Advent 2018

This year for Advent (December 2-24) I decided to look at Christ in Daniel. For a while I was thinking about The Second Advent in Matthew 24-25, which I may do later, but I settled on Christ in Daniel.

Today, in addition to announcing my planned series Christ in Daniel, I want to take a brief look at Daniel, his book, and give my planned schedule of posts.

Daniel

Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, first attacked Jerusalem in 607-605. When he took the city he took captives back to Babylon. Daniel, just a youth, was one of those captives. His name means God is my judge (dan= judge; i=my; el=God). He was a righteous young man who stood firm in righteousness (ch 1) and was blessed by God. He and his friends were granted great favor with the Babylonians and rose in stature and to positions of authority. Daniel especially rose to a position of great authority in Babylon.

Daniel was clearly anointed by the Spirit – with favor, wisdom, knowledge; he interpreted dreams and had dreams/visions himself, in which he saw the period of gentile domination over Israel; he also saw the Messiah, who would bring the promised and hoped for kingdom of God!

Book of Daniel

Daniel 1:1-2:4a is written in Hebrew. At 2:4b the language changes to Aramaic, and this is retained till the close of the seventh chapter. At 8:1 it returns to Hebrew and continues to the end of the book. How cool is this? The parts that apply to the gentiles is in the language of the gentiles. Was this an accident? I think not. Of course, all my quotations of Daniel will be in English!

As we will see, Daniel, through interpretation of the dreams of others and his own visions, speaks of the times of the gentiles and of Messiah who will bring the kingdom of God to the nations. Despite Daniel’s prophetic dreams and visions the Jews do not consider him to be a prophet. They list his book among the “Ketuvim, the Writings, and not the Neviim, Prophets.”† Our Bibles place him among the prophets, putting him between the Major Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel) and the Scroll of the Twelve (Hosea et al). In the Old Testament of the Greek Orthodox, the Septuagint, The Scroll of the Twelve is listed first, then follows the Major Prophets. Daniel still follows Ezekiel and is the next to last book of the Old Testament.

Christ in Daniel

Here is my planned schedule. The main posts are in bold and are planned for Tuesdays. I felt like Chapters 7 & 9 called for two posts, the second one planned for Thursday of that week.

December 04 – Daniel 2 Christ: the stone cut without hands
December 11 – Daniel 7 Christ: the Son of man coming with clouds
December 13 – Daniel 7 Postscript on Daniel 7
December 20 – Daniel 9 The Seventy Weeks
December 22 – Daniel 9 The prayer of Daniel

My prayer is that you will be blessed and your faith strengthened as we look at Christ in Daniel!

† https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1735365/jewish/Why-Isnt-the-Book-of-Daniel-Part-of-the-Prophets.htm

You may want to read the whole book!