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Well, hello everybody. Delightful to see you looking so fresh and enthusiastic and expectant. I can only wish that your expectations will not be disappointed. Let me just remind you what I am asked to do and aim at in this present series of seminars. I'm asked to make my comments on two prophetic books of scripture. First, the book of Daniel and then the book of the Revelation. I shall not be preaching. That is to say, it is not my brief in these seminars to take scripture in the normal way that one would do in the congregation of the church and expound them and apply them from the very word go.
I'm reminded that many of you, anyway, are experts at doing that already. What I'm asked to do is to suggest certain approaches to the study of these two books. Those approaches, of course, will in the first place be my own approach, and I would like to say at once that in giving you the kind of approach that I myself would go through in studying books like these, I am not saying that everybody has to adopt that same approach. We are all free, are we not, under God, to make our individual approaches to his word and to listen to the Lord speaking to us in the way that the Lord adapts himself to our individual personalities.
That said, there is, is there not, a common area in the study of the word of God. We all have to come to agree what the actual words mean. If the Bible says cat, it isn't saying dormouse. And we have to agree, and if you find me expounding a passage that says cat as though it were talking about a dog, well, you'll say he's got it wrong, whatever his personality and preferences are, do you see? So we have to agree what the thing is saying. And that's the beginning of a long task, because the Bible is written in books, and commonly these books don't say just dog or cat, they say a thousand and one other words, and our job is to see how all those words fit together.
Now, there are two ways of approaching prophecy as any other, uh, doctrine in God's great revelation. The one is the way of systematic theology. That, of course, is an excellent and entirely valid way of approaching God's revelation. Nothing I shall say now or hereafter is meant to cast any aspersion whatsoever on the way of systematic theology. The way of systematic theology, uh, is this, that if, for instance, you are studying, uh, prophecy, you go through scripture and you read it.
You then pick out all those places where the Bible deals with prophecy, and selecting all those pieces, you put them together and endeavor to understand how they fit together, and out of those many verses and many paragraphs, you make a system of theology that all hangs together. Now, that is a very valid way. It proceeds on the assumption that whatever God says about prophecy throughout the whole of his word, here and there and elsewhere, that if you select these prophetic elements and you put them all together, they will make coherent sense.
They will not contradict each other. They will prove to fit together into a logically coherent system. And that, of course, is what the systematic theologians aim to do in their study of the prophetic elements in the Bible. Then they write it down for us in their books of systematic theology. And if you open a book of systematic theology, you will find as follows. There will be one chapter, for instance, or one whole section of the book on the doctrine of God, and everything that's said about God in Holy Scripture has been taken out and selected and put together and made into a coherent system in this particular chapter or section of the book.
Then you will find another, uh, chapter, and that is headed perhaps Soteriology, meaning the study and science of salvation. And all that is said in the Bible in its different books and different chapters and here and there and elsewhere is selected and put together and considered and made into a logically coherent system, you'll see. You'll read all about salvation in this one chapter on soteriology. And so when it comes to prophecy, the book will have a chapter on what's generally called eschatology or something like that, and, uh, what you'll find there is all the parts where the Bible has talked about prophecy.
They're all now here put together in one nice, good, neat chapter. This is what the Bible teaches by way of prophecy, and that is very helpful. And, uh, preachers in particular like it very much, you'll see, because it makes very good sermons, very lucid, very clear with point one, two, three, four, five, six, seven A and eight, you'll see. Uh, uh, uh, and it's very good, and it's a makes a remarkably easy way in the end to take it all in, because you can copy down what the preacher says, and you'll get point one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, sevenA, and eight, you'll see, won't you?
Uh, and that is very helpful. And we all, of course, do it, whether consciously or subconsciously. We all tend to take subjects out of the Bible and, uh, put all the details together in one coherent whole. That is admirable. And the foundation upon the presupposition upon which it is built, of course, is absolutely true. True systematic theologies assume rightly that when you do this, you select all the things about any one subject and you put them together, they cohere, they make logical sense, they don't contradict each other because these are taken from the word of God, inspired by the living God, they make a consistent whole.
