Welcome to Connect with Skiff Heitzig. We're so glad you've tuned in today. Here at Connect with Skip, we believe there's no substitute for knowing God through His Word. And we want to help you stay grounded in his truth no matter what's happening in the world around you. That's why we've created the 30K 30-Day Challenge, a free daily email series designed to help you read, understand, and apply the Bible in fresh ways.
Every day, you'll receive a big picture overview of a New Testament book, along with key Bible passages to focus on, a prayer to guide you, and practical tools to help you put God's truth into action. It's free, it's easy to join, and it can make a lasting impact on your spiritual growth. Sign up now at connectwithskip.com. That's connectwithskip.com.
Now, here's today's message from Pastor Skip. Once upon a time there lived a man who thought he was dead. And that really disturbed his wife and his friends. They thought he needed to see a psychiatrist, so they took him to the doctor, and the doctor. decided that he would Convince the man that he was not dead by one basic fact, and that fact is that dead men do not bleed.
Over the next several months, he gave his patient medical books. even invited him to see an autopsy. And after several months, the patient finally conceded and said, okay, okay, you're right. I give up. I agree.
Dead men don't bleed. Immediately, the good doctor took out a needle and poked his patient in the arm, and blood. spurted forth. And the patient looked at that. And said, oh my goodness, what do you know?
Dead men do bleed. For centuries, people have looked at the Bible as a dead book. It's irrelevant. They marginalize it. It's irre.
out of date, it doesn't have anything to do with real life. It's allegorical. It's certainly not literal. It is dead. Today we're going to poke.
the Bible and watch it bleed truth. In fact, we'll be doing that over the next several weeks in the second part of the book of Daniel. Because we get to a very special part of the book of Daniel that lends itself to this kind of. Analytical study.
So far in the book of Daniel, it's been pretty easy to go through in terms of application. Stories of three Hebrew children not bowing down before a statue. Stories of how these three and four, Daniel himself. purposed in their heart. not to compromise, but to stay steadfast and loyal to God.
A story about the great feast of Belshazzar. And story of the lion's den. Daniel fared fine in the lion's den, but when you put Daniel in the critic's den, It gets different. The best way to look at the book of Daniel, because chapter 7 is a completely different section from chapter 6. It doesn't even read the same.
Chapter 6 ends the Chronological, historical part of Daniel.
Now we get to the apocalyptic part, the prophetic part.
So, the best way to view Daniel is to slice it in two and say that the first six chapters are mostly historical. with a little bit of prediction. But the last six chapters are mostly prediction with a little bit of history.
So, this is going to be a very different Bible study today. I just want to warn you that it's going to be a mix of history. Prophecy. and a Twilight Zone episode. I mean it's just a strange kind of a thing to read.
as we go through this chapter. But I'm going to encourage you, in fact, dare you to go deeper in your faith, to be smarter, well-read. Christians who can Stand up for what you believe. That you'll go deeper that when you have a conversation with somebody and they say, Well, why do you believe that? You don't just say, Well, I have my faith and you have your faith.
That you can go a little bit better than that. In fact, we're encouraged to do that in the New Testament. Peter writes these words. 1 Peter chapter 3. Verse 15, but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts.
And always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness. And with fear. That is the dare. to understand The truths we're going to read. To not only know what you believe, but why you believe what you believe, and to dare to.
Put up a defense for the faith. To give a reason. when people ask you why you believe it. There's a great story I've always loved about Carl Henry. Carl Henry's now in heaven.
He was an eminent theologian and an author. And when he was a student, he was on a university campus with a group outside. He was giving his testimony to them about why he believed in Christ. And at the edge of the crowd was the skeptic who Interrupted Henry and said, Let me just ask you a simple question. Do you believe in the The book you're holding, that Bible, you believe all those stories.
You mean to tell me you believe there really was a universal flood? You believe the story of Jonah and the whale? You believe the creation epic? You believe all that stuff? Henry said, Yes, sir, I believe all of it.
So the man went on to disrupt him and to sort of put him in a corner and say, well, Let me ask you a question then. How could a guy like Jonah survive in the gullet of a great fish or a whale, as this book says? With the gastric juices emanating. With oxygen deprivation as part of the problem, with all the gases from the alimentary canal, how on earth could he survive? Young Carl Henry said, Sir, I do not know the answer to all your questions, but when I get to heaven, I'll ask Jonah.
Skeptics said, yeah, but what if Jonah isn't in heaven? And Henry said, well, then you can ask him. And wow, that's a cute little story. I hope we can do better than just that.
