JESUS IN DANIEL - Influencing Our World
Jesus is revealed in Daniel as the 4th man in the fiery furnace who can rescue us from or in the fire!
Babylon invaded disobedient Israel in the 6th century and things were very bad. Daniel had been taken to the cultural center of their empire, the city of Babylon. The religious culture was polytheistic and he had lots of opportunity to abandon his values but he stood firm in his faith.
Daniel 11:32 “…but the people who know their God shall be strong, and carry out great exploits.” NKJV
The visions are difficult to understand, written as they are in deliberately cryptic style. They are very apocalyptic in nature.
Dan 9:24 “The Lord has commanded 490 years…It will be 49 years plus 434 years from the time the command is given to rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One comes!... (TLB)
49 + 434 = 483 years from the time the command is given to rebuild Jerusalem until Anointed One comes. Calculate this using the Jewish Sacred = 173,880 days.
Ezra 7 tells the story of when the commandment was given to rebuild Jerusalem on March 14th, 445 B.C.
173,880 days later = Palm Sunday, April 6th 32 A.D. Jesus rode into Jerusalem on donkey - Matthew 21:7-10.
Jesus isn’t knocking on the door of a political party. Getting Jesus into the church is FAR MORE IMPORTANT than your candidate getting into the whitehouse.
In the same way we can't wait for the government to feed the poor we can’t wait for a president to save America.
God's plan to redeem America is Jesus working through surrendered and unified church!
Political extremism promotes division and this violates nature of God’s love for mankind.
You know you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out God hates all same people you do.
When it comes to politics we rarely have all the facts but argue dogmatically like we have all the answers! Even if we are short on information we are never short on opinions. We hurl Bible verses at people oversimplifying deeply complicated situations.
Abraham Lincoln is known for his warning against self-righteousness and his plea for “malice towards none and charity for all…” He cautioned Americans against both demonizing the South & glorifying the victorious North.
Unity isn’t always agreement. We can have distinction without division.
If you’re so easily sifted that the enemy can get you to demonize people because of political viewpoints you’re naïve and off point Scripturally.
WWDanielD – Keep your faith healthy and strong, learn the language, understand the culture, serve people within your reach, carry such a spirit of excellence that even secular officials invite your influence.
Let your love be louder than your agenda! Embrace the transforming love of Christ not destructive power of religion.
Truth without love is brutal.
Love without truth is reckless.
People may think UR passing judgment when U stand up for what you believe is right. UR job is to LOVE them not to change them. Keep standing Keep LOVING!
GP4RL: – Keep your faith healthy and strong, learn the language, understand the culture, serve people within your reach, carry such a spirit of excellence that even secular officials invite your influence.
GOING DEEPER:
These next few paragraphs are the introduction to Daniel as written in The Message Bible:
“Images generated by the book of Daniel have been percolating through the daily experiences of the people of God for well over two thousand years now, producing a richly aromatic brew stimulating God's people to obey and trust their sovereign God.
Obedience to God in the pressures and stresses of day-by-day living and trust in God's ways in the large sweep of history are always at risk, but especially in times of suffering and persecutions. Obedience to God is difficult when we are bullied into compliance to the God-ignoring culture out of sheer survival. Trust in God is likewise at risk of being abandoned in favor of the glamorous seductions of might and size.
Daniel was written out of just such times. There was little or no observable evidence in the circumstances to commend against-the-stream obedience or overarching trust. But Daniel's stories and visions have supplied what the society did not - could not - give. Century after century, Daniel has shot adrenaline into the veins of God-obedience and put backbone into God-trust.
Daniel is composed, in approximately equal parts, of stories and visions - six stories (chapters 1-6) and four visions (chapters 7-12). The stories tell of souls living faithfully in obedience to God in a time of adversity. The visions are wide-screen renditions of God's sovereignty worked out among nations who couldn't care less about him. Six soul stories; four sovereignty visions.
The six soul-survival stories nourish a commitment to integrity and perseverance right now. Very few of us live in settings congenial to God-loyalty and among people who affirm a costly discipleship. Hardly a day goes by that we do not have to choose between compliance to what is expedient and loyalty to our Lord. The stories keep us alert to what is at stake day by day, hour by hour.
The four visions of God's history-saving ways nourish hope in God during times when world events seem to put God in eclipse. The visions are difficult to understand, written as they are in deliberately cryptic style (apocalyptic). From time to time they have been subjected to intense study and explanation. But for a first reading, perhaps it is better simply to let the strange symbolic figures give witness to the large historical truth that eclipses the daily accumulation of historical facts reported by our news media, namely, that God is sovereign. In the course of all the noise and shuffling, strutting and posing, of arrogant rulers and nations that we call history, with the consequent troubles to us all, God is serenely sovereign; we can trust him to bring all things and people under his rule.