But then you will have noticed, I'm sure, as you have read your Bibles, that the Bible is not written as systematic theology. You'll notice that, won't you? It's got the stuff all mixed up. Ha. First comes a story, perhaps, and then perhaps a genealogy, and what ho- oh, here's five verses of prophecy, and then instead of concentrating on the matter in hand, he goes off and gives you an exhortation, and uh, well, it's all sort of mixed up. Then we've got to be careful what we say about it.
We better not say that the Bible is a very bad preacher that doesn't know how to get the stuff across. Because, well, to put no finer a point on it, systematic theologies are not necessarily inspired, are they? But the Bible is. And God, who inspired the Bible to be written in the way it's written, presumably knows the best way to communicate his truth. And if systematic theology had been the very best way to communicate the truth of God, God would have used it.
Wouldn't he now? God has chosen to communicate himself, not in the form of systematic theology, but in the form that you see it before you in the books of Holy Writ. You can't take any one book and say, this is the book on prophecy. Prophecy will be found in all sorts of books in the Bible. That is eminently true of the two books that we're going to study this week together, and in particular of the prophecy, so-called, of Daniel.
Because, yes, there are some very famous prophecies in the book of Daniel. Chapter two, and I'm going to assume that you all know the book of Daniel forwards, backwards, inside out, and upside down, and the right way up, and that if you were woken up in the middle of the night and somebody hit you on the head with a brick and said, tell me what the contents of Daniel are, you would proceed from chapter one and recite all the contents of Daniel. That is the presupposition of your being at this study, of course. And, uh, you will remember vividly that chapter one— oh, sorry, chapter two is a remarkable prophecy in the form of the, a dream image that was given to Nebuchadnezzar as he was lying in his bed in a very troubled sleep one night.
And he saw the magnificent image, head of gold and shoulder and so on, and silver, and with descending metals till it got right to the toes. And how, uh, when it stood there in all its magnificence, a stone, a boulder was cut out without hands from a mountain nearby and came whizzing through the air and hit the, uh, image on its feet, smashed it to smithereens, and itself grew into a great mountain. A prophecy, and we know it's a prophecy because when Daniel expounded it, he expounded it in the form of a prediction of the things that would happen from Nebuchadnezzar's time onward until the setting up of the messianic kingdom of Christ.
So chapter three uh, chapter two is a prophecy. So is chapter seven, a big prophecy. There Daniel sees four beasts, wild beasts arising, and in the, uh, exposition of that prophecy, we are told that those beasts represent four world empires that will come in succession, and what will happen to them, how that they will eventually be destroyed, and the kingdom of the earth given to the son of man and to the saints. Remarkable prophecy. In the same way, chapter eight is a prophecy, where the, uh, prophecy is conveyed under the figure of two wild beasts.
Chapter nine at its end, is a prophecy. Chapter nine is a long chapter where Je- uh, uh, uh, Daniel inquires about the restoration of Jerusalem. That restoration had been promised through Jeremiah the prophet. Jeremiah had said that Israel should be in exile and Jerusalem in ruins for seventy years, and then Jerusalem would be restored. And when the times were near, Daniel prayed to God about this matter. Was God, when and exactly how and so forth, was God going to fulfill the promise and restore Jerusalem? The major part of the chapter is taken up with Daniel's prayer and intercession to God, but at the end he is given a prophecy concerning the timing of the restoration of Jerusalem.
So that's a prophecy too. Then chapters ten, eleven, and twelve are a very detailed prophecy of what should happen in the intervening centuries. So yes, Daniel is famous because of these great prophecies. But it would only take a child to see that not all the book of Daniel is prophecy. Much of it is straightforward narrative. In chapter one, for instance, is the famous story how Daniel and his three colleagues, being newly admitted to the Imperial University in Babylon, and coming to dinner on the first night as students in the university, we're faced with the question, would they eat the food provided by the college, by the university dining rooms, provided by His Majesty, of course, ultimately?