So, today we're going to look at Daniel chapter 7, and because it is such an all-encompassing panoramic place. portrait of the future. We're going to look at adjust. Skimming it today, looking at a few verses, but then going over it in the next few weeks. Beginning in verse 1, we see that Daniel documented the future.
In the first year of Belshazzar, the king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head while on his bed. And then he wrote down the dream, telling the main facts. Daniel spoke, saying, I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea. And four great beasts came up from the sea, each different from the other. The first was like a lion.
And it had eagle's wings. I watched till its wings were plucked off and it was lifted up from the earth. and made to stand on two feet like a man, and a man's heart was given to it. And suddenly another beast, a second, like a bear, It was raised up on one side and had three ribs in its mouth. between its teeth.
And they said thus. to it. Arise and devour much flesh. After this I looked and there was another like a leopard. which had on its back four wings of a bird.
The beast also had four heads and dominion was given to it. And this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful. and terrible, exceedingly strong. It had huge iron teeth. It was devouring, breaking in pieces, trampling the residue with its feet.
It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns. I was considering the horns. And there was another horn, a little one, coming up among them. before whom three of the first horns were plucked out by the roots. And there, In this horn.
were eyes like the eyes of a man. And a mouth. speaking pompous words, I watched till thrones were put in place and the ancient of days was seated. His garment was white as snow. The hair of his head was like pure wool, his throne was a fiery flame.
Its wheels like a burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from him. A thousand thousands ministered to him, ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him, the court was seated, and the books were open. I watched then because of the sound of the pompous words which. The horn was speaking.
I watched till the beast was slain. and its body destroyed and given to the burning flame. As for the rest of the beasts, they had their dominion taken away, yet their lives were prolonged for a season and a time. I was watching in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the ancient of days.
and they brought him near before him. Then to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom. that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away. In his kingdom the one which shall not be Destroyed.
Basically what we have here is Daniel Saw things. Daniel wrote down what he saw. And what Daniel saw and wrote down happened. as time went on.
Now I want you to notice that we have a historical setting. in this chapter. As in all the other chapters of Daniel. Proper names are given. Belshazzar in this case, the ruler.
We know where Daniel was in Babylon. We know about how long he was there. We certainly know how long the children of Israel were there. were there before they were sent back to their land.
So we have all of this detail that is added. But we have a problem. Beginning in chapter 7, all the way to the end of the book, we have an incredible problem. The problem is simply this. Because there are so many detailed predictions of the future.
that have actually come true. It has raised the entrance. and the scepticism of the critic. Example. In Daniel chapter 11, There are 35 verses.
that have 135 fulfilled and documented that they are fulfilled prophecies. 135 predictions of the future in 35 verses. all of which have happened. That has raised The interest of the critic.
Now you're going to Help me here. I don't see how this is a problem.
Well, let me illustrate the problem. Dr. A. K. C.
Morrison had a great illustration from the New York Academy of Sciences. He said, Suppose I had in my pocket ten pennies. And I marked them 1 through 10. And then with hands out of pocket, I made a prediction to you. And I said, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to awe you right now and I'm going to reach into my pocket and pull out.
Penny pre-marked number one. If I were to pull my hand, pull out penny number one and show it to you. What would the chances of me doing that be? One in ten, there's only ten pennies. But if I said now, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to reach into my pocket and select with my fingers penny marked number two.
My odds exponentially decrease to 1 in 100. If I could Pull out one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, all in that sequence. My odds are one in a hundred billion. This is Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before we return to Pastor Skip's message, think about this.
If we really are living in the last days, wouldn't you want to know? The Bible doesn't leave us guessing about the future. It offers clear prophecies, solid truth, and real hope to anchor your faith in uncertain times. That's why this month, we'd like to send you two resources from Pastor Skip. The Bible from 30,000 feet 2 CD teaching from Daniel.
and his booklet, Are We Living in the Last Days? These explain key end times passages, how they apply today, and how to live with confidence in Christ. They're yours when you give $25 or more to support Connect with Skiff Heitzig. Request yours at connectwithskiff.com slash offer or call 800-922. Mm-hmm.
Let's return now to today's message. And let's just say I did that and I awed you all. You might clap and be odd, but A good majority of you would say something's up.
Something is going on. The game is fixed. There's no way that could happen naturally. That is the problem that we have. Because when the unbelieving skeptic approaches the Bible, he approaches the Bible with two predispositions.
