“Your Kingdom Come” (Part 2 of 2)

Guest: Throughout Scripture, we are reminded that ultimately, Jesus wins. At the cross, he triumphed over sin and death and hell. So, does this assurance of Christ's victory mean that you and I as Christians will be spared from intense opposition, the kind described in the Bible's apocalyptic visions? Alistair Begg explores the answer today on Truth For Life as we continue our study in Daniel chapter 7.
Host: In the first eight verses, we have, if you like, the garden of beasts with the description of these four beasts emerging from the sea or emerging from the earth as it's later said. That is followed in verses 9 to 14 with the vision of God which we said contained three aspects of one great event that runs in history, namely, the throne room of God, the destruction of the beast, and then the appearing of one like a Son of Man. We noted the fact that Daniel is so caught up in this that in verse 16 he is actually describing himself as approaching one of the people who's standing there. Again, this is a feature of apocalyptic. You see that John does it in the same way, and Daniel does it here. Although he's caught up in a vision and in a dream, he's so drawn into it as he actually finds himself. He sees himself approaching. And the reason for his approach is to ask concerning the truth of all of these things. And in being given an explanation, verse 17 and into 18, we are provided with the, if you like, the hermeneutical principle or the principle of interpretation which has guided our study so far. Although the first 14 verses are all about description, and interpretation comes later, in order for us to navigate these first 14 verses, we've had to have some kind of interpretive methodology. And that has been derived from the clear statement in verse 17. These four great beasts are four kings who shall arise out of the earth. The saints of the Most High will receive the kingdom, possess the kingdom forever, forever, and forever. And then, of course, we're told that Daniel decides that he would like to have a little more information than this. And interestingly, he provides us with a few more details of his vision. For example, we never learned about the claws of bronze in the earlier part of the chapter. And Daniel here as he reiterates this, asks that he might have information concerning this, and also about the ten horns that were on its head, and the other horn that came up, and before which three of them fell, and then the horn that had eyes and a mouth and that spoke great things and that seemed greater than its companions. Well, ultimate victory is assured. That's what we're told here. But that doesn't mean that the people of God are removed from the realm of opposition. And in actual fact, that is what he is discovering here. That although victory is assured, although triumph is determined, nevertheless, as I look, the horn, verse 21, made war with the saints and prevailed over them. So, the story is not that this great triumph has taken place, and therefore for the balance of time, until the consummation when Christ returns, the saints, the people of God, are just going to be able to enjoy themselves and relax and have a nice time. No, the picture is very different from that. This horn made war and prevailed over them. In other words, it is a reminder of the fact that there is a not yet dimension, that we are living in the period of time between the triumph of Christ in his death and resurrection and the return of Christ in his power and in his glory. Jesus himself said, "In the world, you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." And it is important for us to understand this. It's throughout the Bible. You don't have to look hard for it. While I was studying and I was looking for a quote from a hymn, I inadvertently found a quote from Professor Don Carson, which seems apropos what I'm saying to you just now. This is what it says in the quote. "The gospel is boldly advancing under the contested reign and inevitable victory of King Jesus." All right. It is a contested reign, and it is an inevitable victory. This side of Jesus' death and resurrection, all of God's sovereignty is mediated exclusively through King Jesus. Christ must reign until he has put all of his enemies under his feet. That presupposes the reign is still contested and the reign still advances. Now, I find that very helpful in coming back to read verses 23 to 27, and I hope you do too. Thus he said, "As for the fourth beast, there shall be a fourth kingdom on earth, which will be differentiated from the other kingdoms, and it shall devour the whole earth." Now, I've said a couple of times, and I think you've picked up on this. That we have said, "It seems legitimate, along with other interpreters of the Bible, to see these kingdoms as being identifiable, at least primarily, as first of all, the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Greek, and the Roman." That's what we've said. Not all commentators do that. Some commentators say there's no reason for us to try and tie this to identifiable kingdoms. Many of the reformers saw the fulfillment of this in the papacy. In the papacy, the great establishment of the power of the Roman Empire. Calvin had his own view. So what are you saying, Alistair? I'm saying this, I think when you get to 23 to 27, we have to resist any temptation to try and identify in these ten horns a one-for-one equivalence. Now, go ahead if you want to. For example, you can go through the Roman Empire, and probably you can find ten or a dozen who came after all of the Caesars. You know, so you'll be able to get it neat and tidy. You