Would they eat this food, defiled as it was by being offered to idols, or would they not? And they chose not to, and so made their stand for their faith in God. That's chapter one. It's not a prophecy, the story. Chapter three is not a prophecy. That's the story how Nebuchadnezzar built an image of gold and, uh, set it up in the plain of Dura and commanded all his satraps and things to bow down and worship when the orchestra played, you'll say. And, uh, uh, they were to worship this image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up.
And three of Daniel's companions were there and refused to bow down, and for their trouble were thrown into the fiery furnace. And there there appeared one like unto a son of the gods. And the fire didn't harm them. This became a colossal witness to Nebuchadnezzar and brought him to his first dim appreciations that the God of the Hebrews was the true and the living God. And the three men were brought out of the furnace and set free. Not a prophecy, at least not as it stands. It is a narrative. Chapter four is a narrative in which Nebuchadnezzar is likened to a large beautiful tree that then was cut down, its stump left in the ground, and later the tree s- was allowed to sprout again and grow back to its original majesty.
A parable to Nebuchadnezzar of the discipline that God was about to bring upon him because of his arrogance and pride. But it's not so much a prophecy as it is a story of Nebuchadnezzar's own personal experience of the discipline and restoration of God. That is chapter four, and in chapter five there's another story. That isn't a prophecy either. Uh, Dulce, that's the story of Belshazzar, much preached upon by preachers, and I shall not need to remind you of it. It's a story when Belshazzar, at the height of his fury, called for the golden vessels to be taken out of the house of the Lord and drank therein before his courtiers.
Then there came out the famous hand and wrote upon the wall, a writing upon the wall, indicating that Belshazzar's life and reign were finished. That night he lay a corpse upon the ground. That isn't a prophecy. And, um, uh, chapter six, Well, that isn't a prophecy either. That's the story how Nebuchadnezzar, dear boy, was flattered, the silly fellow, uh, by his courtiers and civil servants. You always have to watch civil servants. And, uh, they suggested to his majesty that it might be a nice idea for the unification of the empire and the general peace, uh, to unify religion.
Instead of having people praying to ten thousand and one gods and each thinking his god was better than the other god, and all the social unrest that makes, and sometimes riots. Wouldn't it be a nice idea if they unified religion, you see, and got all the whole empire praying to one god, at least for a month or two? And, uh, you'll see, they came up with a brilliant suggestion, uh, that, uh, the god in question should be Darius the Emperor himself. Well, he thought that was a bit, uh, uh, uh, a novel idea, but when they put it to him in good diplomatic and civil service language, that of course His Majesty would be doing something, well, not really arrogant, but, um, if you were going to represent all the gods in one, well, I mean, who better than Darius?
And he saw the point and said, well, yes, go ahead. And anybody that refused to bow down and worship, uh, Darius, or conversely, where was so perverse as to worship some other god instead of Darius, would have to be dealt with. And Daniel was such, and he was dealt with, uh, thrown into the den of lions. That's not a prophecy either, is it? So, if you were a systematic theologian and you weren't careful, because all systematic theologians are careful or intend to be, uh, you'll see, but if you weren't careful, you would be tempted just to take out the chapters on the prophecy bit and add them to all the other prophetic bits in scripture, and so make your system.
That method, good as it is, has a weakness because it sometimes doesn't listen to God saying the thing as God says it. Doesn't necessarily always take the context of the prophecy seriously. So in these studies, I propose to make a little contribution to your study of these books by working with you and looking not simply at the prophetic bits, but as these books as a whole, as they are written.
To see, first of all, what the book is saying as it stands in its wholeness. Uh, that won't do away with the need to be systematic theologians. By the time we're finished this week, you'll say to yourself, well, that was moderately interesting, uh, so much so we might even invite him again. But you ought to know that, um, well, what on earth has he done? Because we've still got to do our systematic theology, you'll see. This is no substitute for. Its value is that it will put the prophetic things in their context, and when we begin to see them in their context, then their context will help to control the message, even of the prophetic parts.
