The Book of Daniel Intro - Chapter 1

Okay, we're studying the book of Daniel and we're going to start off with the meaning of Daniel's name. Dan-el, any name that has el in it, that's one of the primary names of God. It literally means the first part that Dan has to do with judgment. So the literal meaning of Dan's name and Daniel's name is God is my judge or God my judge or God, the God of judgment. So I like the the definition God is my judge.

In the names of God in the Bible there are three primary names of God, El, Yahweh, and Adonai. Now these primary names, El, when you see in your Bible all caps are L-R-D, that's that's Yahweh. When you see capital L, lowercase L-R-D, that's Elohim usually, and that is a compound word from El and the plural of El. In Hebrew, El, I-M is the same as S in English. In other words, when a Hebrew word ends in I-M, that means that it is plural in most every case, whereas in English it either ends in ES or S, usually speaking. So and then Adonai, Adonai will appear as capital L, lowercase O-R-D.

So we have El, Yahweh, and El is going to appear as uppercase G-O-D.

Uppercase G-O-D, El, uppercase L-O-R-D, and lowercase L-O-R-D, Adonai. There are many compound names, and as I said any name ending in I-M is plural. So very often in the scripture you find Elohim, which is a plural noun. Some have coined the phrase it is a uni-plural noun. Now what is God's view of Daniel? We're going to find out that Daniel, and we'll go to the scriptures now in chapter 14 in verse 4. Ezekiel 14 in verse 4, and we will see Ezekiel is the book just before Daniel. So in Ezekiel 14 in verse 4, though these is 14, I said forward, it's Daniel 14 in verse 14. Though these three men Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, they should deliver at that time only their own lives. So they should deliver but their own lives by their righteousness, says the Lord God. And these were among the most righteous men in the Bible. Now continuing with God's view of Daniel, we go to Daniel chapter 6 in verse 3, and this is a wonderful scripture and a wonderful trait that we should all strive for, and we can tell people who have this almost immediately. Sometimes we call them charismatic, and we should strive to be like Daniel in this sense. Then they brought the golden vessels, as that's 5, chapter 6 in verse 3. In chapter 6 verse 3, then Daniel was preferred above the presidents and princes because an excellent spirit was in him, and the king thought to set him over the whole realm. There was an excellent spirit in Daniel that God say of us that we have an excellent spirit. That's something we should all strive for is an excellent spirit. And now in Daniel chapter 10, Daniel chapter 10, and verse 19, another thing that God says, well the angel says it bringing a message from God, in Daniel chapter 10 and verse 19, and said, Oh man greatly beloved. So God through the angel tells Daniel, a man greatly beloved, fear not peace be unto you. Be strong, yes, be strong. Be strong when he had spoken unto him. Having a little trouble with my glasses.

So we see that God had a very high opinion of Daniel to be classified in this. Though Noah, Daniel, be in it, they would save only their own lives through their righteousness.

