Christ in Daniel

Daniel 1 opens with loss - Jerusalem besieged, the vessels of God’s house carried into Shinar, the choicest youths of Judah marched off to be remade as Babylonians, given new names and the king’s own table. And then, before any threat is even spoken, the line that turns the whole book: But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor with the wine which he drank (v. 8). The resolve is settled in the heart beforehand…

Daniel 2 hangs on a single image: a stone… cut out without hands that smites the great statue of human empire, grinds it to chaff, and then became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth (vv. 34-35). Daniel reads it for the king: kingdoms will rise and fall, and then in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed… and it shall stand for ever (v. 44). The New Testament takes up the stone and names it a…

Daniel 3 sets the worship of the true God against the worship the world demands, and it answers the question every persecuted believer has asked: what if God does not rescue me? Three young men of Judah refuse to bow to Nebuchadnezzar’s golden image, and their reply is the high-water mark of faith in the Old Testament - our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto…

Daniel 4 is the testimony of the proudest king on earth, brought to the dust and lifted again, and it turns on one lesson he is made to learn the hard way: that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will (v. 25), that the heavens do rule (v. 26). Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a tree reaching to heaven, felled by a holy watcher, its stump bound and left till seven times pass over him ; Daniel tells him the tree is himself, and that he will be…

Daniel 5 is a night of reckoning, and its central image - a hand writing a verdict on the wall, a man weighed in the balances, and… found wanting (v. 27) - reaches straight into the heart of the Gospel. Belshazzar’s great sin is named with precision: thou… hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all this… but hast lifted up thyself against the Lord of heaven (vv. 22-23). He had heard how God humbled his father and gave him back his reason; he…

Daniel 6 sets a faithful man in a pit of death and brings him out alive, and the New Testament returns to both halves of that picture. First the trial: Daniel’s enemies comb his public life and can find none occasion nor fault… concerning the kingdom (v. 4), and conclude they can convict him only concerning the law of his God (v. 5). The Gospel records the same verdict over the One on trial - I find in him no fault at all (John 18:38), I find no fault in this man (L…

Daniel 7 is the chapter the New Testament reaches for when it wants to say who Jesus is. Daniel watches four beasts rise from a churning sea and a little horn with a mouth speaking great things (v. 8); then the scene lifts to a throne room where the Ancient of days did sit… his throne was like the fiery flame… the judgment was set, and the books were opened (vv. 9-10). And at the center stands the vision’s heart: one like the Son of man came with the clouds o…

Daniel 8 sets a proud power against the Anointed of God and shows how that contest ends. A little horn rises out of the kingdoms of Greece and magnified himself even to the prince of the host (v. 11), takes away the daily sacrifice, casts down the place of his sanctuary , and tramples the truth to the ground; and a later king of fierce countenance shall stand up against the Prince of princes (v. 25). The text names what no human strength can finally do to such a power: he…

Daniel 9 holds two of the most pondered things in the Old Testament side by side: a man’s prayer of confession that rests everything on mercy, and an angel’s answer that names the Messiah the Prince. Daniel pleads not for our righteousnesses, but for thy great mercies (v. 18), and the Gospel grounds salvation in the same place - not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us (Titus 3:5); we are accepted in the beloved… throu…

Daniel 10 opens the book’s final vision with one of its most personal scenes, and the glorious figure at its center is described in language the New Testament will use again of the risen Christ. After three full weeks of mourning beside the river Hiddekel, Daniel lifts his eyes and sees a certain man clothed in linen… his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in colour to polished brass, and the voice of h…

Daniel 11 is the longest and most exact prophecy in Scripture, and beneath all its tangled wars it makes one steady claim: the God who speaks here declar[es] the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure (Isa. 46:9-10). Kingdom rises against kingdom - a mighty king broken, and… divided toward the four winds of heaven (v. 4), the long struggle of the king of the south…

Daniel 12 closes the book with the clearest promise of personal, bodily resurrection in all the Old Testament: And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt (v. 2). Jesus takes up that very promise and makes Himself its center: Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto t…