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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Norman McNulty

Bible Study On Daniel 11

This afternoon we're going to take a look at Daniel chapter 11, which is sort of an interesting topic, and we don't have time to go through all the details, but we'll hit the high points.

So why don't we go ahead and start with a word of prayer, and we'll just get started here.

Father in heaven, thank you for this Sabbath day that we can come together and study the Bible.

I pray that you would be with us as we dig deeper into the word of God and may we learn some things that will be helpful to us as we prepare for the last days.

So this is definitely going to be a Bible study this afternoon and not a sermon.

Just out of curiosity, how many of you have studied Daniel chapter 11?

Okay, good, actually several hands, and more than this morning, so that's good.

Daniel 11 is probably the most detailed chapter in the book of Daniel, and probably the least understood in the Adventist church today.

Most, I mean, growing up I think most of my classmates knew the basics of Daniel 2, and some of Daniel 7 and 8, maybe the 70 weeks of Daniel 9, but when you get past Daniel chapter 9 most Adventists that I know don't know very much about it.

So actually Daniel 10 through 12 is perhaps 1 of the most important parts of the book of Daniel.

Now, as you know, Daniel follows this pattern of repeat and enlarge with Daniel 2, Daniel 7, Daniel 8, and then Daniel 10 through 12.

Now, Daniel 10 through 12 is basically, you could put Daniel 10 through 12 in 1 chapter if you wanted to.

As opposed to Daniel 2, that was the earliest chronological point in the book of Daniel.

Then you have Daniel 7 being the next prophecy, then Daniel 8, and then finally Daniel 10 through 12.

So, just for a brief review, I think we know Daniel 2 and 7 pretty well, but I'm going to point out that in Daniel chapter 8, and for those of you who are coming and we do have handouts, I don't know, so there are handouts for this.

Daniel chapter 8, interestingly enough starts with the kingdom of Medo-Persia.

And Daniel 8 spells out very clearly who the ram and the he-goat are.

You have the ram in verse 20 being, with the 2 horns being the king of Media and Persia, and verse 21, the rough goat being the king of Grisha.

And of course, Daniel chapter 8 tells us about this rough goat being broken up and you have 4 notable horns coming out of this goat.

And then after that, we see the little horn which succeeds the 4 horns of the kingdom of Greece.

Daniel chapter 8 follows the same sequence of kingdoms as Daniel chapter 10 through 12.

Daniel chapter 8, you just have the kingdom of Med...

You start with the kingdom of Media and Persia, the kingdom of Babylon is skipped in Daniel chapter 8.

And the same thing happens in Daniel chapter 10 through 12.

And if you remember from your study of Bible prophecy, the reason why Babylon is skipped in Daniel chapter 8, even though Babylon was still in existence at that time, is that the prophecy of the 2300 days starts in the kingdom of Medo-Persia, so God wants us to focus in on that kingdom to understand the start of that prophecy.

Now 1 thing that you're going to see in Daniel chapter 8, as well as in Daniel chapter 10 through 12, is this sequence of meet of Persia, then Greece, then pagan Rome, then papal Rome.

And Part of the description helping us to understand the sequence of events is a host Given against the daily by reason of transgression.

That's Daniel chapter 8 verse 12 You see the very same concept in Daniel chapter 11 verse 31 where it says, Arms shall stand on his part, they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate.

So you have in here in Daniel chapter 8, you have the ram, Then you have the he-goat and God tells us this is the kingdom of Media and Persia and the kingdom of Greece.

Then you have the little horn first being pagan, then papal Rome.

And you have this army standing up on the part of papal Rome.

In Daniel chapter 8 it's pretty easy to understand the sequence of kingdoms.

And we could do a whole study on some of the topics I just mentioned, like the daily and the abomination of desolation and all those sorts of things.

But it's, 1 thing that's key to point out is understanding that the same sequence in each of these chapters and the same entities are described in very similar ways.

So you have meet of Persia then Greece and pagan the papal room.

You have the daily, you have the transgression of desolation.

You have God's sanctuary being trodden underfoot.

That's mentioned in Daniel chapter 8 and it's mentioned in Daniel chapter 11.

Now in Daniel chapter 8, we don't get a lot of detail about the kingdoms of Media and Persia or the kingdom of Greece.

We're just told that the ram is the kingdoms of Media and Persia with the 2 horns, so you have the 2 kingdoms, and then you have the rough goat being Greece with a notable horn, then it's broken, and then you have the 4 ones coming out of that.

Now, just to keep you involved, So who were the 4, or what was the 4 notable horns, or who's the notable horn and what's the 4 horns that come out in the kingdom of Greece?

Okay, so as Grace is saying here, so the notable horn historically is Alexander the Great.

