Lectures on Daniel the Prophet

* (“HE chart accompanying this volume isare

production of a large one, used for the purpose of aiding to a clear apprehension of the structure of the book of Daniel when the following lectures were delivered in public.

A little careful study of the diagram will, it is hoped, make plain much that might otherwise be obscure to some who have given but littie attention to prophetic teaching.

The first chapter of Daniel, as noted, is introductory, and does not itself have a prophetic character, but it pictures, for our instruction, the moral condition suited to enlightenment in regard to the Divine ways and counsels eimphasizing the need of holiness as a prerequisite to growth in the truth.

Chapters two to nine are each complete in themselves, giving either actual prophetical instruction or typical lessons of a like character. All, as will be readily observed, culminate i, ‘the Time of the Bude

What is meant by this last expression will be inade clear, if it be noted that a parenthetical period in the Divine plan is indicated by the broad space between the two heavy lines running right

6 across the chart, near to the centre. Every: thing noted or pictured above the upper heavy Jine, represents fulfilled prophecy, or history already accomplished. The line itself, it will be noticed (see the column headed *‘Chapter IX.”’), is coincident with the cross of Christ. Below the second line we have the ‘‘ Time of the End.” This second line represents the close of the present ‘‘ Church-period,”’ at the rapture of the saints, or the Lord’s coming to the air. Between the two, we have the whole gospel age, or dispensation of the grace of God, in which He has been pleased to make known ‘‘for the obedience of faith,” the revelation of the mystery of Christ and the Church, ‘‘ which in other ages was not made known,” but was ‘*‘hid in God,” until the rejection and ascension of His beloved Son, followed by the descent of the Holy Spirit to baptize believing Jews and Gentiles into one body; thus securing, for the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, a heavenly people who will share His throne as the bride of His heart, in the coming age, and through eternity.

Now all this was still hidden in the days of Daniel. If the chart were folded so that the two dark horizontal lines touched, the parenthetical period would be hidden, as was the mystery in Old Testament times. With this period covered, we have an outline of what was revealed to Daniei. The great image is then teen to be apparently continuous. and the ten-horned condition of the Beast of Chapter VIL follows immediately upon its first risiny up

Chapters X. to XII. form one prephecy. The division into past and future occurs betweep verses 35 and 36 of Chapter XI.

Daniel says very little about the Kingdom. as his special theme is ‘*The Times of the Gentiles’; but Chapters II. and VII., as also Chapter XII. lead us upto the Kingdom, though with little detail regarding it.

If the reader will refer from time to time bacx to the chart while reading the Lectures it hoped all obscurity will be removed.

IN beginning a series of addresses on this book,

I want you first to notice the title of the chart — “Outline of the book of Daniel the Prophet.” I call especial attention to the name given to Daniel, because it is given to him, not by man, but by our Lord Jesus Himself, in the 24th chapter of Matthew, 15th verse, and in Mark 18, verse 14.1. There we find Him warning His disciples concerning the setting up of “the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet.” I emphasize this, because it is a common thing with some in our day to deny that there was a prophet Daniel. If you are even moderately familiar with the theories of the destructive “critics,’ you must know

1The R. V. omits the expression in the last passage noted,

though retaining it in Matthew.

that the book of Daniel was about the first portion of Scripture to which they objected. They declared that it was utterly impossible to credit the idea that Daniel lived in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, and Cyrus, and yet wrote a book which told of all these world-empires before any of them, except the first two, had come into existence. Daniel, these learned teachers tell us, was simply a romancer, who lived over 200 years later on, and he wrote his so-called prophecies after they had all become history.

As a simple believer, who owes everything for eternity to what the blessed Christ of God accomplished on Calvary’s cross, I prefer to accept His testimony, though it were in opposition to all the wise men of the day. He declared that Daniel was a prophet. He spoke not of Daniel the historian, nor Daniel the romancer, nor Daniel the novelist, but Daniel the prophet — Daniel the man who had enlightenment by the Spirit of God, and therefore could speak of the things that were not, as though they were. That is one thing I shall be insisting on in all these lectures. I stand for the full inspiration of all the reputed word of God, and necessarily. therefore, of the book of Daniel.

The first chapter, as noted on the chart, is introductory. It sets forth the moral condition suited to enlightenment in the ways and counsels of God. In it we read of a little company

The Needed Moral Conditivun 11

of faithful men maintaining a state of separation to God from evil, in a day when everything seemed to be against them, and it appeared as though there was none to whom they could turn for help.

This little company, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, four devoted young men, set themselves against all the evil of the kingdom of Babylon. They said, “We will not defile ourselves’: and these were the men to whom God could communicate His mind. I believe it is important to dwell upon this, because in our own day, alas, in many cases prophetic study has been taken up by very unspiritual persons. If we are going to get the mind of God in studying this book, we must remember that it consists of revelations, deliverances and visions given to a spiritually-minded man who was separated from the iniquity of his day; and if we are to understand it, we also need to be spiritually-minded, and to walk apart from all that is unholy, all that would hinder progress in divine things. We need ever to have before us the words, “Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward” (2 John 8).

The truth of God is learned through the conscience; and this is the reason why the most brilliant men can read the Bible through, over and over again, and never hear the voice of God in it at all. It has been said that “what is one man’s meat is another man’s poison.” The very word of God may become poison to an unspiritual man, if he reads it without being in subjection to God, — reads it to find difficulties; and arises from its perusal more confirmed in his unbelief than he was when he sat down to consider it. But, on the other hand, the same book put into the hands of a spiritually-minded person — one who has bowed in God’s presence, owning his lost condition, who has trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as his Saviour, and who is now seeking to live for God, and to let his whole life be subject to His word — that man sits down to the same book, and he finds it to be food for his soul, building him up on his most holy faith.

Keep reading