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Daniel walkthrough

Daniel: the kingdoms and the Kingdom.

14 steps through the visions of Daniel: Nebuchadnezzar’s image, the banded stump, the four beasts and the little horn, the seventy weeks, and the resurrection at the end.

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    Reading Daniel

    Daniel interprets much of his own book. He tells Nebuchadnezzar “Thou art this head of gold”; Gabriel names “the kings of Media and Persia” and “the king of Grecia”; the angel explains that the beasts are kings and the horns are kings. Those fixed points let the rest be followed through history, and they agree with one another: the image, the beasts and the ram and goat tell the same story from different angles.

    Every vision ends in the same place: the Kingdom of God given to Christ and his saints, and the resurrection of the dead. That is the hope the Christadelphians preach. The book of Revelation takes up Daniel’s symbols and carries them on: see Revelation unsealed.

    Sources

    • Scripture: King James Version, quoted verbatim.
    • The identifications follow the historical reading set out by John Thomas (Elpis Israel, 1849; Exposition of Daniel, 1869) and Robert Roberts, and the standard dates of ancient history: the fall of Babylon (539 BC), Gaugamela (331 BC), the death of Alexander (323 BC), Ipsus (301 BC), Pydna (168 BC), and the end of the western Roman empire (AD 476).
    • The seventy weeks are counted from the decree of Artaxerxes in the seventh year of his reign (Ezra 7), 457 BC.
    • Where Thomas tied a prophecy to the politics or dates of his own day (Russia and Turkey in the 1860s, end-dates between 1868 and 1908), we give his principle and leave his timetable aside. His expectation that the Jews would be back in their land in unbelief before Christ returns has come to pass since he wrote.

    Daniel 11–12 in detail · Revelation unsealed · Prophecy studies