His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and His dominion is from generation to generation."
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SPIRITUAL STRATEGY:
THE DIVINE DEPLOYING THE HUMAN FORM OF DANIEL
DANIEL, NEHEMIAH, MESSIAH
DANIEL
PART II
THE LINE OF DEVELOPMENT FROM DANIEL
There is, then, as seen in the preceding Chapter, a sense of the strategy for broadcasting the truth of God and the necessity to find Him, who has neither category nor class, for there is none in heaven or earth like Him, as the kings discovered.
Meanwhile, there is another element to trace. It is that of development. This leads us on from power and precision, deliverance and direction, to a mounting thrust to the finale for faith, judgment and its perspective.
First, you have
1) An Impersonal Dream.
It is given to King Nebuchadnezzar and may contain a whiff of warning, in this, that it makes it clear that not only is the empire which he rules, one of a line to come, but that it will END, by implication, its mundane domain (Daniel 2). In this case, the King has anxiety, and becomes weary of fancy and fanciful prognosticators and magicians, men of culture; seeking the truth. In fact, his royal disdain is so great that Daniel's own life comes to be at risk, so that a confrontation with the God of Daniel is now put into position. Just as a pagan King challenged, so was an alien nation shown the answer in high profile work from the Lord, the provision of whose own power in the matter was justly acknowledged with utter veracity by Daniel.
The Lord is shown as a revealing and a delivering God, for whom no task is too much.
As with Esther, this brought the name of God into the very centre, not only of a pagan culture, but of an imperial regime and for that matter, a high profile religious caste; for here on indisputable display was the God of knowledge, wisdom and truth without equal, successful where others failed, transforming challenge into exhibition of His limitless knowledge and control.
God thus turned Israel's sin into Gentile revelation in a way to reach an amazing climax in Christ, as in Isaiah 49:6, and Daniel 9:24-27. The matter over a short period was progressive; for any and for all who would be driven by curiosity, fear or fascination, it supplied a look at the salvation of God.
2) The Brazen Imperial Dream, Expressed in Gold
In this case (Daniel 3), like one dreaming, but this in the egocentric function of fallen human nature rather than in the realms of night, under the inspiration of its Maker, Nebuchadnezzar joined vanity with virulence. Instead of reflecting on what he had learned of the power of God and the need to fear and honour Him, the misled King set about honouring himself. Brazen in pride, he used gold to show it, and the metals did not mix! At his small request, the large golden statue had to be worshipped, a challenge for all time to those who feel the frenzy of idiotic State signature to plans amiss, seeking to usurp reality in the arena of religion, making gods after their own style and heart, sometimes as if unconscious of what they are doing. Yet there is the statue, erect in a statue against liberty and truth, for all to see, and all who love truth, to abhor.
On this occasion, the three friends of Daniel, stubbornly refusing, even when given a second chance, to bow to the gold idol enshrining the imaginary grandeur of the so great King, of his thoughts, his empire or of his power, were thrown to a superheated furnace. Again, it was not a matter of degree. Men dealing with the fire to host the friends of Daniel, died of the heat. They, whose live were sought, did not do so. They were on the contrary seen walking in the presence of one like the Son of God, imperturbable before any degree of created heat or anything else, and protecting His people when and how He pleased. Here He pleased, and there ended the Second Lesson.
This time, instead, as before, reflecting only on the fact that God is the Lord of Kings, revealer of secrets, the God of gods, He whose name is holy, goes further. It is not Daniel on this occasion, perhaps lest any one man seem to seal the model; it is his friends who had shown their thrust and zest as Daniel had done, in the earlier cultural tussle on food and drink. It is clear that what they all have in common is the one God who is not a vague entity, but the One whose word they followed, had followed and would follow.
Upon their staggering deliverance, Nebuchadnezzar blessed the God of these three, declaring that He had sent His angel, messenger, and DELIVERED His servants who TRUSTED in Him. He even gave praise in this, that this so great God over all had FRUSTRATED His own wishes, and marvelled that these three men had "yielded their bodies", trusting in God, and not worshipping any other God.