There are always some of us who want to concentrate on the soul, and others of us who want to deal with the big issues of history. Daniel is one of our primary documents for keeping it all together - the personal and the political, the present and the future, the soul and society.”
PROPHECY OF JESUS BEING REVEALED AS THE MESSIAH:
The Bible gives us amazing prophecies about Jesus first coming that were all fulfilled in Christ. Palm Sunday is the week before Easter commemorating Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
Zech 9:9 Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. (NIV)
– Custom for a king to be received as he was riding on a donkey expressing humility and relation to the least members of society.
To whom is this referring? – If you’re a Christian you’d say that is references Jesus Christ and His grand entrance into Jerusalem on a donkey on Palm Sunday in 32 A.D.
Understand that the original language is Hebrew. Interestingly if you take the original text and count every 22 letters you actually find a name encoded by the hand of God….the name….Yeshua – Hebrew for Jesus!
Dan 9:24-25 "The Lord has commanded 490 years of further punishment upon Jerusalem and your people. Then at last they will learn to stay away from sin, and their guilt will be cleansed; then the kingdom of everlasting righteousness will begin, and the Most Holy Place (in the Temple) will be rededicated, as the prophets have declared. 25 Now listen! It will be 49 years plus 434 years from the time the command is given to rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One comes! Jerusalem's streets and walls will be rebuilt despite the perilous times. (TLB)
Notice that Daniel specifically states that it will be 49 years + 434 years = HOW MANY YEARS? 483 years from the time the command is given to rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One comes. Who is the anointed one? This references the Messiah. Who is the Messiah? This is where this prophetic scripture gets very specific and leaves little room for discussion.
The sacred Year known to the Jews as 360 day year based on the account of Noah and the five months (150 days) of water prevailing upon the earth. Gen chapters 7 & 8. Daniel stated it would be 483 years. If you do the math you’ll find that 483 years of 360 day years will total HOW MUCH? GIVE BOOK HERE = 173,880 days. According to this prophesy in Daniel 9:24 there would be a command to rebuild the temple and this command would set a prophetic alarm clock into motion that would introduce the Messiah 173,880 days after the command was given.
Ezra 7 tells the story of when this commandment came forth to restore and to build Jerusalam.
Ezra 7:9 For on the first of the first month he began to go up from Babylon; and on the first of the fifth month he came to Jerusalem, because the good hand of his God {was} upon him.
Ezra 7:12-13 "Artaxerxes, king of kings, to Ezra the priest, the scribe of the law of the God of heaven, perfect {peace.} And now
13 I have issued a decree that any of the people of Israel and their priests and the Levites in my kingdom who are willing to go to Jerusalem, may go with you. (NAS)
The first of the fifth month according to the Jewish calendar would be 1st day of the month of Nissan. In our calendar this would be March 14th 445 B.C. If you take March 14th of 445 B.C. and add to that day the 173,880 days you will be able to come up with a very specific date in history – SIGNIFICANT? Remember that this is the date when Daniel prophesied the Messiah would be revealed. If you walk this out on a calendar you will land on a Sunday
Matthew 21:7-10. MARCH 14TH, 445 B.C. + 173,880 DAYS = PALM SUNDAY, APRIL 6TH, 32 A.D. AS JESUS RODE INTO JERUSALEM.
After these 483 years there is a pause in the prophetic clock. This pause is the release of the church age through which we’ve been working ever since this event took place. The clock will start again when the antichrist forms a 7 year treaty of peace with Israel not when the church is raptured.
We are in a parenthesis of time between the 69th & the 70th week of this vision. There is no reference to the church in Daniel’s vision. Reading the church into this vision will do nothing but confuse you.
The 70th week starts when the Palestinians and Israelies sign peace treaty = the prophetic clock then begins to tick for seven years. As soon as this Palestinian state is established weapons will begin flowing in and the U.S. will assure us that it will not happen this way but the U.N. will be in charge to sheriff the situation.
Dan 9:27 This king will make a seven-year treaty with the people, but after half that time, he will break his pledge and stop the Jews from all their sacrifices and their offerings; then, as a climax to all his terrible deeds, the Enemy shall utterly defile the sanctuary of God. But in God's time and plan, his judgment will be poured out upon this Evil One." (TLB)