And we shall see how the prophetic and the other parts combine together to get across the totality of what God is saying in that particular context. That is the notion. The other night I was so simplistic as to use an analogy upstairs for the general congregation. By your leave, I repeat it now. I s- suppose that one day somebody would ask us to describe a human hand. Do you remember that bit? Huh? And I came up with a a a description. Uh, people didn't think it was good enough. Eh, and it was that the human hand is a square bit of stuff.
Well, m- more or less square. You can, you can, you can overlook the corners and the round bits. It's more or less square, do you see? And it's made up of flesh and bones and blood and things, do you see? So there it is. And this square bit of stuff has got four bits sticking out the top and one at the side. And I offered that as a, as a explanation of, uh, and a description of a human hand. What would you have thought of me if I said, you don't need to consider it in, in, in totality, just take that, that, that third one in the row and take him off and put him with a all another collection of fingers.
Well, that would be one way, wouldn't it? Then you'd get a study of fingers. Third fingers. Well, how on earth would you know what third fingers were for, anyway? You might have a marvelous study of fingers, but if you didn't study fingers in relation to the whole hand, what would you come up with? Well, a systematic theology of fingers. That would be useful. Studying fingers, they do have all things in common. Most of these fingers on my hand, except that funny one that sticks out the side, have got three bits to them, and they fold this way generally.
And so a comparative study of fingers is useful. But even when you've done that, unless you study those fingers in connection with the whole thing, you will be in danger of missing the real point. Because to describe a hand as a bit of square stuff with four things sticking out the top and one at the side, mm, misses what the great purpose of the hand is, that it is function. Why has it got a square bit in the middle? There's a sort of a doak in the, in the center. And, uh, what's this thing doing sticking out the side? How does that contribute to the whole?
Oh, you say, I mean, it's absolutely essential it be sticking out the side, and the right side there, not the left side. Why? Because you see how it functions by its position and what it contributes to the whole in grasping something. And why is that little thing there shorter than all the others? Well, it's a marvelous function it has, isn't it? So perhaps the strongest of all the fingers to grip things with. You let a little baby get hold of your finger with its little finger, and you see how tough that little baby's little finger is. Yes, it's when you study the elements as a whole, and to you, you see their function and then why they're there, and then you see, well, it couldn't be anywhere else if you're going to have a se- sensible hand, that's the way it's got to be.
And understanding what a thing is in itself, in its totality, and how it functions, and why each bit has got to be there. Now that is coming to an understanding of the thing. And if we were to apply that analogy to the book of Daniel, it would suggest, wouldn't it, that's not a sin, goodness me, no. It's not a sin to take out the prophetic chapters, and leaving the rest, add those prophetic chapters to all the other prophetic chapters in the Bible, a- a- a- and make a system out of them. It's not a sin. But the first thing we ought to do, perhaps, is to study the prophetic bits along with all the other bits, and say, how do all those chapters in Daniel, be they narrative or prophecy, how do they fit together?
How do they function together? Why has God put them together? We might be driven to the conclusion, who knows? We might be driven to the conclusion that, well, these chapters in Daniel, they're just bits and pieces, you know, valuable in themselves, but they're chapters one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten to eleven—it It wouldn't matter what order they were in, they could be any old, any old order. They're just a convenient box to put these things in. But perhaps we oughtn't to start with that presupposition. We ought to start, perhaps, with the presupposition that if God put them together, he meant to, and he meant to put them in the right order, and he meant each chapter to contribute to the meaning of the whole.
So that's what we shall be trying to do this week. We may not succeed, of course, uh, or even if I think I succeed, you may not think I have either. That won't matter at all, so long as you see what it is we're trying to do. Why do we take Daniel and the book of the Revelation? Well, comparing Daniel with the Revelation raises some interesting questions that again would be helpful to us in the book of the Revelation. Uh, for instance, a book of Daniel and chapter seven.
