SEGMENT 1
DANIEL 2
THE ROCK OF
AGES
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Faulty Interpretations
until the Time of the End
The book of Daniel
contains 533 sentences. While the
book is very short, it contains
volumes of information. Daniel was
written about twenty-six centuries
ago, but unlike the other 65 books in
the Bible, Daniel was sealed up
“until the time of the
end.” The angel, Gabriel, said
to Daniel, “… Go your
way, Daniel, because the words are
closed up and sealed until the time
of the end.” (Daniel 12:9)
What does “closed up and sealed
until the time of the end” mean?
It means that God placed certain
information in the book of Daniel
that remains “top secret”
until the time of the end arrives.
Has the time of the end arrived? On
the basis of fulfilled prophecy and
an understanding of God’s
timing, I am convinced “the time
of the end” has arrived. If this
true, the time has come for secrets
in Daniel to be unveiled.
The secret information
God coded into Daniel 2,600 years ago
is something like the “Rosetta
Stone.” The Rosetta Stone was
accidentally unearthed in 1799 near
Rosetta, Egypt, by French soldiers.
The marvelous thing about this buried
rock is that it bears a message
written during the second century
B.C. in two forms of Egyptian script
– demotic and hieroglyphics.
When archeologists examined the rock,
they were thrilled because they were
able to solve a very perplexing
mystery. Prior to 1799, archeologists
could not read the clay tablets
bearing Egyptian hieroglyphics
because no one could decipher the
language. When the Rosetta Stone was
discovered and translated, the
demotic inscriptions enabled Thomas
Young (1773-1829(and J.F. Champollion
(1790-1832) to decipher the
hieroglyphics of ancient Egyptians.
In a similar way, I
believe God embedded four secrets in
the book of Daniel 2,600 years ago.
By God’s grace, I believe I have
stumbled into an understanding of the
four secrets that were sealed up in
the book of Daniel. (Of course, the
passage of time will prove or
disapprove the validity of my claim.)
These four secrets shatter centuries
of prophetic exposition, because all
interpretations of Daniel are
necessarily faulty and incomplete
until the book of Daniel is unsealed.
In other words, certain truths in
the book of Daniel were deliberately
reserved for the generation that
would live “at the time of the
end.”
Three Levels of
Information
As a person might
expect, God buried His secrets in the
book of Daniel very well. However,
when God wants something known, He
enables ordinary men and women to
discover extraordinary things He has
hidden. Through the ages, we find
this discovery process at work: On
or about the time of fulfillment,
elements of prophecy are understood. For
example, when it came time to
understand the timing of
Christ’s birth, the wise men
from the East figured it out.
(Matthew 2:2) The apostle Paul also
noticed this phenomenon. Consider his
words: “Surely you have heard
about the administration of
God’s grace that it was given to
me for you, that is, the mystery made
known to me by revelation, as I have
already written briefly. In reading
this, then, you will be able to
understand my insight into the
mystery of Christ, which was not made
known to men in other generations as
it has now been revealed by the
Spirit to God’s holy apostles
and prophets. This mystery is that
through the gospel the Gentiles are
heirs together with Israel, members
together of one body, and sharers
together in the promise in Christ
Jesus.” (Ephesians 3:2-6)
What did God hide in
the book of Daniel? The answer to
this question requires a little
explanation. The book of Daniel
offers three levels of knowledge.
They are:
- Dramatic
stories of faith
- Visions
revealing God’s plans
- Apocalyptic
architecture
The first (and
easiest) level of knowledge in Daniel
contains dramatic stories of faith in
God. These stories of faith and
loyalty to God were recorded for the
benefit of all generations. However,
Earth’s final generation will
benefit the most from these stories
of courage since the fiery trials in
the fist chapters of the book of
Daniel are mini-parallels of coming
events. For example, in Daniel 3 we
read that Shadrach, Meshach and
Abednego facing the mandatory worship
of a golden image which the king
of Babylon constructed. In
Revelation 13:15, we read about the
inhabitants of the world facing the
mandatory worship of an image of
which the king of modern Babylon will
construct. These parallels and their
outcomes were put in the book of
Daniel for our encouragement. (Note:
I hope you will read in the Bible
study room the last ten lessons about
Bible Stories With End Time
Parallels, which reveal end-time
issues through the lives of certain
Bible characters.)
