Episode Transcript
So we'll be in Daniel chapter 7, verse 1 this morning.
If you want to go ahead and turn there.
Daniel chapter 7, verse 1.
The title of the message this morning is An Introduction to Prophecy.
An introduction to prophecy, Brother Shepherd.
I was planning on teaching maybe the first three verses, and I just couldn't get out of verse one.
I had such a good time with it.
So, an introduction to prophecy.
Remember, Daniel is a prophetic book and what we've been seeing so far We've seen prophetic dreams that Nebuchadnezzar had, for example.
We've seen handwriting on the wall that Belshazzar experienced.
But what we're about to do is to get very deeply into prophecy here in the book of Daniel.
And so verse 1 gives us a lot of doctrine.
Kind of sets the stage for what we're going to be looking at in the rest of this chapter.
The past six chapters of Daniel.
Have followed a historical timeline.
Remember that.
They've led us from the destruction, the historical destruction of Jerusalem.
These are not fairy tales.
This is actual historical records.
You can go back and verify it with an encyclopedia if you're secular.
But here we would say we verify the encyclopedia with the Bible, right?
But you can.
You can go up and read about the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon.
But it's taken us from the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon to Daniel's capture.
His service to King Nebuchadnezzar.
It's taken us to the fall of the Babylonian Empire when it was conquered by the Medo-Persian Empire.
Again, all history, right here in the Word of God.
And now it's taken us to Daniel's service to King Darius, who was Persian or Median, excuse me.
But when we get to chapter 7, we stop following the history of Daniel and we start following the mysteries of Daniel.
Repeat that again.
When we get to chapter 7, the chronological timeline stops.
So we quit following the history of Daniel.
We start following the mysteries of Daniel.
Remember, Daniel is a book of prophecy.
And now that Daniel has outlined the history, He is now going to fill in the mystery.
He's going to go back in time now.
And reveal the prophecy that God gave him when he was serving under the reign of the Babylonians.
But don't think we're moving in a different direction in time because we're not.
Daniel is actually going to take us back in time.
That he might take us forward in time.
Only God's word can do that.
By taking us back to the prophecy God gave him during the Babylonian reign, Daniel is going to take us forward in time.
To events that would happen long after his death.
Some events, in fact.
That we're going to study may not happen until long after we have died.
So, to understand the future We now go back to the past when Daniel served, look in verse 1, in the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon.
Remember Belshazzar came after King Nebuchadnezzar.
He was King Nebuchadnezzar's grandson.
So Belshazzar reigned after Nebuchadnezzar died, and under whose reign the kingdom of Babylon eventually fell to the Medo-Persian Empire.
And during Belshazzar's reign, before Persia conquered Babylon, look back in your text, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head.
And just remind you, the Persians are the Iranians.
This is when Iran conquered Babylon and ruled the world at the time.
So Daniel during this time of Belshazzar's reign before the Persians, the Iranians.
Came and took them over.
Daniel had a dream and visions of his head.
Notice those two words.
Dream and visions.
And this reveals to us the means by which God conveyed the prophecy to Daniel that we're about to study in chapter 7.
In fact, God used a dream and vision to convey many prophecies in the Bible.
The word dream means Daniel was asleep.
It literally means to shut the mouth.
You think it means something about something you see or something, but it literally in this Chaldean language it means to shut the mouth, to close the mouth.
So you're not, you're just.
They're like that, right?
And you're not talking.
And so you're sleeping.
So this dream means Daniel was in a natural sleep.
The word visions means to gaze.
That's what that word vision means.
It means to gaze at something.
So the word vision means Daniel, during this natural sleep that he was having, he was able.
In his dream, to gaze at the revelation God gave him.
Now he's gazing at something.
He's not inventing something.
So these are not imaginations.
I'm telling you, folks, you can ask my wife, I have some of the craziest dreams, don't I, Tammy?
I got some wild ones.
If prophecy was from our dreams, we'd all be in a mess.
I'm telling you that right now.
Man, I have Brother Shepard and I have both talked about this all the time.
I don't think there's a single preacher.
That hasn't dreamed that he's about to get up to preach and he's in his pajamas or something.