So God's view of Daniel is one that we should strive for. The authorship of Daniel is in question, the liberal scholars want to place the date of the writing of Daniel in the 160s BC in the time of the time of the Seleucid ruler and Tygus. Tygus polluted the temple and set up an abomination of desolation, offered swine's blood on the altar. And they say well because Tygus did that, Daniel, whomever wrote Daniel was talking about that time. But as we shall see, there are so many other proofs to show that the book of Daniel was really written between, probably between 539 and maybe 538. Most of the commentators say that Daniel died in 539 and that's BC. Now remember in BC you're counting down towards zero and then in AD you're counting up from one, two, three on so on as we count to date. So the authorship of Daniel was really, really question and tradition was, it was the last book canonized in the Old Testament. But Revelation actually was the last book canonized. Now the word canonized is a word that, it means this is the official canon and we put our stamp of approval on it and the stamp of approval actually came not from the churches of God but from scholars and worldly people and other religions. Daniel was probably canonized 168 to 164. Now some say that the Jews began, there was a great discussion among the Jews with regard to canonizing and accepting Daniel into the book at all, into the scrolls, because it prophesied of the Messiah, even the resurrection and the coming of the Messiah. We find the coming of Messiah in chapter seven and we find the resurrection in chapter 12. And so at the Council of Jamina, J-A-M-I-N-A, Jamina, the Jews according to tradition accepted the book of Daniel. But canonization is a different thing. There was a man, a minister from Bricket Wood in England who was the academic dean in the 50s and the early 60s in Bricket Wood named Ernest Martin who wrote quite a treatise on the canonization of the Bible. And all you have to do is go to the web and Google and put in Ernest Martin canonization. And it's a fabulous kind of story. Part of it's true, part of it's probably not true. In fact, when I took systematic theology in 1969 at ambassador, it was a required subject and we had to read and study Ernest Martin's treatise on it was his master's thesis or maybe his doctoral. They called him Dr. Martin of Dr. Martin's thesis. Dr. Martin went on to leave the church. In fact, I had a somewhat of a showdown with him in San Antonio, Texas back when the friends of the Sabbath were viable and going from place to place. It was that interim period just before United began. And he was defending that you should keep your service stations open on the Sabbath in case people had a flat and on and on and goes with regard to him leaving the faith.

So there's controversy with regard to the dating. Once again, the dating is probably 168 to 164 in which it was canonized probably accepted by the Jews in the 90s BC and written by Daniel in somewhere around 539 BC. All of the synoptic gospel writers record the words of Jesus which confirms that he was a prophet. In a few minutes, we're going to talk about the Septuagint translation. Now what we're talking about now, some are rolling your eyeballs and wondering when is it going to start the scriptures. These are very important. These are very important concepts that you should follow up on in the internet. As I said in the opening prayer, there's never been a time in which people had so much access to so much knowledge as we have now. We have free of charge the commentaries all over the world, the Bibles all over the world. And we can we can go anywhere. And any denomination you want to name is there. But of course, we know where and what the truth is.

So in Matthew 24:15, if I had no other proof with regard to the Bible, you see the in the official canonization of the Bible, Daniel is now placed in the in the prob with the prophets, he is placed in the writings. And now the Septuagint a translation of Hebrew and a Greek around 270 AD to 250 or later, AD did include some Matthew 24:15. This is confirmation with regard to Jesus himself confirms that Daniel was the author of the book. In 24:15.

Then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountain, let 16:15. When you therefore shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, whosoever reads, let him take heed. So Jesus confirms two things. One that the writings of Daniel are valid, and that he was a prophet. So the Septuagint version of the Bible does place Daniel with the prophets. And in fact, the Tanakh is what the Jews call the the Old Testament. The Tanakh, the law, the prophets, and the writings. More about that later. So all of this and synoptic gospel writers, that's Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Synoptic means seeing through the same eye. They are very similar in their accounts. So they're called the synoptic gospels, all three of those confirms that what Jesus said that that Daniel was a prophet and his prophecy was valid.

So let us discuss some of the translations of the Bible. Now, back when I took was an ambassador college, we spent a lot of time with translations of the Bible. This was in 69. And it went all the way into 1970. That was 55 years ago, 55, 54 years ago, translations of the Bible and how we came to receive the Bible. The Jews are given the privilege of preserving the Bible.

And we read that in Romans chapter three, the first two verses of Romans chapter three, we'll see that the Jews were given the privilege, and there was an advantage to them. And we did they talk about they are God's chosen people. There. God's aim is to bring all of mankind, all nations into the Israel of God. But he starts with the nation of Israel physically as an example. In Romans chapter three, we'll see that the Jews were given the responsibility of translating the Bible or preserving the scriptures.

What advantage then has the Jews? This is Romans 3:1. What advantage does the Jews or what prophet is there of circumcision? Much in every way, chiefly because, chiefly it means mainly because that under them or given or permitted, the oracles are committed the oracles of God. So the oracles of God were committed to the Jews. Now that word committed in the Greek or literally means placed in sacred trust. And so people, there's no telling the labor that went into preserving the scriptures. To begin with, there were only scrolls there. No, there are no autographs autographs auto means self like your autobiography is what you would write.

