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I Dare You: Defend! - Daniel 7:1-8

Taught on | Topic: Daniel | Keywords: defend, truth, archeology, beast, kingdom

Daniel did fine when he was thrown into the lions’ den, but how does he fare when thrust into the critics’ den? Daniel is an amazing book of prophecy as well as history, yet it has not escaped the bright white light of antagonistic critics through the ages. Today I dare you to move beyond a shallow faith that depends on personal feelings and subjective experiences and learn to “contend earnestly for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3).

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3/10/2013
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I Dare You: Defend!
Daniel 7:1-8
Skip Heitzig
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Daniel did fine when he was thrown into the lions’ den, but how does he fare when thrust into the critics’ den? Daniel is an amazing book of prophecy as well as history, yet it has not escaped the bright white light of antagonistic critics through the ages. Today I dare you to move beyond a shallow faith that depends on personal feelings and subjective experiences and learn to “contend earnestly for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3).
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27 Daniel - I Dare You - 2013

27 Daniel - I Dare You - 2013

Skip Heitzig unfolds the book of Daniel verse by verse in the series I Dare You. We'll learn how Daniel lived differently and made a huge impact on his society, and we'll be challenged to do the same.

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  1. Daniel Documented the Future (vv. 1-3)


    1. Accuracy Has Raised Questions

    2. Attacks Have Cast Doubts


  2. Daniel Is Defended by the Facts (vv. 1-2)


    1. Archaeology

    2. Paleography

    3. History

    4. Prophecy


  3. Daniel Described What Follows (vv. 4-8)


    1. Lion with Wings

    2. Lopsided Bear

    3. Four-Headed Leopard

    4. Iron-Toothed Beast

Detailed Notes

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  1. Introduction
    1. There was a man who was convinced he was dead; dead men do not bleed
    2. The Bible has been called a dead book
    3. Daniel 7 is a panoramic prophecy
    4. Divided in two
      1. Chapters 1-6 are a chronological history with some prophecy
      2. Chapters 7-12 are prophetic with some history
    5. Go deeper in your faith; be smarter, well-read Christians
      1. Understand prophecy
      2. Sanctify the Lord, give a reason for your hope (see 1 Peter 3:15)
      3. Know what you believe and why you believe it
    6. Carl Henry publically shared the gospel, his faith, and his testimony; a skeptic confronted him about his belief in the stories found in the Bible
  2. Daniel documents
    1. The rest of Daniel is all keyed in Daniel 7—all the way through history and to the second coming of Christ
      1. Saw things in a vision, wrote down what he saw, then those things happened
      2. Geography, names, and dates are given to exact points in history
    2. There is a problem, so many things predicted have come to pass that it has raised the suspicions of the skeptics
    3. In chapter 11 of Daniel, there are 135 predictions that have already come true
      1. A. Cressy Morrison; 10 pennies in a pocket; odds decrease
      2. The critics think: "Something's up here—there's no way that could happen naturally"
      3. The unbelieving skeptic approaches the Bible with two predispositions
        1. We live in a closed system and the miraculous is impossible
        2. Because that is true, and the things that happened in the book of Daniel came true, it must have been written after the fact
      4. For believers, there is not a problem with prophecy
      5. Nine-year-old boy told what he learned in Sunday school
      6. Skeptics make up stories to explain away the Bible
    4. A little bit of history
      1. Around the third century AD, Porphyry, a Neoplatonic philosopher wrote 15 books, Against the Christians
        1. Said Daniel didn't write the book of Daniel
        2. Said anonymous Jew wrote the book of Daniel around 165 BC, after all the things happened
        3. He said it was a forgery
      2. Why is it such a big deal?
        1. If the book of Daniel is a forgery, it destroys the credibility of Jesus Christ
        2. Jesus calls Daniel a prophet, "When you see the abomination that causes desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet" (see Matthew 24:15)
        3. It destroys the credibility of the whole New Testament
        4. Sir Isaac Newton wrote more about Christian apologetics than he wrote about science; he said "Whoever rejects the prophecies of Daniel does as much as if he undermined the Christian religion"
    5. Daniel is defended by the facts
      1. Daniel 1:1 says, "In the first year…Daniel had a dream…I saw in my vision by night…four winds of heaven"
      2. Facts from archeology
        1. Belshazzar was scoffed at—said he didn't exist
        2. In 1854, cylinder found in Southern Iraq
        3. The name Belshazzar disappeared early from history
        4. Why did Daniel write about Belshazzar when most historians of his time didn't?
      3. Facts from paleography—the study of ancient documents
        1. Old documents point to the Septuagint version of the Bible
          1. Written in 275 BC
          2. 110 years earlier than the supposed forger wrote the book of Daniel
        2. Dead Sea scrolls
          1. Fragments of the book of Daniel in Hebrew and Aramaic
          2. Written in Aramaic from sixth century BC—the kind that Daniel spoke
      4. Facts of history are the proof
        1. Daniel predicted four mighty nations, and it happened
        2. The evidence is against the critic and the skeptic
        3. Robert Jastrow, NASA: "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."
      5. Facts of prophecy defend Daniel
        1. It is the verification that God gave us this book of Daniel
        2. What the Bible says will happen, because there is an all-knowing, all-powerful God that says it will
          1. God told Abraham in advance that his descendents would be in a foreign land for 400 years, and that is exactly what happened (see Genesis 15:13)
          2. God told the prophets about the Babylonian captivity, before Babylon ever existed as a world power; and that the captivity will arise 70 years
          3. God told Isaiah the prophet that Babylon would be overthrown by King Cyrus; it was written 200 years before Cyrus was born (see Isaiah 44:28 and 45:1)
        3. "I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done" (Isaiah 46:9-10)
        4. Only God, at the beginning, can declare the end
        5. That is what we see in Daniel 7-12
  3. Daniel describes what follows
    1. Four wild animals; four coming kingdoms
      1. The dream that Daniel got corresponded to the dream that Nebuchadnezzar had years before
        1. Nebuchadnezzar saw a huge, beautiful statue
        2. Daniel saw four wild beasts
        3. Nebuchadnezzar saw it from a worldly perspective
        4. Daniel saw it from God's perspective
        5. God sees from the heavenly perspective; He is not impressed with outward appearances
          1. Sons of Jesse
          2. God looks at the heart (see 1 Samuel 16:7)
    2. A creature like a lion
      1. Symbol of Babylon—winged lion
      2. Wings plucked—indicates loss of power—humbled by God
    3. Beast like a bear
      1. Medo-Persian empire
      2. Bear is slower than a lion
      3. Bear has brute force
      4. Hard to stop a bear
      5. Medo-Persian empire
      6. King Xerxes of Persia assembled 2,500,000 troops—moved slowly but with great power
      7. Lopsided bear—Persians more powerful than the Medes
    4. Beast like a leopard
      1. Incredibly fast
      2. Kingdom of Greece
      3. Alexander the Great took over the world
      4. Known for speed of victory and the speed of the breakup of his kingdom
    5. Iron-toothed beast
      1. Iron rule of Rome
      2. Corresponds to the iron legs
      3. This corresponds to Revelation 13 where John sees "a beast coming out of the sea" (see Revelation 13:1)
  4. Closing
    1. Through prophecy, God authenticates Himself and the validity of His Word
    2. Why do the critics persist?
      1. It's like the guy fascinated with the microscope
      2. He found microscopic bugs crawling on his food
      3. He destroyed the microscope
    3. Bible reveals the heart
      1. Critics do not want to see the truth
      2. They smash the evidence