The exclusive worship required for God is thus heralded, the trust that meets Him is shown and the power of God to stop any process of man is acknowledged. We grow in testimony in Babylon! Message: AS you believe in Him, SO act! Man is man and God is God and when it comes to pride, there is an impassable barrier between them; but when it comes to faith in the duly and truly revealed God, there are no limits to His power, wit or overpowering of any who emptily try to secede from or strangle the Him whose Spirit enables man to be what he is. He knows the thoughts of the heart of man, and devises ways for the race, at His own discretion, overthrowing, exposing, revealing, discerning, without eclipse of His dynamic or decline of His understanding.
3) The Highly Personal Debasement Dream
Dreams can come from a multitude of sources. They can be emotional in dynamic, feelings associated with images, real or imaginary, given play; or intellectual, constructions attesting discernment being raised in some form or other, contrasting or controlled in some other way to disguise, or perhaps to attest what is in view. They can be from fear, hope or exasperation, from boredom or futility. They can also be from God. God can send one whenever He wishes, and fill it in the psyche of the subject, with feelings of awe, astonishment, unrest or rest.
In the case of Nebuchadnezzar, there had already been two major exposures to the explicit and RECOGNISED work of Almighty God, in contrast to ALL that the cultural religions on file or in stock, could manage. This King had made verbal acknowledgement, and been impressed. One can be impressed with the value of life-savers without keeping to their beach patrol areas; and people could still die of shark attack outside it.
Effectual impact may take more. In the King's case, it did; and he was given more.
In Daniel 4, the diligent record is provided. Seeing a mystic-seeming series of events concerning a tree and a cutting down, its resultant stump, one bound with a band of iron and bronze, with only its roots left in the earth, he is astonished, charged and troubled. The metals of course had been used before and it would take too much imagination to see what might be in view here: a passing of powers or kingdoms or majesty, and a binding of the same. The dream turns from the mystic symbol of flourishing tree, to a man, so that 'it' becomes 'he', as might have been imagined. Here a man is symbolised in its series of developments, the personification in its impact becoming an overwhelming attestation.
Daniel faithfully and by inspiration gives not only the general trend, its personal application to the king himself, declaring, "it is you, O king, who have grown and become strong; for your greatness has grown and reaches to the heavens, and your dominion to the end of the earth."
This greatness was clearly something of which the King had not been unaware, and in fact, in making an image concerning it, for worship, he had exposed his pride to its due downfall; and this was it. At best, Daniel could now advise him to break off his follies in case there might be gained a little space, in which to have peace (Daniel 4:27), a reminder that reminders are not for nothing! and to take heed when the Almighty directs your mind or heart, lest you fall where there is no ground to rest!
Indeed, when the dream would come to pass, Nebuchadnezzar would become like a beast, eating grass for a certain specific season, till the result was complete.
It duly occurred. At the end of it, Nebuchadnezzar has a third acknowledgement of Almighty God, the true and only God, whom Daniel worshipped without variation or innovation from man.
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"How
great," he attested, "are His signs, and how mighty His wonders!
His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and His dominion is from generation to generation." |
Here we find admission that not only is God there, but active in witness and this forever, His kingdom not being a flimsy affair of passing fancy or fantasy, as other kingdoms readily become, as shown in the listing of Daniel 2, but everlasting; nor is it new, but passing from generation to generation. He sees now that God is not able to be restrained, and the power to block Him is as nothing.
Thus there is development from wisdom and vision to deliverance, and from that to the Almighty God of generation after generation, over all, beyond all, above all, able to act with any.
Now at last the realisation has become personal, relevant to action, endued with a living perspective, not a dead form.
4) The End of Terrestrial Majesty at the hand of His Celestial Majesty
In Daniel 5, just as we found other testifiers, in Daniel's three friends at one point, so here there is a King other than Nebuchadnezzar in view. It is the subordinate but strongly placed King Belshazzar, who like his predecessor, in the end of his trial, elevates Daniel as far as he can, in this case to third ruler in the kingdom.
