Alistair Huong: Book of Daniel

Alistair Huong

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Daniel Bible Study: Chapter 8 (Part 2)

Our Father in Heaven, we thank you so much for bringing us together on this Thursday evening.

As we are about to open again to the book of Daniel, chapter 8 specifically, we understand that there are so many different opinions about this passage.

But Lord, we want to see what your word says, so may your spirit come and guide us.

For we cannot interpret your word, only your spirit can do it justice.

So please be with us, give us clear minds so that we may be able to interpret these deep things of your word.

Okay, some of us weren't here last week, so I guess we'll go through briefly what we covered last time.

For the past 2 weeks, I guess, we've been in chapter 8.

Norm, I guess, started it, covered the first few verses and then I took the next few verses.

So what we've seen so far, we've gone through Meda-Persia, which is the ram, and then we see Greece, which is the goat, and then the First, the notable horn between the eyes, that is Alexander the Great.

Alexander's horn broke off in its peak of its power.

It became 4 kingdoms, or 4 kings came out of it, which were the 4 commanders of, or 4 of the commanders in Alexander's army and it divided to the 4 winds.

Last week we discussed the little horn that came out and we identified it as the power of Rome.

We mentioned that it is Rome in its completeness, meaning Rome in both of its phases, the pagan phase and the papal phase.

So, what we're going to do tonight, the main focus of our study tonight, is to see how that is.

How does this horn represent both pagan and papal Rome?

And believe it or not, this concept of the 2 segments of Rome is perhaps the deepest of this chapter.

So, it may take some So, it may take some time, but let's go through it.

It set itself up to be as great as the prince of the host, it took away the daily sacrifice from him, and the place of his sanctuary was brought low." Okay, we're going to spend a little bit of time here.

We already mentioned he magnified himself to the Prince of the Hosts.

That represents Papal or Pagan Rome rising up and crucifying Jesus.

And we already identified that aspect of it.

It says, "...and by Him..." Let's ask ourselves the question, by Him, who's Him?

"...Yea, He magnified himself even to the prince of the host and by him the daily sacrifice was taken away." This hymn is talking about the little horn because you look in verse 12 and the host was given him against daily sacrifice by reason of transgression.

This whole part is talking about the little horn.

So by the little horn, the daily sacrifice was taken away and the place of his sanctuary was cast down.

So the daily sacrifice, now that is, some might want to call it the enigma of Daniel 8.

This is the question mark that often bewilders us.

Now before I go any further, I just want to read you a quick quotation from early writings.

It says, Then I saw in relation to the daily, Daniel 8.12, that the word sacrifice was supplied by man's wisdom, and does not belong to the text, and that the Lord gave the correct view of it to those who gave the judgment our cry.

If you look in your Bibles, I don't know if any other version does it, but the King James.

If you look in the King James Version, the word sacrifice is in italics.

That means all words in the King James that is italicized means that it was supplied by translators.

There were words added to the text to make things flow.

And sometimes, most of the time, it's very helpful.

But sometimes, it's based upon the previous biases or previous knowledge experience of the translator.

And in this case, based on Ellen White's commentary, this word sacrifice does not need to be there.

Now, you must be wondering, well, the translators probably are intelligent people, and therefore, they must have some reason why they added the word sacrifice.

The word daily sacrifice, it's connected in the minds of the translators to the daily temple sacrifices.

You remember, daily people came by with their sin offerings, they killed the lamb or whatever offering that they had, and they burnt on the brazen altar.

And that word daily, it simply means continuance in the Hebrew word.

And often times that word was used in conjunction with the sacrifices.

However, that word does not necessitate sanctuary service.

Just because it was used oftentimes with the sanctuary service, the translators made that connection because they knew the Bible so well.

However, based on Ellen White, the word daily simply does not need the word sacrifice.

So when we look at this text, every time we see daily sacrifice in this chapter, let's just eliminate the word sacrifice in our minds and just look at it as the daily, as it is commonly known as.

Or even better yet, the term daily is a descriptive term for the word sacrifice.

It's an adverb in some cases and an adjective in some cases, but it's a descriptive word, it's not a noun.

So it's hard to really visualize that, but the actual definition of the word is simply continuance, or ongoing, something that just continues on, it's continuous, that's simply the word.

But, we will have, let's look at it a little bit longer and I think it will become clearer.