This is Daniel chapter uh seven. It has a very famous vision. Let me list some of the elements in that vision. It's a vision of the throne of God and other thrones. Thrones were set, and there is central the throne of God. And then a description was given of the occupant. That is God himself.
His head and his hair like wool, the ancient of days. A description of the throne is given, the fiery streams that came from it, and the books. And then in the vision, John sees the one like unto the Son of Man. And he comes to the Ancient of Days. And he is given worldwide dominion.
The kingdom is given to this Son of Man and to the saints of the Most High. And that being done, there are four wild beasts that have been described. One of the beasts is thereby- thereat immediately destroyed. The lives of the other three are prolonged a little while, and then they are dismissed. Worldwide dominion given to the Son of Man and the saints. That is all in one chapter in Daniel. One vision.
Now, in the book of the Revelation, John will tell us of the visions that were given to him. John wasn't just rehashing what Daniel had been told. At least that is my conviction. It wasn't that John had read Daniel and then, uh, thought, well, I know what I'll do. I'll pretend to have a vision as well, but I shan't be having one. I shall be sitting in my study, of course, and with Daniel here and strong concordance there to look up, I will now put together what Daniel had, ideas I got from him, with some of my own. No, no, John was given his own visions.
Uh, John was given visions that, in their form, strikingly resemble the visions given to Daniel. And now notice an interesting thing. We shall find these same elements that are in Daniel seven, we shall find them in the book of the Revelation. The interesting thing is, we shall not find them in one chapter, like Ja- Ja- Daniel has them. We shall find them scattered through different parts of the Revelation. For chapter four, Revelation is the throne of God and its occupant described.
And then the throne is described in much greater detail than the throne is described in Daniel seven. And it was highly important, that is, as we shall subsequently find. The throne is described not just as an impressionist artist might describe it. It's described in precise geometrical detail in order to convey to us not so much the size and design of the literal throne, but to convey to us the quality of the government of him who sits on that throne. What kind of a government is it?
What kind of a throne is it? How does it rule? How does it reign? And so forth. And the story carries on, the description carries on, it's all one scene. Carries on from four to five when we see the lion lamb come to him that sits upon the throne. And there's given him a book, that is a scroll written within and on the back as well, and sealed with seven seals.
So, so far, yes, Daniel four and five have got similar things to chapter 7 of Daniel. Now, of course, the description of the one who comes and takes the book, the description is different from what the description of the personage is in Daniel seven. But now notice, if you will, that in chapters four and five of the Revelation, there are no beasts of the bad sort. There are beasts in the authorized version. Well, yes. Uh-huh. Mm, they should be living creatures, not wild beasts.
But, um, beasts in the bad sense, like these roaring, destructive, wild beasts of Daniel seven, they're not mentioned in four and five, are they? John has his equivalent. They come to start with in chapter thirteen. There are two beasts. But in chapter thirteen, uh, these two beasts are not destroyed as they are in Daniel seven. They're described at great length and what they do, but they're not destroyed.
Then, if you please, they occur again in chapter seventeen, only one beast there. And this time the beast is described in great detail, his horns and heads and what have you. And interestingly enough, unlike these, there's a woman sitting on this beast. That adds another spice to the story, doesn't it? What? There is a brief mention made in chapter seventeen that the Lamb and those that are with him destroy the beast, but it's only a tiny part of that chapter. The beast is finally destroyed in chapter nineteen, beast plus FP, that stands for false prophet.
You'll be getting impatient now, you'll say we didn't pay our fee to come and t- have this man tell us the sheer mere contents of the revelation. Well, I know what you mean, but the point being made is, the similarities that John has in his book with the details that Daniel has in his, see in the revelation how they're not in one chapter, they are scattered throughout the book. Of course, we could insist upon being systematic theologians, couldn't we?
And saying, all right, John, we see what you've done, but the more sensible thing would be to take all those and compress them into one chapter. That would be easier to follow the doctrine of the beast. But our first question ought to be the other way around. Why hasn't John compressed them into one chapter? Why are they distributed in various contexts through the revelation? So then, and I repeat, our first task as students of God's word is to study God's word as God has written it, and trying to understand each element within its own context.
