Daniel and his friends were taken to Babylon in 597 B.C. They were probably in their teens or early twenties and were chosen for the opportunity to serve in Nebuchadnezzar’s administration because they were members of the royal family or other prominent families in Jerusalem.
- Outline
- 1A. Daniel’s career. Chapters 1-6
- 2A. Daniel’s visions. Chapters 7-12
Key verse: “During the reigns of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed or conquered. It will crush all the kingdoms into nothing, and it will stand forever.” Daniel 2:44 NLT.
Daniel has become a book of various interpretations in the church. The first question involves Nebuchadnezzar’s first dream. It was a dream that greatly disturbed him, but it appears that when he woke up, he could not remember what the dream was about. To save embarrassment, he put the responsibility on his advisors and got angry when they could not come up with an interpretation. Enter Daniel to whom God had explained the dream and its interpretation. The question is what is the rock “cut from the mountain, but not by human hands” that crushes the statue and becomes a great mountain that covers the whole earth? A generally accepted interpretation is that this is the Kingdom of
God that Jesus preached throughout His ministry. It took several centuries for the church to grow and cover the earth, but eventually internal strife and corruption interfered with its influence.
The second question revolves around the 70 th week in Daniel 9 (each week represented a 7-year period). The time begins when Nehemiah appears before King Artaxerxes during the 20 th year of his reign (445 B.C.). Artaxerxes gave Nehemiah a directive to rebuild Jerusalem as a walled city. Daniel 9:24-27 tells us that from 445 B.C. until the Messiah was crucified would be approximately 483 years. History tells us that Pilot was removed as governor of Judah in 37 A.D. so that is most likely the year
Christ was crucified. The question then becomes what happened to the last set of seven years? If we read through this chapter and look for historical context, we will find it correlates perfectly with the years 66-73 A.D.
Josephus, the Jewish historian who wrote about this period, records how radicals were trying to overthrow the Roman occupation of Judea. To try to solve the problem, the Romans made attempts at a treaty with the Jews in 66 A.D. All this was to no avail and resulted in a buildup of troops and the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 A.D. The was ended in 73 A.D. with the suicide of all the Jews in Masada, the last Jewish stronghold. This was the final phase in the transfer of the mission of the
Jewish state to the church.
Where is the controversy? Many Christians ignore the historical data and interpret the last
seven years as a period of “great tribulation” that will happen just before Christ returns and point to Revelation 4-19. These Christians still refer to the Jewish people as “God’s chosen people” because all the promises God made to the Jews were never fulfilled. They refuse to recognize that many of the promises made to the Jews were conditional and the unconditional promises were fulfilled in Jesus Christ as Paul explains in depth in Galatians 3.
So, who are the Jews today and how do they fit into God’s plan? Paul tells they are no different than the Gentiles (everyone else). They are people whom God loves, for whom Jesus died, and whom God does not want to perish but have eternal life. 2 Peter 3:9.