Figures referenced: Carl Henry, A. Cressy Morrison, Porphyry, Sir Isaac Newton, Robert Jastrow, King Xerxes, Alexander the Great
Cross references: Genesis 15:13, 1 Samuel 16:7, Isaiah 44:28, Isaiah 45:1, Isaiah 46:9-10, Daniel 1:1, Matthew 24:15, 1 Peter 3:15, Revelation 13:1

Transcript

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Welcome to I Dare You, a series through the book of Daniel with Skip Heitzig.

Once upon a time there lived a man who thought he was dead, and that really disturbed his wife and his friends. They thought he needed to see a psychiatrist. So they took him to the doctor, and the doctor decided that he would convince the man that he was not dead by one basic fact, and that fact is that dead men do not bleed.

Over the next several months he gave his patient medical books, even invited him to see an autopsy. And after several months the patient finally conceded, and said, "Okay. Okay, you're right. I give up. I agree; dead men don't bleed." Immediately the good doctor took out a needle and poked his patient in the arm and blood spurted forth. And the patient looked at that and said, "Oh, my goodness! What do you know? Dead men do bleed!" [laughter]

For centuries people have looked at the Bible as a dead book: it's irrelevant, they marginalize it, it's out of date, it doesn't have anything to do with real life, it's allegorical, it's certainly not literal, it is dead. Today we're going to poke the Bible and watch it bleed truth.

In fact, we'll be doing that over the next several weeks in the second part of the book of Daniel, because we get to a very special part of the book of Daniel that lends itself to this kind of analytical study. So far in the book of Daniel it's been pretty easy to go through in terms of application.

It's all about stories, it's all narrative: stories of three Hebrew children not bowing down before a statue; stories of how these three, and four (Daniel himself) purposed in their heart not to compromise, but to stay steadfast and loyal to God; a story about the great feast of Belshazzar; and story of the lions' den. Daniel fared fine in the lions' den, but when you put Daniel in the critics' den, it gets different.

The best way to look at the book of Daniel—because chapter 7 is a completely different section from chapter 6, it doesn't even read the same. Chapter 6 ends the chronological, historical part of Daniel. Now we get to the apocalyptic part, the prophetic part. So the best way to view Daniel is to slice it in two and say that the first six chapters are mostly historical with a little bit of prediction, but the last six chapters are mostly prediction with a little bit of history.

So this is going to be a very different Bible study today. I just want to warn you that it's going to be a mix of history, prophecy, and a Twilight Zone episode. I mean, it's just a strange kind of a thing to read as we go through this chapter.

But I, I'm going to encourage you, in fact, dare you to go deeper in your faith, to be smarter, well-read Christians who can stand up for what you believe. That you'll go deeper. That when you have a conversation with somebody and they say, "Well, why do you believe that?" You don't just say, "Well, I have my faith, and you have your faith." But you can go a little bit better than that.

In fact, we're encouraged to do that in the New Testament. Peter writes these words, 1 Peter 3 verse 15, "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and with fear."

That is the dare: to understand the truths we're going to read; to not only know what you believe, but why you believe what you believe; and to dare to put up a defense for the faith; to give a reason when people ask you why you believe it.

There's a great story I've always loved about Carl Henry. Carl Henry is now in heaven. He was an eminent theologian and an author. And when he was a student, he was on a university campus with a group outside; he was giving his testimony to them about why he believed in Christ.

And at the edge of the crowd was a skeptic who interrupted Henry and said, "Let me just ask you a simple question. Do you believe in the Book you're holding, that Bible? Do you believe all those stories? You mean to tell me you believe there really was a universal flood? You believe the story of Jonah and the whale? You believe the creation epic? You believe all that stuff?"

