40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Daniel 6:19-7:4 (Episode 516)

Episode Date: July 29, 2026

This episode follows Daniel's deliverance from the den of lions and connects it to the resurrection of Christ. The hosts also begin Daniel 7, a landmark chapter that introduces the four beasts and the Son of Man. Have a listen. More from 1517: ·       Support the work at 1517 ·       1517 on Youtube ·       1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts ·       1517 Events Schedule ·       1517 Academy - Free Theological Education New Books from 1517 Publishing: ·       The Turk at the Door by Adam Francisco ·       Luther and the Lion: A Narnian Catechism by Samuel Schuldheisz ·       By Water and the Word by Brian Thomas ·       Being Family by Dr. Scott Keith More from the hosts: ·       Daniel Emery Price ·       Chad Bird Follow 1517:  Instagram X/Twitter Facebook

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, check out everything else that 1517 is doing. Sign up for an event, man. You can come hang out with us in beautiful California, Southern California, San Diego. I mean, I think – is there a better – we're going to get comments here from people that live in California.

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Sign up. Let's go. Chad, we are in Daniel chapter 6, and we ended with the real – Like, I mean, maybe the most cliffhanger we've ever landed on. I mean, if this story wasn't so well known, right, if we were, like, making this story up as we go along, this would be pretty intense because we left Daniel hanging out with lions with a big stone over the top of this den sealed up so that no one can get in or out, and he's going to have to spend the night there. And this is all because fidelity and worship will get you in trouble sometimes. Christianity doesn't have like a ton of laws or things that you would get in trouble for. Right.

Most of the time you can, and Paul seems to think this, you can get along with the culture that you live in. You can figure out a way to be a good citizen and, you know, regardless of what culture you're in, be someone that someone likes doing business with or a good neighbor and all this stuff. But where the rub comes and what Daniel seems to know, because maybe he's, you know, familiar with the history, is he's like, but there's this idolatry thing that people do. And man, you want to talk about the thing I know that I know that I know that God does not like. It's that. And I'm not messing around with that. And so he doesn't mess around with that. And instead, he gets to mess around with some lions.

And that's kind of where we ended. We are waiting to see how this turns out. And you get the real impression that, you know, the king, he really doesn't want to be doing this. Yeah, and he's also, to his credit, Darius is not just completely despairing, right? He's not like, well, it's over, right? He does hold out hope that Daniel will, in fact, be delivered. In fact, that's what he says in verse 16. May your God, whom you serve continually, deliver you.

spends the night fasting, no entertainment for him, can't sleep. So he is in great anticipation as to what's going to happen in the morning when he's able to visit the den and see what went down. Is there any part of it where Darius, not that he's like a believer or a faithful worshiper of god or anything but he definitely respects daniel and thinks that daniel might be um uh no one knows some things that maybe he doesn't know and one of those things could include this god and uh is is probably like i don't really want this god or any god and his probably probably believes in many gods but uh take a god i don't want to kill his guy like this doesn't seem like this doesn't seem like a good thing if you believe if you believe this god is real at all

yeah yeah and you also he also thinks that if anybody has a chance because of his god to make it through the night inside a den of lions then it's going to be going to be daniel so we'll see we'll see what happens verse 19 then at break of day the king arose and went in haste to the den of the lions as he came near to the den where daniel was he cried out in a tone of anguish the king declared to daniel oh daniel servant of the living god has your god whom you serve continually been able to deliver you from the lions and i i wonder if daniel let a couple of moments pause before he before he answered or if he just uh if he was ready and and immediately responded. Either way, here's what he said, verse 21. Then Daniel said to the king,

O king, live forever. My God sent his angel and shut the lion's mouth, and they have not harmed me, because I was found blameless before him, and also before you, O king, I have done no harm. So I think we talked about this at the last episode, a great parallel here topologically to what happens on Easter morning. I mean, you've got the break of day. You have him hastening to the tomb. Of course, there's differences, no doubt. You've got a large stone and an angel.

