page l 1 l 2 l 3 l 4 l


SEGMENT 1 DANIEL 2
THE ROCK OF AGES
____________________
page 3

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:

1. Dramatic stories of faith
2. Visions revealing God’s plans
3. 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.

page l 1 l 2 l 3 l 4 l