Henry said, "Yes, sir. I believe all of it." So the man went on to disrupt him and to sort of put him in a corner, and say, "Well, let me ask you a question. How could a guy like Jonah survive in the gullet of a great fish or a whale, as this Book says, with the gastric juices emanating, with oxygen deprivation as part of the problem, with all the gases from the alimentary canal? How on earth could he survive?"

Young Carl Henry said, "Sir, I do not know the answer to all your questions, but when I get to heaven I'll ask Jonah." Skeptic said, "Yeah, but what if Jonah isn't in heaven?" And Henry said, "Well, then you can ask him." [laughter]

And while that's a cute little story, I hope we can do better than just that. So today we're going to look at Daniel, chapter 7, and because it is such an all-encompassing, panoramic portrait of the future, we're going to look at it just skimming it today, looking at a few verses, but then going over it in the next few weeks.

Beginning in verse 1 we see that Daniel documented the future.

In the first year of Belshazzar the king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head while on his bed. And then he wrote down the dream, telling the main facts.

Daniel spoke, saying, "I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the Great Sea. And four great beasts came up from the sea, each different from the other. The first was like a lion, and had eagle's wings. I watched till its wings were plucked off; and it was lifted up from the earth and made to stand on two feet like a man, and a man's heart was given to it."

"And suddenly another beast, a second, like a bear. It was raised up on one side, and had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth. And they said thus to it: "Arise and devour much flesh!"

"After this I looked, and there was another, like a leopard, which had on its back four wings of a bird. The beast also had four heads, and dominion was given to it."

"And this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, exceedingly strong. It had huge iron teeth; it was devouring, breaking in pieces, and trampling the residue with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns. I was considering the horns, and there was another horn, a little one, coming up among them, before whom three of the first horns were plucked out by the roots. And there, in this horn, were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking pompous words."

"I watched till thrones were put in place, and the Ancient of Days was seated; his garment was white as snow, the hair of his head was like pure wool. His throne was a fiery flame, its wheels like a burning fire; a fiery stream issued and came forth from before him. A thousand thousands ministered to him; ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. The court was seated, and the books were opened."

"I watched then because of the sound of the pompous words which the horn was speaking; I watched till the beast was slain, and its body destroyed and given to the burning flame. As from the rest of the beasts, they had their dominion taken away, yet their lives were prolonged for a season and a time."

"I was watching in the night visions, and behold, One like the Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven! And he came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near before him. Then to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom the one which shall not be destroyed."

Basically what we have here is Daniel saw things, Daniel wrote down what he saw, and what Daniel saw and wrote down happened as time went on. Now, I want you to notice that we have a historical setting in this chapter as in all the other chapters of Daniel.

Proper names are given, Belshazzar in this case, the ruler. We know where Daniel was, in Babylon. We know about how long he was there. We certainly know how long the children of Israel were there before they were sent back to their land. So we have all of this detail that is added.

But we have a problem; beginning in chapter 7 all the way to the end of the book we have an incredible problem. The problem is simply this: because there are so many detailed predictions of the future that have actually come true, it has raised the interest and skepticism of the critic.

Example: In Daniel, chapter 11, there are thirty-five verses that have one hundred thirty-five fulfilled and documented that they are fulfilled prophecies. One hundred thirty-five predictions of the future in thirty-five verses, all of which have happened; that has raised the interest of the critic.

Now, you're going, "Help me here. I don't see how this is a problem." Well, let me illustrate the problem. Dr. A. Cressy Morrison had a great illustration from the New York Academy of Sciences. He said, "Suppose I had in my pocket ten pennies and I marked them one through ten. And then with hands out of pocket I made a prediction to you. And I said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to awe you right now, and I'm going to reach into my pocket and pull out penny premarked number one.'

"If I were to pull my hand, pull out penny number one and show it to you, what would the chances of me doing that be? One in ten, there's only ten pennies. But if I said, 'Now, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to reach into my pocket and select with my fingers penny marked number two.' My odds exponentially decrease to one in a hundred.

"If I could pull out one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, all in that sequence, my odds are one in a hundred billion. Now, let's just say I did that and I awed you all. You might clap and be awed, but a good majority of you would say, 'Something's up. Something is going on. The game is fixed. There's no way that could happen naturally.' "

That is the problem that we have. Because when the unbelieving skeptic approaches the Bible, he approaches the Bible with two predispositions. Predisposition number one, that we live in a closed system and the miraculous is impossible. Predisposition number two is that because premise number one is true, and yet the things that are written about in Daniel really happened, then it must have been written after the fact, not before the fact. It's really not prophecy, it's history that somebody wrote after these things were fulfilled. That's how they approached this.

Now, we who are Christians, we have no problem at all with prophecy. When we read about it, we go hurrah! It's just simply another evidence of God's incredible power. God orchestrates history; God is all-knowing. And for the Lord God to predict with great detail an event is no more difficult than you waking up in the morning and saying, "It's going to rain somewhere in the world." Duh! It's like a broken clock, it's always right twice a day.

But when God gives these kinds of meticulous, intricate prophecies, the unbeliever has a problem because of these predispositions. "There must be," they say, "some natural explanation, because there is no supernatural. Has to be a natural explanation."

It's like the nine-year-old boy who went to Sunday school, and afterward his mom said, "What did you learn in Sunday school? What did your teacher tell you?" And so the boy said, "Well, what happened was the children of Israel were in a fix with the Egyptians, so Moses was sent behind enemy lines to rescue them. And so what Moses did is had his engineers build this huge pontoon bridge over the Red Sea so the children of Israel could get safely from one part to the other.

