Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - God's Eternal Plan For You | The Writings | Daniel 11

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

Someone is in control of your future, and it's not you. That's a good thing. Do you trust God to take care of the future? In today's episode, Tanya discusses Daniel's prophecies in Daniel 11 to share why God's plan for the future is always good. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Daniel 11

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmeth. When I was a little girl, I watched a movie that made me scared, I was going to be left behind. Like, Jesus was going to come back and I was going to be left behind. I can remember watching it in the basement of our little country church. On a TV and VCR, I don't know, someone must have brought it in for the occasion. And in that movie, there were people, apparently Christians, that got swept away in the sky,

like all of a sudden, in the clouds, and then everyone else was left wondering where they went and what happened. There was mass chaos for those who were still left. Then the people who were left had to decide to either get the mark of the beast or go to the guillotine. It was terrifying. I was probably between 11 and 13, and I realized this isn't going to make any sense to you all who were under 35, but our church had something called a phone tree.

and I used that phone tree in the days following that movie. The phone tree was on our refrigerator with a magnet, and I would come home after school and be home alone for a few minutes, hours, I don't know, until my parents came home from work. And I would start to get scared that they weren't coming home like I had been left behind. So I would go to the phone tree. I would look and find a name of somebody who I thought surely was going to be one of the ones that made it to heaven.

I would give them a call. and if they answered, I'd hang up. I think a lot of things got passed along on that phone tree, and I think a lot of people wonder why somebody called and hung up. It sounds crazy to me now, but it made sense to me then, or at least it made as much sense as the movie did. But those thoughts, in a way, those stayed with me for a while. See, even in the college, I would sometimes find myself thinking,

what if Jesus comes back and I'm out at this bar? Okay, now maybe that was my conscience. Maybe that was my mom's voice in my head. I don't know. I probably did need to hear it. But it wasn't that voice or that message that gave me comfort or that made me want to go all in on following Jesus. Someone is in control of the future, but it's not what I thought. At least not back then. Now, what we know about the book of Daniel is that it was very important to Jesus, and it was very prophetic about the future. Jesus quoted Daniel five times, and he alluded to it 130 times, at least in his teachings, especially so when he talked about the future. And today, when we look at Daniel, we see that the things Daniel said were not only important to Jesus, but they were

incredibly accurate. The things that he talked about were historically accurate. So at the time this had been written, Daniel had been fasting for three weeks. He'd been asking the Lord for a vision or a sign about what was going to happen in the future, and the Lord appeared to him in a vision and said several things are about to happen, but I will tell you what is written in the book of truth. So then in Chapter 11, we get a very detailed account of Daniel's vision, and it was written in the 500s BC. But the things that it alluded to, the things that it talked about actually happened over the next three or 400 years. For example, he talks about a king that will come and take on a nation. And we know that a Persian king came and took on Greece,

Xerxes in 480 BC. And he talks about how that's going to cause another king to arise. And that's what happened 150 years later when Alexander the Great took back the territory from the Persians and killed the Persian king and expanded his territory all the way into India, around 330 BC. And then we have these generals from the north, and the South and they're fighting. And see, historically, when Alexander the Great died, he left his dynasty to four generals. And the generals from the North and the South fought each other constantly with Jerusalem in the middle for 150 years. When Daniel was written in the 500s BC, he was describing events that would happen in 480 BC and 330 BC, and he was describing the dynasties

that would come from four generals. A big part of Daniel 11 focuses on one man, and there was a man named Antiochus Epiphanes, and he became incredibly angry. He took his anger and frustration out on the Jews, and he had the goal of not having one believing Jew alive. See, if you were a Jew at the time that he was in charge and you chose to worship Zeus, you were okay.

But if you worshipped God, you were going to be wiped out. But Daniel says in chapter 11, verse 32, he will flatter and win over those who violated the covenant, but the people who know their God will be strong and will resist him. And that's what happened. There was almost a wipeout. But God told Daniel what was going to happen.

So 170 years after this happens, there was still a Jewish presence, so that when Jesus was born, he had believing parents. He had people who were ready to follow him. The implications of what Daniel prophesied being true are incredibly important to Jesus, and they're important for our future. In the New Testament, Jesus talks about the future, and he is very sure of what will happen. The disciples are sitting with Jesus in Matthew 24, and Jesus, Jesus, points out the temple buildings and he says, see those buildings, they will be completely demolished.

Not one stone will be left, which leads to the disciples to ask, Jesus, what will happen? What sign will signal your return at the end of the world? And Jesus starts by saying, don't let anyone mislead you. And then he goes on to talk about how hard it will be for them and for all the believers who come after them. but this is the part that changed my life and still changes it today. Anytime I get anxious about whether I'm really going to be with Jesus forever. See, Jesus said in Matthew 2431,

and he will send out his angels with the mighty blast of a trumpet, and they will gather his chosen ones from all over the world, from the farthest ends of the earth and heaven. See, it doesn't matter where you are. There will be a day when all God's people, those who have died and those who are still living will be assembled before the throne of Jesus. These hardships will come into your life, and increasingly so, the Bible says at the end of times. It's going to be costly to be a follower of Jesus.

And these things are going to happen because your life is part of a bigger story, and God is in complete control. And yet, if we flip the page to the next chapter, Daniel 12, there's a certainty about your future. They keeps you grounded in the middle of all the chaos. Daniel 12, 2, and 3 says, Many of those whose bodies lie dead and buried will rise up, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting disgrace. Those who are wise will shine as bright as the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness will shine like the stars forever.

All the things that feel so important to us are going to come like the Persian Empire and the Roman Empire and those temple buildings that Jesus was pointing to when he was talking to the disciples. Yet we, yet God's people, are going to shine like the stars forever. I want to have the same view of the future Jesus did. See, for the joy set before him,

Jesus endured the cross. I want to endure to the end with Jesus. Camille Paglia said, the earth is littered with the ruins of empires that once believed they were eternal. All those things in my life that seem really important to me today are going to look like ruins of an ancient city tomorrow. All those thoughts about who likes me and who doesn't. The way someone looked at me, the thing I was able to buy or not buy,

the vacation, the promotion, the slight, thoughts of those things build empires in my head in the quiet, in the quiet of the world. the night. But when I let the light of scripture shine on them, those worries crumble. Those things that are so important lose their power. The author of Hebrews reflects the confidence that Jesus has about the future. Hebrews 1023 says, let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. There are a lot of things we can choose to hold tightly. But the one that matters is Jesus. Will you ask him? to show you where you're holding tightly, to things that are keeping you from trusting him

with your future. See, it's not what we're doing or who we're doing it with that matters when the end comes so much. It's who we're holding on to. I want to hold on to Jesus. I want to believe like he did about the future, so much so that he was willing to go to the cross for me. This is a hope that doesn't depend on how good things are or how well my life is going. This is hope that depends only on the eternal goodness of God.