THE BOOK OF DANIEL - INTRODUCTION - CHAPTER 1 (2026)
THE BOOK OF DANIEL
Pastor Carolyn Sissom
September 8, 1993; May 26, 2026
INTRODUCTION
The Book of Daniel has been and continues to be one of the two most controversial books of the Bible. If I say something to offend your theology, perhaps I have not grown to where you are, so I hope we can disagree in love.
I thank God for all of the wonderful commentaries that have been written on the Bible and for the hours of labor and research these great men have done. However, the Bible is its own best commentary.
For years I did not own a commentary. I would sit down before the Lord many times weeping asking the Holy Spirit to teach what the scriptures meant. Now, I use commentaries, not for doctrine, but for confirmation. Also, there is a lot of wisdom to be gleaned from those “Desert Fathers.”
There is controversy among some as to whether Daniel was a prophet because his prophetic gift was in the exclusive use of dreams and visions. There are no, ‘thus says the Lord’ direct oracles in the Book of Daniel. Young claimed Daniel held the gift, but not the Office of Prophet.
Jesus called Daniel a prophet in Matthew 24:15: When you shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet stand in the holy place, (whoever reads, let him understand.) I believe Daniel was a prophet. I will teach the Book from the perspective that he stood in the Office of the Prophet.
If Jesus said, it, then it is settled. Daniel was a prophet.
The Greek New Testaments lists 133 quotations from Daniel.
Daniel was a man uprooted from his home, educated in an alien society, who kept an unswerving loyalty to the God of his people. His ability and the integrity inspired by his faith took him to high offices of state. He was called to do the impossible, tell the king his dream, not the interpretation, but the actual dream. His faith and courage were rewarded with divine revelation, saving him and others from death.
He would not compromise under persecution even for a month, and his enemies knew he would not. His faith was neither ostentatious nor secret, but steadfast, ready to give account when asked, even to rebuke a king for heedless sacrilege.
Whom God sends; He equips. Daniel was equipped for responsibilities of state for receiving from the Ancient of Days revelation about his nation in international affairs in his time and for centuries ahead even to the latter days.
Daniel’s faith is the meat of the book. His prayer in chapter 9 continues the attitude of Deuteronomy, God’s chosen people could enjoy their promised land so long as they were obedient. For Christians, our promised land is the rest of God. The only way in is through obedience made possible by our great high priest and king, Jesus, by grace and mercy through the blood.
Continuous, willful, disobedience will send God’s people into exile --- “sin separates us from God.”
God’s agents of punishment depicted by the Assyrians, Babylonians, etc. would all one-day crash and all will crash who tried to pass the Lord’s limit.
Thank you, Jesus, that your limit is not the same as our limit of patience and mercy. When my patience wears out, the Lord continues to extend mercy and patience to rebellious and self-willed people.
Daniel saw that the Kingdom of God would be established, but not in Daniel’s day. Human empires had a further lease on the rule of Israel from the kingdom of gold through the silver and the bronze to the iron and clay.
A definite end there would be then human pride would be abolished at a blow.
Ezekiel envisioned a Heavenly Jerusalem as a city of greater glory. The prophecies of Daniel 2 and 7 embrace the same spiritual Kingdom. The national names of Jerusalem and Israel are notably absent.
Daniel sees beyond man’s failures to God’s eternal purpose for man to reach God’s goal using the perpetual remnant of the faithful.
As the Ancient of Days, God is awesome in Daniel. He is displayed as the world ruler, majestic dealing with morals through His agents, the angels. At the same time, He is concerned for every detail of the welfare of His worshippers, the uncompromising. Those who know Him by His covenant name. for the uncompromising, He meets faith with faith by revelation of the future.
The Lord has been faithful to His servant, Daniel, and stood by His Word fulfilling it stage by stage.
Daniel’s prophecies reveal the Lord’s constancy. No world empire will continue indefinitely. No human state could ever reach complete control for man could not control himself. In the end---the Lord is triumphant!!!
