Kingdom Down: A Study in DanielSample

Possibly the Most Amazing Prophetic Chapter in the Bible

Enjoy learning about the animals in the last chapter? Don’t worry, there are more in chapter 8.

This time, there’s a goat and a ram that appear in Daniel’s vision. He has this vision while he’s in Babylon, but he sees Susa, which would become the capital of Persia a few hundred miles away. In Susa, he sees a ram. According to the vision, Babylon, the most powerful nation in the history of the world, would suddenly see an empire with two horns, or two kings and kingdoms coming together. Historically, this is the Medo-Persian Empire. The reason why one is longer than the other is because the Persian Empire grew bigger and stronger, so that it then absorbed the Mede Empire. God cares about these empires because their rising and falling would affect His people, the Israelites, and ultimately allow them to go home to Israel and for Jesus to be born there.

Daniel receives this revelation from God, but he doesn't fully understand it, because it needs to be interpreted. Even Daniel, who had interpreted many dreams for earthly kings, doesn’t quite get this one. Don't feel bad if you sometimes don’t understand what you read in the Bible. God spoke to Daniel, and Daniel said, "I don't get it." God sent him a Bible teacher, named Gabriel, one of the two named angels in the Bible. For us, God sends the Holy Spirit to help us interpret His Word, which is an amazing perk of being a believer in Jesus Christ.

Next in the vision, something that looks like a man shows up. This is probably Jesus appearing as a man in a form that we call pre-incarnate, or before he was born into human history.

Last is a goat, but this isn’t your typical goat, and it represents the king of Greece. When Greece was established, the people met with a supernatural seer, and they were told this vision: find a goat, follow the goat, and where the goat lays down, establish a city there. They followed the goat, and eventually the goat laid down and they named that city Agia, the goat city. This happens 200 years after the prophecy in this chapter.

Alexander the Great led Greece to become a great empire, and according to the historian Josephus, he had a dream or a vision that a man that he did not know appeared to him wearing purple, which was the color of royalty. This man told him, "It is time for you to amass your army, to march against Persia, the time of fulfilling your father's longing, and walking in your destiny has come." He didn't know who this was, or where this came from, but he assumed it was divine revelation. He eventually conquered the nation of Israel. At the beginning of Daniel, this is the same thing that the Babylonians did. They destroyed the worship of God, and enslaved the people of God. Fearing that history was repeating itself, the high priest decided to welcome Alexander the Great, and to honor him respectfully. He told the worshipers to put on white, the color of worship, that we use for our high feasts and holidays, to show that ultimately God forgives our sin and makes us clean and pure in His sight. All of this is foreshadowing the forthcoming of Jesus, the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. The high priest went to dress himself and chose to wear purple. The high priest, wearing purple, goes out with the worshipers wearing white. Here comes the mighty king Alexander, the conqueror. Seeing them, he stops and is stunned, and says, "You are the man I saw, in my dream. It was your face, and your voice, and you were wearing purple."

Alexander the Great then joined the high priest, in offering a sacrifice in worship to the God of the Bible, the Lord Jesus Christ. We don't know if he converted, or just honored God. But he now had a sense of divine destiny. As a result of all of this, Alexander didn’t outlaw Judaism, so God’s people continued to flourish.

All of this is leading up to the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire was the largest most powerful empire in the history of the world. That's where Jesus came. It had a road system and a common language, so Jesus Christ came in the fullness of time, in the fulfillment of prophecy, so that He could arrive at the temple and news of His resurrection could go out in one language, on the road system that the Romans built to expand their empire. God is in the details. God will even cause a nation to pave a highway, if people will walk on it to tell others about His Son.

Lastly comes the little horn. This is the same demonic, satanic, evil imagery as Daniel 7. The moral of the story is that Satan wants to start little. Just a little sin, just a little compromise, just a little white lie, just a little secret. He starts small and he ends big, and it's all about a war.

When you hear the language of stars in the Bible, it often refers to the unseen realm, to angels and other divine beings. Here, the antichrist isn’t just harming God’s people, he’s also fighting the heavenly host, or the stars. The Jewish people eventually started a festival called Hanukkah, the festival of lights, to indicate that the lights are back on, and that Jesus, the Light of the World, was welcome there.

How is your mind? Blown? What stands out to you in this chapter and how does it validate your trust in the Bible?