The text used in this study is from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®) © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.                         ** Used by permission.

1. The events recorded in The Book of Daniel took place from about 605 to 530 BC and in our English translations it is given to us in twelve Chapters which can be logically divided into two sections:

Chapters 1 – 6 are an account of what happened to four young men in Babylon named Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, and Daniel and includes King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the great image, the three young men being thrown into a fiery furnace, King Nebuchadnezzar’s humiliation and restoration, and the account of Daniel in the Lion’s Den.

Chapters 7 – 12 are an account of the great prophetic visions God gave Daniel about the future including the four beasts, the Son of man, the Ram and the Goat, the Seventy Weeks, the Kings of the South and the North, and the Time of the End.

2. The Hebrew name “Daniel” means, “GOD is my Judge.”  (Daniel is such a hero to me I named my son after him!)

3. Jesus believed that Daniel was a real person and a real prophet!

Matthew 24:15 “So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand) …”

Mark 13:14 (Same Context) “But when you see the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not to be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.”

4. Since they lived at the same time and their prophecies overlapped, Ezekiel knew that Daniel was a real person and a real prophet!

Ezekiel 14:14 “even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness, declares the Lord GOD.”

Ezekiel 14:20 “even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live, declares the Lord GOD, they would deliver neither son nor daughter. They would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness.”

Ezekiel 28:2-3 “Son of man, say to the prince of Tyre, Thus says the Lord GOD: “Because your heart is proud, and you have said, ‘I am a god, I sit in the seat of the gods, in the heart of the seas,’ yet you are but a man, and no god, though you make your heart like the heart of a god—you are indeed wiser than Daniel; no secret is hidden from you…”

5. Daniel was taken into Babylon in 605BC and lived there at least until 539BC when Cyrus, King of Persia, conquered the Babylonians.

6. Daniel and his three friends, Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael were taken with the first group of exiles apparently because they were of royal descent.

Daniel 1:3-4

(3) “Then the king commanded Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility,

(4) youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding learning, and competent to stand in the king’s palace, and to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans.”

7. It is vitally important to remember that there is only one future! Therefore, Daniel’s vision and John’s vision on Patmos must be the same events.

* Daniel sees the future from the perspective of Israel.

* John sees the future from the perspective of the Church.

8. Since this is true, an accurate understanding of Daniel’s prophetic visions is only possible when understood in the light of John’s prophetic visions in The Book of Revelation!

9. Daniel is the most specific of all the prophets, giving us the time frame in which the prophecies will be fulfilled!

Daniel 9:24-27

(24) “Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. (25) Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time. (26) And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. (27) And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering.

And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.”

10. Daniel is one of four Jews in the Old Testament who became a ruler in a foreign country; the others being Joseph, Moses, and Esther.

Amen!