Daniel once more interprets, but this is not a dream but an action occurring in their very, visible midst. A hand writes in a language difficult but not impossible to understand in this compressed and highly enriched form, and Daniel interprets at request, showing the King Belshazzar's way and day is past, that he has been weighed in the balance and found wanting, that Medes and Persians are about to supplant his whole realm. This happened, and he died on that same night. He had not learned from what happened to Nebuchadnezzar and so suffered without delay. That he had blatantly used the very sacred articles associated with the authorised worship of God Almighty, for pagan purposes merely accentuated the direness of the case, and brought home the sudden sighting of his doom.
In this fourth case, it becomes apparent, firstly, that God does not necessarily wait, when He gives an intimation, a wonder, a sign or a signal. Secondly, it is shown that a kingdom can pass at His instance, and be betokened in its passing, as by Stop Press news, but with this difference in chronology and dynamic, that the news precedes the action it depicts: the ultimate method in scoops. It is one the Lord is marvellously able to perform, and this new feature is now made manifest in the heart of the most powerful Empire then on earth. It is shown JUST AS it is overthrown, thus providing, doubtless, a message to the next one.
It was not long before this was concretised for the new Empire.
5) The Type of Christ Program: to illustrate the heart of history, duly to come.
Next, Daniel 6 shows the working of envy, and power play, of subtlety and deceit, in efforts to gain power, such as is common as sand in a desert in this world, but if anything, less useful; yet on the other hand, as in suffocating sand storms, or what possesses some of the characteristics of sand, of deserts of it, drifting, man is able to be lashed by winds of passion, arid amongst aridity. Of this, God is not unaware, nor incapable of action, resolute and irremediable, turning evil truculence into evident truth.
What then of the agents of evil, with pawing eyes stroking his eminence, as if to pounce from their very heads! Desiring to prevent this illustrious Jew from maintaining his overlordship, if one could put it as it might have seemed to their eyes, they decided, amid a marvellous compliment, how to destroy him. The praise ? It was of course indirect: Daniel COULD not be trapped, they decided, in anything but relative to his God. Hence as deviously devilish conspirators, they would use this.
Method: Have the King allow prayer only to himself, and then of course Daniel would not do it, and make this rule to apply for a longish time so that he would have scope for being caught praying to his God instead of to the King; and then denounce him to the King. Now since he was justly popular with majesty and royalty, being unique among all religionists at court, or at least in a small but conspicuous coterie of Jews, it was necessary to prevent the King from pardoning him.
To do this, they would use - as they did - the phenomenon that in Media-Persia of that day, if the monarch made the law, then EVEN HE could not change it. Death would be the penalty for breaking this one, and presto, there goes Daniel, doomed.
It all went marvellously to plan, and Darius, then in charge, was appalled to find how he had been trapped. He tried for hours to find a way of delivering the court friend, Daniel, from destruction on this earth, but found no way. Hence he gave Daniel another compliment: tragedy was all but lined with compliments. He told Daniel, as he was being sent to be devoured by lions, in a nocturnal little interlude, the place sealed with a stone, that
He sees operational faith as fact, like caustic soda at work in sulphuric acid. There are results!
That is recognition of faith, not as a thing merely to note, like the work of an athlete, but as a thing to enter into the counsel of kings; so that even if they did not personally possess it, they could be assured that it would have its due results IF it were in the constant, believing heart of the servant of God. WHY should God CHOOSE to deliver Daniel ? What may be been in the mind of Darius, that he should at this point think of such a result ?
Such an expectation may have found its way to Darius’ thought, for him to give such an assurance of the regal expectation of result, because there had OBVIOUSLY been a trap, set by lust for power, envy or both, and because God had shown before what happens when circumstances try to over-rule: for Daniel had been chosen with his friends, to be a testimony. Even though his death would seal the matter, it could lead to a feeling at least of implication. It might be thought that God of all power, protecting His servant and testimony in this imperial land, as He did with Israel in Egypt before, could not quite manage this one.
Would Daniel die ? King Darius was not impelled to believe that would, however great his fear and apprehension. Your God, said he, whom you serve continually, HE will deliver you.
Whatever however his reasoning, perhaps he had begun to discern a certain type of divine program here, to make a point. God had been very near and real and interventionist at His own absolute discretion which is seen NOT to be another name for laxity by ANY means; and no doubt He would continue to make the impact on the kingdoms that He had in mind.