It's the biography of yourself. There are no original autobiographies. We don't have what Mark wrote down or Matthew or any or Moses or any of those Bible writers. There are no autographs that there are no original manuscripts or where the scribes that are copied from the original autographs.

So we have the autographs, we have the manuscripts. And eventually these were made into books, or books, books were precious and not readily available to the public. And that's one of the reasons why that they put together in the Bible. You look at Luke chapter four, in verse 17, where Jesus went into the synagogue after he was before, after he was baptized, and before he went back to Nazareth. And he called for them to deliver unto him. This is Luke four and verse 17.

And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written. Isaiah 61. He read part of a verse there and Isaiah 61. And then he gave the book back to the synagogue keeper of the scrolls or the books and he sat down and all eyes were fixed upon him. So even in Jesus day, there was no one book called the Bible. Even to have books, to have a book was a rare, rarety among the peoples of that day. The scrolls had to be organized and made into one book.

And this was a monumental task. This task was monumental. And no certain person is responsible for just think about all the writings of all the books and the various manuscripts, and translations and whatever were made of the scriptures had to be organized and placed together.

And that's what Ernest Martin does in his thesis, in which he goes through that. Now, of course, there are many other sources on the internet to talk about this organization of the scriptures and how it came to be. People like Moses, David, Ezra, played a role in helping gather material. But the scribes were the ones that actually did it. The scribes were not named by name. They were just called the scribes. We sell these scribes way short, because under them were committed the oracles of God.

Much of this work, or by men who organized the scriptures made them more readable or the general public. You see, when Alexander the Great conquered basically that part of the world from India back East, he made Greek the official language of the various nations. And so people could not read Hebrew. So they translated the Bible into Hebrew.

This organization replaced the individual scrolls. There are three broad divisions of the Old Testament. The Tanakh. It's important if you're a Bible, if you're a minister especially, or give sermonists or that kind of thing to know what the Tanakh is spelled T-A-N-A-K, meaning the three divisions of the Old Testament. Tanakh is an acronym for T stands for Torah, the first five books of the Bible, which is the Pentateuch, and then the N for Naveem, which is the prophets, and then the AK for the Ketuvim, which are the writings. Remember the printing press was not invented by Johannes Gutenberg until 1440. 1440 over a thousand years. Jesus referred to this three-fold division in the book of Luke. We're there. So we go to Luke 24, verse 14. Luke 24, and verse 44. I said 14. Luke 24, and verse 44. Luke 44, verse 44. It was about the sixth hour. I must not be reading from the right chapter. That's four years. It's Luke 24, verse 44.

And he said unto them, These are the words which I spoke unto you when I was with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, the Torah, the Pentateuch, the first five books, and of the prophets and of the writings concerning me.

The law of the prophets and the writings. And Daniel was argued whether or not it would be placed with the prophets. And when the final canonization of the Bible took place, they placed Daniel with the writings whereas the Pentateuch placed it with the prophets. But even the the Masorites and the canonization of the Bible, they did recognize the historical aspect. And I now say, Septuagint I mentioned, several times in the earliest translation, the Old Testament translated in the heaped in the Greek 278 BC into a later date. It was translated from the oldest surviving manuscripts of the Codex Vaticanus and a fourth century manuscript Codex Sinaiticus and a fourth century manuscript Codex Alexandrios and a fifth century manuscript. For that reason, basically, when I was at Ambassador College as a student taking classes in the 60s and early 70s, the pen of the Septuagint was frowned upon because of the manuscripts are mistaken for Christ and the apostles over 90% of the quotes by Christ and the New Testament came from the certain Septuagint, because it was the language of the common people and what they understood. When the Septuagint was translated, according to tradition, there were six men, six learning ones from the 12 tribes of Israel making six times 12 72, making up the number of people that translated the Septuagint into Greek. But it was called the 70 and this was challenged. It was doubtful that this person doubted the fact that you would have to leave your home and spend a lot of time in Alexandria, Egypt, wherever you were located as one of the representatives of one of the tribes, but it was passed by them in his final form for their approval. So whichever way it is, the Bible was the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament was translated into Greek.

