Kingdom Down: A Study in DanielSample

King Jesus is Coming on the Clouds!

If you’re enjoying Daniel so far, buckle up your seatbelt and get ready for it to become a bit more confusing. The first 6 chapters are largely narrative in style with some prophecies, but 7-12 are mostly prophecies, and some are pretty complex. My goal is not to make you understand every small detail, but to see Daniel’s character and God’s faithfulness in the midst of it all. Ready?

Ok, by way of preface, let me just tell you that there are two basic ways to view human history. One is that the future is open, uncertain, the possibilities are that anything could happen, everything hangs in a precarious balance. If you believe that you will live a life of anxiety, you will be stressed and depressed. On the other hand, if you think that the future is controlled by God, that it is certain, that He is in charge, that He is working all things for His glory and your good and that He has a plan for history, you will sleep better. You will live differently with less anxiety. My goal is to prove, from the perfect prophetic word of God, that God knows and rules the future.

God uses a lot of creative imagery starting in this chapter, so you're going to need to use your imagination. Starting in Daniel 7, we shift between the seen and the unseen realms. This is crucial. The Bible is a supernatural book and those who do not believe in the supernatural cannot fully understand Scripture. There is a physical world - a realm that we see, and there is a spiritual world - a realm which we do not see. When Satan and demons declared war on God, they were thrown down to the earth. They have continued their war and they're seeking to recruit us to join their side, to be antichrist, to oppose Jesus and/or replace him as the highest authority, our greatest treasure and the person that we love most dearly.

Daniel 7 speaks of four beasts, which are four successive kingdoms, predicting, prophesying, and anticipating human history. This is much like Daniel 2 where there was this image of this great warrior King and it showed four different nation states that would rise and fall, one overtaking the other and expanding the borders and empires. In this chapter, he's going to look at these same four kingdoms in the same order with different imagery.

We still use animals as symbols and signs for groups of people and movements, like the donkey and the elephant that you’re probably familiar with in American politics. God will use imagery of dangerous untamed deadly beasts to refer to demons because they are untamed dangerous beasts in the unseen realm, as He does here.

The first beast, a winged lion, represents Babylon, because that was their symbol. A gate to the city has even been excavated with a winged lion guarding it at the threshold. Then the bear represents the Medo-Persian empire. The reason that it's a lumpy bear, one side bigger than the other, was because the Medo-Persian empire was two empires together, but the Persian empire was much bigger and stronger than the Mede empire. And eventually the Persian empire overtook the Mede empire. The third is a leopard with wings. Now leopards are super quick animals, and this is a prophecy about the Greek empire led by Alexander the Great, who conquered the entire known world in just a few years. The fourth empire, I believe, is the Roman empire. It was the largest and longest-standing empire in the history of the world. The little horn then represents the counterfeit of Jesus, and what it is telling us here is that Satan is always trying to do two things, oppose all that is for Jesus and replace Jesus. This still happens.

All of this points to the coming of Jesus under the rule of the Roman empire. That’s the whole point these prophecies are driving at. When in doubt while studying your Bible, try to connect it to Jesus.

The good news is that there's more than just bad news. The God who rules over the world is coming to rule in the world. God is always at work in human history. God is always at work to love and seek and save and deliver his people. And this angelic army described in this chapter is available for the people of God to enjoy, experiencing the presence and power of God. This is a reality that you need to see by faith for now, but it will get worse before it gets better.

Here we see Jesus, the Ancient of Days and Son of Man, come down from Heaven, while the beasts come up from the pit. You either live Heaven Down or Hell Up. God's Kingdom comes down. His Kingdom come, His will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Satan's counterfeit kingdom comes up from the pit. These four great beasts are four great kings who shall arise out of the earth, but ultimately any counterfeit of Jesus will be defeated once and for all, so that we can have salvation and eternal life with Him, amen.

How can you bring the Kingdom down into your life?