The Coming Kingdom of Christ, Part 2
Daniel 7:1-7
We have the great and glorious privilege of hearing the voice of the Lord speak to us tonight from the seventh chapter of Daniel. It could be no more the voice of God if God Himself were to utter audibly from heaven, for this is His inerrant, authoritative, personal Word to us. And in Daniel chapter 7, it comes in the form of a vision given to this most unique man, Daniel, the prophet of God in a pagan land, the land of Babylon. Now, in our last study, we had begun to examine the seventh chapter, and we wanna continue to do that tonight for a brief time and see how far the Lord takes us in our study. Let me give you an introduction that, perhaps, will help you get in the context a little bit.
The chapter begins with a very overt indication that this is prophecy. This is divine revelation. Verse 1 tell us that, "In the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head upon his bed. And he wrote the dream and told the sum of the matters." Now, the indication there is that God spoke to Daniel through a vision or through a dream. From the very first chapter of Daniel, we know that God gave Daniel the capability to receive prophetic revelation through dreams and visions. There are many ways in the Old Testament in which God communicated His Word. One of them was in this manner of dreams or visions. And in this case, that is precisely how God speaks.
Actually, the second half of the Book of Daniel, from the seventh chapter on through the twelfth, is a series of these visions though which God speaks. For example, in chapter 8 verse 1, we read, "In the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar, a vision appeared unto me, even unto me, Daniel, after that which appeared unto me at the first." In other words, I had another vision.
In the tenth chapter of Daniel, in the first verse, "In the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia, a thing was revealed unto Daniel." And so the...the...the last portion of the book is a series of revelations...of prophetic revelations given to this, the prophet of God. This, then, is a book of prediction. This is a book of prophecy. And I would just add a footnote at the beginning that prophecies were given to confirm the validity of the Bible as God's Word.
There were many voices. There were many religious writers. There were many religious speakers. There were many people, even as there are today, trying to draw people to them and convince them that they speak for God. That was very common in those times. God had to have some method of confirming who was a genuine prophet. God had to have some means by which He could single out the true prophet. And one way that he did that was by predictive prophecy. You could tell a true prophet, because everything that he predicted would come to pass. He would be 100 percent accurate, or he was not a true prophet.
So prophecy not only was given by God to reveal truth to us, but rather in addition to that to confirm the word of the prophet as being from God. And so not only to give us the message, but to give it to us in advance so that when it came to pass we would know, indeed, that it was the message of God.
In Isaiah 45, for example, verse 21, it says, "Tell ye, and bring them near. Yea, let them take counsel together." Talking about the nations. "Who hath declared this from ancient time? Who hath told it from that time? Have not I, the Lord? And there is no God else beside Me, a just God and a Savior. There is none beside Me. Look unto Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else." Why? Because who else has told you that this would happen before it came to pass? So prophecy is a confirmation of the voice of God predicting that which has not yet occurred in order that the people who hear might be convinced that God is the source.
In 46 of Isaiah verse 9, "Remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is none else. I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, and saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure. If I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass. If I have purposed it, I will also do it.'"
So God gives predictive revelation, not only so that we may know what's coming in advance. That wouldn't be the most necessary thing at all, because we don't necessarily need to know everything coming in advance. But mostly so that God can confirm the truth as spoken by His prophet. Man cannot predict the future, you see, because he's not omniscient, so he doesn't know what's coming. And he's not omnipotent, so he cannot control what's coming. The ability to predict the future involves omniscience, knowing everything, and omnipotence, controlling everything. And God, alone, can do that. And the fact that in the Bible you have time and time again predictions of the future is indicative of the authorship of God Himself...
In the 41st chapter of Isaiah, two other verses. "Let them bring them forth and show us what shall happen; let them show the former things, what they are, that we may consider them and know the latter end of them; or declare us things to come. Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods." In other words, all of these supposed pagan gods, all of the idols to which he speaks in Isaiah 41, God simply says, "Let them predict the future, and then we'll know they're gods; because we'll know they have omniscience, which can know in advance, and omnipotence, which controls." Who can accept that challenge? Nobody. Not anybody at all.