There were three main learning centers in the Old World, Alexandria in Egypt, where there was a contingent of Jews, Tarsus, in Asia Minor, you remember Paul of Tarsus. Paul was of Tarsus and there was a great learning center, he headed by Gamaliel in Jerusalem.

And Paul sat at the feet of Gamaliel. Most of the Bibles today are translated from, that is the Old Testament, translated from the Masoretic Texts. Now the Masoretic Texts, now listen to this, the Masoretic Texts began to be translated in the sixth century and was finished in the 10th century. And it was an effort by communic academies in Babylon and Palestine in order to produce as far as possible the original text of the Hebrew Old Testament.

Now we come to how Daniel came to be in Babylon. So let's turn to Daniel chapter 1, in verse 1, how Daniel came to be in Babylon, Daniel after Ezekiel.

In Daniel chapter 1 verse 1, in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon unto Jerusalem and besieged it. Remember I gave you an anachronym or a mnemonic device, a memory device to help you learn the first, not the first, but the last four kings of Judah. The last four kings of Judah are Haschim, Chen, and Zed. So Jehoiakim, Jehoachim, and Zedekiah, and the last four kings. So the second king there, Jehoakim, Daniel was taken to Babylon. We continue in verse 2, and the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand with part of the vessels of the house of God. Now that part of the vessels in the house of God comes up again in a later chapter in Daniel where they were eating and drinking and the handwriting appeared on the wall. You're bound in the, you've been weighed in the balance of been pound wanting. So which he carried into the land of Shinar. Now Shinar is another name for Babylon, to the house of his God. Now that word God is Elohim, and it should be plural. He is God's because the Babylonians had many gods and he brought the vessels into the treasure house of his gods. And the king spoke unto Aspen as the master of his eunuchs, that he should bring certain of the children of Israel and of the king's seed and of the princess. So that was the custom in the orient at that time, especially the Middle East to bring the learned ones, the promising ones, the conquering nation would bring them to the land. And there they would be educated in the ways of the conquering nation. Children whom was no blemish, but well favored and skillful in all wisdom and and cunning in knowledge and understanding, understanding science and such as had the ability in them to stand in the king's palace. In other words, people that could stand up, look good and have knowledge and whom he might teach the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans. And so Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Ben-Ygol, those last three were the Babylonian names for the three. They actually went to what we would call graduate school in Babylon. Now you can go to graduate school and not come out of fool. And we had faculty members, even ministers, in the late 60s and early 70s, that ambassador who went to graduate school and came out fools, they turned them around, they turned them inside out. They didn't know what end was up up. And they left faith. So knowledge puffs up, charity edifies, but you have to have a certain threshold of knowledge and to study God's Word and how it came to be is very precious. And people paid a dear price for it to happen. In 539 BC, the Medes and Persians conquered Babylon and Cyrus issued a decree that the Jews could return to Judea and build a temple. Now the Babylonians had conquered the Assyrians and they'd taken them into captivity in 721 to 718 BC and Judea continued for circa another 120 years. And that's where we are now. So Babylon conquered Assyrian, Nineveh fell in 612 BC. And these, we'll talk about these are given in Kings and Chronicles. I'm not going to take the time to read it now.

Now at this time, I would like for us to briefly review the entire book of Daniel. And I would like to challenge you to be able to take all 12 chapters in the book of Daniel and from memory, give a brief one sentence summary of each chapter. Of course, this will be to yourself. Nobody else will know whether or not you can do this, but it should be fun. You could be shaving, you could be taking a bath, you could be male, you could be female. It doesn't matter. So we can, as we've already said, we can probably date the daily of Daniel's death at about 539. Some say he lived to 538 and when you read the history of that period of history, ancient history, there is a scrambling and a war of words and that kind of thing that goes on among those scholars. They will deal with that kind of thing. But the Bible clearly says, and we will go now to Ezra.