That's pretty good. You've got a large stone. You've got an angel. Of course, it wasn't like when the Marys showed up at the tomb that they spoke through the rock and said, Oh, Jesus, has the Father resurrected you? Now, given the fact that Jesus repeatedly had told his disciples this was what was going to happen, they should have parked themselves outside the tomb and waited until Sunday morning knowing that he was going to be resurrected. But, of course, that didn't happen.

So the parallels here aren't exact. There's some differences. Nonetheless, what you're looking at here is definitely a foreshadowing of the resurrection of Christ. One of the things that I think is interesting about this is that, you know, first of all, you have the king. I mean, he gets up at dawn and then is like running, right, to the tomb or to the den. This line, it kind of strikes me as humorous that – mostly just because of what precedes it, where he says – so this is what he says, right? He says, O Daniel, servant of the living God. It's nice, right?

Good start. Really good start. All right. So you got a God who's alive, and you're his servant, right? So that's good. Has your God, whom you continually serve, right? Like you're serving him day and night. And this part just strikes me as humorous.

Been able to deliver you from the lions. And you're like, man, what kind of puny gods does this guy worship? I mean, it's kind of like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego when we talked about that. The question is not if he's able. I mean, this is like nothing for God. I mean, this is nothing. You're talking about the creator of heaven and earth. I don't know what kind of pantheon of whatever you got going on, dude.

but this is light work uh for this god uh and it lets you know that like that when you have you know a god for everything you have a god for nothing man like that's like you have a worthless god uh but if you've got one god the god who creates everything who is all powerful who has always been who will always will be uh that this is nothing man like the the creator of lions doesn't have a problem shutting their mouth. Yeah, it's such a great insight into the weak theology of the ancient Near East, where you had gods and goddesses that were restricted in their power and restricted even in their movement.

I mean, most gods of the ancient world were not considered to be universal deities. They had borders, right? Oh, yeah, this is God. He's the God of Egypt. He's the God of Babylon. she's the goddess of the philistines or whatever whatever it might be so they had their their place they had their responsibilities they had their connections to the other gods but they also had limitations yeah well even their abilities so you're like i don't know like this god could this particular god like he can make it rain i don't know if he can do much about lions though like that i don't know if he has that kind of power he has power over weather i don't know

But, like, when it comes to beasts, like, so what kind of God does Daniel have here? Is this the kind of God that can control lions or not? And you're like, dude, this God can control everything, man. This is the God you need. Yeah, like I said, if you have a million gods, you have no God. If you've got the one God, then you've got a million reasons to worship him. That's right. So Daniel responds, O king, live forever.

My God sent his angel, his messenger, and shut the lion's mouth. Of course, there's a lot of parallels here between what happens to Daniel, the individual, and what happened to Daniel's three friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. We, I believe, discussed that at the beginning of the last episode. In both cases, you have them being charged with something which was theologically freighted. Of course, the three friends refused to bow down to the golden statue. Daniel refuses to pray to anyone except his God, the only true God. And as a result, both of them, of course, are cast into situations where, according to appearances anyway, they should have perished.

And in both cases, you have this messenger from God who is sent and does the work that needs to be done to save them. Of course, he's in the fiery furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. go, he is presumably in the den of lions with Daniel. He goes there. God sends him. He shows up. I don't know how he shuts the lion's mouth. Maybe he just did it. Maybe he just said something. Whatever it was, those lions were not opening their mouths. They were just sitting around harmless all evening. And in both cases, because of the parallel here, if we just had Daniel 6 and we didn't have the account of the fiery furnace, I might be more inclined to say, oh, well, this, You know, this could be any, any heavenly messenger, but because of the parallelism and because of the, uh, the pretty, pretty clear language in, uh, in the other account, I'd be inclined to see this as the messenger of the Lord.

