02/08/2025 – Day 223 – Daniel – Chapters 1 – 6 / Two recommended books / Reliability of Daniel (bottom of text)
This is our third cycle of reading through the Bible in 365 days. Each time, we hit Daniel, I tell myself, Whoa!, we need more than just two Saturdays to go through Daniel. In fact in cycle 1, back in 2020, we studied Daniel after we completed day 365. If you login and use your search tool on “Day 223”, you will see a couple of summary posts on these first six chapters.
For a thorough study of Daniel, I recommend two books, which I will use a footnote key, if and when I use an excerpt commentary:
(*A) – “On the Way to the Future – Daniel’s Visions and the Believer’s Hope” by Ray C. Stedman (Reference ISBN # 978-1-57293-796-3)
(*B) – “The Mid-East Beat: The Scriptural Case for an Islamic AntiChrist” by Joel Richardson (I can’t find this in Amazon even, I have a 3 ring binder for the book that I used in our group Bible study of Daniel at our local church)
(*A) – from pgs 18 and 19, these two short paragraphs give an excellent summary to these first six chapters, and the Book of Daniel in general:
“If you live in bold obedience to the living God of the universe, you need not fear the wrath of kings. The same God who created the world is able to work our every circumstance of your life, no matter how impossible it may seem. We will see this theme repeated five times during the first six chapters of the book of Daniel.”
…
“But if you walk faithfully, if you obey what God says regardless of pressure or threats, God will place you in a strategic position and use you in a mighty way. He will give you the privilege of opening the eyes of men and women to the fact that God exists , that He is active and involved in human events, and that He must be reckoned with. This is the message of Daniel.”
In Chapter Two, verses 2: 31 – 43, we are introduced to the different materials of the statue that from Daniel’s interpretation, represent four world empires. Those four kingdoms are predominately identified as Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome. But I agree with Joel Richardson (*B), the 4th kingdom the “Islamic Caliphate”. From my pg. #63, Joel describes it thusly: “The Islamic Caliphate, is simply the historical Islamic government or empire, which began with the Rashidun Caliphate in 632 shortly after the death of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, and culminated in the Ottoman Empire which officially came to an end in 1923. No doubt, may who read this will find such a proposition to be highly dubious. The idea that Rome is the fourth kingdom is such a widely held position that many will not even entertain any suggestion to the contrary. This is entirely understandable. This has been the majority position throughout Church history. However, as we will discuss below, there are several significant, perhaps even fatal difficulties with this interpretation.
Let’s look at two verses:
“And the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron … and like iron that crushes, that kingdom will break into pieces and crush all the others.” Daniel 2:40
“Later in Daniel 7…:
Thus he said: ‘As for the fourth beast, there shall be a fourth kingdom on earth, which shall be different from all the kingdoms, and it shall devour the whole earth, and trample it down, and break it to pieces.” Daniel 7: 23
The three other kingdoms that would be trampled and crushed, as we already know, are Babylon, Medo-Persia and Greece. The text is clear that the fourth kingdom would ‘crush’ or conquer all three of these kingdoms. The three empires never co-existed of course, and thus we must ask what the text means when it says that fourth empire would ‘crush’ all the others.
To Conquer Geographically
The first meaning of the word ‘crush’ is simply referring to geography. By examining the maps at the end. of this chapter, it is clear that the Roman Empire only conquered roughly one third of the regions controlled by Babylon, Medo_Persia, and Greece. But roughly two thirds of the regions controlled by these empires were left entirely untouched by the Roman Empire. In fact, the Roman Empire never even reached the two Persian capital cities of Ecbatana and Persepolis.”
And yes, Ray Stedman agrees with the historical majority view that the 4th Empire is Roman Empire.”
______________________________________
Reliability of Daniel:
My “Apologetics Study Bible” has an excellent introduction that ‘Daniel indeed wrote the prophecy that bear his name in the sixth century B.C. and that his predictions are supernatural and accurate.’ Skeptics typically point to the second century B.C. That would open up the door to his fulfilled prophecies being nothing more than a repeat of history.
From the three page introduction, I will note just two defenses:
“The NT writers and Jesus Himself accepted the traditional understanding of the prophecy (cp. Matthew 24:15 and Mark 13:14; Matthew 26:64 and Mark 14:62 and Luke 22:69; Hebrews 11: 33-34).”
“Eight manuscripts of the text of Daniel have survived two millennia in the caves of Qumran. They were produced sometime between the second century B.C. and the first century A.D. These fragments demonstrate the Qumran community’s high regard for the book of Daniel and the faithfulness with which the biblical text was preserved over the centuries.”
Soli Deo Gloria!