And then you have the 4 horns that come out of that.

You have Lysimachus, Cassander, Seleucus, and Ptolemy.

Those were the 4 Greek generals that succeeded Alexander the Great.

Now you may ask yourself why is that important?

Well as we're going to look at today and I'm not going to go through all the detail of Seleucus and Ptolemy and all the battles they fought against each other and so forth.

You can actually read that very nicely in Daniel and the Revelation by Uriah Smith.

And actually, I've summarized some of that information in your handout.

So that's sort of the high yield Uriah Smith version of Daniel 11.

Now, interestingly enough, out of curiosity, I went to the internet and on Google I typed in Daniel 11 and there was an evangelical scholar who on the first 30 verses was nearly identical to Uriah Smith, but after verse 31 he stays with the literal interpretation of Israel and doesn't make the prophetic switch.

So the first 30 verses are pretty well accepted even by evangelical scholars as far as the history goes.

Now 1 thing I want to impress upon your minds, so we have the sequence of kingdoms in Daniel chapter 8, and they come back again in Daniel chapter 11, but how important is Daniel 11?

And this is something that I want you to take away from this study.

Well, Let's go to Daniel chapter 10 first, and we'll just run through this briefly Daniel chapter 10 through 12 is this 1 long prophecy Daniel chapter 10 is the intro direction Daniel chapter 11 is actually the detail of the prophecy.

And then basically once you get to the end of verse 3 of Daniel chapter 12, that's the end of that flow of thought and then verses 4 through 13 help to summarize and put things in context.

But in Daniel chapter 10, we see that something interesting is happening here.

If you look at verse 1, Daniel is saying, I'll go ahead and read it.

It says, In the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia, a thing was revealed unto Daniel, whose name was called Belteshazzar, and the thing was true, but the time appointed was long, and he understood the thing and had understanding of the vision." First of all, what was the vision that preceded Daniel chapter 10?

So you have the 70 week prophecy explained to Daniel in Daniel chapter 9, but why was the 70 weeks explained to Daniel in Daniel chapter 9?

Daniel did not understand the vision of Daniel 08:14.

And God tells Gabriel in verse 16, Gabriel make this man to understand the vision.

So Gabriel's role, especially beginning in Daniel chapter 8, is to help Daniel understand the vision of the 2300 days and the visions that point to the end of time.

And then in verse 17, so if God sends Gabriel to help Daniel understand the vision it must be important to understand what this vision is.

Now what's interesting then is what is it that God wants Daniel to understand about the vision of the 2300 days.

Well notice the end of verse 17 it says, understand O son of man for at the time of the end shall be the vision.

So what is it that God wants Gabriel to understand about the 2300 day prophecy?

What does God want Daniel to understand about the 2300 day prophecy based on verse 17 of Daniel 8?

Now, interestingly enough, Daniel 11 helps us to understand better what happens at the time of the end.

So, what happens here is at the beginning of Daniel chapter 10, notice what's happened here.

Daniel gets a vision in Daniel chapter 10 and now it says he understood the thing and had an understanding of the vision.

But if you look at the end of Daniel chapter 8, it says, I was astonished at the vision but none understood it.

So interestingly enough, the vision of Daniel chapter 10 through 12 helps Daniel to fill in the gaps that he wasn't getting about the length of the 2300 days in Daniel chapter 8.

Finally, when God goes through the sequence of kingdoms in Daniel chapter 11, Daniel finally understands, okay, this is what the 2300 day prophecy is all about.

And so Gabriel comes in Daniel chapter 8 to help Daniel understand the vision, but by the end of Daniel chapter 8, he still doesn't understand it.

Then in Daniel chapter 9 the only thing that Daniel can handle is that 70 weeks are cut off for God's people and Daniel gets the privilege of getting the time prophecy of when exactly the Messiah will come But by the end of Daniel chapter 9 he still doesn't understand what's going to happen at the end of the 2300 days.

So it takes this last vision in the book of Daniel for Daniel to understand the most important time prophecy of the Book of Daniel because you could make the argument that the Book of Daniel was written for us to understand the 2300 days.

And so Daniel hadn't understood it yet so God had to give him more information so that he would finally make the connection.

Now here's a couple of other points about Daniel understanding things and receiving more light from God.

Daniel chapter 9 is of course the famous intercessory prayer where Daniel is praying on behalf of his people how they have sinned wickedly.

He understands from the law of Moses, the curses and blessings of Moses of Deuteronomy 28, that if they're unfaithful they would be destroyed.

And this is, and when he, here's the prophecy in Daniel 8, that's what he thinks it's about, and it actually was.

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Bible Study On Daniel 11

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