We'll go to Ezra.

And Ezra chapter one, Ezra right after 2 Chronicles. And in the first year of Cyrus, circle 539, King of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled. We'll have a lot to say about that when we come to chapter nine. The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, King of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all the kingdom and put it also in writing, saying that the Jews could go back, the verse two, that the Jews could go back and build a temple. And so under the leadership of Zerubbabel and Joshua, the high priest, they went back and built what was called the restoration temple or the second temple.

So we want to be able to summarize each chapter. So in chapter one, we see that Daniel was taken captive. And as we'll read later, he came out of it very well. He was a star student.

So one of the things that we want to do in this course is to teach for mastery. You teach for mastery. So many people just want to hear about prophecy or want to hear about something that tickles their eardrums, whereas we need to get really into the Bible. Indeed, you know that what is the church all about? I've said this two or three times in recent times in local church that the church is about bringing sons and daughters to glory in the family of God in the kingdom of God. We want to teach for mastery, to master whatever it is that you're studying, not just gloss over it. So one of the things that I talk about is the Gestalt, the whole Gestalt literally means the whole and it has to do with human beings in the sense of they desire closure. They want to know well, what is the date? What is the final date? What is the final word? Now, in a lot of cases, we do not have the final word, but we have sufficient. Now, some people may say, well, on the day of Pentecost, the New Testament had not even been written. And so that is the case. But that does not mean that you should not dig into the Old Testament and that you should not dig into the New Testament and study it with all your might and with all your being. So one of the things that I continue to try to do is get the listener to view the whole. There is this German word, Gestalt, meaning the whole, which we have mentioned. And the human mind desires closure. So when we look at something, we can look at if we can look at the whole, we are more apt to be able to put the pieces in the right place. For example, if you're doing a jigsaw puzzle, you look at the picture on the front of the box that the puzzle came in. This is what the puzzle will look at when you get it finished. And so you begin to put those pieces together. And the Bible is somewhat like that. You have to put the pieces together. Well, unfortunately, one of the things that happens so often in studying the Bible is that people will be just interested in the prophetic events in the book, and especially the book of Daniel, quote, three or four scriptures closing up or move on, instead of looking at the whole. They will they will look at key verses in isolation. They will only read those, not understanding this around the context and what goes, what got them there in the first place. And of course, this can oftentimes lead to error. So it's good to look at the whole book, not only the whole book of Daniel, but the whole book of the Bible and all of the books of the Bible. And one of the things that you'll find in the Bible, of course, it has a basic theme, the basic themes of the Bible is that God is bringing sons and daughters to glory in his kingdom. All of the other things and details, which are important and good to understand, surrounds that one theme that God is bringing sons and daughters to glory his family. So you can say, well, I'm just going to close the book here. I'm going to close the book. And that's all I have to know. And I've been in my sins. And here I go. Unfortunately, that's one of the things that so often happens in studying the Bible. That some people will just be interested in what they are interested in. And you have to, in some cases, you have to develop an interest for certain things, just like with some foods you may not like it at first, but after a while, say, well, it's not too bad after all.

So it's good to look at the whole book and not only the whole book of Daniel, but the whole book of the Bible. So we have said the whole, the whole of the Bible is bringing sons and daughters to daughter's glory. So in the book of Daniel, there are several visions.

