September 7 - Miriam

Today's reading from the One Year Bible Chronological Reading Plan is
Daniel 7, 8 and 5.

Sermons on Chapter 7 by John MacArthur -
The Coming Kingdom of Christ, Part 1, Part 2,
Part 3.
Sermons on Chapter 8 by John MacArthur -
False Messiahs, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

These messages are long and I only read two of them, seeing as how I am already embarrassingly late with this post.  I plan to listen to the rest of them during the course of this week.  Anyway, these visions are obviously more than dreams, and they also obviously prophesy about the end times.  I know the story of Daniel and the lions' den, and the disembodied hand that wrote on the wall, and the story of Shadrach, Meshach & Abednego.  I do not, however, recall having read these chapters of Daniel before, so I was somewhat surprised last week when researching the end-times timeline to discover that a good portion of the information comes from the book of Daniel.  My impression had always been that Revelation was the authority on all thing end-times related. 

Excerpts from The Coming Kingdom of Christ, Part 2. 

Now, let's look at the text. We have seen three particular themes in the seventh chapter. The coronation of the king, the character of the kingdom, and the chronology of the kingdom.  And we said that the theme of the seventh chapter of Daniel is to point out that Christ is going to come and take over as king of the earth. Look at verse 9, and, "I beheld till the thrones were placed, and the Ancient of Days did sit." Now what happened at that particular point, go to verse 13. "I saw in the night vision, and behold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days...who was sitting on the throne...and they brought Him near. And there was given Him dominion and glory and a Kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His Kingdom that which shall not be destroyed."

Now, what is the character of the Kingdom He receives? Well, we mentioned that there are five features to the Kingdom. First, the Kingdom is a Kingdom of authority. In verse 14, "There was given Him dominion." And we said the word means authority. He rules with a rod of iron in His Kingdom. He is an absolute monarch.

The second thing we said is the Kingdom is not only characterized by authority, but by honor. For He was given dominion and glory. And glory means honor. He not only rules as an absolute monarch, but He has the right response from the people He rules. Not only is the structure proper as He rules, but even the attitude of the people is proper. Their hearts are toward Him.
The third thing we saw was the extent. The word Kingdom is mentioned in verse 14. It is mentioned again in verse 18. It is mentioned again in verse 27. And we saw that the extent of this as a monarchy, a structured monarchy, a Kingdom in which Christ literally ruled the earth. Then we saw that this Kingdom had scope. That all people, all nations, and all language would serve Him. It's stretched to encompass everything. And that it had duration. "It shall not pass away. An everlasting dominion, a Kingdom which cannot be destroyed." And verse 27 says that essentially, as well.

Now, one question remains. The who - Christ, the Son of Man crowned King. The what - His Kingdom, which is eternal in which He rules in absolute monarchy. The only remaining question is when is it gonna happen? And that takes up the rest of the chapter. When is it going to happen?

Now, in Daniel's vision, the sequence, mark it now, the sequence of the Kingdom of Christ is unfolded in a series of five great truths. And these are chronological, sequential truths.


Now, number one, mark this in your mind. The Kingdom of Christ follows the kingdoms of the nations. That's point number one. I want you to get that down. The Kingdom of Christ follows the kingdoms of the nations. When is it going to happen? It's going to happen after the course of man's history. It will follow the kingdoms of the nations. Now, this is a major thrust in this vision.

Chapter 7 is one long vision. But within that vision, there are three segments...three segments. Number one, the four beasts that rise out of the sea. Number two, the vision of the Ancient of Days on the throne. And, number three, Christ being given His Kingdom as He comes in glory. Those three are visions in themselves, part of a larger vision which encompasses the whole chapter.