You can't find his sermon.
I don't know what it is.
If those were prophecies, man, I'd be scared to go to sleep, brother.
You know, thinking, oh, man, that's what's going to happen to me next, you know.
But in his natural sleep, he's having a supernatural gaze.
See what's happening?
In his natural sleep, he's able to gaze upon a message that God is giving him rather than his mind is conjecturing and inventing inside his head.
Daniel's dream was the natural course of sleeping.
But what he gazed upon was a supernatural message from God.
God revealed information about the future to Daniel.
While he was sleeping.
And while he was sleeping, look back in your text upon his bed.
So God used this method, and he used similar methods to this to reveal Information to prophets to communicate divine truth to men.
He used this method If a prophet wasn't asleep on his bed, for example, do you know what would happen?
In this case, Daniel was asleep on his bed.
Natural sleep, supernatural gaze.
But if a prophet wasn't asleep on his bed, you know what God would do sometimes?
He would call someone who was awake to go into a trance.
They would be awake, but suddenly all of the natural world around them would be tuned out.
And God would tune them into the spirit world.
They'd leave the natural and be tuned into the divine.
God would open up The heavenly message to them.
Concerning the prophet Balaam, now prophet Balaam was a hireling prophet, but he was a prophet of God nonetheless.
And concerning the prophet Balaam in the Old Testament, the Bible says, Numbers 24, 4, He hath said, which heard the words of God, which saw the visions of the Almighty, falling into a trance.
But having his eyes open.
So Balaam, when God would reveal messages to Balaam, because he did.
They kept trying to hire Balaam to falsely prophesy.
Balaam didn't do that.
Balaam did some wrong things, but he didn't do that.
And the prophecies he gave were from God.
And so when God revealed those messages to him, Balaam's eyes were open.
He was wide awake.
But he fell into a trance to where the natural world was shut out around him.
All he could do was gaze into the supernatural.
I don't know what that is.
You check that, Brother Shepherd.
Thanks.
All you could do is gaze into the supernatural.
Now, the Apostle Paul.
Said in Acts 22, verses 17 through 18.
Acts 22, verses 17 through 18.
Paul said, And it came to pass that when I was come again to Jerusalem, even while I prayed in the temple, I was in a trance.
That's what the Apostle Paul said.
No one's going to doubt the Apostle Paul, right?
And so here he is, he's praying in the temple, and while he's praying, God shuts out the natural world.
It now brings him into the supernatural world.
He's in a trance.
He says, What is in the trance?
He says, and saw him saying unto me, Saw him seeing God saying to him.
In other words, he's in a trance, just like Daniel was in a dream, and now he's gazing.
Upon the spirit world.
Make sense?
And saw him saying unto me, Make haste and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem, for they will not receive thy testimony concerning me.
So God would put the prophets to sleep.
Or he would put them in a trance to completely separate them from the distractions of this world, at which time God would reveal His holy word to them.
And during the time of Belshazzar's reign, God put Daniel to sleep, and then he caused him to gaze upon the message that God had for him.
In a prophetic dream, which means the message from God again was not Daniel's dreamy imagination, but God's.
Holy inspiration.
Daniel saw the dream and looked back in your text, and then he wrote the dream.
See that?
And then he wrote the dream.
So he wrote the dream that God gave him.
And when a prophet writes the information that God gives him, do you know what that's called?
It's called scripture.
You're watching it happen right here.
So, whether, and the Apostle Paul spoke of that when he was caught up to the third heaven.
He said, Whether in the body I cannot tell.
I don't know.
But I was caught up to the third heaven.
And I saw this.
You know, I saw things that are not lawful to be uttered.
But whether it was Paul, Whether it was Daniel, and God allows them to gaze upon his holy message When they write that message down, now it is scripture.
And the Bible says all scripture is given by what?
Inspiration of God.
Right?
And so now his dream becomes scripture.
Think about that.
Second Peter.
Chapter 1, verse 20 and 21, says this: Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture Is of any private interpretation.
In other words, when Daniel takes this dream that he gazed upon the message from God, he then Transforms that from a vision in his head into writing on paper, okay, parchment, whatever.