might be wrong, you might be right. I don't think you need to do that. That's what I'm saying. Now remember, when I referenced ten earlier in the chapter, I said, you know, most beasts have two horns, and ten would be five times two, you know, proving how good I am at math, but also explaining that this is a picture, this is probably symbolic, and to take it as an expression of fullness, and of that which extends throughout the period of history, at least it helps me. Because the interpretation of the four beasts, which is clearly seen here, right? We already said it. These four beasts are the four kingdoms. We don't have that in relationship to the ten horns. And we certainly don't have it in relation to the three horns. There's no one-for-one equivalence. There's no explanation of it. Therefore, when it is left unstated, it seems to me dangerous territory to be dogmatic about that, about which the scriptures are not themselves dogmatic. You can have a lot of fun with it. But I wouldn't go to the mat for one's interpretation. So, in other words, let's contend ourselves by doing what we've said we must do, and that is grasping the big picture, and leaving the unexplained details alone. As for the ten horns, out of this kingdom, ten kings shall arise, and another shall arise after them, not identified, different from the former ones, and will actually put down the three kings. Who are they? We don't know. What will he do? What is the feature of this particular phenomenon? What is it about this horn with the eyes like a man and a mouth that is speaking great things that we saw for the first time back in verse 8? Well, look at what we're told about him. Verse 25. "He shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, the people of God, and shall think to change the times and the law. And they shall be given into his hand for a time, times, and half a time." Now, when you read these characteristics, it's not difficult, is it, to understand why it is that throughout history and the reading of history, a variety of individuals have been identified as this little horn. Now, when we read our Bibles in relationship to the unfolding story, which we must, then we realize that when John writes in the first century, and he considers these kind of things, First John 2, he says, "Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come." Now, when he says it is the last hour, if he thought that it was the last hour, he was wrong, wasn't he? Because that's 2,000 years have elapsed. So what was he saying? He was saying that now that Christ has triumphed, now that he has ascended, now that he has been crowned, now that the gospel goes out to the ends of the earth and the kingdom of God is being established, we live in that final hour, as it were, a metaphor, a symbol of that singular time period. And he says, "We know that there will be a final effulgence of evil in its opposition, in its full bore opposition to God and to God's people." He said, "But we don't have to actually wait for that, because there are many antichrists who are present even now." And the characteristics of verse 25 of Daniel chapter 7 fit the bill. These people are blasphemous. They are persecutors. They have notions of self-deification. Now, the best I can do with this is then to say, this little horn ultimately represents the final consummation and embodiment of evil. This little horn finally represents the individual to whom Paul refers when he writes Second Thessalonians. He refers to the individual as the man of sin or the man of lawlessness. In fact, it might be good for you just to turn there and let's just let's get anchored this in our minds. Second Thessalonians, and in chapter 2. And the people in Thessalonica have been asking, given all that they're going through, "When will Jesus come back? And what is going to happen? And how will the world end? And if Jesus triumphed, why are we in the mess we're in?" And so on. And so he writes to them, "2 Thessalonians 2. Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God." "Do you not remember that when I was still with you, I told you these things? And you know what is restraining him now, so that he may be revealed in his time." Now keep in mind, Daniel 7 is a great prophetic panorama of time from Daniel's time to the final consummation of things in the return of Jesus. He came with the clouds in glory to the Ancient of Days. He will come from there in like manner as we've seen him go. And so he says, "For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming. The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness." Now, it's not possible for us to make sense of Daniel 7 without recognizing what John is saying as I just quoted for you and what Paul is saying here. You see what is being conveyed for us. The kingdom of man, the proud, blasphemous assertions of man in his rebellion against God, reaches its apex in the little horn, which we're told is going to be able to prevail for a time and a times and half a time. I'm not even going to pause on that. All right. You know yourself, some of you this just gets your juices going remarkably so. For me, it doesn't. And I've never really been particularly intrigued by the explanations that I've been given. I say to you again what I said before, that the contrast is between the limited, God-controlled period of time where there will be this massive onslaught of evil, united, visibly, physically, observably against the saints of God, and the establishing of the kingdom of God, which is forever and forever and forever. So that the kingdom of man finds its apex in the activity of this little horn, and the kingdom of God