"Behold...He says in the same chapter...you are nothing. Your work is of naught." Verse 28, "I beheld, and there was no man, even among them; and there was no counselor that, when I asked of them, could answer a word. Behold, they are all nothing. Their works are nothing; their melted and cast images are wind and confusion." And so God sets Himself up against all of the other idols by His ability to predict the future.
Now, as foreign and impossible as this is to man, he nonetheless attempts to do it. And throughout all of human history, you have your wizards and magicians and soothsayers and necromancers and clairvoyants and witches and swamis and mediums and oracles and fortunetellers and seers and astrologers and on and on. You have all of these people, even today, who are trying to push themselves off on society as those who can predict the future. And, frankly, many people fall prey to their influence. Probably the leading one in our society today is a woman named Jeanne Dixon. Now, Jeanne Dixon says she can predict the future, and she primarily does it two ways, she claims. One is through the use of cards, and the other is...and the more dominant one, through a crystal ball. She believes she is an agent of God who, through her crystal ball, can read the future.
Now, the question that people often ask me is, "Can she really read the future?" Well, let me just give you a little idea. In 1964, she assured her readers that the war in Vietnam would be over in 1965. Later, she amended that to 1966. Then she gave up. In 1972, the war was still going on. In 1958, she predicted that in the year...in that year...1958, Red China and the United States would declare war against each other. That hasn't happened yet 22 years later. In 1959, she predicted that, in that year, Red China would be admitted to the United Nations. China was not admitted for 12 years longer, till 1971. She predicted in 1964 that Walter Reuther would be a candidate for president. He didn't even propose to run. In February of 1968, she predicted that the Democratic nominee for president would be Lyndon Johnson. It was Hubert Humphrey. In 1968, she predicted that, before the election, Dean Rusk would resign as secretary of state. He didn't. In 1968, on the 20th of October, she predicted that the men on the captured ship Pueblo would not be released by the North Koreans, but they would be released after a long period of time through the negotiations with Russia. Actually, the crew of the Pueblo was liberated by the North Koreans, not the Russians. In fact, two months after Jeanne Dixon predicted they wouldn't be.
In 1968, she predicted that Russia would be the first nation to put a man on the moon and would do it in three years. We all know they weren't. The newspaper syndicate that distributes her column printed her prediction about Jackie Kennedy on October 20th, the day of her surprise wedding to Aristotle Onassis. It threw the hocus-pocus industry into a dither. Why? Because Mrs. Dixon says this writer had written in her column that very day, "I stand on my New Year's prediction that Jackie will never be married."...In 1967, she predicted that that would be the year for a cure for cancer, giving false hope to uncounted thousands of sufferers.
Frankly, folks, just how wrong can someone be and still survive as a reader of the future? Reminds me of my dear friend, Dr. Kyper, who said once time he went into the largest drugstore in Pennsylvania in the city Philadelphia, and there was a fortuneteller there. The fortune teller was telling fortunes, and you would walk up and plunk down $5.00, and she would tell your future...And she was spinning off all these yarns, and a crowd was gathered around her. He doesn't see too well, and so he thought is my moment. And he could just about go anywhere and do anything, because people kinda move away for him because of handicap. And so he pushed his way through the crowd, and his little...he's a little, tiny fellow, and he got up to the front, and he looked up at this lady through the one little eye with which he can perceive 10 percent vision, and he said, "Ma'am, do you know where the Kleenex is?"...She was absolutely indignant. She looked down at him, and she said, "Sir, I do not work for this drugstore. I do not know where the Kleenex is." He said, "Ma'am, how come you know so much about the future, but you don't know where the Kleenex is?"...I'm afraid Jeanne Dixon and a lot of her ilk know a whole lot about the future, but they don't know where the Kleenex is...If they were so smart, they oughta know some other things...