See how each part in each book functions, how it contributes to the whole, how all the different parts combining together control each other. And thus we shall come to the message that God himself is designed to convey in the book as a book. And when we have got that, then of course we can begin our serious work, can't we, as systematic theology- theologians, and say how the messages on each book of the sixty six books of the Bible, how the messages can all be put together and combined in the different orders of systematic theology and the doctrine of scripture.
Our task there, or at least my task this week, therefore, is a very humble one. Please don't expect me to do more than I'm promising to do. I'm not going to offer you an alternative systematic eschatology. There are all sorts of eschatologies, are there not, on the, on the Christian market. All kinds of schemes and theories. And you surely have your own, and I, I'm sure you do, you ought to be convinced that yours is right. I'm going to leave you with your system at the end of the week, as I found it. What I'm aiming to do is to say, whatever your system is, our first task should be the Bible as it stands.
Prophecy in its context in each book. And then, and only then, when we've understood it in each book, do we then build our systematic theologies. And then there's a third thing. When we have built our system of prophecy, then our third important task is to come back to the Bible and test our system by the Bible. Because, you see, the Bible is God's way of communicating his truth. We ought to start with God's way in our attempt to understand, yes, build our systems, but because God knows how to communicate his truth, ultimately the best way to communicate it is to communicate it in the way that God has communicated it, that is, in the way it stands in his word.
We always ought to check, then, our systems, because the danger of our systems is this, that when they get entrenched into our heads, we could sometimes be inclined to interpret the scripture in order to fit our system. And it could happen that our system is controlling our interpretation of scripture, and where scripture doesn't quite fit in, we say that's too bad, we neglect that bit. Or we chop off its feet or cut off its head or whatnot because it doesn't fit our procrustean bed. Whereas what we ought to be doing is bringing our script- our system back to scripture, and where our system doesn't actually fit scripture, or scripture doesn't fit it, then we ought to be changing our system.
Yes? Amen. Good. And, uh, for that purpose then, let us start with the prophecy of Daniel. And I start on the absolutely ground floor. We're going to make, in our minds, a table of contents. I want to introduce to you now three words. They are sort of technical terms. I use them in a very arbitrary fashion.
You don't have to use them, you'll see. But I use them because these are processes that I shall take you through, and you need to know what I mean by my terms. In the study of scripture itself, I would at- attach prime. Oh, how does one spell thought? OUG? GHC. G, I've got another H in. It's marvelous how when you confront a blackboard, it turns your mind as blank as the board is itself. Thought. Number one is, oh, had to put a T on it.
I'm in the presence of the learned, I must be learned to spell. Uh, thought flow. Number one element. Two would be structure. And three would be pattern. Thought flow, structure, and pattern. These three are the greatest of these is...
thought flow. Amen, you've got it. The greatest of these is thought flow. Because when we come to scripture, and particularly narrative books, but it applies also to the logic of epistles, what we are at first and last, is tracing the thought flow of the passage. What God is saying from this sentence to that sentence, from this verse to that verse. Where does this particular thought start, and how does it proceed through the middle?
Where does it come to its end? And we shall find ourselves doing that and saying, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, man. Uh, now, have we finished that story, or... or does it carry on somewhere else? You know how it is. When your, uh, uh, friend comes back from her holiday in the Bahamas and says it was a beautiful holiday. I'd like to tell you all about my holiday, how we spent every day on the beach, and the sea was marvelous. Oh, it was the fact that on the first day, do you know what, ho, I'd forgotten my bathing costume, so I had to go up to the street, and when we went up to the street to Marks and Spencer's, or wherever it was, there was a big accident, and uh, uh, we had to go to hospital, you see, and that was terrible.
