Daniel by Scott Risley (2017)

The book of Daniel is filled with predictive prophecy and contains more fulfilled prophecies than any other book of the Bible. Despite what skeptics have said, there are many reasons to trust the authenticity of the book of Daniel. In chapter 1 we'll meet Daniel and learn how he ended up in Babylon as a teenage boy. We'll see his first big test of faith and learn how he resisted the powerful current of the culture surrounding him.

In the book of Daniel, chapters 4-6 we'll take a look at three different forms of pride from the kings - Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar & Darius, as well as the ways that Daniel responds to them. Daniel teaches us to keep trusting the true God no matter what the cost.

King Nebuchadnezzar has a nightmare and none of his astrologers or wise men can tell him what it was or what it meant. Daniel and his friends pray and God gives Daniel insight. Daniel predicts for Nebuchadnezzar the end of his kingdom and the kingdoms that will follow.

Non-biblical attempts to predict the future, including those of Nostradamus, have failed. The book of Daniel, however, contains multiple fulfilled prophecies, including the vision recorded in Daniel 8. In the third year of King Belshazzar's reign, Daniel sees a vision of a ram, a goat, and a small horn. The angel Gabriel visits Daniel and explains the vision to him. The ram represents the Medo-Persian empire united under Cyrus the Great. The goat represents the Greek empire under Alexander the Great. The small horn represents King Antiochus IV, the great persecutor of the Jews. Antiochus is also a type of the antichrist described in the book of Revelation.\r\n

While Belshazzar was still king of Babylon, Daniel had "visions of the night", which he wrote down. He describes how he saw the four winds blowing on the ocean. Four different beasts come up from the sea; a lion, a bear, a leopard with four bird wings, and the fourth beast is the worst and most terrible with teeth made of iron. It also has ten horns from which one little horn pops up and knocks out three of the other horns. The little horn has human eyes and speaks arrogantly from its mouth. We will look at types, types of Christ, and the Antichrist.

In the first year of Darius' reign, Daniel says that he was reading about how the prophet Jeremiah said that Jerusalem would stay destroyed for seventy years before it could be restored. God has given us predictive prophecy in his word especially related to his Son, Jesus. This study is one of the greatest prophecies predicting the coming of Jesus Christ as the Savior, what He would do and that He would be killed and it predicts it to the very year, 33AD. We'll do the math from evidence in Scripture as well as extra-biblical sources to see this.

The Bible contains both near future and end times prophecies. In the end times, there will be a final world ruler, the Antichrist, who will be the catalyst for an epic and final world war. According to the Bible, this war must be preceded by the regathering of Israel, which occurred in 1947. The final world war will be capable of destroying all humanity, but Jesus will come to earth a second time and put an abrupt stop to it. These end times prophecies show that the human race needs divine intervention to prevent self-extinction. Jesus first intervened in history to save humanity from their sins; the second time he intervenes he will save humanity from themselves. Those who believe in Jesus need not fear the future.\r\n

What will the end of the world look like and what comes afterward? Daniel describes this seven-year period. We'll see the Antichrist's role where things turn from peace into war; the final world war, which will last until Jesus returns to defeat the Antichrist. In Matthew 24, Jesus quotes from Daniel, describing the Abomination of Desolation and the Great Tribulation. The world will be wracked by anguish, but everyone whose name is "written in the book" will be saved. At the end of time, everyone will be brought back from the dead; some will be awakened to everlasting life and some to "shame and everlasting contempt."