Now a summary, how did Daniel get to this? This is what makes it such a good chapter. Daniel understood Jeremiah's 70 year prophecy. Did you notice that? Let's start reading, verse one. In the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus, of the lineage of the Medes, who has made king over the realm of the Chaldeans. Now just that verse is really great. This is a great chapter. And when Bonnie and I teach, one of the byproducts is, you know, I have a perpetual hobby. I would live in Israel. I am so jealous. Where are my Israeli friends? What, 10 weeks you spend over there every year? Two and a half months? I can't believe that. I told them I would move to Israel if I could afford it. But you know one of the byproducts the Lord gave me, because I teach in all these different Bible institutes and everything, some of them are in really great museum cities. Like I teach in London, do you know where every moment I'm not teaching, I'm in the British Museum. The British Museum is the biggest collection of biblical verification archaeological material I know of in the world. And when I'm teaching in France, in Paris, what's there? One of the biggest repositories of stuff you're just reading about. I mean, the French archaeologists, they're the ones that excavated Thessalonica. They're the ones that excavated sites all over the world. And so I take our students walking And I walk him through and I say, you look up there. Do you see that big stone thing? Look into his eyes. That's the Pharaoh that knew Joseph. Whoa, the kids, everything changes. They get up there and they look at him and they're taking pictures with him, you know. I mean, it was just a stone Egyptian something that's boring in a museum. These museums have almost all these characters you've read about. It just brings them to life. This one's real too. Verse 1, Darius, the son of Hasuerus, of the lineage of the Medes, who, by the way, the Medes are still around. You know what they're called today? They're called the Kurds. Okay? So, you know what I mean? If you hear about turkeys attacking the Kurds, you know, up there in Kurdistan, they're still around, you know, these people. And when I teach over in Jordan, the people introduce themselves. They say, hello, I'm in a, in English they say, I'm an Assyrian. And I go, And Assyrian, I thought the angel lord wiped them all out, you know, with Hezekiah. No, no, I'm from Assyria. And they still identify with these geographic locations, the Chaldeans too. But look at this, verse two. In the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood by the books the number of years specified. Now, let's go over here. Before I show you this, Jesus gives Daniel a strong endorsement. Daniel's the only Old Testament prophet Jesus calls by name. When he's explaining the future in his long and detailed Olivet prophetic lesson. The disciples asked Jesus one question. He spends two chapters answering it. I wish they would have asked him more questions. I mean, they said, what? The temple's going to be destroyed? When? How is that going to happen? Well, how will we know it's going to happen? What are the signs it's going to happen? Two chapters. Chapter 24 of Matthew, Chapter 25 of Matthew, Chapter 13 of Mark, Chapter 21 of Luke. Wow. Now look at this. Daniel's Bible study method. would be what we call dispensational. What do I mean by that? Well, Daniel from 539 to 538 BC was doing a prophetic Bible study of Jeremiah 25, 11, and 12. You can look up Jeremiah 25, 11, and 12. Daniel had a copy of it. Daniel was reading it. Daniel was praying and saying, Lord, what does this mean? See, Daniel didn't understand the Bible. Peter already told us that. Peter said, the Old Testament prophets, do you know what Peter said? Searching water, what manner of time the Spirit of Christ, which was in them, testified, signifying the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow. When the Old Testament writers wrote all their stuff down in inspiration, many of them, most of them, didn't even understand what they were writing. You think we have trouble understanding it? They wrote it and didn't fully understand it. And they studied, and they did the same thing we do. They said, Lord, what is this? So that's what Daniel was doing. How did Daniel interpret prophecy in the Bible? This would solve a lot of arguments. How did the people, under inspiration that God chose, that are recorded in the scriptures, how did they, well, look what it says in verse two. I understood by the books the number of the years specified, this is Daniel 9-2, by the word of the Lord through Jeremiah the prophet that he would accomplish 70 years in the desolations of Jerusalem. So Jeremiah the weeping prophet under inspiration of God's Spirit, wrote down in Jeremiah 25, 11, and 12 that God was going to make Israel be in exile for 70 years. And we know why, because of Leviticus 25, because they didn't do the Sabbaths. And God said, you didn't do my Sabbaths. I'm going to make you, for all the sabbatical years of rest and everything that you neglected to do because you were so greedy and wouldn't trust me and everything else, I'm going to make your land lay fallow, desolate, occupied, etc now look what I wrote how did Daniel interpret the prophecy in the Bible was he like st. Augustine and Luther and Calvin and I could go on and on and on the covenant theologians was he like them who allegorically said everything in the Bible is a code for something other than what it literally says when it gets in anything prophetic it doesn't mean what it says it means something else that's called an allegory Allegory is valid. God uses allegory. He calls Hagar and Mount Sinai and all that in Galatians. We know that, but he tells us when it's an allegory. He says the allegory and then he says it. But how's the rest of the Bible? Well, did Daniel take it allegorically or literally that God is telling us about specific events in the future? Well, Daniel, and by the way all the other Old and New Testament writers, always took the plain normal sense of scripture as what it said about the future. I mean, when I read a menu, I know it's a menu, and I read it the plain sense of a menu. When I read a newspaper, if you can find one, I mean, you know, we read it online, but when you read the news, you take it in the context, the plain simple language it means. You don't think that when it says Jerusalem is going to lay 70 years in desolation, that it means, let's see, Jerusalem probably means heaven. 