Predisposition number one: that we live in a closed system and the miraculous is impossible. Predisposition number two. Is that because premise number one is true? And yet The things that are written about in Daniel really happened. Then It must have been written after the fact.
Not before the fact. It's really not prophecy, it's history that somebody wrote after these things were fulfilled. That's how they approach this.
Now, we who are Christians, we have no problem at all with prophecy. When we read about it, we go, hoorah! It's just simply another evidence of God's incredible power. God Orchestrates history, God is all-knowing. And for the Lord, God.
to predict with great detail an event. Is no more difficult than you waking up in the morning and saying, it's going to rain somewhere in the world. Duh. It's like a broken clock. It's always right twice a day.
But when God gives These kind of meticulous, intricate prophecies. The unbeliever has a problem because of these predispositions. There must be, they say, some. Natural explanation, because there is no supernatural. It has to be a natural explanation.
It's like the nine-year-old boy who went to Sunday school, and afterwards, his mom said, What did you learn in Sunday school? What did your teacher tell you? And so the boy said, Well, What happened was the children of Israel were in a fix with the Egyptians.
So Moses was sent behind enemy lines to rescue them. And so, what Moses did is had his engineers build this huge pontoon bridge over the Red Sea so the children of Israel could get safely from one to another. part to the other. And then he got in his walkie-talkie and he Radioed in for extra support, and the bombers came in and bombed the pontoon bridge.
Now the Egyptians were on top of, and they all drowned in the Red Sea. And his mother looked at him and said, You mean to tell me that's what your Sunday school teacher taught you today? He said, no, mom, but if I were to tell you the way she told it to us, you'd never believe it. And that's what the skeptic does. That's what the critic does.
You can't believe anything supernatural. It just doesn't happen.
So we got to make stuff up. It wasn't really the Red Sea, it's the Reed Sea, they say. It's only 18 inches of water that the children of Israel waded through.
Okay, now explain to me how the Egyptian army drowned in that. It really wasn't manna that fell down from heaven. It's just a sap that appears in desert bushes common in the Sinai Peninsula. The resurrection of Jesus Christ didn't really happen because we know that stuff doesn't happen.
So, there must have been hallucinations the disciples had in their ecstatic, sleepless state. Or Jesus didn't die at all. He just swooned. He almost died. But didn't I?
Or Daniel didn't write this book. But somebody else wrote it after the fact. And that's what many skeptics believe because of the amazing predictions that are in it. I'll give you a little bit of history. This first started surfacing.
About the third century AD. By a guy by the name of Porphyry. who was a Neoplatonic philosopher. He was a pagan. He wrote 15 books called Against the Christians.
Can you imagine his life's work? 15 volumes called Against the Christians. He hated Christians, wanted to destroy the teachings of Christianity, and he wanted to defend polytheism.
So porphyry said that Daniel, the one that we say wrote the book of Daniel, didn't really write the book of Daniel. That there was some unknown Jew Further on down the road, about 165 BC in the Maccabean period between the Old and the New Testaments. He was a Judean. He wrote after all of these things that Daniel predicted actually happened. About 400 years after it happened, he wrote it down and it was a forgery.
And he made it look like prophecy.
So it's not in the 6th century BC, it was 165 BC. That some unknown Jew, some unknown Maccabean Jew, decided to write the book of Daniel.
Now you might ask, well, so what's the big deal? Why are we spending a Sunday service on this? I'll tell you why it's important. If Daniel the prophet This book of Daniel is a forgery. The whole credibility of Jesus Christ goes down the tubes.
You know why? Because Jesus said When you see the abomination of desolation as spoken by Daniel the prophet. Standing in the holy place, you who are in Judea, flee to the mountains. He didn't say when you see the abomination of desolation is spoken of by Daniel the deceiver or Daniel the forger. He called Daniel a prophet.
If Daniel wasn't a prophet, if this wasn't written when it was written, but later. The credibility of Jesus is shot. Not only that, but the entire New Testament, the documents of. Peter and Paul and John, who wrote end times apocalyptic literature, though they had fresh revelation. A lot of what they wrote about is based squarely on the book of Daniel, the writings of the book of Daniel.
in these next few chapters. I want to sum it up by telling you what somebody else actually said. I'll quote him. Sir Isaac Newton, we've all heard that name, right? Sir Isaac Newton, the guy who, I was gonna say, discovered gravity, he didn't, he observed gravity.
And he wrote about it. But did you know that Isaac Newton wrote more about Christian apologetics. Then he wrote about science? And Sir Isaac Newton said this: Whoever rejects the prophecies of the book of Daniel does as much as if he undermined the Christian. Religion.