So in chapter one, as we have said, we have Daniel being taken into captivity. The trials deal with judgment is coming upon all nations. But if we look at each one in chapter one, we see Daniel and his three friends and some of the trials were to endure in the court of the King and the palace school that they were attending. As I mentioned, we have had people to go to graduate school in the schools of this world, they come out fools. They depart from the faith by thinking that they have discovered the real truth. In chapter two, we see Daniel and the dream, the dream of the great statue and the four kingdoms that are mentioned there. Babylon, Mino, Persia, and Babylon and the three succeeding kingdoms there in Daniel chapter two. And there is in chapter three, we see Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. That's their Babylonian names are thrown into the fire attorneys. In Daniel four, we see the vision of Nebuchadnezzar of the stump and the tree that was cut down and what that meant. In Daniel five, we see the vision of Belshazzar, the handwriting on the wall of Daniel's interpretation there. In Daniel six, we see Daniel in the lion's den, Daniel seven, the vision of the four beasts and the little horn that comes up among them. In Daniel eight, vision of the declarable of the sanctuary and the 2300 days prophecy. In Daniel nine, we see the 70 weeks prophecy, one of the key prophecies of the whole Bible. In Daniel 10, we get an insight into the angelic realm and to the spirit world, especially then of the demonic world and how it is organized and where the prince of demons withheld Gabriel and Michael for a season. In Daniel 11, we see the successive battles that were fought over the holy land and some of the intrigue and deception that took place. The taking away of the daily sacrifice and setting up the abomination that makes desolate. Then it depicts the activities of the willful king and placing the abomination of desolation. You know, that's Christ quoted that in Matthew 2415, when you therefore shall see the word spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place in the place of the abomination that makes desolate let him the reeds take heed. And so the willful king eventually places his headquarters in Jerusalem in the holy land. I was given a Bible study in Sydney, Australia, way back in sometime in the early 80s, I guess. And I said that the beast power eventually places his headquarters in Jerusalem. He said, Oh, this is Rome. I said no. And we turn to the last verse of Daniel.

It's chapter 11. You see clearly that he plants his headquarters between the two seas in the holy land. The Daniel 12 reveals details about the resurrection, the scattering of the holy people and waiting until the 1235 days after the abomination of desolation is placed. And our goal is to be able to close our Bibles and make a statement about each chapter. If that you if you can do that, you will have the whole book of Daniel to some degree in mind when you think of the book of Daniel. So now let's go back to Daniel and begin a verse by verse exposition. We had read to Daniel chapter one in verse four. Now we want to start in verse five.

In Daniel chapter one verse five, and the king appointed them, that is Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the king appointed them a daily provision. That's the food that they would eat of the king's food and of the wine which he drank. So nourishing them three years. So they were in graduate school for three years that at the end thereof they might stand before the king. So they had their final exam, their doctoral exam as it were at the end of three years. Now among these were the children of Judah, Daniel, Hananiah, Meshael, and Azariah. These were their Hebrew names, Hanamishael, Azariah, Daniel. Under whom the prince of the eunuchs gave names or he gave them their Babylonian names, he gave unto Daniel the name Belteshazzar, and to Hananiah the Shadrach, to Meshael, Meshach, and to Azariah Abednego. But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with a portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine which he drank. Therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself. So we are familiar with the laws of clean and unclean meats. The laws of clean and unclean meats are still valid today, no matter how much one wants to twist the scriptures with regard to if they are received with Thanksgiving making them clean. That is if they're received of Thanksgiving making them ceremonially clean to be eaten, not that that prayer cleanses the meats. Now God had brought Daniel into favor and tender love. Now we want to look at that word love because some might read that and say, oh they had tender love between the eunuch and Daniel. That word is rakam, r-a-c-h-a-m, rakam. Rakaam means it can mean vows of compassion, it can mean tender, it can mean mercy, it can mean pity, it can mean the womb. Here it means compassion and pity, not sexual love. There's a different word for, there's another Hebrew word for love which we will get to in just a minute. So we read 9 again, verse 9, now God had brought Daniel into favor and compassion or pity with the prince of the eunuchs. And the prince of the eunuch said unto Daniel, I fear, I fear my lord, he said, I fear my lord the king who has appointed your meat and your drink for, why should he see your face is worse, lacking than the children which, I lost my place again.

Sorry.

Verse 10, and the prince of the eunuch said unto Daniel, I fear my lord the king who has appointed your meat and your drink for, why should he see your face is worse, lacking or looking than the children which are of your sort than shall you make, shall you make me endanger my head to the king. So the eunuch was fearful to change Daniel's diet. Now notice what Daniel did in his negotiation with the eunuch. I mean he was very bold at this point. What age was he?