Man, then is God’s creature, a created being by an awesome creator.
Daniel and friends are presented as models of the faithful to whom are God’s promises of eventual victory.
The fact that many of the prophecies are ‘apocalyptic’; (an unveiling of spiritual things) heightens the disputes over the Book of Daniel.
Isaiah and Jeremiah had visions concerning Israel’s future distress and restoration. Daniel belongs to a time when no national Israeli state existed; and no Davidic ruler had to be recalled to covenant duties. Daniel is the first prophet to reveal a Kingdom of God transcending physical boundaries and limitations.
Thus, my conviction that the promises of God transcends the nation Israel to a spiritual Israel, the Church of God, the manifestation of the New Jerusalem, the glorified community of God made up of The Elect, the servants of God, the Bride of Christ. These are those who are the called, chosen and faithful followers, but not to the exclusion of natural Israel. “All Israel will be saved” (Ro. 11:26).
We must keep a perspective that a dual and sometimes triple interpretation of scripture is valid; as to what it meant then; what it means today; and what it will mean in the future. Three teachers can teach the same scripture from different revelations and all are correct.
The N. T. makes very clear how far the fulfillment of O.T. prophecies differed from the expectations of even the most Godly, like John the Baptist. Lk. 7:19: He sent his disciples to the Lord to ask, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?”
Jesus replied, The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.
The time of the book was probably around 605 B.C. The chronology of the last 20 years of Judean history is very vague.
At the time I was studying this, Jennifer Robin gave me a copy of a letter from Jack Van Impe. In it, he states that the Lord woke him in the middle of the night saying to him, “Everything Jews, Gentiles and Christians need to know about their future is predicted in the Book of Daniel.”
He then began a quest which cost him 300 hours of research. One of the books he quotes is Reckonings of Redemption by Rabbi Shvili. He said, “Everything we Jews need to know about our future is predicted in the Book of Daniel.”
I never studied Bro. Van Impe’s teachings or video series. I was on quest to discover what it was the Lord wanted to reveal to me through the Book of Daniel. I received a prophecy that I was called to teach the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelations to the nations.
I decided I had better go to work studying and find out what I was supposed to be teaching.
The first six chapters are historical and are plain and easy. The last six are prophetic. In them are many things hard to understand, which would be more intelligible if we had a more complete history of the Jewish nation, from Daniel’s time to the coming of the Messiah.
One aspect of comprehending the metaphors is to establish where Daniel is at the time of this writing. He is in Babylon which is now part of Iraq near Bagdad in the continent of Asia. “The land of Shinar” in verse two is the land of two rivers, a region around Babylon
Chapter 11:34-45 describes the time of the end of wars in the last days between the King of the North and the King, a prophetic description of the last king of the north, Antichrist, and his conquests of the nations and his dealings with Israel. “And some of them of understanding shall fall, to try them, and to purge, and to make them white, even to the time of the end; because it is yet for a time appointed. And the king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvelous things against the God of gods and shall prosper until the indignation be accomplished; for that which is determined shall be done.”
Most scholars believe the King of the South is Egypt; the King of the North, Syria; the Kings of the East – Far East; the leader of the West-the Grecian/Roman Empire.
Asia is the earth’s largest continent. It covers nearly 1/3 of the world’s land area, and more than half the world’s people live there. The earliest civilizations and all the world’s greatest religions began in Asia:
Daniel and his friends were part of this dispersion of Israel to Babylon as prophesied by Jeremiah 25:7-12.
Daniel 1:3: The king spoke unto Ashpenaz the master of his eunuchs that he should bring certain of the children of Israel, and of the king’s seed, and of the princes. Children of whom there was no blemish, but well favored and skillful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science and such as had ability in them to stand in the king’s palace, and whom they might teach the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans.