This is a Christ showing up once more to do the work of protecting his, his people and shutting the lion's mouths in this case. Yeah, I think that when you, I know we, if you listen to this podcast, we make a big deal out of the angel of the Lord, of course. So when you see that, we're like, hey, we know what that is. And then you have other times where you have an angel of the Lord, and we're like, oh, that's probably just, you know, an angel. This one is like sort of a little bit different where it's his, right? So what do you do with that? Well, I'm inclined to think that when it's one and it's God's messenger, not just a messenger from God, And yeah, I think we're talking about Jesus here.

Yeah, which is beautiful, because not only is there a parallel here, of course, between what happens to Daniel and what happened to his three friends, but of course, both of these are a foreshadowing of the greater deliverance that Christ himself will bring in his resurrection. So you could say that Jesus has been in the place of death and come out of there twice before he actually enters into the tomb himself and is resurrected. He brings Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego out of the fiery furnace. He brings Daniel out of the den of lions. And so when his own body is laid in the tomb, he's like, ah, been here before. I know the way out. Yeah, this is Jesus being like, listen, I got two opportunities here.

Don't be sending anyone else. You know, like, we don't need Gabriel for this. Like, I'm signing up. send me in there because I'm all in on foreshadowing my conquering over both hell and the fiery furnace and the grave and the den of lions. Let me show you exactly how much power I have over both of these things. Yeah, so all of it's a beautiful preaching of the gospel beforehand through both these narratives. And then Daniel says that they haven't harmed him because he was found blameless before him,

that is before God and also before you, O king. So Daniel's basically declaring, listen, I got a double innocence going here. I didn't do anything wrong to you, O king. And I certainly didn't do anything that was wrong before God because I continued to pray to him just like I always had, nor did I do anything whatsoever that was against you. Yeah, I certainly defied the orders that my enemies had tricked you into putting into place, but I haven't done any harm to personally anyway to the king. So the king, needless to say, given everything that we have seen, was very happy. The king was exceedingly glad, we're told, and commanded that Daniel be taken up out of the den. So that's what they did. Daniel was taken out of the den and no kind of harm was found on him

because he had trusted in his God. One more parallel there with what happened to his three friends because back in Daniel 3.28, another king, this is Nebuchadnezzar, said, blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants, who trusted in him and set aside the king's command. So in both cases, you also have trust going on. The three friends trusted, Daniel trust. Slightly different verb that's used, but the same idea is behind both of those. I like that in both those accounts. It's almost like they come out And they're like, man, these guys look better than when they went in. Yeah.

Three friends, they didn't even smell like smoke. Their clothing was fine. Their hair was fine. Looked good. Man, like Daniel came out and you're like, this is an old man. He looks better than when we threw him in there. This is crazy. Yeah, like you're looking at no scratch marks on him whatsoever.

He's great. Now, the next verse tells us that things did not go so well for the accusers. And in this case, the parallel does break because this did not happen. We know the soldiers who had Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, when they took them to the fiery furnace, they were killed because of the overheating. But after the three friends were brought out, I mean, it wasn't like the king said, all right, grab some people and throw them into the fiery furnace in their place. But in this case, verse 24 tells us that as soon as Daniel was out, the king commanded, and those men who had maliciously accused Daniel, I've talked about this Aramaic phrase before, it's literally who eat the pieces, which is something we could compare to the English phrase backbiting. So to eat the pieces, backbiting, those who maliciously accused is the way the ESV translates it. Those men who had maliciously accused Daniel were brought and cast into the den of lions.

And here it gets, what's the word I would look for? Unjust. Extreme. Extreme. I feel like right here you know that Darius, you don't exactly have this God figured out. And no, because I mean, it'd be one thing if he just threw these guys, but it wasn't just they, it was also their children and their wives were thrown into, into the den of lions. I mean, this, of course, this does happen. It's not right.