Listen, in Deuteronomy chapter 18, there is an interesting text. Deuteronomy 18 verse 10. God says, "When you enter into the land...to the people of Israel...there shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or daughter pass through the fire." That was a rite of those who worshipped the God of Molach. "Or who uses divination, or who is an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter of mediums, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord, and because of these abominations, the Lord, thy God, doth drive them out from before thee." They are to have no part.
In Numbers chapter 23 verse 19, the Bible says, "God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son of man, that He should repent. He said, and shall He not do it? He has spoken, and shall He not make it good?" In other words, in the Old Testament, God says there's only person who can tell the future, and don't ever believe that anybody else can, because they can't. Oh, now and then, they might be right like the clock that doesn't work. It's right twice a day, but that's about the extent of it...
A Hebrew execution was an ugly thing...Hebrews, when they executed somebody, stoned them. First of all, they would strip the person relatively naked. They would bind the hands of the person behind them. They would parade the victim out of town. And if they didn't have a precipice of at least ten feet or so over which they could push the person to a flat space below, they would build a scaffold nine feet high, and they would climb the person up the stairs to the scaffold, and then shove the person off the scaffold. The first official witness against the crime committed by the individual would do the pushing. And the person who's hands were bound would hit the ground with a great thud...And then the second witness would take the large boulder and drop that boulder...on the head and the chest. And then all the rest of the witnesses would join in, and the whole community, until the person was pummeled to death. The corpse of a person who had been stoned was then taken to an infamous place to be buried. It was buried with only the stone that was dropped on the body as a marker. And no ceremony was permitted...
You say, "Who did they do that to?" False prophets. Anybody who said they predicted the future, but missed. That's what happened to them. In Deuteronomy chapter 13 in verse 5, "And that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he's spoken to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of bondage." Verse 10, "And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die, because he hath sought to trust...thrust thee away from the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage." Anytime somebody comes along and claims to tell the future and claims to speak predictively and misses, they are to be stoned - 100 percent accuracy is the standard.
Now you show me a modern prophet who would be likely to stake his ability to predict the future against his life in that kind of circumstance. A 100 percent accuracy. Well, there was such a man in ancient times. There were many. But one particular was Daniel. Daniel unequivocally, unhesitatingly gave prophecies without a fear in his mind or a fear in his heart of reprisals. Without a fear for his life. Why? Because, when he spoke, he spoke as a legitimate prophet of God, and his prophecy was not a good guess. It was not partially true. It was 100 percent accurate. And so were all the other Biblical prophets. And, beloved, their accuracy is literally a staggering reality. Staggering reality.
Lemme give you an illustration. If you take a coin, say a dime, and flip it twice...there are four possible results. It could land heads both times, tails both times, or heads, then tails or tails, then heads. The chance of its landing heads both times is one out of four. Or to put it another way, if four people each flipped a dime two times, one of them could be expected by the laws of chance to come with two heads in a row. I only say that to introduce you to this whole idea of probability. The chance of getting heads three times out of three flips is, of course, greatly reduced. If eight people each flipped a dime three times, one of them could be expected to come up with three heads. One person in 16 could expect four heads in an uninterrupted sequence and so on. And it just goes from there.
Now, if slightly more than a thousand people were all flipping dimes a thousand times, chances are that one of them would drop their dime, right. Chances are that one of them...chances are that one of them would turn up heads ten times in a row without any tails breaking the sequence. To get 20 heads in an unbroken sequence would require more than a million people. An uninterrupted run of 30 heads, more than a billion people.
What am I saying? I'm saying that to take the prophecies of the Word of God and say that they happened by chance is an astronomical impossibility. Just to get 30 heads in a row, you'd have to have 1 billion people flipping dimes. A run of 40 heads in 40 flips could happen by chance less than once in 1 trillion times. Now, if there were 4 billion people on each of 250 earths like ours, and all of them were flipping dimes...and it goes on from there. The probabilities get to, if you wanted a hundred heads in a row...you'd have to have one and 72 zeros people...