"And then he got on his walkie-talkie and he radioed in for extra support, and the bombers came in and bombed the pontoon bridge now the Egyptians were on top of, and they all drowned in the Red Sea." And his mother looked at him and said, "You mean to tell me that's what your Sunday school teacher taught you today?" He said, "No, mom, but if I were to tell you the way she told it to us, you'd never believe it." [laughter]

And that's what the skeptic does, that's what the critic does. You can't believe anything supernatural. It just doesn't happen. So we gotta make stuff up. It wasn't really the Red Sea, it's the Reed Sea, they say. It's only eighteen inches of water that the children of Israel waded through. Okay, now explain to me how the Egyptian army drowned in that.

It really wasn't manna that fell down from heaven, it's just the sap that appears in desert bushes common in the Sinai Peninsula. The resurrection of Jesus Christ didn't really happen, because we know that stuff doesn't happen. So there must have been hallucinations the disciples had in their ecstatic, sleepless state. Or, Jesus didn't die at all, he just swooned. He almost died but didn't die. Or Daniel didn't write this book, but somebody else wrote it after the fact. And that's what many skeptics believe because of the amazing predictions that are in it.

I'll give you a little bit of history. This first started surfacing about the third century AD by a guy by the name of Porphyry who was a Neoplatonic philosopher. He was a pagan. He wrote fifteen books called Against the Christians. Can you imagine, his life's work, fifteen volumes called Against the Christians? He hated Christians, wanted to destroy the teachings of Christianity, and he wanted to defend polytheism.

So Porphyry said that Daniel, the one that we say wrote the book of Daniel, didn't really write the book of Daniel. That there was some unknown Jew further on down the road about 165 BC in the Maccabean Period between the Old and the New Testaments.

He was a Judean. He wrote after all of these things that Daniel predicted actually happened. About four hundred years after it happened he wrote it down and it was a forgery and he made it look like prophecy. So it's not in the sixth century, it was 165 BC that some unknown Jew, some unknown Maccabean Jew decided to write the book of Daniel.

Now you might ask, "Well, so what's the big deal? Why are we spending a Sunday service on this?" I'll tell you why it's important. If Daniel the prophet, this book of Daniel is a forgery, the whole credibility of Jesus Christ goes down the tubes.

You know why? Because Jesus said, "When you see the abomination of desolation as spoken by Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place, you who are in Judea flee to the mountains." He didn't say, "When you see the abomination of desolation as spoken of by Daniel the deceiver, or Daniel the forger." He called Daniel a prophet. If Daniel wasn't a prophet, if this wasn't written when it was written but later, the credibility of Jesus is shot.

Not only that, but the entire New Testament, the documents of Peter and Paul and John who wrote end times apocalyptic literature, though they had fresh revelation, a lot of what they wrote about is based squarely on the book of Daniel, the writings of the book of Daniel in these next few chapters.

I want to sum it up by telling you what somebody else actually said; I'll quote him. Sir Isaac Newton, we've all heard that name, right? Sir Isaac Newton the guy who—the guy who, I was going to say discovered gravity; he didn't, he observed gravity and he wrote about it. But did you know that Isaac Newton wrote more about Christian apologetics than he wrote about science?

And Sir Isaac Newton said this, "Whoever rejects the prophecies of the book of Daniel does as much as if he undermined the Christian religion." In other words, if this is fake, if this isn't true, if we can poke it and it doesn't bleed truth—now what are we doing here? Why are we getting up, dressing up, and coming to church, and singing to a God that doesn't exist, and believing and reading a book that can't be trusted? So Daniel documented the future.

I want you to see now that Daniel is defended by the facts. Go and look at the first couple verses with me, if you will. "If the first year of Belshazzar the king of Babylon," notice how detailed he is about telling you when and whom. "Daniel had a dream and visions of his head while on his bed. And then he wrote down the dream, telling the main facts. Daniel spoke, saying, 'I saw in my vision by night.' "So evidently he went to bed and his dream turned into a vision, and what a vision it was."

"'And behold, the four winds of heaven,' " and that's an ancient term to speak about the four corners: north, south, east, and west; the four directions all blowing, converging into one section." 'The four winds of heaven were stirring up the Great Sea,' " now the Great Sea was probably the Mediterranean Sea. They often called—they lived in the Mediterranean world, the Mediterranean was called the Great Sea.

By the way, in the Bible there are only four seas that are mentioned: Sea of Galilee, the Dead Sea, the Red Sea, and the Great Sea. So in Daniel's vision he's transported back home to where he grew up, Judea, and off of the coast of Israel that great Mediterranean Sea he sees in this vision as all stirred up.

So once again, names, places, are given in these writings. Now, what Daniel saw he wrote. And what Daniel saw and wrote we believe he wrote the sixth century BC, not later. And I believe that Daniel is defended by the facts, first of all, the fact of archaeology.

I told you a few weeks ago that for centuries critics said, "Aha, the book of Daniel is fake! You can't trust it because it mentions this guy named Belshazzar who never existed in any of the records of history. And we've never found him in any of the archaeological digs." So, book after book, year after year was written that you can't trust the Bible because Belshazzar is in it and he never existed.

Until 1854 when an archaeologist in southern Iraq dug up a clay cylinder with cuneiform writing around it, and among other things was written a prayer for the good health and the long life of King Nabonidus of Babylon and his son Belshazzar. And the critics were immediately silenced. And we discovered later on as we kept digging that not only was he the son of Nabonidus, but he became the co-regent, the co-king of Babylon for his father.