The second (and more
difficult) level of knowledge in
Daniel concerns the meaning of the
visions in the book of Daniel. The
visions God gave to King
Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel faithfully
predict the passage of time and the
fulfillment of all that God
predestined to occur. Even more,
these visions reveal what God planned
to do long before He told
Nebuchadnezzar or Daniel of His
plans. Because students of prophecy
have understood something of
Daniel’s visions for hundreds of
years, we cannot say the visions were
entirely sealed up until “the
time of the end.” However,
something in the book of Daniel was
sealed up, and that something
uniquely applies to the people who
live at the end of the world. What is
it?
The Book Unsealed
The third (and
deepest) level of knowledge found in
Daniel is the architecture of
apocalyptic prophecy. The prophecies
in Daniel conform to a structure or
pattern that controls their meaning.
The exciting thing about this
structure is that it is also present
in Revelation! In other words, when
you understand how the architecture
of Daniel behaves, you will
understand the architecture in
Revelation because it is the same
architecture! This architecture
produces four rules (methods of
interpretation) that govern the
interpretation of Daniel and
Revelation These four rules are like
combinations to a safe. When these
four rules are applied to the
interpretation pf the prophecies in
Daniel as well as Revelation, a
marvelous result occurs. The
prophecies make perfect sense just
as they read! This point is
extremely important. Portions of
Daniel and Revelation have been a
mystery for 2,600 years and then
suddenly, the words make sense just
as they read! What causes
this too occur? When the architecture
of Daniel is understood, the contents
of Daniel can be understood.
When the four rules
found in Daniel are applied to each
line of prophecy in Daniel and
Revelation, a comprehensive story
unfolds that is completely harmonious
with everything the Bible has to say
about the ways of God. Furthermore,
all of the details God gave in the
prophecies of Daniel and Revelation
are in perfect harmony and synchrony
with each other. The four rules force
all of the prophecies in Daniel and
Revelation into a chronological
matrix of layers that are orderly in
nature. To visualize this matrix,
think of the seventeen* prophecies in
Daniel and Revelation as a wedding
cake of seventeen layers! The larger
pieces are at the bottom of the stack
and the smaller pieces are on top.
The “toothpicks” that hold
the seventeen layers together are
events that unite and align the
seventeen layers in Daniel and
Revelation into one grand story. The
toothpicks are necessary because two
or more layers can describe the same
prophetic event! Because the same
event is described in two different
ways – in two different layers
– a precise alignment of the
prophecies is not only possible, but
also essential to understanding the
big picture. This feature will be
examined in Segment III.
* For
fifteen years, I have maintained
there are eighteen apocalyptic
prophecies in Daniel and Revelation.
However, I have recently discovered
that my division of Daniel 10-12 into
two prophecies was unnecessary.
Because Daniel 10-12 is one prophecy
and not two prophecies, the total
number of apocalyptic prophecies in
Daniel and Revelation is seventeen
– five in Daniel and twelve in
Revelation.
The Value and
Importance of Rules
A beginning student of
Bible prophecy may not appreciate the
necessity of a valid set of rules of
interpretation (or hermeneutics) at
first, so hopefully the following
parallel will help you understand why
rules of interpretation are essential
to prophetic study: Scientists
achieve advances in the study of
genetics at the cellular level. By
studying various cells within the
human body, they have been able to
determine how certain cells operate.
In more and more
cases, they have been able to predict
the behavior of cells under
controlled circumstances, because
they now know some of the secrets of
protein and the DNA structure.
Scientists are constantly testing for
“consistent behavior”
within their studies of cells. Once
the behavior of a specific cell is
understood, cell behavior can be
changed or influenced through drugs
compounded to produce the desired
results. Pharmaceutical companies
spend billions of dollars on this
type of painstaking research because
they know that a genuine cure for
most diseases must occur at the
cellular level.
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