After all, there was a series of kingdoms, and Daniel as a humble representative of the divine, a man with a mission and a message, was showing the power of God to overrule, oversee and deal with those who overreach themselves; so that before it was all over, Darius seems to have felt, more oversight and power would be manifest. When Daniel was duly found in the morning, decidedly intact for as he explained, God had shut the mouths of the lions, he could come out of the 'tomb' very much alive. Here was a pictorial depiction of the tomb of One greater than Daniel to come - the Messiah as in Daniel 9:24-27, here given in his passion, a trailer; for here was a pre-run to the parade of a Prince (Daniel 9:24ff., Psalm 2, 16, 110).
Here was Daniel, the prototype for the Prince of Life (Acts 3:14-15), emitting like light from the jaws of death, and coming out to tell of His unvarying purpose. The incarceration from death's sentence, could only yield its prey, untouched. God was at work on various fronts simultaneously: for He is very wise.
One of these was this feat as prelude to the Messiah. Then, and at that time, it was not deliverance from death for the sake of one willing to suffer it, but through resurrection of One whose deliverance was epochal, epic, the overruling of death, in grief intensive, in suffering the guilt of sin for the glory of God, from whom He came, entrusted, to whom He went, the Word of God made flesh, despoiled, dynamic, arising at the divine touch as Lazarus at His own, and fulfilling much for many (Isaiah 53:11, Matthew 20:28). In all these things, as in creation of mankind at the first, with power to lower or love, God’s counsel prevailed, and His plans moved (Acts 2:22-32).
Thus, in Daniel’s deliverance, acutely desired, Darius had an attestation, once again at the heart of an Empire, and it would speak this time, not only of a man's deliverance, but of the Messiah of Isaiah, in this new laboratory notebook method, alerting eyes to a reality not yet seen, and giving notice that where God is determined to act, no one can re-enact. It will be done (Isaiah 43:27).
Just as other prophets had shown in detail what was there to come, so Daniel here, though in the utmost peril, gave a forerunner of certain aspects of the envy and power lust against the Messiah to come, the slaying of His body, the incarceration of His corpse and the seeming certainty of His end, where not lions, but death as an entity, penalty of sin itself, would be overthrown by a grace to cover guilt exercise, stopping the mouth of judgment.
So impressed indeed was Darius at this divine act, that he made a proclamation, imperial in sound, source and impact.
To all peoples on the earth, there came a royal proclamation from this Darius: for here scientific method was by far more apparently at work, than in the theories of those who are naturalistic evolutionists, as if to capture the divine in the taint of judgment (cf. Romans 8:17ff., 5:1-12), who though do not cease to find negatives to all their theories empirically, and do not cease to find the power of God in the same way (cf. SMR pp. 140ff., The gods of naturalism have no go!), on every side, yet erect their statues to what has no power, make their emblems of what does not work, and teach their students so.
Alas for the fallen state of things, this is so, whether in the frustrating failure even to HAVE new information find and fund itself without intelligence, experimentally, in ANY circumstances*2, or to have failed and fumbled efforts of the mythical 'nature' to make things, or to have a wipe out of the brazenly spread testimony of the flood, though they seek to turn heaven and earth upside down to avoid it (cf. News 1).
The interactive, conceptual-type, control media via codes and modes of systematically superlative schema, as found in DNA with its various resources, continuing in the reproduction of zones of creations light-years beyond 'need' in their magnificence and repertoires in form and function*3: laugh at their folly and pride, just as kookaburras do, as if amused at the very idea that such charming wonders could come from any other source. Nothing arises, coping without cause, coming without warrant, extradicted from nothing, with nothing as its source of form, format and contrivance, ingenuity and system, constraints and over-constraints, directions and meta-directions; libraries do not write themselves, before they are.
Man has learned a hollow laugh, ludicrous in passion, empty in wisdom. How modern he is!
Yet Darius, in his ancient clime, he did not laugh at the evidence he saw attested, and of which he had heard attestation, in the kingdoms. Having seen and found attestation of more power than any scientist in his normal laboratory testing situation, he had more humble reliance on empirical fact.