But we also know something else, that though there was a Belshazzar and he did reign just like Daniel recorded it, that that's a recent discovery, 1854. And we know that the name of Belshazzar disappeared early from history. So that when another historian visiting Babylon a couple hundred years after it fell named Herodotus, who was Greek, and he wrote about the glories that he still saw, and he named the kings and the queens of history, he left out Belshazzar even though we know from archaeology that he existed.

So here's my question: How could a Jew writing in 165 BC write about what historians at his time didn't know about, Belshazzar? And that was buried in history until more recent discoveries in the eighteen hundreds. So, archaeology defends Daniel as writing it.

A second line of factual evidence is from paleography. Now, I didn't write that down because I'm smart or anything. I was looking for a word to rhyme with archaeology. [laughter] And paleography is simply the study of old documents; it's manuscript evidence. And as you study manuscript evidence it points to an early writing, not a later writing.

Let me give you one of those pieces of evidence. You've heard of the Septuagint version of the Bible, right? Most of you have? The Septuagint version of the Bible is the most famous translation of the Old Testament translated from Hebrew into Greek around 275 BC by scholars in Alexandria Egypt. Two seventy-five BC is one hundred ten years earlier than the supposed forger who came along and wrote the book of Daniel was written.

And as we look at the Septuagint version of the Bible written before that, you know what's in it? The book of Daniel. One hundred ten years before the forger came along and wrote the book of Daniel, the book of Daniel was written; at least that.

Then there's the Dead Sea Scrolls, probably the greatest modern time archaeological discovery. And the Dead Sea Scrolls found in the caves of Qumran, a lot of you have visited that when we've gone to Israel. In cave number one and cave number four of Wadi Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, fragments were found of the book of Daniel in Hebrew and in Aramaic. But get this, the Aramaic it was written in was not the more modern Maccabean between the testament Aramaic, but sixth-century-BC-style Aramaic, the kind that Daniel would have known and spoken.

So archaeology, paleography, and then there's history. Here's Daniel seeing this vision, writing it down, and writing several visions down in the rest of the book, and these are things that he sees and says are going to happen. Now that was thousands of years ago. It's given us enough time to see if they actually happened.

If you say something is going to happen and it never happens, you're a false prophet. If you say something is going to happen and you let history take its course and they actually happen, I hope you go huh. Things that make you go huh. That would be one of them. History proves it. Daniel predicts four mighty nations will come, and three of those are mentioned by name in the book of Daniel: the kingdom of Babylon, the kingdom of Medo-Persia, and the kingdom of Greece.

So if you say, "Well, you know the supernatural never happens, and the book of Daniel was written after the fact, this is really a forgery, this is really a fake," you have to call archaeology a liar, textual criticism and evidence a liar, historians a liar, and Christ a liar. The evidence is against the critic and against the skeptic. We poke the Bible, it bleeds truth.

I've always loved this statement by NASA scientist Robert Jastrow. He said, "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; he pulls himself over the final rock, and he's greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

"We've discovered something archaeological, this must mean this, and the Bible is correct." "Okay. Okay, we'll give—we'll say that may . . ." Crawl all the way up and there's a bunch of theologians saying, "Hi. Told you so."

Then there is prophecy. Prophecy is one of the facts that defends the accuracy of the Bible. In fact, I would say that of all the other things, prophecy is the verification that God gave us this book, this book of Daniel more than anything else. What the Bible says will come to pass, does come to pass, because there's an all-knowing and all-powerful God.

There are hundreds of examples. Here's one: God told Abraham in advance, "Your descendants will be in a foreign land for four hundred years." It's exactly what happened. They were in bondage in Egypt four hundred years. God told the prophets of the Babylonian captivity before Babylon ever existed as a world power, and that the kingdom would last seventy years, the captivity.

God told Isaiah the prophet that Babylon would be overthrown by King Cyrus, and it was written in the prophecy of Isaiah, get this, two hundred years before Cyrus was ever born. His name was written in the Scripture. That's because of this fact, Isaiah 46, God speaking, "I am God, and there is no one else. There is none like me. Declaring the end from the beginning. And from ancient times the things that are not yet done." Only God at the beginning can declare the end.

And that's what you find in Daniel 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12. Daniel 7 is the most comprehensive panoramic of all the prophecies in the entire Old Testament and probably in all of the Scripture. It is incredible. So incredible that chapters 8, 9, 10, the rest of the chapters will all go back and fit somewhere in chapter 7, and just simply highlight and amplify what we read here. So Daniel is documented by the future; Daniel is defended by the facts.

Let's read a little bit and see how Daniel described what follows. Now, we've already read through several verses, but let's just go back and visit a few, especially this vision of these four wild animals. These four wild animals are four kingdoms that will arise. I didn't make that up. We didn't read it, but if you keep reading in verse 15, 16, and 17, there's an interpreter there who tells Daniel, "Oh, by the way, Daniel, what you saw, those four beasts are four kingdoms that will arise out of the earth."

Now, let me just get something in your mind before we even go through these. The dream that Daniel gets corresponds to the dream Nebuchadnezzar had many years before. Nebuchadnezzar had a dream of the huge statue, remember that? Head of gold, chest and arms of silver, stomach and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, feet of iron and clay, ten toes. The dream Daniel has is of wild beasts; same truths, two different images.

The question is why? I believe because Nebuchadnezzar as a pagan king saw it from the worldly perspective, Daniel saw it from God's perspective. The world is enamored with power, enamored with kingdoms, enamored with glory, and he sees this big statue, gold, silver, bronze. But when God looks at the world, he sees the world as ravenous beasts, bloody, fighting, destroying one another to have power, and that's an accurate depiction.