And you say, wait a minute, my dear, uh, is this part of the same story? Thought you were going to tell me about how you went swimming and saw the coral and the, and the porpoises and the whales and things. Uh, uh, now you seem to be describing to be a hospital ward. Is this, what, what has this got to do with the story? Is it the same story, or is this another story? Yes. Where does one story start and the next one begin? How would you decide that? Well, simply by trying to follow the thought flow and asking, now, where does this begin, and what is it about, and how does it proceed? How do we get from here to there, to there, to there, to there, and where does it come to its finale, its climax?
And of course, if you attempt simply to write a table of contents, you'll find yourself before long having to decide about the thought flow. It's notorious, isn't it, that our dear friends, the King James translators of the Bible in their magnificent version, divided the thing up into chapters. But you'll hear even humble expositors, little though and others, uh, come forth in their sermon and say, well, mm-hmm, sorry, mm, the chapter division is wrong here. Uh, they've they've they've chopped off the, um, last verse of the previous chapter and put it in the beginning of the next chapter, and they oughtn't to have done that.
That that this first verse of this chapter belongs to the last verse of the previous chapter. And what they're commenting on is the thought flow. So even to make a a content a serious table of contents, you have got to ask about the thought flow. It's moderately easy with the book of Daniel, isn't it? If we make a thought flow of the book. Uh. Let me attempt one and see whether you'll agree with me.
You'll need to keep your eyes on the text. You'll see thought through. Chapter one. Third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, came Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, unto Jerusalem, and he besieged it. The Lord gave Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hand with part of the vessels of the house of God. He carried them into the land of Shinar to the house of his God, and he brought the vessels into the treasure house of his God. And the king spake unto Ashpenaz, the master of the eunuchs, to bring out these children, even of the seed royal and of the nobles, youths, wonderful youths, and teach them and train them in the various disciplines of the university.
And the king appointed them their daily meat. Well, the boys refused to eat it. And that could have got the steward into trouble, only they came to an agreement with the steward, and he gave them porridge instead of the meat, and lo and behold, at the end o- of a course of that diet, they were fatter and much better health, more healthy than all the others. And what is more, when it came to their final examinations, they all got first class degrees, and uh, everybody was pleased. So, yes, that's the first story. And you notice that the verse twenty one, and Daniel continued even to the first year of King Cyrus. Ha.
And the little chronological remark is signing off story number one. This happened when Daniel and Co. were students. Uh, they made their stand. Thank God for that, for it, uh, proved a backbone for them for the rest of their lives. Thing to be remembered, isn't it? At school, at university, or getting called up into the army, you want to take your stand at once. It'll cost you a lot. You'll never forget it for the rest of your lives. A lot of Daniel's eminence and his firm stand for God in the high echelons of the civil service of his imp- imperial majesty. A lot of the backbone was built into him when he was a student in college, and he first dared to stand over such a humble matter of his daily food.
Oh, I sorry, I o- I said I wouldn't be preaching, and I won't. Well, not anymore before coffee, anyway. So agree with me, story one. It starts with vessels, those vessels of gold. Daniel, eat. No. How will that do? Chapter two is, uh, the story of Nebuchadnezzar's dream image, how he dreamt it, and then in the morning demanded his servants that they should tell him first what the dream was.
He was checking them out, you know, whether they did have supernatural knowledge. Uh, they would tell him what the dream was and then give the interpretation. The rest of the wise men said it couldn't be done. Daniel did it. This is the story of Neb's dream image. I submit it's easy enough to see that that comes to its climax when Nebuchadnezzar is vastly impressed of a truth, your God is the God of gods, and the king made Daniel great.
Daniel used his influence to get jobs for his companions. That's a climax to that story, successful ending, yes? One story, that's one whole good. Three. Neb's golden image. And that's a self-contained story, isn't it? Beautifully and dramatically written, of course. The build up to it and the magnificence and all the satraps there, the orchestra in place, and then the tremendous suspense.
Will the young men bow down or won't they bow down? They refuse to bow down. They are brought before the king. Will they yield? Will they give in under pressure? Ha, but they defy his majesty, and his majesty gets hopping mad, and his mustache goes up and down, and he goes red in the face, and he commands the furnace to be heated seven times hot, and they're thrown in. Cool, marvelous, marvelous stuff, isn't it? And then... came one like the son of the gods. And the men weren't saved from the fire, were they? They were saved in it, whereby hangs a long tale.