When he transforms that from a vision he saw To a document you can read.
That is called scripture.
And no scripture is of private interpretation, meaning it's not Daniel's dream.
It's not Daniel's thoughts.
It's not Daniel's ideas.
It's not Daniel's opinion.
It is God's message.
Given to man.
He says, Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation, for the prophecy came not in old time, and that includes Daniel's time, by the will of man.
It wasn't that man's conjuring himself up and working himself up.
Have you seen people do that?
They'll do that in these Pentecostal churches.
They'll just work, work, and work, and work themselves up.
And just get them into some kind of tizzy and all that.
Oh, my goodness.
It didn't come by the will of man, but he says, But holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
In the Bible, writing God's word is the same as speaking God's word.
You know that?
Writing God's Word.
God's written word is the same as God's speaking it.
So if it's written down, it's the same as God speaking it when you read it.
So whatever you see written down when you read it, God is speaking to you.
So writing God's word is the same as speaking God's word.
And when we read God's word, the prophets are still speaking to us today.
Through the scripture.
Hebrews chapter 11, verse 4.
Hebrews chapter 11, verse 4.
By faith, Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.
By which he obtained witness that he was righteous.
All right?
So Abel and Cain both offer an offering.
The difference between the two, the reason one was accepted, the other was rejected, is because Abel had faith.
He had faith believing in a Savior to come who would die for his sin as the animal died that he offered.
He knew the animal was a picture, a prophetic picture, the act of sacrificing that animal.
Every time those priests took their hands and laid their hands on an animal and confessed the sins of Israel on that animal.
God said, put your hands on the animal and you lay all the sins of Israel on that animal.
Every time they transferred The people's sins to the innocent substitute that died in their place.
That was a living prophecy being acted out.
It was a prophecy because God gave them those instructions.
And so, as they acted that out, it was a prophetic utterance that as This priest is transferring the people's sins to this animal, to this lamb.
So one day there will be a greater priest who transfers sin.
To another Lamb and that Lamb will take away the sin of the world And that's why John the Baptist, when he saw Jesus, said, Look, behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.
In other words, he is fulfilling that prophecy.
No prophecy of the scripture.
So prophecy doesn't just have to be written down.
It's in the dream.
It's also in the actions that were inspired by God.
Abel's actions were prophetic when he offered that offering.
By faith, Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous.
Listen now.
God testifying of his gifts.
Now, a gift was another word for offering.
And by it, by that gift that he offered.
He, Abel, being dead, yet speaketh.
He still speaks.
Abel prophesied through the offering of that animal.
That someone would come to die for our sins.
And every time we read The story of him making that offering and God accepting it.
Abel is speaking to us through the scriptures now.
Because the scriptures record his prophetic action.
They were transformed from action into manuscript.
And now, every time we read it, Abel is still speaking to us today, testifying of the Savior who did come.
To fulfill what he was saying.
So he says, By it he, being dead, yet speaketh.
God testified of Abel's gifts.
Through the scriptures, and when we read the scriptures, Abel is still speaking to us about the Savior he was waiting on.
And now there are two great truths we learn from this.
First, Prophecy does not lose inspiration with time.
Prophecy does not lose inspiration with time.
Hebrews chapter 11.
Verse 4 again should still be up there.
There we go.
Thank you.
Said, by God's testimony in the Old Testament, Abel.
Watch this now.
Let me get my little pointer out here.
I like this table.
Yet speaketh Abel yet speaketh He still speaks today.
What do we learn from that?
Prophecy all the way back.
To the son of Adam that long ago.
Prophecy does not lose its inspiration over time because he yet speaketh, you see.
Isn't that wonderful?
God's word never expires, folks.
It never gets old.
It's like this thing around my neck.
It gets getting old.
I don't know why.
It's just binding up on me today.
It never gets old.
It never expires.
Meaning, God's word in Genesis, it may be ancient, yet those prophets still speak to us today.
See, Brother Richard, why does God say Abel is speaking?
He didn't write the book of Genesis.
Was Abel a prophet?
Once again, yes, Abel was a prophet.
He prophesied the Savior to come through the sacrifice he offered.