And listen, astronomers tell us there are something like 200 billion stars in the Milky Way. Imagine that on each of the 200 billion stars live 4 billion people...The population of all the stars in the Milky Way would add to 20 zeroes, that's all. Just 20 zeros. But to get 30 prophesies to be fulfilled by chance, you'd have to have 72 zeroes worth of people. Can't happen by accident. There's no chance. It has to be the Word of God.
And so when Daniel speaks in concert with all the other prophets, you better listen. The chances alone of the specificity of Daniel's prophecy in chapter 7 coming to pass by chance is absolute, utter impossibility. It is God who speaks.
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. The coronation, the character, and the chronology. In our last study, we saw that the theme of the chapter is the coronation. That answers the question who. And then there is the character of the kingdom. That answers the question what. And tonight we're gonna look at the chronology. That answers the question when. Who, what, when.
Now, remember, the coronation answered the question who. 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." And we...we studied that in our last study. Thrones were set. 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."
So the coronation took place there in verses 9 and 13. The Father sits on the throne. The Son comes in verse 13 and, in 14, receives the Kingdom. That is the coronation. And we discussed it in detail. 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.
So we have seen, then, something about the character of the Kingdom. It is a Kingdom of authority, of honor. It's extent is that it is a structured Kingdom in which Christ rules, encompassing the globe. Its scope - it touches all people. Its duration is that it is forever. It begins with a 1,000-year millennial period and then moves on into eternity.
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?
In Acts 1, the disciple said, "Lord, wilt Thou at this time bring the Kingdom?" That's always been the gnawing question. We've sung songs tonight. Jesus is coming again. Clayton mentioned that Christ could come at any moment, at any time. We all have that anticipation of John who said, "Even so, come Lord Jesus." Of the disciples who stood on the mount as Jesus ascended into heaven and heard the angels say, "The same Jesus who is taken up from you shall so come in like manner as you've seen Him go." We all understand the hope and the heart of John and Peter and Paul as they wrote their epistles with a longing anticipation, and even Jude, that Christ would return.
And I suppose that Christians in every generation have wondered when. When? When? Daniel gives us the answer in this chapter. It is an incredible insight, and I wanna take my time to unfold it to you, because I believe that every word that God has put here, He wanted us to understand. And I want you to see what He says. 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. Now, let's begin as we see this first point in the beginning of the chapter, verses 1 to 3. Now mark it.
"In the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head upon his bed. Then he wrote the dream, and told the sum of the matters." We went into that in detail last time. Just mark it that he had a vision. "Daniel spoke and said...here's the sum of it...'I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea. And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another."
Now, within the particular vision, mark this in your thinking, in chapter 7. 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. The Sea of Galilee is really nothing more, frankly, than a lake. A small lake, at that. The Dead Sea is nothing more than a larger lake. And the Red Sea is just a narrow strip of water. The great sea would be the sea that would be the largest one that Daniel ever beheld in his life, and that would be the Mediterranean.
And so he stands in vision on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea at the heart of human history and human civilization, which was born in the Mediterranean area. 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.
For example, in Revelation 17:15, it says, "The waters which Thou sawest, are people and multitudes and nations and tongues." The sea seems to be representative of people. And the winds are just another part of the earth and its system. And the earth is in boiling, convulsing, raging, disturbed turmoil, upheaval, distress. And so Daniel stands and sees all of human history in turmoil. He sees the upheaval of the day of man. He sees humanity shaken at its very ebb because of the turbulent impact of its sinfulness. The winds, you see, are the various elements of human sin that play upon the nations that stir up the strife and the turmoil. And so there is general confusion in the world as Daniel looks.
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. And that is precisely what Daniel perceives.
As I said in Revelation, you have many parallels to Daniel. And the sea there is identified as the nations. Now, in the midst of this, look at verse 3. Something amazing happens. "Four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another." The word "great" literally means very great. Huge, massive, monsters. Listen, they are not an animal, but they are like some animals. They can only be described in terms that we would understand, so they're described like certain animals, and yet they are distinct. They are monsters, and each is diverse or unique.