I think we could—all of us could look at any point and survey history and even survey what's going on in the world and we still see it happening. There's no peace, but there's destruction, and there's war, and like a sea being churned up, kingdom after kingdom. So Nebuchadnezzar sees from the human perspective, God looks at it from heavens perspective and gives that to Daniel.

It reminds me of the Scripture when the prophet Samuel was trying to find the next king of Israel and he and he went to the house of Jesse. And before he found David he saw David's older brother Eliab who looked tall, dark, and handsome, and he said, "This dude is the king." And God says, "Uh, nope. I have rejected him. For God does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but got looks at the heart." And Daniel chapter 7 shows you how God sees the heart of these kingdoms.

Verse 4, it's the first. "'The first was like a lion, and had eagle's wings. I watched till its power, till its wings, accuse me, were plucked off; and it was lifted up from the earth and made to stand on two feet like a man, and a man's heart was given to it.' "Now, this corresponds to the head of gold."You, O king," said Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar, "you are the head of gold."

You want to hear something fascinating? In the archaeological discoveries of the city of Babylon, especially at the gates of the royal palaces, they have found several examples of winged lions. That was the depiction of Babylon by the Babylonians, a winged lion; lion, the king of the beasts; eagle, the king of the birds.

It speaks of power, domination, speed, all of which characterize Nebuchadnezzar when he took Carchemish 605 BC, defeated the Egyptians, took over the whole world speedily. They cast a lion with the wings that depicted Babylon just like Daniel said to Nebuchadnezzar in chapter 2, "You, O king, are the head of gold."

Notice it says though that the wings were plucked off. That would indicate a loss of power and a loss of speed. And I believe that this actually took place, as most scholars believe, that this describes Nebuchadnezzar being humbled by God, and he was given a new heart, and different heart after that episode that we already discussed.

Verse 5 is the next kingdom, the second kingdom, like a lopsided bear, this speaks of the Medo-Persian Empire, the chest and arms of silver. I'll show you why. "Suddenly another beast, a second, like a bear. It was raised up on one side, and had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth. And they said thus to it: "Arise, and devour much flesh!" '" Now a bear is slower than a lion, it's more lumbering than a lion, not as agile as a lion, but a bear has brute force, brute strength.

I have a friend who lives in Alaska, and he lives where bears come out. And I mean, they come, they come over for Halloween, trick-or-treating, there's so many bears there. That's a little exaggeration, but [laughter] he was at home and he was outside and a bear was coming toward him. He was up on his porch, so he pulled out his bear gun, whatever that is, some big gun, and he shot the bear coming at him. The bullet struck the bear in the chest.

The bear kept coming at him. He shot it again. The bear kept coming at him. Now he's on the porch. He fired a third shot at the bear. The bear kept coming until it finally collapsed right in front of him where he was standing; hard to stop a bear—brute force. And that is a great depiction of the Medo-Persian Empire.

For example, in the battle when King Xerxes of Persia fought the Greeks, Xerxes was able to amass an enormous army of two million five hundred thousand troops. They move slowly, but with great power and great force.

Notice also in this verse it says the bear's raised up on one side as if two feet are on the ground, and two feet are up. It's lopsided. That also is a depiction of the Medo-Persian coalition. It was never an even union. The Persians were much more powerful than the Medes were and historians bear that out.

Verse 6 is the third beast, a four-headed leopard-looking thing. "'After this I looked, and there was another, like a leopard which had on its back four wings of a bird.' "Now a leopard would be the most agile, so far, of any of the animals, and given four wings it would be incredibly fast. " 'The beast also had four heads and dominion was given to it.' "

This is a perfect depiction of the next empire which will also be named as we go on in this book, the kingdom of Greece. When Alexander the Great took over the world beginning in 334 BC, there were two things that marked his kingdom: speed of victory, speed of victory, and the speed of the breakup of his kingdom.

First of all, he took over the world from Greeks, Macedonia, all the way to Egypt, all the way to India in ten years, ten years. It's so fast that it surprised even him. But then there was the speed of breakup. He was thirty-one years old when he died. He died in Babylon. And when he was dying on his deathbed, the people surrounding him said, "What shall we do with the kingdom? To whom shall the kingdom go?" And he said, "Give it to the strong."

And the kingdom was divided up between the generals of Alexander. Guess how many there were? There were four generals like the four heads, four generals. Now how could Daniel have known that? That's why the critics said he couldn't have, it was written after the fact. Cassander, Lysimachus, Seleucus, and Ptolemy were the four generals and the kingdom was divided up as the Scripture predicted.

The seventh, and we'll touch more on this in the weeks to come, is this iron-toothed beast. It is unlike any other beast so far. Verse 7, "'After this I saw in the night vision, and behold, a fourth beast,' " it doesn't even say what it's like, just a fourth beast. Notice the description, "Dreadful and terrible, exceedingly strong. It had huge iron teeth.' "H'm, like the iron legs, right? of the statue that Nebuchadnezzar saw.

"'It was devouring, breaking in pieces, and trampling the residue with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns.' "The main feature is its iron teeth. Historically we know this to be the iron rule of Rome. Like the legs in the statue, the longest part of the anatomy, Rome ruled the longest. Not two hundred years like most of these others, but fifteen hundred years in total.

Also, you should just write a footnote either to yourself if you have a perfect memory, or write it down so you don't forget; Revelation 13. This corresponds to Revelation 13 where John sees a beast coming out of the sea and describes it with the features of a leopard, a bear, and a lion. Has all of the features and then some, to make it very, very unique unlike any other creature.

So through prophecy God authenticates himself and confirms the validity of his Word. Which brings me to a question, and it does every time I study archaeology and prophecy and textual criticism, etcetera: Why do the critics persist? Why do they keep trying to attack the Bible?