I would guess at the most 20, maybe 18, 19. Then said Daniel to Malos, and the prince of the eunuch had said over Daniel, Anana, Michelle, and Asta, Raya, prove your servants beseech you, I beseech you, ten days and let them give us pulse to eat. Now that word pulse means and water to drink. It means that which is of the seed. It was a it was a vegetarian diet, but it doesn't mean that Daniel was a vegetarian pursuit per se, but the meats that were brought to him from the king, there's no telling what all they brought. So they played it saved and they ate the vegetables and they drank water. Then let our countenance be looked upon before you and the countenance of the children that eat of the portion of the king's meat. And as you see, deal with your service. So let's give this ten days as it says in the next verse. Let's give it ten days and see how we look in comparison to the ones who have eaten the king's meat. So then let our countenance be looked upon before you and countenance of the children that eat of the portion of the king's meat and see you deal with your servants. And so you deal with your servants according as you have to after that. So he consented to them in this matter and moved them, prove them ten days. And at the end of ten days, their countenance appeared fair fatter and flesh. Then all the children which did eat the portion of the king's meat.

Now, of course, I believe that God had something to do with this, as we shall see with regard to knowledge. I mean, Daniel excelled all of the soothsayers and wise men of the kingdom in his knowledge, as we shall see in just a moment. Thus, Melaz took away a portion of their meat and the wine that they should drink, gave them pulse, they very hate vegetables. And these four children, God gave them knowledge. Notice that God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom. In all learning and wisdom, and Daniel had understanding in all vision and dreams, all visions and dreams in addition to the knowledge. Now, at the end of the days, that the king had said three years, he should bring them in, then the prince of the eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar. And the king communed, that is, means he talked with them. The king talked with them and among them all was found none like Daniel, Benaniah, Michelle, Azariah, therefore stood they before the king. And in all manners of wisdom and understanding, but the king inquired of them, he found them 10 times, 10 times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm. And Daniel continued even into the first year of King Cyrus. So it appears from that verse, as we said, Daniel died in in circle 539 BC. So we have covered one chapter, we see Daniel and his three friends in captivity in Babylon, they have gone to graduate school, they have eaten only vegetables for three years. They their flesh and their everything is better than everybody else. They have more knowledge, understanding, especially Daniel, Daniel even understood dreams and visions. So we wrap it up for tonight. Now based on our polling that we did, we want to go every other night, every other Wednesday night. So that means to get it right on track. We will go again next Wednesday night, then there after. So next Wednesday night is the sixth, I think it's either six or seven. Next Wednesday night at seven o'clock.

And then two weeks, the 20th, we will go at seven o'clock. And then the first weekend, the first Wednesday in December, and from then on it'll be every other weekend on Wednesday night at seven o'clock. Hopefully I made that as clear as mud. And now for your questions and comments.

Dr. Ward? Yes, ma'am. You went so fast, I couldn't write down what you were saying for four and five and seven, the chapters. Should I just wait and read that myself?

Well, chapter four, we see the vision of Nebuchadnezzar, the stump and the tree that was cut down and what that meant. Okay.

I gave a little one sentence, highlight of each chapter. And then a chapter, did you say five as well? Yeah. We see the vision of Bel Shazar and the handwriting on the wall and then Daniel's interpretation of that. You have been weighed in the balance, you're found wanting. This night, the kingdom is going to depart from you. And so that night, the amazing persons who depends on what source you read took, battle in chapter, took from captive, took battle in captive. And so now we have the Medo-Persian Empire that was succeeded by Alexander the Great, the Grecian Empire, and then the Roman Empire. So Daniel two, we have that great vision of four empires. First of all, Babylon, in the Medo-Persian, the Greek and the Roman. Then there are the 10 kings that are talked about. We're going to discuss that next Wednesday night. Okay. In chapter two.