actually finds its climax in the destruction of the Antichrist, and in the putting together of a dominion that will never come to an end. So throughout the chapter, we see, in the words of Chuck Colson's book, "Kingdoms in Conflict." And it's not possible for us to reckon with this, to understand this peculiar, immense chapter apart from the activity of the evil one, and apart from the reality of evil itself. Martin Lloyd Jones, many years ago now, in being interviewed, said, "I am certain that one of the main causes of the ill state of the church today lies in the fact that the devil is being forgotten." If you think about this, the commencement of the ministry of Jesus is a direct confrontation with evil. It is the forceful pushback of Satan against Christ as he comes to inaugurate his kingdom. The saints of God throughout history and in our world tonight are suffering at the hands of evil people. The ultimate evil of Islam, the ultimate problem with ISIS, is not actually what it can do structurally and politically and cataclysmically to our nation or to our superstructures of life. The ultimate disaster of Islam is that it is taking countless of millions of people to a lost eternity. The God who sends them a great delusion is the God who has loved them in his Son and has called out to them and has wooed them. Part of the problem we have in dealing with the eradication of evil is the fact that we don't really believe in evil at all. We're just a little misguided. We're not bad. We just wandered a little bit. We're not really lost. We're sort of on heart support, life support. We're not really dead. No, we're totally dead, totally corrupt, totally lost. And that's the reason for the appearing of the Son of Man. And as I said to you this morning, some of our brothers and sisters, known or unknown to us, are living at the epicenter of the opposition of vitriolic evil in their lives. And one doesn't have to be an alarmist to say, I'm not sure that we will get any more free passes in the continental United States. So let me wrap it up in this way. This chapter should help us to realize that the path of Christian discipleship is not an easy path. Also, I think this chapter should help us to realize how futile and silly it is to look to the power structures of our world as a basis of security and confidence. Not least of all, to our own power structures. No, there is a higher throne than all this world has known. You see, it's all really to give us an entirely different matter of perspective, an entirely different view of the world. Because news about the little horn is actually not the main message of the chapter. The recurring theme of the chapter is that the saints of God will receive the kingdom and possess it forever and ever. That's verse 18. He comes back to it again in verse 20-something and again in another 20-something. And the kingdom and the domain and the greatness under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High. So in other words, if you're disheartened, if you're fearful, if you're discouraged, the answer to your dilemma does not lie in trying to find a one-to-one equivalence of the ten horns and the three and the so on. But lies in the fact that when you stand back, I don't get this whole picture, but I get this part of the picture. God wins. In fact, God has won. And that the way that I view my world is altered entirely as a result of the unfolding drama that is contained here in chapter 7. My elder brother tells a wonderful story of a missionary returning to the United States when overseas travel was only by ship. And the missionary found himself arriving in New York on the same vessel as an acclaimed national figure. And the crowds were awaiting on the key for the arrival of the ship, and particularly large numbers with banners and signs, and many photographers to welcome this acclaimed figure with great fanfare. The missionary couldn't help but feel the contrast. He'd been laboring for the treasure that doesn't perish. He'd been pouring his life into sowing the seed of the gospel. And as he scanned the faces on the key, he realized that no one had come to welcome him home. And as he began to submerge in waves of self-pity, he realized the truth as clearly as if a voice had spoken to him from heaven. "Do not be discouraged. You have not yet reached home. This isn't it."
Guest: You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth For Life. If you are fascinated by our study of Daniel's prophetic visions, you can listen to Alistair's teaching through all 12 chapters of this Old Testament book. The entire two-volume series is available for purchase on a USB for just $5. In part of this series, Alistair explores the familiar opening chapters in Daniel's story, from his youthful days as an exile in Babylon, refusing to bow down to idols, to his later years, when his steadfast faith landed him in a lion's den. In part two of the series, Alistair explores the more difficult, mysterious passages found in the second half of the book of Daniel, the prophetic dreams and the apocalyptic visions. Throughout the series, the focus is on God's faithfulness, his power, and his sovereignty over the affairs of history, along with his promise to judge the world. To purchase the USB with all 21 messages, visit truthforlife.org/store and search for a study in Daniel. I'm Bob Lapine, thanks for joining us today. When you read the apocalyptic visions in Daniel, do you find them alarming? Do they make you anxious like Daniel? Tomorrow we'll learn why believers can be comforted. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth For Life, where the learning is for living.