It is well first however to reflect, that then as now, that what God does and does not is manifest enough (cf. Romans 1:17ff.). His works may be brought under the nose uplifted, as with Nebuchadnezzar, but if the eyes are cast down, it is nevertheless manifest, what the creation does and what it does not, and what is required for its institution and composure, from without.
Daniel for his part, had access to more power than either, since the power of the Creator of principles, laws, forms and formats, information and cogitation, in their correlative jurisdictions, was available as he served Him. Darius saw the power in the God of Daniel, not in the endless 'wisdoms' of various people who think they are god or a mouthpiece for the ultimate, because they watch some things move this way and that, though never apt at all to create themselves. That power to direct, it comes now from what is already written, and the God who wrote it.
If Belshazzar, type of disdain of the Almighty and His revelation, did not learn in his preoccupations with the gods and imaginations of things natural; yet Darius, for all his eminence, did. Indeed, after so little a time from the date of Belshazzar, well he might!
Let us then, duly impressed with the degree of wisdom imparted to Darius, as distinct from the vain pride of Nebuchadnezzar before he learned to apply the lessons to his own person, and Belshazzar, impervious to reproof till doom sounded, see what further he empirically found.
The proclamation of Darius was to this effect: that people must be God-fearing in all his dominions, that it is His kingdom which will never be destroyed (since His powers extended over and beyond all processes whether political, or biological, or physiological, or psychological). Since God had cumulatively shown His grandeur, then man must recognise it. Indeed, it is He who works signs and wonders, having a power correlative to His accomplishments, available when His name is involved, so rescuing. The imperial tongue uttered in these things, truth. It had begun to follow facts, not fictions.
Once more Daniel is the figure of deliverance; but the ingenuity of the plot, the brazenness of the deception, the skill of the diplomatic deviousness involved in the plans of Daniel's enemies, to which the voracity of prepared lions is to be added: all is too little. When the God who lives and acts is in view, NOTHING is too hard, no domain too difficult, and trust in Him is able to bring operations without limit.
Thus the penetration of accumulated reality came through to this next Empire, and a testimony was made with such an economy of means as might make any advertising firm marvel: one man with three friends to be sure - with one message in many kingdoms without flinching, in the hand of God Almighty, and three Kings are taught, and all seem disposed to respond!
Let us also who accept testimony of truth, disdain cutting corners, not speaking out: is salt savourless ? Is truth to be dumb ? and let God use us whether on this earth or beyond it, in a gallant testimony, fired with His truth in Christ Jesus. Without Him, man is a walking mirage (Hosea 13:9-14:9).
While all this was proceeding, Daniel had another role to play in the mind and wisdom of God. He was first of all made great; then grated on the envious; then was subjected to a devious, diplomatic trick, in which power of another party is to be used to secure ruin; was then delivered up to death as if a wrong-doer, was not overcome by it; was placed in an enclosure shut off by a stone, for his death to be fulfilled; next had victory over the plot; then and thus by the power of his God, showed in the process readiness to 'yield his body'. Out from the death trap He came, attesting the power of God so that the whole kingdom could hear of it.
This is the 'type of Christ' scenario. In nearly all of this, it is the SORT of thing that happened to Christ, except of course, while Daniel attested the Lord, that WAS and IS the Lord. Yet Daniel pre-figured something of this, and indeed that to an eminent degree which is apparent on inspection when you look first at those categories in the paragraph above, relative to Daniel, and then to the same relative to Christ! This, then, is a preparation for the Messiah; but that is not only as history would and did uncover it, when He came, but as Daniel would in part predict it, in Chapter 9 of his prophecy, led by the Spirit of God, who being unlimited by our own little time frame, can course over and discourse on what is and what is to be without limit.
6) The Profound Prophetic Harvest which Brought Abundance of Knowledge amidst the action.
In the midst of these dealings, in fact in the first year of Belshazzar, we learn in Daniel 7, Daniel at night had a vision. It was his own vision this time, and it prepared him for the rapid change of empires that was coming upon Babylon, and stretched out before his eyes of the spirit, what would come for millenia ahead, with emphasis on compartmentalisation, empire change, developments to a finale, and much variation within that last kind of empire. This time, not the statue of Ch. 2, in the King's dream, but successive 'beasts' appeared, with the succession here corresponding to the downward movement along the statue's height, starting with Babylon, as there. It had more detail this time.
