In our pondering of chapter six, keeping an eternal perspective has been the theme.
The text today challenges my perspective. It is so different. Let’s get our bearings.
We will need to get used to this type or genre of writing. The remainder of the book of Daniel, chapters seven through twelve, consists of four visions, two in the Babylonian period and two in the Medo-Persian.
In the first six chapters we looked at God working through the lives of people in events, that while highly dramatic, were still nonetheless somewhat relatable.
Now we are in the world of dreams and visions.
The first two take place during the reign of Belshazzar and therefore have taken place before the events of chapter six. Daniel gets this vision 10 years before that fateful night of the handwriting on the wall.
The four beasts of chapter seven certainly seem quite similar to the giant man in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of chapter two. Here is a ten-page summary that puts these dream’s side-by-side and offers other outlines.
For our purposes, it has been noted that there are four natural divisions in the chapter. They revolve around Daniel’s visions:
1. Verse 2, “I saw in my vision by night”, three of the beasts revealed.
2. Verse 7, “I saw in the night visions”, the fourth beast, its judgment and destruction.
3. Verse 13, “I saw in the night visions”, the coming of the Son of Man and the saints receiving the kingdom.
4. Verse 15, “…the visions of my head troubled me…”, the explanation.
Much has been written about the beasts and how they are symbolic of four empires.
Each successive beast becomes increasingly ruthless. The first had a heart. The last possesses the ability to see and speak yet is heartless.
The fourth beast is especially arrogant. As heaven is opened before Daniel’s eyes, as millions of people worship the Ancient of Days—the fourth beast bows not, and continues to speak (v.11), even as it is being destroyed.
Perhaps your head is spinning. The visual detail is stunning. There are so many avenues to pursue. Who exactly are these beasts, when did, or will, this all happen, and more?
However, there is a down-to-earth dimension to these visions that permeates all of our lives that I want to focus on. John Lennox calls it out.
It is a reality. Evil exists in the world, especially in the hands of kings and rulers.
To put a point on it: God does not always deliver us from evil.
In Daniel’s story, and that of his friends, up to this point, God has delivered. Here now is Daniel watching the saints suffer (see 7:21).
Daniel is troubled. The human condition is one that longs for love—and justice.
God knows. He knows this is what we long for. Yet He allows evil to prosper for a period for His greater purpose. Yet please note:
1. There is to be a judgment
2. The Son of Man will come
3. The saints will receive the kingdom
This is hugely important. I expect you, like me, live in a part of the world where we expect law and order, justice, and the like. Most people don’t. Most Christians don’t live in such a world. Most of them cry out for God’s judgment against those who persecute them.
We don’t hear much preaching about judgment. We often speak of God’s love. Yet for God to really love us, won’t he judge those who rail against those whom love Him? To not do so would make God’s love merely “cheap talk”.
God’s love is anything but cheap talk. The Son of Man will come, indeed has come!
The challenge for us is time. We live within God’s eternal plan, as God delivers all of the world. Which means, for a time, we will endure hardship.
Daniel today reminds us what the Bible has been telling us all along: history is not spinning in a non-ending spiral. History has an endpoint, an objective. That God will come to put His world right, judgment will happen, and the saints will receive the kingdom.
It can be hard, in the midst of suffering, to keep this eternal perspective.
How do you process the injustice in the world, and in your own life?