It's not just, but that's what, that's what Darius does. And before they reached the bottom of the den, the lions overpowered them and broke all their bones in pieces. it's a pretty grotesque end for uh for not just their accusers whom we can make an argument had deserved this but also for their families as well complete destruction by the lions which of course underscores the fact that it wasn't like it just so happened that these lions overnight had become tame creatures who no longer were uh after human human flesh but in fact god had worked a miracle and closed their mouths because they certainly opened those mouths

against Daniel's enemies. Yeah, part of that is that we don't understand the way that people did things back then too. So often the threat is to wipe you out completely. You see this when it's like, hey, if you guys aren't going to interpret this dream, I'm going to burn your houses down and I'm going to kill all your families.

um so uh the threat of just killing you um now maybe they probably didn't even like value death was so common then that like it's like hey uh people just dying all the time um so the the way to amp up that threat is then to say like i'll wipe out your your whole line man i mean it won't just be you like it'll be you you defy me and it'll be you and your kids and like it'll be everybody uh obviously now we'd be like i mean you can't do that that's completely unjust uh but i don't think that threat hits the same way either because we don't care as much about bloodlines or lineage and that kind of stuff uh so it uh yeah it's it's horrific but it's not as though this is like the only time um and the scriptures or just in in the the history of the

world in that place and in that time that these kind of things were done right where it's like you cross me i wipe out your whole family yeah it's toxic is something you might see happening in a in a mob movie you know oh we're gonna take your out or at least threaten to take out your kids, your wife, everybody. But this was not unusual. This was not just relegated to the ancient mob. This would have been just par for the course in lots of these ancient cultures. Yeah. So after that, verse 25, King Darius wrote to all the peoples, nations, and languages that dwell in all the earth. And here's what he wrote. Peace be multiplied to you. I make a decree that in all my royal dominion, people are to tremble and fear before the God of Daniel,

for he is the living God, enduring forever. His kingdom shall never be destroyed and his dominion shall be to the end. He delivers and rescues. He works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth. He who has saved Daniel from the power of the lions. So Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian, or as we discussed last episode, if we understand Darius and Cyrus to be actually two names for the same person, then we would translate this during the reign of Darius, that is the reign of Cyrus the Persian. Listeners can consult our earlier conversation about that if they're interested in who Darius was.

so this uh is it fitting with some of the things that nebuchadnezzar said too where you have this reaction on the part of the king after god works a deliverance where he you know he makes a pretty good confession i'm not saying that everything that all these kings everything that they say is necessarily completely accurate even though here everything that darius says in fact rings completely true is god a living god yep is he endure forever yes well this kingdom is dominion never be destroyed, always be there? Will he rescue and deliver? Yes. So all of these things are true. Now, whether Darius himself came to eventually reject all other gods is a whole other story. I mean, keep in mind that when you are a polytheist, you can say things like this

while at the same time not discounting the existence and the power of other gods. So you can say that the God of Daniel is a living God, his kingdom's going to go on forever, he rescues, he delivers. All of that can be true for you, while at the same time, you turn to someone else and you say the same thing about their god or their goddess. That being said, what he speaks here, just the words themselves are completely theologically true, accurate, and a really good confession as to who the God of Daniel is. I like that there's this, so as a Christian, having a god who saves is just sort of a given that's like what he does like i mean we go around being like so-and-so got saved i mean like god's just going around saving all the time

that's what he does right it's a it's like a primary uh characteristic of what he does uh this this is i think it's interesting that this isn't the first time that happened i mean that happened with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego as well, that this is distinct. This God delivers. They've got like a delivery God, and that's crazy because that's not what all these other gods do. They're not out here delivering people, like individuals.

They're not doing that. But it's one of those things that sets God apart from uh the sort of uh all these other gods that they have like would all when any of these other guys take interest in just like one random guy and like deliver him save him no like probably not um but yeah that's what you get with the with the true god you get a god who's very interested in delivery yeah if you read uh for instance the read the iliad read the odyssey uh you know which is a narrative at the same time it's it's it's theological narrative because it talks about the the views of the the greeks and the roman the greeks were the guard to to their gods and

goddesses and typically if if there's a god or a goddess who's going to rescue or deliver it's a very special individual but for one reason or another this god or goddess is especially attached to but it's not like they take a special interest in every individual and they're really out to save and to deliver. In fact, if you read a lot of the theologies from the Greeks or from the Romans, and by theologies, I mean, they can be philosophical works that are about the deities. It can be just kind of a gathering together of various myths about them. One thing that strikes you is that the deities of the ancient world were much more concerned about other deities than they were humanity. I mean, you had, uh, you had spats going on between