But you see, then Nebuchadnezzar saw it and was mightily moved and commanded they be brought out. And once more we come to a climax, yes? Our truth is he's the God of gods. So we needn't stop, uh, stop about that. That's one, uh, complete thought flow, yes? That's one complete story. For king... um, like a tree cut down, restored. And likewise, it is easy to see as one whole story, from its beginning to its eventual climax, Nebuchadnezzar's restoration.
And you can't help noticing that, um, in this story, and in this story, and in this story, there's a similarity in the endings, is there not? For in each of them, the monarch is impressed and expresses his, his, his, uh, uh, the effect of these things upon him and comes in his dim, perhaps pagan way to recognize the reality and the truth of the God of Israel. The stories have something in common, don't they, even as narrative.
Yeah. Then there is five, uh And this is about a king. Ah. And he's cut down. Full stop. For whereas this king in four was warned by God, refused the warning, was cut down but repented. This fellow, having the warning of Nebuchadnezzar in front of him and rehearsed in his ears many times, and deliberately rejected it.
When he was cut down, there was no restoration. Yes? Well, we know the stories. You've doubtless preached them yourselves. Um, uh, that's five then. We can begin to see, like mountains coming out of the mist, we can begin to see that these two stories, four and five. are not unconnected, are they? They are separate stories, and yet they're connected. Daniel in this one reminds the king, Belshazzar, the, uh, the viceroy, whatever he was, it reminds him what he knew about the experience of Nebuchadnezzar.
The stories are connected, even though they're separate stories. Yes. Well, then comes, uh, six. We're merely proceeding with our table of contents. And six is, uh, the story now. Things have changed. And Daniel and Co. are no longer under the Babylonians, are they? They are under the Medo-Persians. The king is no longer a Babylonian as here in six, it's Darius the Persian. Well, that's a significant shift if we're taking notice of the chronology of the business.
That's a significant shift. In the, uh, book, uh, here, Daniel is under Darius. Daniel persists in prayer to God, that is, I mean. The command was that he should abstain from praying to any other god than to Darius. And Daniel refuses the king's edict. He does not pray to Darius, but persists in praying to the true God of heaven.
Yes? That's a story in itself, how he was then promoted to great honor indeed. So he prospers in the reign of Darius and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian. Thus does chapter six end. Seven is the vision of the four beasts. And some of men. That obviously stands by itself. And eight is a quite separate vision, self-contained, of course, and it's about two beasts.
Beast. Nine, likewise self-contained, is the story of Go- of Daniel's great prayer about Jerusalem. How it had been cut down. And when would it be rebuilt? Finally, in the book, I suggest to you that chapters ten, eleven, and twelve are all one.
Not three chapters, but three parts of one whole. Why do I say that? Well, because the vision is dated to the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia. The vision is then described how Daniel saw this man above the river. And the prophecies were given to him, communicated by the man above the river through the various angelic servants that were around him. And the communication is given you in eleven and on into twelve. And in twelve you're still with the same vision.
I do see verse six. one said to the man clothed in linen, which was above the waters of the river, how long shall it be to the end of these wonders? So, following thought flow, just for the moment, I'm going to put man above river, Meaning the chapters, the vision given us in ten, eleven, and twelve.
And you say we've been an hour at this stuff, and we haven't got very far yet, learned nothing at all whatsoever, what we didn't know even before we came. You'll say, who paid that chap to come here and tell us what we already knew at such infantile level? Never mind. Um, we- we've done our duty, haven't we? We've made a table of contents, and particularly in the, that last three, we said, yes, thought flow demands that those last three chapters be taken as one thing. It's all one and the same vision. Hmm. We haven't done much, but we deserve a cup of coffee, surely.
And then we can begin to build upon our observations so far. So let's break off and have a cup of