Strategically, God had used a dream to trouble Nebuchadnezzar, the King's wrath to heighten attention to it, Daniel's death danger to intensify interest, his answer in sublime wisdom from God Himself, to explain that there is such an Eternal Being without limit, and that all the other oddments of religion just are not in competition. They all are like nothing in comparison, their motifs blind as with the case of Egypt which fell so dramatically at the Exodus (cf. Biblical Blessings Ch. 15, with The Plagues of Ancient Egypt), just as in that of the later Antiochus Epiphanes*2, maddened with religious lust and unclean hands, who sought to rubbish the testimony of God in the nation of Israel, hideously crafty but coming to a mini-end, one lugubrious for such tyranny, unnotable for such self-annotation. It is he who is the 'little horn' type for the final exemplar of godless ravings and religious rovings which are to afflict not merely Israel but the entire earth (Daniel 7:7-14).
The first of the little horns in historical sequence is seen in Daniel 8, where the period of Antiochus is focussed in some detail, and the second, in the far grander overview of Daniel 7, where many periods are seen in sequence. As seen in Highway of Holiness Ch. 8, the period of the former little horn is in the third of the sequence of kingdoms specified in Daniel 2 and 7, detailed in Daniel 8, and the second one of course is in the fourth, the last (7:8,20ff.). It has its focus in Daniel 7's profound and large scale overview.
In view of this similarity, indeed the use of the very same name 'little horn' for the Antiochus blaspheming and arrogant potentate of the third empire, and for the other at the time of the end of the Age, in the fourth, we have much to learn of the devious blighting ways, the unholy hauteur and the thrust to the celestial on the part of this evil power, and lowering personality, his endeavour with subtlety and social cleavage to subvert, and speciously to obtain his own way, appealing now to this, now to that, twisting people more and more into the desired configuration. Such was the way of Antiochus, Little Horn I, and such is an index for his successor.
It is this which is to come in our own era, before his consumption by the power of the Lord, who thus closes the books on the lightnings of evil, with the light that never fails, flickers or changes, being eternal and beyond time, though put into time, in the Lord Jesus Christ (John 1:1-14, 8:12, 9:4). To the evil, it comes as ‘flaming fire’ requiting the folly of consuming the earth with unbounded arrogance, as if a man could be God!
The Lord in this double reference to the 'little horn' thus provides for the wise, an understanding, a key FROM history FOR history to come, perhaps in our own days, when the second 'little horn' arises to achieve his flash of greatness, in hollow grandeur, only to be smitten (Daniel 7:8ff., 7:22ff.) in the midst of his regality, and abased in the tatters of his glory, when the Lord takes His own place, made apparent at Calvary, glorious at the tomb and its evacuation in power, faithful in all things.
When we come to Daniel 11 as seen*2 in Highway of Holiness Ch. 10, we find that the text moves swiftly at 11:35ff. from that first utterly abominable defilement in ancient Israel to arrive suddenly at that which is to come over the whole earth. It moves, in other words, from the summit of abomination for Israel before the last empire, to the summit to come in the very end of the Age, like someone hopping from hilltop to hill top, interested only in the similar heights, though in this case, it is more apt to call them depths!
This evil apparition, to be formed as a man, perhaps to be likened despite the shame and weakness of it all, to the devil's messiah, comes to entice what is willing to flaunt itself, or to have itself held high as if God Himself, without glory (II Thessalonians 2:4ff.), an imposture close to clowning, fraught with contemptible dreaming, international impact and that self-same exaltation of what is not to be exalted, being but base and low, that Hitler showed, Mao falsely claimed and Stalin sought to achieve for himself, his nation, his ideas, as if a vent from some horrid volcano, direct from hell (cf. Highway to Hell).
His force is to be applied also in Israel at the climax, thus opening up in Daniel 12, the last rites for the wrongs and the eternal rights granted to those redeemed (Romans 5:17), vicariously granted by virtue of Christ's own gift, and witnessed in the resurrection of the Lord's people of all time and clime. Whether the figure in Daniel 11:36ff. be a regional antichrist or one there dwelling, the spirit of the thing is the same. Certainly, as the little horn Mark II is of the European Empire, it is either in place in this setting, or exercises its power and name in that place.