"Ha-ha, we found something." Yeah, but have you consulted the other four hundred critics before you that found something and then had to zip their lip? "Ah, but we found something." Why do they persist? I mean, all of this evidence is here, it's discoverable, you can find it, you can research it, it's easy.

I have a hunch. It's like the guy who is so enamored with the microscope when he was showed it one day, and he looked and he saw the intricacies and beauty of flowers and nature. He had to have one for himself. So he bought one and he took it home and he showed his family. And he took some of the evening meal in a slide and looked at it under the microscope, and was disgusted to find microscopic things crawling all over it like most everything has. And it so appalled him, it so disturbed him, that was his favorite food he was looking at. You know what he did? He smashed the microscope.

What do you do with the evidence? You get rid of the instruments that tells you the truth. I have a hunch that people want to destroy the Bible so much, not because it reveals the future, but because it reveals their heart. It tells us that all men and women are sinners by nature and by choice, and need a Savior. And that the only solution is the blood of Jesus Christ shed on Calvary's cross.

And that is a truth they do not want to see under the microscope. So let's just destroy that microscope, shall we? You poke the Bible and it bleeds truth. And if God can be that detailed about the future, don't you think he can handle your tomorrow?

Father, that's where we leave it. So much more could be said, and certainly there's more in my heart to say. I'm just overwhelmed by this stuff every time I look at it, every time it read it. But just when people think the Bible is dead, it keeps bleeding more truth. And we who are believers are not amazed by it, but we certainly rejoice in it, and we're so thankful that we have a Book that comes from the very mind of God. And in reading the Bible it couldn't be better than if you were here audibly speaking your voice to us. It's the very words of God, and we thank you for it, and we rest in it, and we trust you with our lives because of it, in Jesus' name, amen.