In other words, if if this is fake If this isn't true, If we can poke it and it doesn't bleed truth.
Now, what are we doing here? Why are we getting up? dressing up and coming to church and Sing into a God that doesn't exist, and believing and reading a book that can't be trusted.
So Daniel documented the future. I want you to see now that Daniel is defended by the facts. Go and look at the first couple verses with me, if you will. In the first year of Belshazzar the king of Babylon, notice. how detailed he is about telling you when.
And whom? Daniel had a dream, visions of his head while on his bed. And then he wrote down the dream, telling the main facts. Daniel spoke, saying, I saw in my vision by night.
So evidently he went to bed and His dream turned into a vision, and what a vision it was. Behold, four winds of heaven. That's an ancient term to speak about the four corners, north, south, east, and west, the four directions. all blowing, converging into one section. The four winds of heaven were stirring up the Great Sea.
Now, the Great Sea is probably the Mediterranean Sea, they often called Um they lived in the Mediterranean world. The Mediterranean was called the Great Sea. By the way, in the Bible, there are only four seas that are mentioned. Sea of Galilee. The Dead Sea.
The Red Sea and the Great Sea.
So in Daniel's vision, he's transported back home to where he grew up, Judea. And off of the coast of Israel, that great Mediterranean Sea. He sees in this vision as all stirred up.
So once again Names? Places are given in these writings.
Now what Daniel Saw, he wrote. And what Daniel saw and wrote, we believe he wrote. The 6th century BC, not later. And I believe that Daniel is defended by the facts, first of all, the fact of archaeology. I told you a few weeks ago that for centuries, Critics Said, aha, the book of Daniel is fake.
You can't trust it because it mentions this guy named Belshazzar. who never existed in any of the records of history. And we've never found them in any of the archaeological digs.
So, book after book, year after year, was written that you can't trust the Bible because Belshazzar is in it. And he never existed. Until 1854, when an archaeologist in southern Iraq dug up a clay cylinder. with cuneiform writing around it. And among other things was written a prayer.
For the good health and the long life of King Nabonidus of Babylon and his son Belshazzar. And the critics were immediately silenced. And we discovered later on, as we kept digging, that not only was he the son of Nabonidus, but he became the co-regent, the co-king of Babylon for his father. But we also note something else: that though there was a Belshazzar and he did reign, just like Daniel recorded it, that That's a recent discovery, 1854. And we know that the name of Belshazzar disappeared early from history.
So that when another historian visiting Babylon a couple hundred years after it fell, named Herodotus, who was Greek. And he wrote about the glories that he still saw, and he named the kings and the queens of history. He left out Belshazzar, even though we know from archaeology that he existed.
So here's my question. How could a Jew Writing in 165 BC, write about what historians at his time didn't know about. Belshazzar. And that was buried in history till more recent discoveries in the 1800s.
So archaeology defends Daniel. is writing it. A second line of Factual evidence is from paleography.
Now, I didn't write that down because I'm smart or anything. I was looking for a word to rhyme with archaeology. And paleography is simply the study of old documents. It's manuscript evidence. And as you study manuscript evidence, it points to an early writing, not a later writing.
Let me give you one of those pieces of evidence. You've heard of the Septuagint version of the Bible, right? Most of you have. The Septuagint Version of the Bible is the most famous translation of the Old Testament. Translated from Hebrew into Greek.
around 275 BC by scholars in Alexandria, Egypt. 275 BC is 110 years earlier. than the supposed forger who came along and wrote the book of Daniel. was written. And as we look at the Septuagint version of the Bible written before that, You know what's in it?
The book of Daniel. 110 years before the forager came along and wrote the book of Daniel, the book of Daniel was written. At least that. We're so glad you joined us today for Connect with Skiff Heitzig. Before we go, remember to request Pastor Skip's 2 CD teaching from Daniel, Bible from 30,000 feet.
and his booklet, Are We Living in the Last Days? They'll give you clarity and confidence about the days ahead. And they're yours when you give $25 or more to support Connect with Skip Heitzig. Call 800-922-1888 or visit connectwithskip.com slash offer. And while you're there, sign up for the 30K 30-day challenge and take your Bible study deeper.
Come back next time for more verse-by-verse teaching of God's Word here on Connect with Gip Heitzig. Make a connection at the foot of the cross sand. Cast your burdens on his wood. Make a connection. Connection.
Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of connection communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.