Now, here Daniel first in his vision beholds the great sea. Verse 2 says, "The heavens, the winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea." Now what is the great sea? Well, Daniel, of course, lived in the Mediterranean area, and the Bible only mentions basically four seas. They are these: the Galilean Sea...the Dead Sea...the Red Sea, and what's the other one? The Mediterranean Sea. And the great sea was the Mediterranean Sea. It was called often the great sea. So in Daniel's vision, he stands on the shore of the largest sea he has ever beheld. And he sees the sea in turbulence, in violence, in turmoil, being torn up. And what is doing it is four winds of the heaven...Now, basically, four is a number that's associated with the earth. There are four seasons. We talk about the four corners of the earth. Four seems to be identified with the numbers of the earth. The wind comes from the four areas, north, south, east, west. And so what you see then is the earth in turmoil. The sea representing humanity, and this is very common in the Bible.  And, frankly, I believe this is how God views the nations. God sees the nations in chaos. God sees the nations of the world, the peoples of the world in ultimate turmoil. And we see it, don't we today? We can understand how Daniel feels. Because of media and because of all that we know about human society, we, too, could stand on the edge of the...the brink of human history, and we could see nothing but utter chaos and turmoil all around the globe throughout the history of man. So out of the raging, boiling, troubled sea of humanity rise four superpowers. Four monstrosities, four great empires who are bloody and fearful. Now what do they pose for the future of the world? Well, just give you a note. This is very similar, isn't it, to the vision of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel chapter 2. Do you remember that? Where Nebuchadnezzar saw this colossal image of gold and silver and bronze and then iron and iron and clay. And we saw there were four great world empires: Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome.

In Daniel's vision, Babylon is represented by the beast that resembled a lion with eagle's wings, Medo-Persia by a bear, Greece by a leopard or panther with two sets of wings, and the fourth beast was so terrible it defied description, and represented Rome.  There is a great deal more detail in the sermon, if you wish to and have time to read it.  It is very interesting, but much to long for this post.

Keep in mind, people, that the Roman Empire lasted much longer than the others. The others lasted a maximum of 200 years. The Roman Empire went on for nearly 1500 years. Tremendously powerful empire. But let's look at the things it says. First it says it was dreadful and terrible. Those are just synonyms, speaking of the fearful character, inspiring dread and fear. Then it says it was exceedingly strong. It immensely was - it had immense size and strength. It had great iron teeth. That speaks of its ability to crush and devour and smash and shred. And it stamped the residue with its feet. It was fierce and dreadful, ripping and tearing with its teeth and crushing everything underneath it.
If ever there was anything that symbolized Rome, it was its crushing legions that tramped their way through the world conquering. It was different from all the beasts that were before it. And then this remarkable statement, "It had ten horns." Now, listen, history tells us this is the Roman Empire. We know that. The Romans conquered the Greeks. The dominion of Rome began with the occupation of Sicily in 241 BC as a result of victory in the Mediterranean. And then the Mediterranean, as I told you weeks ago, became a Roman lake. And the Roman Empire grew and grew. And do you know that the Roman Empire was not finally put aside until 1450 AD. For over 1500 years, that powerful empire ruled.

So we see the first four empires. Now, listen. My first point was this: Christ will come after the last of the great Gentile empires. You say, "Well, Rome is dead. Rome is gone. Rome is dead." No, you'll note at the end of verse 7, it had ten horns. That has not yet been fulfilled. No empire has taken the place of Rome. There is yet coming a time when there will be a revived Roman Empire. This is very clear in the Book of Revelation, and we saw it in Daniel 2. I don't wanna go into it all again. Just to remind you that that's what he's saying. And in that final form of the Roman Empire, there will be ten horns. Now, in Scripture, a horn refers to authority or power or a king. Final phase of the fourth empire is a ten-kingdom monarchy.

The European Economic Community, EEC, the Common Market now has ten member nations. They are territorial occupying what was once the Roman Empire. (This sermon is from 1980.  The current European Union has 27 members.) 

I had no time to further research chapter 8 or chapter 5.  John MacArthur has sermons on both of those chapters as well.  I attempted to link them at the top here, but for some reason my IE wouldn't open any more of the sermons after Part 1 and Part 2 of The Coming of Christ.  My apologies.  And I'm terribly sorry for my lateness.  Somehow this long weekend just threw me for a loop.

Tomorrow's passage:  Daniel 6:1-28; Daniel 9:1-27; 2 Chronicles 36:22-23; Ezra 1:1-11; 1 Chronicles 3:17-19.