Additional Messages in this Series

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1/6/2013
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I Dare You: Be Distinct!
Daniel 1
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Men and women of character will rise to meet a challenge. Our challenge over the next few months will be modeled in the life of Daniel, a man of God who stood out above the rest, honored God, and influenced his world. Each week, our service will be formed around a new challenge—a dare—to rise up, be counted, be different, and above all, be pleasing to God.
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1/13/2013
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I Dare You: Step Up!
Daniel 2:1-23
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Any crisis we face is a test. How will we respond? What actions will we take? What will our faith in God mean to us and to others in that moment of crisis? Daniel and his friends faced their moment of crisis when the King of Babylon’s insomnia became their worst nightmare. As they faced the possibility of their own death, they used the situation to display their life-giving faith. Let’s consider how we can step up to life’s difficulties and use them as spiritual opportunities.
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1/20/2013
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I Dare You: Speak Out!
Daniel 2:24-49
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Words can become jumbled when we feel intimidated by the one we’re speaking to, especially if the one we’re speaking to intends to kill us! That’s why this story is so inspiring: Daniel speaks out clearly, boldly, accurately, and yet humbly to Babylon’s monarch and thereby gives us a model of speaking God’s truth to our world.
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1/27/2013
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I Dare You: Stand Up!
Daniel 3
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Fitting in, blending in, and conforming to the values of the world around you is what is expected. If you dare go against the flow of popular worldly ideologies, you will be a marked person, regarded as a fanatic and relegated to the category of "dangerous individuals." Three of Daniel's friends decided it was better to stand up for God than to bow down to the wishes of the crowd. Their conviction of heart was to refuse to be "conformed to this world" (Romans 12:2).
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2/3/2013
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I Dare You: Submit!
Daniel 4:1-18
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Before us is a remarkable section of Scripture with a remarkable story about a king who makes a remarkable statement. It is the personal journal of an earthly political monarch who recognizes God’s authoritative rule in the human realm. As amazing as the story is, it carries with it implications for us to submit to God by submitting to man’s government.
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2/10/2013
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I Dare You: Be Humble!
Daniel 4:19-37
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A pundit once quipped, "Humility is like underwear—essential, but indecent if it shows!" The opposite of humility is pride, and Daniel 4 reveals it in spades. Nebuchadnezzar will learn (and then tell) about the greatest lesson God showed him in his long career—that He is able to humble those who walk in pride. So why not learn it the easy way? Listen carefully and apply these truths diligently. I dare you!
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2/17/2013
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I Dare You: Wake Up!
Daniel 5
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As a teacher was lecturing his class, he noticed a student sleeping in the back row, so he said to the sleeping student’s neighbor, "Hey, wake that guy up!" The neighbor answered back, "You put him to sleep, you wake him up!" Falling asleep on the job may be harmless in some situations, but not as the ruler of a nation, and certainly not when God’s judgment is impending. This week’s dare is directed to anyone who is not heeding divine warning signals and needs to wake up.
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2/24/2013
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I Dare You: Be Faithful!
Daniel 6:1-15
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Daniel was consistently faithful, both publicly and privately. His diligence and attitude set him apart from his peers and his reputation withstood harsh scrutiny. When his life was on the line, Daniel refused to compromise—he dared to be faithful!
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3/3/2013
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I Dare You: Be Steadfast!
Daniel 6:10-28
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Calvin Miller once wrote, “Security is never the friend of faith. It is peril that produces steadfastness.” Daniel knew this to be true and was willing to sacrifice the security of life and limb because his heart was steadfast and immovable toward his God. Even though he had been faithful to king and country, this aged prophet faced the trial of a lifetime.
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3/24/2013
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I Dare You: Decide! - Part 1
Daniel 7:8-28
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The world as we know it won’t last forever. Time will not march on without interruption. Daniel saw a vision of four future kingdoms which can be documented historically. But one final worldwide antagonistic thrust against God is coming. It will be waged by a ruler typically referred to as the Antichrist (but actually there are many more names for him). A fourfold description of this coming dictator’s reign is highlighted before us. Even more basic is the choice we must all make about which kingdom we will be part of.
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4/14/2013
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I Dare You: Decide! - Part 2
Daniel 7
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The time is coming when the world will have to decide between a false messiah and the true Christ. Sadly, some already have. Today, we'll consider the world's fastest growing religion and how it might possibly interact with the Bible's predictions of the end times.
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4/21/2013
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I Dare You: Look Ahead!
Daniel 7:9-14;7:26-27
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Economists, meteorologists, visionaries, and psychics all share one thing in common: They all try to predict the future to announce what's coming. God's prophets never had to; God revealed it to them and they simply wrote it down or spoke it out. The central highlight of Daniel's vision in chapter 7 isn't the coming kingdoms of earthly men nor of the coming Antichrist but rather the coming of Jesus Christ. Let's look ahead and see what's coming.
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4/28/2013
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I Dare You: Be Great!
Daniel 8:1-8;8:20-22
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The New York Life Review posted this: "Great men have but a few hours to be 'great.' Like the rest of us, they must dress, bathe, and eat. And, being human, they must make visits to the dentist, doctor, and barber and have conferences with their wives about domestic matters. What makes men great is their ability to decide what is important, and then focus their attention on that." (I think that goes for great women too!) Let's compare three men who some consider to be great, and then see how we measure up.
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5/19/2013
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I Dare You: Be Shocked!
Daniel 8:8-27
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When was the last time you heard someone respond to an incident or piece of information by saying, “That’s shocking!”? Shock (emotional disgust, offense, and aversion) has been diminished due to a widespread exposure to facts and images. Things get too easily relegated to a file in our brains marked, “I’ve already heard this before.” It’s a sad day (and dangerous) when we become spiritually desensitized to God’s truth and the world’s pain.
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5/26/2013
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I Dare You: Pray!
Daniel 9:1-5
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I have never met a person who's regretted praying too much. I've met plenty who've regretted praying too little. Prayer is the one activity that everybody knows they need, but few actually do. It's preached often, but practiced seldom. Forgive me if I'm dispensing guilt—that's not my intention. I'd rather take a peek into the busy life of an ancient executive (Daniel), and see the role prayer played for him and, in so doing, get fired up about this most powerful of activities!
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6/2/2013
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I Dare You: Pray! - Part 2
Daniel 9:4-19
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Just as a square has four sides and is incomplete without all four sides, so too does effective prayer. Daniel leaves us with a great example (and a simple one at that). Though we can pray anywhere and anytime, these four elements form a great baseline for us to emulate. When you talk to God, make certain the signal is clear, your heart is pure, and your confidence is sure.
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6/9/2013
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I Dare You: Understand!
Daniel 9:20-27
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God wants us to understand! He wants us to understand the truth about life. He wants us to understand the way of salvation. He wants us to understand His plans for the future. Today we come to the scriptural key that unlocks the door to the prophetic future of God’s plan. If you have never known it before, choose to understand it now. I dare you!
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6/30/2013
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I Dare You: Fight!
Daniel 10
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Fighting is never fun, but it's sometimes necessary. Certainly that's the case with the Christian life: It's not a playground but a battleground. Spiritual warfare (the cosmic battle between forces of good and evil) is a reality that none can escape but few really understand. For Daniel, the curtain is pulled back and he is allowed to see past the natural world into the supernatural world. Let's get a firsthand briefing on a heavenly battle that has earthly repercussions.
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7/7/2013
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I Dare You: Remember!
Daniel 11:1-35
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Daniel 11 is packed with prophecies about the history of Israel and the world. In just the first 35 verses of the chapter, we find that 135 of those prophecies have already been fulfilled. As we look at the historical details Daniel received in his visions, God's sovereignty comes to the forefront and prompts us to remember that He will carry out the prophecies yet to be fulfilled.
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7/14/2013
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I Dare You: Rest!
Daniel 11:36-45
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It's hard to be at rest when everything around you is chaos and conflict. But today that is our dare. Peace isn't the absence of a storm but being at rest in the midst of the storm. Daniel is informed about a stormy future in store for his own people and for the whole world. As we look ahead to consider a leader who will come during the most tumultuous time in human history, I dare you to rest in four distinct ways:
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8/4/2013
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I Dare You: Hope!
Daniel 12:1-3
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There is nothing needed more in the world today than hope. Every generation faces the tendency toward despair and hopelessness. Daniel especially did since he was learning of his own people's future suffering that would last for multiplied generations. But at last, God gives him a precious ray of hope: The worst of times will usher in the best of times. Four words describe that future time and become four rungs on the ladder of hope.
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8/11/2013
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I Dare You: Respond!
Daniel 12:4-13
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The Christian life is essentially a response to God: God is the Master and we are His servants; He's the Good Shepherd and we are the sheep; He is the Head and we are members of His body. Even our love for God is a response: "We love Him because He first loved us" (1 John 4:19). In this final section of the book of Daniel, let's consider three things that God does and what our response should be in each case.
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8/18/2013
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I Dare You: Be Balanced!
Daniel 1-12
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One dictionary defines balance this way: "A condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions." That's a fitting word to describe the whole of Daniel's life. In today's final study of the book of Daniel, we consider the man himself and how his life was so outwardly powerful and yet so inwardly stable. Daniel was supremely balanced in at least four areas.
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There are 23 additional messages in this series.
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