God's goddesses, uh, like Zeus and Hera. You have jealousies. You've got, uh, you know, this goddess is married to that God, but she's cheating on him because she's sleeping with this other God. You got all of this going on. You got them, you know, well, I'm on the side of these people. I'm on the side of the Trojans. Well, I'm on the side of the Greeks and the gods are trying to undercut each other. They're very human in the worst possible sense, but they're not characterized by rescuing and delivering. And they're certainly not characterized by showing mercy and compassion and acting to save those who are in these kinds of situations. And in those ways and lots of others, of course, the God of Israel is completely different from the theologies

of persians babylonians greeks romans all the way down yeah well most of these gods exist to be appeased too right i mean so like i mean it's not so much about they have no like affection for you per se uh unless you're someone that really gives them what they want and then they might like what you give or do and so maybe they maybe they'll come to your your uh aid uh because you're like we've made the right sacrifices like we give them the thing they want um so they all the bet like one of the things you're just trying to do all the time is just not make these gods angry with you like you're like i'll just i'll just if i could just live a natural life without the gods upset with me that would be like a real win the last thing you want is like one of the gods angry and

so and they're very easy to make angry it turns out uh so you have to do all these things and Yeah, God is just completely different than that. Yeah, the basic assumption of all ancient worshipers outside of Israelites and Christians was that all worship was quid pro quo. I mean, I give God this, I make these sacrifices, I do these rituals, whatever it is I'm doing. and uh god in response to my obedience response to my ritual and response to my gift then will give me that which i'm i'm asking for but it's all based upon what i have to do first and then god will then god will respond which is completely contrary to the way that that the one god works he doesn't work with a you scratch my back i scratch yours he steps forth and he does for

his people what they can ever do for themselves and their sacrifices even aren't a way to get something from him but actually the means by which he gives something to them by grace yeah well i mean and i mean it's understandable uh why they think that because that is like the default position of the human heart is that obviously this must be how god works because we even do this like we fall into this trap of thing of believing that god is like that right uh that like oh this this thing is happening and it's not good i wonder if i made god mad uh that's probably why this is that this is like this is the default mode that that you're born into and so it's um it's completely understandable why all their views of these gods are all

transactional when we struggle to not apply that same thing to God when we know he's not transactional. Yeah. I think the fundamental challenge is so much of our life is transactional. I mean, we do things for people just because we want to, not because we're wanting to get something out of it. I mean, we do those sorts of things, but a lot of life is transactional. you know i do this and for someone especially if you're dealing with power yes yes so i do this to get something from from this person or they do something for me to get something for me that's just and that's the way most of our life works and we just take that horizontal ordinary and we shift it vertically and like oh well evidently things going to work that way with with god and uh it's

It's completely backwards. God will have nothing whatsoever to do with transactionalism, no matter how prevalent it is in our ordinary lives. Yep. All right. So chapter six, done, which means that we are going to start one of the biggest, most important, most monumental, most impactful. I could just keep going on and on with adjectives. one of those chapters in the Old Testament that is a true mountain peak, if you were to use that kind of image, Daniel chapter 7. I mean, there's a number of these. 2 Samuel chapter 7 is another

one of these big chapters in the Old Testament where God makes a promise to David that he's going to build a house for him. We could point to other chapters that it's not like they're more inspired than the rest of the Bible, but they do serve as these mountaintops in the sense of what's described continues to be seen and through the rest of the scriptures and to impact the rest of the scriptures. And Daniel 7 is certainly one of those chapters. It's also a switch in the book of Daniel itself. So up to this point, we've had some dreams and visions and interpretations, things like that, but a lot of narrative. And Daniel 7 is going to start the second half of the book. So we got the first six chapters, you know, mainly historical. We got some prophecy

