Post by Admin on Jul 20, 2017 5:15:55 GMT
Tonight we moved away from the books of personal experiences in Daniel to the books of prophecy. Things can get murky in these chapters, because the visions are extreme and fantastic. Also, there is a tendency to want to connect the images with known historical events and from there extrapolate confirmation of milestones in the end time. In fact, plenty of both scholars and crackpots spend years and volumes doing just that. For our discussion, we stayed away from matching up future events to Daniel’s wild visions, which led us to realize how important it is to trust God and not expect that He needs to explain His plans to our satisfaction.
We did confirm that the four beasts in Daniel’s first vision seem to compare to the four sections of statue in the dream of Nebuchadnezzar which Daniel interpreted; that is, the empires represented in order are likely Babylon, Persia-Medes, Greece, and Rome. Whether those are truly the empires God is showing Daniel, or if they represent successive empires, we cannot know. One of the subjects we covered when reviewing the characteristics of the four beasts is that they can also be metaphors for our internal struggles, and that the destruction the monsters bring can be to our spirits and souls in addition to destruction of the physical world.
We spent some time on the underlying theme of the vision, which is that God wins in the end, and why Daniel received such an elaborate vision to make that point. For Daniel’s perspective, and ours, however, God wanted to show that he knows that destruction and despair and violence seem ascendant to us. Nevertheless, and no matter the long time or severity of the trouble, God is in control and will triumph in the end – and his "Holy ones" will be with Him, worshipping.
We did confirm that the four beasts in Daniel’s first vision seem to compare to the four sections of statue in the dream of Nebuchadnezzar which Daniel interpreted; that is, the empires represented in order are likely Babylon, Persia-Medes, Greece, and Rome. Whether those are truly the empires God is showing Daniel, or if they represent successive empires, we cannot know. One of the subjects we covered when reviewing the characteristics of the four beasts is that they can also be metaphors for our internal struggles, and that the destruction the monsters bring can be to our spirits and souls in addition to destruction of the physical world.
We spent some time on the underlying theme of the vision, which is that God wins in the end, and why Daniel received such an elaborate vision to make that point. For Daniel’s perspective, and ours, however, God wanted to show that he knows that destruction and despair and violence seem ascendant to us. Nevertheless, and no matter the long time or severity of the trouble, God is in control and will triumph in the end – and his "Holy ones" will be with Him, worshipping.