Thus Daniel 2 and 7 provide the overview of the imperial succession, 7 and 8 the comparisons for comfort in knowledge of the two 'little horns' and 11 gives a detailed sequence of events from the time of the Persian hegemony (Empire 2), to that of Antiochus Epiphanes (one of the four divisions in the break-up of Empire 3, Daniel 7:6, 8:22), the first little horn of Daniel 8, moving in spirit on to the second one in the final and fourth empire, and thus to the regional events to the end.
When it comes to sticking to the point, keeping to what is relevant to the issues presented, there is nothing to excel in vast overview, the Book of Daniel. At the same time, if you want the detail of the 3rd Kingdom, relevant to the issues of God's kingdom and the intervening interludes, there is Daniel 8, whereasif you want the contemporary record of practical events showing the same matter in historical past performances, during and somewhat after Israel's exile, there is Daniel 1-6; if again, the strategic insight into the marshalling yards of history be desired, over generations, there is Daniel 2 and 7. If however, you want to find the thing in arithmetical format, and to see the focus not only in a type of Christ - as in Daniel 6 - but in the Messiah Himself, you come to Daniel 9. After this, Daniel 10 leads into the vast and detailed coverage as noted above, and covered in the references there given, of Daniel 11.
Here in Daniel, then are the marshalling yards of history, the various trains seen as in some vast exhibit of historical railways, all operational in their various domains, this train of events here, and that there, all placed, marked, signified for the historical tourist and the prophetic student.
NOTES
See Highway of Holiness Ch. 10 for the account in sometimes ironic detail of the now roving, now raving exploits of incensed, elevated, power-corrupted, idolatrous bodies as they dance through history like so many crazed marionettes, jabbing their extended fingers like dancers, delighting in mobility, empty of nobility. It comes at length to Antiochus Epiphanes, exploiter of one of the four segments left after the break-up of Alexander the Great's vast Empire, a king fascinated with divine things, and empty of reverence for them, whose title God manifest, his self-acclaimed epiphanes, was derisively changed to the tag, epimanes, madman!
His utter and artful desire for the overthrow of what was specific to Israel in its worship reminds one of another now, Ahmadinejad, whose exalting boastings and threats seek to sunder the very heavens with their aspirations.
From this 'little horn', Antiochus, the text leaps on as shown in Ch. 10, noted above, to the final segment of spiritual overlordship sought for another 'exalted' being, whose overthrow is this: "he shall come to his end, and no one will help him." When you study the detail, as Ch. 10 enables you to do, of this staggeringly detailed prediction of Daniel, it becomes clear, in keeping with the whole scope and strategy of the Lord in Daniel, that the poverty of national and international greatness on earth is lamentable, even their uttermost majesties readily becoming both despicable and inept in dynamic, till the dust is their portion, and folly is their name.
The Lord, however, over all kingdoms, whether dealing with the first 'little horn' or the terminal second one of Daniel 7 (cf. Tender, True), has the everlasting kingdom which will not be destroyed, whether Israel for a time be duped, as by Antiochus in no small measure, or arise with the Maccabees, only to fall again in political cunning in due course, after so much all but imperial strength was achieved by the little nation.
The Messiah as in Daniel 7 and 9, is the One whose corruption is impossible, who from this world (as in Daniel 9:24ff.) gets NOTHING, but to it gives all it needs so that all who are not duped, but delivered, as Daniel was, through faith in this same Messiah (cf. Daniel 7:25, Isaiah 55), may freely live where folly has finished its fizzle and by faith, truth has found its light in the hearts of those who remain in the God who remains (Zechariah 9:7), who came on an ass's colt (Z. 9:6), and return in flaming fire to present judgment to those for whom joy is too much, peace too little, and eternal exclusion is their preference (John 3:19).
See:
Waiting for Wonder Appendix,
Dig Deeper, Higher Soar ... Ch. 1
History, Review and Overview Ch. 5.