70 years, what would 70 be? It's seven tens maybe, or it's seven times seven perfect numbers plus one. And we've got to figure out what it means. That's allegory. And so you have to have this key to understand any of the Bible that's prophetic, which happens to be more than 28%. So the covenant theologians have lost more than a fourth of the Bible. They don't know what it means. Or worse, they say it's the church. That's the easy thing to do. That's the whole renewal charismatic movement. They've claimed all the promises for Israel about material things and blessings and prosperity and all that. And they brought it over and said, if you just, you will. And they have disconnected it from the context. Well, Daniel. And the rest of the Old Testament and New Testament writers always took the plain normal sense of scripture as meaning what it said about the future. So basically what we have in Daniel 9 is God has given us a very simple map. God has given it. And it's Jesus' favorite. You know, chapter 9 is his favorite, because he quotes it in Matthew 24. The Bible offers us a map of the future. It's flawless, it's accurate, it's a guide to understanding history. That's why I love the museums. It's not just the future, it's the past and the present that are all encompassed in this. God tells us in chapter 9 a lot. It starts in chapter 2 of Daniel, actually, and God says there are four coming empires. One is, and three are coming, and then the world is going to end. Wow. That really is comforting to me. Jerusalem is, that's why I want to move there. Jerusalem is still standing at the end. Jesus returns to Jerusalem. It's not going to get nuked. You ought to live there. You know, it's a safe place to live. I'm teasing. When God Almighty, who rules from heaven over all the affairs of mankind, gave Daniel the snapshot of all the ages left for mankind, God says, this is all there's going to be to the end. I meet people, they're all worried. In fact, prophecy worries people. I just was teaching in another place and one of the dear people came up and they said, I've done all the courses and everything and now I'm going out and getting gold coins and silver coins because we're gonna join this thing in Vermont, we're gonna barter system because the world is close to end and the feds are doing this. I said, have you considered the most repeated command in the Bible? Fear not. I said, your entire take on prophecy is you're scared to death, you're trying to protect your money, and you're trying to keep a level of prosperity when bad times are coming to the world. I said, you actually ought to move into where all the starving people are and take all your gold coins and feed them and share the gospel with them. That was not welcomed. You know what I mean? That is not how we think. That's how the early church thought. that it says in Hebrews 11, they took joyfully the spoiling of their goods, and they were helping those that were in prison, they weren't hiding out. This new Christian idea of, it started in Y2K, none of you are old enough to remember, Y2K was a huge problem for American Christians. I mean, all the prophecy people were telling them to get bullets and guns and gold and get a place out in the country, way out, and don't tell anybody where it is. By the way, we lived in Oklahoma during that time. And people did it. Barbed wire, trenches, one of them, Bonnie and I went to. They wanted Bonnie to be the cook at this place. They had enough gear for three years. Enough diesel for the generators, enough water, enough grain, enough everything. They had bullets, shrink wrap, they had gold coins, and they said, we'll share equally. If you'll come into our compound, you have to come six months before Y2K starts, whenever it was going to start. And once you close the gate, you can't leave. I said, that is the most unchristian idea I've ever heard. And they got mad, and we're not even friends today. And it didn't happen, and they have all their bullets still shrink-wrapped. Were they going to actually shoot people? I mean, if you have a choice between giving them a gospel track and shooting them, which do you do in your compound? I mean, how did I get off on that? So basically, if you take all that Daniel says and put it in order, it looks like this, that there are these seven events coming. The church leaves the world. Then Jesus Christ does what he promised to do. We stand before his judgment seat. We get the reckoning for our life. While that is going on, the tribulation comes, which is for the nation of Israel. By the way, this tracks with all... The book of Revelation is a complete chronological summation. It's the key to understand prophecy. It has over 800 allusions to other parts of the Bible, and it puts them all in order, so you understand what's going on. It's kind of like when you get this complex thing, and you get how to put it together, it falls out of the box. You don't throw it away. The book of Revelation is the complex putting together of everything, of all the prophecies in the Bible. So after the second coming of Christ, it inaugurates the thousand-year rule, which so much of the Old Testament's about. And then they rebel, and then it's all over the great white throne and then heaven. So God says, I want you to know my plan, okay?