Okay. And what was seven? Seven in the vision of four beasts and the little horn that came up among them. Okay. Chapter seven, nearly all commentators believe that chapter seven is a repeat of the four beasts of chapter two. I tend to lean that they are contemporaries because chapter seven also depicts the coming of Jesus Christ. Books were open and the ancient of days did sit and one coming like the son of man. So it's quite the interesting chapter. Yeah. Thank you. That's just an overview we gave of. Yeah. Here are the highlights of all chapters to try to get all of this in mind. Where you have the whole book before you and you have it in your mind and you can go over it. Say, well, I remember chapter two, three, four, five, six, seven, six, Daniel and the lines.

Yeah. Very good. Sounds very interesting. Thank you. It's been a wonderful lesson tonight. Well, I spent hours and hours on this because we used to teach when I taught fundamentals of theology. This Armstrong in the late in the early 1980s did away with systematic theology at Pasadena and Big Sandy and replaced it with fundamentals of theology. And one of the units in fundamentals of theology was canonization. And so I spent a lot of time with canonization and and as a student we took we had a long unit on Ernest Martin's thesis of how we got the Bible. As I said, Ernest Martin has left the church and like with any thing that you read was regarding canonization. The scholars do not agree and there are errors in everything you read just about with regard to canonization. I'm not talking about the Bible itself. Yeah.

And even with all the the manuscripts, I think they're, well, I don't think I know they were over 5,000 New Testament manuscripts existing today. And they there are there is like 97% agreement among those manuscripts. That is a miracle within itself. Yeah.

That's a that's a whole different thing than the Old Testament. Those are the Byzantine manuscripts from which the Texas Receptus was taken, which basically the King James is based on the Texas Receptus and Erasmus version of it.

Anybody else have a question or comment? Don't be bashful. I have a couple questions. Bill Bruce.

My first question is when you talked about the canonization of Daniel, now you said around 167, is that BC or AD? That's AD. AD. Okay. Now my other question is, are your classes going to be on the UCG sermon website? I hope so. Well, the reason I ask is, I'm very interested, but I have some other classes I'm already taking, like Rick Shavey's and some of those that are going to conflict. Because his are on Wednesday night also. Yeah. But I can find his on the website for sure. So I'll figure it out. I'll fit it in. Let me see if I have. I wrote John Nossel. He was able to post all the Isaiah studies on the website. It took him some time. Right. He is our internet manager and he can post it on hopefully on the website.

I guess that's it. Thank you. You are. Let me show you.

Dr. Ward. Yes. To follow up on the former gentleman, whatever his name was. Rick Shavey comes on, or President Shavey comes on at seven o'clock on Eastern time because he broadcast, he comes out of Ohio. You come on next time's time zone over. So you can listen to Rick Shavey and then listen to you afterwards. So I've done it with Gary Petty too because he broadcasts out of or does his Bible study out of Nashville, which is the next time time zone over. Okay. So I've done that too. You've always the same day. Yeah. Yeah. And the only thing too is I had a chance to meet you in 2010 with the first speech we've kept since 1993. And you were in Bushkill. I remember you saying, and I forget this, that we had a big storm coming up. And you said that you did the afternoon service on the eighth day. And they said that there's a lot less people here that were here in the morning. And it's still a holy day.

And you were right. And my wife and I looked at each other and says, where are we going to go? Well, that's true today. There are a lot less people in there after the morning. So, yes, I have a question to comment. You have a prayer request or anything.

Okay. No questions. One more is Ernest Martin's canonization paper. Is that, is that worth the read? Is that what you were saying?

There's a lot of helpful information in it. I think there are errors in it. I mean, Encyclopedia Britannica has a whole long article on the canonization of the Bible and various religious organizations have a long treatise on canonization of the Bible. I think Ernest's treatment of it is worth reading just for background, if nothing else. And it's, if you did the Ernest Martin canonization Bible, it'll probably come up. It came up for me on Google. Also on, what's that other one? Anybody else?

Okay. We'll see you next Wednesday. And then from there after, it'll be seven o'clock next Wednesday. Seven o'clock. Seven o'clock. Seven o'clock. And I hope I've got my volume ready. And then from then on, it'll be every other week at seven o'clock. Seven o'clock. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Warren. Good night.