So it says just this, by the little horn, the daily or the continuance was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down.

Now, let's ask this question again, and the place of his sanctuary, whose sanctuary?

But most people, they think, wait a second, it must be the Prince of the Host.

Because if you look at the whole passage, verse 11, 12, and 13, it is clear that it is the little horn that takes away the daily, okay?

So the little horn comes, magnifies himself even to the prince of the host, and by the little horn the daily was taken away, and all of a sudden the place of the prince of the host's sanctuary was cast down.

In terms of looking at it systematically, he magnified himself to the prince of the host, the little horn did, the little horn took away the daily and the little horn sanctuary was cast down.

We're going to come back to this as to why this can be the Little Horn Sanctuary.

We're just gonna set the stage for a lot of this, but let's come back to it in a minute.

Verse 12, it says, "...and a host was given him against a daily by reason of transgression, and it cast down the truth to the ground, and it practiced and prospered." Does anybody have a new King James Version?

Okay, I like that because it makes it clearer than the King James.

The King James simply says, and an host was given him against the daily by reason of transgression.

Or we can simply say a host or an army, as her translation renders it, same thing, an army was given to the little horn against the daily for or we should say because of transgression.

And it cast down the truth to the ground, and it practiced and prospered." Now this is strange.

It takes away the daily because of transgression.

Or we can say this, an army was given to the Little Horn to take away the daily so that the transgression can come.

In order for there to be a place for transgression, there must be a removing of the daily.

And an army was given to the little horn to accomplish that.

Now this is tricky because transgression and daily often is not in our minds the term of a noun, transgression is, but it's not like an object, a person, a being or some sort of thing, but it explains itself.

Let's just look real quickly in verse 13 and we'll come back.

Daniel Bible Study: Chapter 9 (Part 1)

Our Father in Heaven, we thank you again for another day that we could come and gather together and study your Word.

And we thank you Lord that you have given us life and energy and ability to think and to do the things that you ask us to do.

And tonight as we are about to look at, continue to look at the book of Daniel, may you open our minds and send your spirit to teach us and lead us into all truth, that we may better understand these things, that our lives may be conformed into your likeness, that we may also be able to share these things with others.

We love you Lord, and we pray for those who are still coming.

Okay, well, normally we've just been focusing on 1 chapter, like chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and we spent a few weeks in 7 and a few weeks in 8.

However, I like to go back to Chapter 8 and tonight I like to just wrap things up with 1 final point that I didn't mention last time, last 2 times.

And There's actually so much more to be said in chapter 8, but we don't have the time.

So we're going to touch on 1 final point of chapter 8, and then we're going to move into chapter 9.

Let us just read Daniel 8, verse 15 through 17.

When I, Daniel, was watching the vision and trying to understand it, there before me stood 1 who looked like a man.

And I heard a man's voice from the new way, calling Gabriel, tell this man the meaning of the vision.

As it came near the place where I was standing, I was terrified and felt prostrate.

Son of man, he said to me, understand that the vision concerns the time of the end.

Okay, there are a few things that I want you to pick up right away and just remember them and we'll come back and hit them later on.

First of all, what happens in these 3 verses takes place right after what message?

The 2300 days and then the sanctuary shall be cleansed.

It is immediately after this that the command is given to the angel who?

Okay, make him understand specifically the 2300 days.

It's going to be very critical, very key as we continue.

But for now, I want to look at the final, You can say, frosting on the cake of chapter 8.

And it says in verse 17, So he came near where I stood, Gabriel did, And when he came I was afraid, and fell upon my face.

But he said unto me, Understand, O son of man, for at the what?" At the what time?

So it is at the time of the end that the vision shall be.

So now, We use these words almost flippantly.

A lot of times we hear, time of the end, the end times, last days, end of time.

All of these things are sort of all jumbled together in our minds and we associate them all.

We just read it, the time of the end, we just sort of skim over it.

But there is actually significance to this phrase, time of the end, and it's not the same as end of time, and hopefully we can break that down.

So let's come to Daniel chapter 11, to something here that will help us better understand this phrase, time of the end.

Because, let me explain why it's pretty important.

When we understand the time of the end, that's when we'll understand when this vision will be understood.

Because he says the vision is not until the time of the end.

All of these verses mention the time of the end.