going on, of course. But the last chapters, beginning with chapter 7 all the way through the end of the book, are going to be mainly focused upon various visions, apocalyptic kind of genre visions that are seen, interpreted. So we'll begin that section with chapter 7. And the reason chapter 7 is so important, not just for Daniel, but for the whole rest of the Bible, is because this description that we're going to see of the Son of Man and the kingdom which is given to him is going to pop up all over the Gospels. It's going to be echoed in some of the Psalms which precede Daniel, but it interacts with those, Psalm 2 and Psalm 110 in particular.

But the Gospels certainly are impacted through and through with what happens in Daniel chapter 7. And then, of course, it goes all the way to Revelation. A lot of chapters in Revelation are piggybacking off of what happens in Daniel, not just Daniel 7, but other parts of Daniel as well. So it's pretty hard to overstate just what an impact this particular vision has on the rest of the Scriptures. Is there a chapter in the Old Testament that has had a greater impact on many people's eschatology than Daniel 7? Oh, I don't think that there is, besides maybe Revelation 20. But from the Old Testament, no, Daniel 7 is definitely at the top. There's no chapter which has impacted people more eschatologically from the Old Testament than Daniel 7.

Yeah, not that there's nothing to impact your eschatology here, but the thing that should be the biggest takeaway is how Jesus borrows this language and applies it to himself all throughout the Gospels. Like that's the big, big thing in Daniel 7, that Jesus is – if you just read the Gospels and you're like, hey, what is this thing that Jesus keeps calling himself? What's this title that Jesus keeps giving himself? And what am I supposed to do with that? Why – like that sounds weird. You have to understand like who he's talking to when he does that, and like they know exactly what he's doing. yeah they they figure it out as not just his disciples but his uh his adversaries too oh he's at his trial when jesus finally when they when they push him and push him and push him and

he finally says yeah and you shall see the son of man standing at the right hand of the power on high well then all there is no more lack of clarity they know exactly who he's claiming to be And as a result of that, his – the decision by the Sanhedrin and the high priest is reached. Yeah, this guy has to go because he's just declared that he is the character of Daniel 7. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so people that – when they say like, hey, Jesus never claimed to be God. He never claimed to be the son of God. Yeah, he did.

The people – the religious leaders of that day sure thought he did. They weren't just making that up. They were drawing a reasonable conclusion from these words. Like, hey, we know that he knows what he's doing right here. Yeah. So for all those reasons, needless to say, Daniel 7 is an important chapter to work your way through to understand and to see how it is threaded through the whole rest of the Old Testament and then into the New Testament as well. So we'll get there. I think it looks like we have maybe six minutes left. So we'll get at least into this opening vision. It's not going to start with a Son of Man vision. We're going to work our way to that. It's going to start with a vision of four different beasts. One that's like a lion, one that's like a bear, one that's like a leopard. And you might be expecting me to say one like some other animal, but actually the fourth one is not described in connection with any particular individual animal.

But instead, it's just a terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong fourth beast. So we'll have to take each of those bit by bit, see how far we get. Start out here with kind of getting the setting. and this is the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, which then helps us to pinpoint the date here. We're looking at around 553 BC. So I mentioned this in the previous, not the previous episode, the one before that, that Belshazzar was actually never a king on his own, but he co-ruled, he was a co-regent along with his father Nabonidus, but he began that co-regency around 553. This is the guy who was the co-regent when we had the handwriting on the wall,

just kind of help people to put these narratives together. So it's his first year, about 553 BC. And when he was co-regent or king of Babylon, Daniel saw a dream and visions of his head as he lay in his bed. That same language we saw back in Daniel 2 and Daniel 4 as well. Well, somebody's in bed, they're dreaming, they have these visions, and Daniel, we're told, wrote down the dream and told the sum of the matter. So he didn't just have the dream and then, you know, told people about it. He wrote it down, and here's what we have. Verse 2, Daniel declared, I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea, and four beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another. so the four winds of heaven of course pointing to the four different directions uh talking about

