had appointed to destroy the wise men of Babylon. He went to him and he spoke as follows: 'Don't destroy the wise men of Babylon. Take me into the king's presence and I will declare the interpretation of the king.'" Daniel saved all of the wise men of Babylon.

Now I can guarantee this: some of them may not have liked him to begin with, but some of these people said, "Wow, we really like you, Daniel." And when you look at what happened in the first coming of Christ, when we look at all of Daniel's prophecies, some of Daniel's prophecies included the timing of the first coming of Jesus Christ. And so what happened through Daniel's influence, the wise men of Babylon and Persia came to know how the future would unfold through some of these prophecies. That was the Magi that came at the birth of Christ. The Magi, these were from the same groups of people, but it was because of Daniel's prophecies.

Verse 25: Arioch hurriedly brought Daniel into the king's presence and spoke to him as follows—now look at Arioch: "Oh, hey, I found a guy from the exiles who can make known the interpretation." A little bit of a glory hog right here, right? Whatever, can't blame him for doing that. Verse 26: the king said to Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, "Daniel, are you able to make known to me the dream which I have seen and its interpretation?" Daniel answers, verse 27: "As for the mystery about which the king has inquired, neither wise men nor conjurers nor magicians nor diviners are able to declare before the king. However, there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will take place in the latter days. This was your dream and the visions in your mind while on your bed." He tells us here: "God has made known to you what the end times are going to be, what's going to happen in the latter days, everything future from their time period on all the way, as we see, until the coming of God's kingdom when Jesus Christ returns."

God gave that message to Nebuchadnezzar and God revealed it to Daniel. Verses 29 and 30, we close with this: "As for you, O king, while you were on your bed, your thoughts turned to what would take place in the future, and God who reveals mysteries has made known to you what will take place. But as for me, this mystery has not been revealed because of any wisdom residing in me more than in any other living man, but for the purpose of making the interpretation known to the king so that you may understand the thoughts of your mind. God has shown you what the future is and I'm going to tell you what it is." And that's where we're going to come back to next week.

Listen, here's the real point of application, guys. If the Bible is true, and it is, God has a plan that he's working. When we look at the first coming of Christ, here's what Peter said in Acts 2:23. He says that Christ's death was the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God. It was not a cosmic accident; God was working out your salvation. So if you look and you say, "Oh, what's going on now is terrible and it's hard," yeah, it is. Maybe it is. But God loves you. How do I know? God gave his son for you. God gave his son for me, and he's working a plan and we can trust him. Amen?

Father, we thank you so much for your goodness, your sovereignty, your plan, your purpose. Even though some of these things are so painful and so heartbreaking, our eyes are upon you. We thank you for who you are, what you're doing. Help us, O God, to love you with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Help us, O God, to live for you until that day when Christ comes, and we ask it in his name. Amen.