Notice the lineage of the Kingly anointing. The Hebrew children were of noble birth. 1:6: Among these were the children of Judah, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. As children of Judah, they were of royal birth. Their ages are not given, but their careers suggest they were twelve or thirteen years old, the flower of Judah’s next generation. Their physical perfection was a gift from birth, its maintenance their responsibility.
The learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans were people connected with the Arameans. In Daniel, the name is used less of a people (5:30; 9:1) than of a class of wise men amongst the people. The national name was applied to particularly distinguished men. The analogy has been applied to the Magi, a Median tribe by origin, giving its name to a cast of wise men, dream-interpreters, and priests.
Aramaic was the common tongue but learned men and conservative scribes kept the ancient Babylonian language and script alive until the first century. The King wanted the young Judeans to learn both in their undergraduate course. Their educations were to fit them for the royal service. Babylon’s bureaucracy was highly organized.
1:5: The king appointed them a daily provision of the king’s meat, and of the wine which he drank; so nourishing them three years that at the end thereof they might stand before the king.
This would be graduation time when the new graduates were to join the king’s permanent retinue, a large body, highly privileged, but totally depending upon the royal whim.
Giving names to captives or foreign slaves was a sign of their being put under subjection to shame them. The prince of the eunuchs gave Babylonia names to the Hebrew children.
Belteshazzar: O lady protect the king. The Lady being the wife of Marduk, god of Babylon.
Shadrach: I am very fearful (of a god).
Meshack: “I am of no account’.
Abednego: Servant of the shining one
1:8-12: Daniel proposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s meat, nor with the wine which he drank; therefore, he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself. Now God had brought Daniel into favor and tender love with the prince of the eunuchs. And the prince of the eunuchs said unto Daniel, “I fear my lord the king, who has appointed your meat and your drink for why should he see your faces worse likening the children which are of your sort? Then shall you make me endanger my head to the king. Then said Daniel to Meltzer, whom the prince of the eunuchs had set over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Prove thy servants, I beseech you, ten days; and let them give us pulse to eat and water to drink.
Pulse is vegetable, seeds, grains of barley, etc., boiled or roasted. Pulse has high nutritional value and is still a staple of Near Eastern meals. In ten days, the effects of a rich diet would show in the skin of the face and general alertness or sluggishness of demeanor.
1:15: At the end of ten days their countenances appeared fairer and fatter in flesh than all the children which ate the portion of the king’s meat. Thus, Melzar took away the portion of their meat, and the wine that they should drink; and gave them pulse.
Fatness indicates sufficiency and prosperity throughout the OT. This confirms the supernatural element in the training of these 4 youth. God blessed them physically when they took a stand for a proper diet. He also blessed them mentally and spiritually for their stand regarding His law. The faithfulness of the four friend’s God rewarded with first class honors, fitting the men for any aspect of government.
1:18-21: Now at the end of the days that the King had said he should bring them in, then the prince of the eunuchs brought them in before nebuchadnezzar. And the king communicated with them; and among them all was found none like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah; therefore they stood before the king, and in all matters of wisdom and understanding, that the king enquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm. And Daniel continued even unto the first year of King Cyrus.
Daniel had a special gift of God in understanding all visions and dreams---the gift of interpretation (similar in operation to the gift of interpretation of tongues). It was simply divine skill and understanding imparted by the Holy Spirit. All gifts of the Holy Spirit are divine abilities imparted by the Spirit of God dwelling in one so blessed and operate only through divine love.
Daniel was to use his gift many times for God’s glory.
Chapter 2 is Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the metallic man. The Chaldeans were brought in, and we see how the Lord demonstrated His gift in His man over the learned Chaldeans.
Pastor Carolyn Sissom
Eastgate Ministries Church
Scripture from K.J.V.; N.K.J.V.; Notes from a teaching by Pastor Sissom from 1993 and F.F. Bruce Bible Commentary- A. R. Millard; Principles of Present Truth, Kelly Varner.