With you Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book until the time of the end.

Many shall run to and fro and knowledge shall increase.

Okay, so the vision is sealed, specifically the vision of the 2300 days was sealed until the time of the end.

So if we can figure out when the time of the end is, then we can understand when this vision was opened to be understood.

So in Daniel 11, verse 31, we'll begin in verse 31 and we will continue down through verse 35 and through these verses I believe we can see when the time of the end is or when it begins.

We're going to have a pause in the middle and talk about this.

"...forces from him shall appear and profane the temple and fortress and shall take away the regular burnt offering and they shall set up the abomination that makes desolate.

It says, And arms shall stand on his part, and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate." Now, there's a few points I'd like to bring up before we move on, because last week we had a few questions on the daily and the abomination or the transgression of desolation.

And the people who asked the question are here, so hopefully they'll hear this on the recording.

In chapter 8, we remember that a host was given him.

A host was given him against the daily sacrifice.

And right here it says, and arms shall stand on his part, and shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice." It's very similar language.

The language is in fact talking about the exact same thing.

Let's just read it real quickly in Daniel 8.

It says here, Yea, he magnified himself even to the prince of the host, and by him the daily sacrifice was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down.

And an host was given him against the daily sacrifice." You see how it's similar language, it's talking about the same thing, same event.

Arms is the same thing as army, host is the same thing as army.

So armies were given to the Littlehorn Power in chapter 8, chapter 11, the King of the North, he comes to pollute the Sanctuary of Strength.

You remember in chapter 8 we mentioned that the sanctuary, his sanctuary in verse 11, that sanctuary is talking about the pagan sanctuaries.

And in chapter 11 it makes it clearer by saying the sanctuary of strength was polluted by arms.

So we're talking about the same thing, sanctuary and it shall take away the daily sacrifice and they shall place the abomination that make it desolate.

Last week, the question that was asked was this, Based on chapter 8, how can we tell that the daily must be removed in order for the transgression of desolation to come?

It sounds, based on the questioner, the person who asked the question, it sounds almost as if because there was transgression, that is why the daily was taken away.

But based on 11, which is talking about the same event, we can see that the daily must be taken away in order to place, in its place, so to say, the abomination that makes us desolate.

And the same thing, abomination of desolation, transgression of desolation, same thing.

Does that make things a little bit clearer for those of you who were here last week?

Daniel Bible Study: Chapter 9 (Part 2)

Father in heaven, thank you for bringing us safely together and please be with those who are still coming.

And as this summer is drawing close to the end, we also see the end approaching as we finish our last few studies here.

The Lord help us to remember the things that we've learned and to use it and share it with others and especially this coming quarter as we study the book of Daniel in our Sabbath school quarterly help us to be able to share this knowledge and inspire others with it.

Please guide us tonight with your spirit as we dive into Daniel chapter 9 and to look at some very important things tonight.

We love you Lord, We pray all these things in Jesus' name.

How many of you were here for the study last week?

Okay, so there's 3 of us, 4 of us, including me.

Let's have a quick review of what we've covered in Daniel chapter 9 so far.

Basically last week, in our introduction to chapter 9, the main burden of what we wanted to establish was the connection between chapter 8 and chapter 9.

The time prophecy is no good unless there's a beginning date.

So, chapter 8, obviously we didn't see any beginning date for the prophecy.

So we go to chapter 9, and in order for us to establish that the beginning date is found in chapter 9, we must be able to prove that chapter 8 and 9 is somehow integrally related and connected and that they need to be 1 and the same flow of thought.

So what we did was we analyzed a few things.

First at the end of chapter 8, we see the reaction or what was going through the mind of Daniel.

We see that Daniel heard or saw this vision and prophecy of all of this persecution that would come upon God's people.

And then all of a sudden at the end it says, unto 2, 300 days, then the sanctuary shall be cleansed.

In answer to the question that was asked, how long will God's people in the sanctuary be trodden underfoot?

So in Daniel's mind we assume that he was looking into the future, 2300 years into the future and thinking, wow, that's a long time before God's people will be restored.

In chapter 9, we looked at it and we recognized that the majority of the chapter was dedicated to Daniel's prayer.

And Daniel's prayer, most of the time, we say, wow, we can read this prayer in less than a minute.