the sea the sea here is or the great sea is not a reference to the mediterranean even though that is applied to the mediterranean and other other other text this seems to be more of the sea is just kind of an image for the world and the four winds coming from all different directions and so you kind of you had this idea of okay here's the world which is pictured as a sea it's kind of tumultuous and a lot of things going on. And what's going to come up out of the sea are going to be these four different beasts. And each of these beasts is going to represent kings and kingdoms. And what's happening here is you're going to be given the vision in these opening verses. And then once we get down to verse 15, we're going to have the interpretation, at least,

of aspects of this vision. This is the way that a lot of, especially the apocalyptic literature works. You have a vision and then you have the interpretation of the vision, which is often done by some angelic figure. That's what's going to happen here. Have the vision. And then when we get down to verse 15, which won't be until our next episode, we'll have this angelic interpreter who's going to make known the interpretation of the vision. So we'll just kind of start out here with kind of getting the general vision, and then we'll hear more about the details as we get into it later in another episode. But the four beasts come out of the sea, different from one another. The first, verse four, the first was like a lion and had eagle's wings. You kind of think here of,

you think of the lion, you think of king, you think of king, we might say king of the beast, eagle uh king of the the flying flying beast we might say you kind of got a double royal image here and the image of a lion with eagle's wings that was a very common iconographic image that you had in babylon and other ancient near eastern uh statues and and carvings so i got a winged lion with eagle's wings and he as i looked its wings were plucked off and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a man and the mind of a man was given to it so you got to read read daniel 7 in parallel with what was going on back in daniel chapter 2 where you had nebuchadnezzar having the dream of the statue that had the golden head and then the silver chest and

then of course you had the bronze and your family had the iron mixed with clay the same sort of thing is going on here, except under different kinds of images. So this first one, this lion with eagle's wings, is going to be the Babylonian Empire. And you can tell by its wings being plucked off that its power is going to be limited. It's going to be depleted over time. And then when it says he was lifted from the ground, stood up like a man with two feet, had the mind of a man given into it. Most commentators that I've consulted, and I agree with this, this seems to be hearkening back to what happened in Nebuchadnezzar when he was a beast for a while, and then his reason returned to him, the mind of a man returned to him, and he was able to reassume his power and

his throne after he had suffered for a while. So the first image, lion, eagle's wings, is going to be the the babylonian empire not the last of these images but at least that'll be the first yeah i mean the a lion uh with wings like an eagle i mean this is like king of land king of the air air superiority land superiority uh that's that's who this guy is uh but uh yeah you've been in that way that your um your power has been cut in half if the way if you the wings get pulled off uh yeah and uh yeah and it seems to me that yeah given the mind of a man um that seems like a pretty direct i mean it's almost like it's not quoting uh the previous section but it's it's so similar that i don't know how like is his reason returned to him kind of thing right i'm gonna stop walking

around on all fours i'm gonna stand up and i'm gonna use my mind to speak words uh which i was unable to do earlier yeah so that's a that's a first kingdom and we're gonna have to stop there just because we're out of time we're gonna see the other kingdoms described as a bear and a leopard and this terrifying fourth beast uh we'll talk about that next time but daniel's getting us rolling here in chapter seven with this vision basically what we're going to see is all world history laid out for us with the rise and fall of these kingdoms and the establishment of the kingdom of the son of man a kingdom that will have no end so daniel's going to give us the big picture basically of entire world history coming up here under these different images so a lot a

lot of great stuff to get to you know you want to hear that you know you want to hear i mean this might be just because the lion's den is so well known this might be even a greater cliffhanger because people are maybe more interested to hear what we have to say about the rest of daniel 7 than they were to find out oh look daniel didn't die in the lion's den i think i heard that somewhere so yeah uh so yeah make sure you tune in next episode because uh we will uh be getting into all that chad i will see you then all right see you then