Of Daniel, Of Dreams and Nightmares
by Terry Wane Benton
Daniel, the prophet, is probably one of the most hated and attacked men of God to have written in the divine collection. This is because he defies the atheists and skeptics with proof of God, which is very unusual. When a robust case for God and the divine inspiration of the Bible is so powerfully presented, you either believe or you attack the prophet. A prophet was sometimes empowered to tell the future and, in some cases, the distant future. If it failed, you did not have to respect that so-called prophet. Even Moses admitted that fact. You know the prophet is not from God if what he predicts fails to come to pass (Deuteronomy 18:20-22). That is God’s test that He wants you to apply to Daniel or any other so-called prophet.
God has distinguished Himself from all phony religions by this display of foreknowledge, which no other gods could display for human review. God, through Isaiah, challenged, “Show us the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods” (Isaiah 41:21-24). Daniel distinguished himself before all the wise men of Babylon by showing King Nebuchadnezzar that “there is a God in heaven” who reveals secrets, showing power to tell the king what he dreamed and the meaning of the dream (Daniel 2). There is a God in heaven; the proof is in the prophesies He gave that no man could have predicted by any trickery.
Daniel showed the king the future, and the future he showed the king went far beyond just the life of Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel showed him exactly two kingdoms by name that would follow Nebuchadnezzars. The Medo-Persian, followed by the Grecian, was specifically in the future lineup (Daniel 8:20-21). How could anyone know these facts hundreds of years in advance? Beyond those two would be another, the fourth from the Babylonian kingdom, where the God of heaven would set up an “everlasting kingdom” (Daniel 2:44-45). The fourth kingdom was the Roman Empire, during which would come the Messiah (Daniel 9:24ff), and even predicted that the Messiah would be “cut off” (Daniel 9:26) and after they cut off the Messiah, there would come the people who would “destroy the city (Jerusalem) and the sanctuary (the temple).” These events were too far into the future for human wisdom to predict them. Skeptics have tried to get these matters written after the facts to excuse their unbelief.
These dreams and visions of Daniel are truly a nightmare for the determined unbeliever. Daniel has been thrown into the lion’s den and, in our time, thrown into the critic’s den, but they cannot get around the power of Daniel, or rather, Daniel’s God. “There is a God” who reveals secrets, things too great for human trickery. He revealed the exact kingdoms to follow Nebuchadnezzar and the time of the Messiah (who turned out to be named “Jesus”). He even predicted that Jesus would be “cut off” (which points to being put to death), and even the destruction of Jerusalem would happen sometime following Jesus’ death. The dreams of Nebuchadnezzar and the visions of Daniel all provide a nightmare for the unbeliever because someone in the first century could not forge them. Daniel was written well before Jesus. He is in the Dead Sea Scrolls, written hundreds of years before Jesus.
But another nightmare for someone determined to be a skeptic and unbeliever is that Jesus Himself, in the first century, referenced Daniel’s prophecy of the fall of Jerusalem, showing that the Son of God, who would Himself rise from the dead and prove His credentials (Romans1:3-4) believed and knew that the very Daniel we are talking about, had a real prediction of the “abomination of desolation” (Matthew 24:15) that would result in the temple of Jerusalem being destroyed. Thus, in the first century, Daniel was known by the Jews, including the Son of God, Messiah, Jesus, to be “Daniel the prophet,” and that Daniel had prophesied long before Jesus came into the world that there was coming a desolation to the temple. Get the power of this! Daniel prophesied that after the call to rebuild the temple (Daniel 9:25), which happened in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, there would come “Messiah the Prince.” After the Messiah was “cut off,” another destruction of the city would come. No matter when the skeptic tries to date the book of Daniel, it was still hundreds of years before Jesus and the final destruction of the city and sanctuary. There is a God Who reveals secrets! No way around it!
This is a nightmare for the skeptic. He cannot explain it away! All he can do is prove his dishonesty and await a final nightmare of eternal misery, or cease fighting the evidence and believe in the Almighty God who reveals secrets! Daniel’s dreams were from God, and this is wonderful to know, but it is a real headache for the determined skeptic and atheist!