And it says that the angel Gabriel said, I was commanded at the beginning of your supplications to come answer your prayer, and then we sort of say, wow, Gabriel can fly really fast, and then we go on.

But, you know, there's a reason why this prayer is recorded in all of its length and breadth and entirety.

This prayer was very simple in terms of its theme.

If you read it, and I encourage you to do it if you haven't, the whole prayer basically is a prayer of confession, repentance, and also for forgiveness.

Daniel is praying on behalf of his people.

He looked at the prophecies found in Jeremiah chapter 25 and 29 saying this Babylonian captivity should last only 70 years.

We're coming close to the end of the 70 years, God, please forgive us.

We have turned away from you, we've been sinning, we are transgressing against you, we are not obeying you.

Please, Lord, for the sake of your name's glory and honor, forgive us and turn your face again to your people.

Don't leave us to destruction." It was this prayer of supplication, in, so to say, in sackcloth and ashes for God's people.

And he is mentioning, all this curse that fell upon us, you know, according to the law of Moses, forgive us Lord, we have turned away from you, and so on and so forth.

So we can see that the burden on Daniel's heart is the restoration of God's people.

Putting that together with chapter 8, it makes perfect sense because he heard this King of Fierce countenance is coming, He will destroy God's people and all of these atrocious things takes place in Deuteronomy 28 at where Moses lays it all out.

So we see the prayer of Daniel reflecting the thoughts in his heart and then we see well, obviously first of all, we obviously see that this is a misunderstanding on Daniel's part, based on our further knowledge.

But then Gabriel comes, and it says, Gabriel in verse 23, let's just look at verse 23 in chapter 9, At the beginning of thy supplications the commandment came forth, and I am come to show thee, for thou art greatly beloved, therefore understand the matter, and consider the vision.

And we mentioned that the angel Gabriel, the only other chapter that he is mentioned is in chapter 8.

That's the only other place Gabriel is mentioned in the Book of Daniel.

And in chapter 8, we mentioned that Gabriel came with a specific mission.

God told the angel Gabriel, make him understand.

And at the end of the chapter, in chapter 8, we see Daniel said, he got sick, he fainted, he was astonished, he was troubled in his heart, but none understood it.

So the angel Gabriel basically didn't finish his mission, you can say that.

Angel Gabriel only appears in these 2 chapters.

He needs to finish his mission and also Daniel's misunderstanding must be cleared up.

And let me just add this note and this is the main burden of our study tonight And it is that the 2300 day prophecy would be meaningless without the 70 weeks.

Not just talking about the beginning date, as important as that is.

Beginning date without it, you know, 2300 days and you know, in what?

But we will see after tonight's study that the actual 70-week prophecy which is found in chapter 9, it is absolutely critical in order for what the 2300-day prophecy says will happen to take place.

So in other words, It's almost like you cannot have a 2300 days if you did not have a 70 weeks.

So that is our brief review from last week.

And let's begin in chapter 9 in verse 24.

70 weeks are determined upon thy people, and to find thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring everlasting righteousness, and to strengthen the vision and prophecy, and to enlighten the most holy.

Alright, it says here, 70 weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city.

Now 70 weeks in Bible prophecy, 1 day represents, 1 prophetic day represents 1 literal year.

So, 70 weeks, that represents 490 days or 490 years.

We're going to look at the words of Christ real quickly.

Can someone read Matthew 18, verse 21 and 22.

When came Peter to Him and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?

I say not until 7 times, but until 7 times.

If a brother sins against me, how many times should I forgive him?

Now how many times is that, literally speaking?

Now, you know, obviously Jesus is not saying you keep tally marks.

You know, forgive this person, I forgave this person 480 times, 10 times left and you're out, you know, it's not like that.

But this is very key because in the Hebrew mind, they're familiar with Daniel chapter 9.

It's very very important to them and we're going to explain why in a second.

So when Jesus said, No, you forgive them 70 times 7, which ends up being 490 times, immediately in the mind of Peter, he should have thought, maybe he didn't, but he should have thought, God gave his people 70 weeks or 490 years of forgiveness.

This is a time that God is sort of saying, this is to make right your wrongs.

But the whole concept of 70 times 7 is the concept of forgiveness and the concept of restitution and mercy.

So 70 weeks, 490 times of forgiveness, 490 years of forgiveness so to say, are determined upon thy people.

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