Luke chapter 11.
Luke chapter 11.
Look with me in verse 49 and 51.
Luke 11, 49 and 51.
Listen to what Jesus said.
Therefore, also. said the wisdom of God I will send them prophets and apostles And some of them, some of those prophets and apostles, they shall slay and persecute.
That the blood of all the set with me, prophets.
Which was shed from the foundation of the world may be required of this generation from the blood of Abel Unto the blood of Zacharias, which pairst between the altar and the temple.
Verily I say unto you, it shall be required of this generation.
Abel was a prophet.
So Abel prophesied through his actions.
The actions were prophecy, and then that prophecy was written down, or that action was written down.
And Abel was the first prophet martyred for the testimony of Jesus Christ.
Yet, he still speaks to us today because prophecy does not lose its inspiration with time.
Prophecy does not lose its inspiration with transformation.
Prophecy does not lose its inspiration with transformation.
When Abel prophesied through his action, That action was then transformed to a manuscript, which we read about today.
The inspiration from action to manuscript did not lose its inspiration.
See?
Just because it changes form.
Does not mean it loses the integrity of being the inspired word of God.
Make sense?
Abel prophesied through the sacrifice he offered.
His prophecy was an action that he took.
That action was then written down in the book of Genesis.
So the prophecy was transformed from a form of Acting to a form of writing, and yet it is still the inspired prophecy of God.
In the same manner, therefore, Daniel's prophecy Is being transformed from a dream to a document, from a vision to a manuscript.
And now To my speech to you.
Isn't that amazing?
All these different forms.
So, over the next several weeks, This prophecy that Daniel dreamed being now recorded for us in God's word.
And I expounded through in real time through God's New Testament pastors It does not lose its inspiration with time that has passed.
It does not lose its inspiration with transformation.
That it goes through what you will be hearing may over the next few weeks may be very old, yet God is still speaking to us through the dream He gave Daniel.
What we are reading, what you're holding in your hand, God's Word, what we're going to be learning is as fresh And personal from God to us in the scriptures today during President Trump, while President Trump was in power, as it was to the man who first dreamed it when King Belshazzar was in power.
Just as fresh and real.
Daniel wrote the dream for us, look back in your text, and told the sum of the matters.
And told the sum of the matters.
Now, the Chaldean word here, sum, translated as sum, it literally means head.
Head.
If you're reading this, you're reading this and you're studying the original language, you're going to think, my goodness, he told the head of the matters.
Did you know some literal translations will translate it that way?
He told the head of the matters, or told the chief of the matters.
Because we'd call heads of state, they're really chiefs of state.
And so he told literally the head of the matters.
And I believe this will be easy for us to understand when we remember how information is relayed to us today.
When a news agency, I tell you what, I just want to pull this thing off here.
Well, I know y'all are tired of watching me grab this.
There we go.
I'm just going to let it dangle all over my shirt right there, and I don't care because I'm going to be able to move around and talk to you now.
When a news agency Relays information to us.
Think about what they do.
When they want to relay information to us initially, what comes first?
The headline, who said headline?
Brother Shepherd?
It's because he's so smart.
They don't give the article first, do they?
They give the headline first.
They give the article last.
And what do we do?
We usually scroll through the headlines, and when we find a headline that interests us, we then dig down deeper into the article.
Sometimes, if you've noticed, the headlines are misleading.
You'll ever notice that?
They're clickbait, they're there to catch you and drag you in.
Then you read the article, and it's like that headline was misleading.
Not with scripture.
Scripture is the inspired word of God.
So, what Daniel is giving us, he's giving us literally the head of the matters.
You see?
The head of the matters.
He's going to give us the headlines.
Daniel's not going to sum things up in a single line.
But he's going to sum things up in the sense that he's giving us the head, the main points of what the dream was about.
And that's all he's going to do.
And that's the way prophecies are generally given.
That's the way God works prophetically in the scriptures.
Prophecies, if you'll think of it this way, what is a headline?
A headline is a vast amount of information contained in a few words, right?
And then you got to read the article to get to that vast amount of information.
And that's what an Old Testament prophecy is.
A prophecy is a vast amount of information.
That's contained in a small space.
That's contained in a few words.
When Jesus was speaking to his disciples in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 24.
Luke 24, 44 through 46 says, And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you. while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms concerning me.
The law of Moses was a prophecy about Jesus.
Remember, the sacrifices were prophecies when they acted them out.
So he said, the law I had to fulfill, right?
Then he said, the prophets I had to fulfill.
Those were prophecies.
Then he said the Psalms I had to fulfill.
What were the Psalms?
The Psalms were also prophecies about Jesus coming and dying for our sins and many other things, his future reign, his second coming, his resurrection.
All of that was prophesied in the book of Psalms.
And so what we have here is this.
He said, all things must be fulfilled.
Then he said, Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures.
The scriptures, God's prophetic dreams recorded in writing, right?
And said unto them, thus it is written, the scriptures, and thus.
It behooved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day.
Now, here's what I want you to notice: thus it is written.
That's the prophecies reduced to writing, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, etc. , etc.
So notice what Jesus said.
Thus it is written, and thus.
Thus it is written, was the prophecy in old time.
But the and thus was the fulfillment and explanation that came afterward.
When I'm at work, I leave my phone setting out and I leave it open.
I'll take it like this.
I've got my Sunday school class uploading to YouTube right now.
But I'll take it and I'll set it up like this at work.
And that way, if the marshal's office were to text me or something were to happen, I can see it pop up on my phone.
And sometimes headlines will pop up on my phone.
And interestingly, sometimes a headline that will fascinate me will pop up on my phone that's important to me.
And maybe to us.
And so I'll just read the headline out to my coworkers.
Oh, it says here: Supreme Court just ruled, da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
And there's this one particular coworker that I have.
My wife knows who it is.
And when I read the headline out, he'll always, he's gotten better.
But he has this habit of saying, Well, well, what did it say about this or that or the other?
He'll start asking more information.
And I'll say, How?
It's just the headline.
I don't know.
And then everyone will laugh because they're so used to him wanting more information with that headline, and I don't know it.
I know the basics, I know the sum of the matters, but I don't know all the details yet.
So here's the point: Jesus' death and resurrection were packed.
Into the prophecies of the Old Testament.
The prophecies of the Old Testament, they were the headlines.
But the epistles unpack all that knowledge that was once stored in that small space in those few words, giving us the finer details.
So think of it like this.
The Old Testament published the headlines.
The New Testament published the articles.
Make sense?
The Old Testament published the headlines.
The New Testament published the articles.
So when Daniel's prophecy, here's what we're going to be doing.
We're going to be studying the headlines, and since we live in the New Testament age, we're going to take those headlines.
And we're going to pull up the articles from the New Testament, and we're going to study those headlines in finer detail.
That were published at a later time.
And remember, knowing that both the headlines and the articles are prophecies from God, they're divine revelations from God.
Then we have to understand that if an article ever contradicts a headline, the article Is the wrong story.
You got it?
If an article ever contradicts a headline, the article is the wrong story.
And that is why We can look at the headlines in the Old Testament, pull up the Quran, and say, wrong story.
That's why we can look at the articles in the Old Testament.
Pull up the Book of Mormon, say wrong story.
That is why we can look at the articles in the Old Testament, pull up the apocryphal writings that are in the Catholic Bible, those extra books.
Wrong story, that's how it works.
This Is the introduction to prophecy.
Anything written after that contradicts what was written before is a forgery of the handwriting of God.
And with that information, we will go into Daniel's dream next Sunday morning.
And I'm looking forward to getting into it.
Father, we thank you so much for your precious word.
God, we come to you now.
And we thank you, Lord, for this instruction you've given us in Scripture.
Scripture explaining Scripture.
And we pray that we will enter this church next Sunday.
Taking this wonderful knowledge of your divine revelation and applying it going forward, and that you will continue to open our eyes. of our understanding to reveal to us, Lord, the mysteries of Daniel's dream and how they impact us today and what they mean to us today as we are still looking forward, Father.
Not only of the things that have passed, but the things that are yet to come.
In Jesus' precious name we pray.
Amen.
