Daniel - Overview - Putting Daniel in his Place

- Tonight we’re going to have a presentation that you could entitle “Putting Daniel in his Place.”
- Many times people say to us that when they pick up their Bible, they feel like they picked up a jigsaw puzzle box.....
- they have a lot of pieces, and they know the pieces are important, and they are even interesting and helpful to look at.....
- but there’s a difficulty of putting all the pieces together.....

- there’s also the view that, if those pieces were put together, the landscape that was created would be much more beautiful to look at, much more understandable....
- and it would really help future studies that went back to looking at the individual parts.

- We’d like to do several things tonight...our pastoral staff got together and divided the Bible, and in some senses, the history of mankind, in 12 categories.
- If you know these twelve categories, the Bible should make a whole lot more sense....
- they sort of serve as a superstructure on which you can hang and organize things you know from the Word of God.
- we have placed these categories on the easels behind me, and we’ve also printed them on the section of your notes [the top left-hand corner of the side that has the map on it].
- that’s the good news---the bad news [challenging news] is, they are scrambled.

- before we turn you loose, I’d like to tell you what to expect for the rest of the evening.....
- after we get these unscrambled.....then we will turn our sheet over......
2) The 12 boxes on this side correspond to what you’re about to unscramble.
- we’re going to go through them, and hit the highlights --- the main people or events in each category.
3) Then we are going to go through each book of the Bible and ask, in which of these 12 categories does this Bible book fit?
- where does Ruth fit into this, where does Hosea fit, what about Ephesians, or Titus?
4) Then we’re going to go through the book of Daniel....because one of Daniel’s uniqueness is that it actually touches on several of these categories.
5) Then we are going to go through the chart and ask two critical questions....
a. Where is the glory of God in each of these categories, and lastly.....
b. Where is Jesus Christ in each category?

I. Unscrambling the Categories

- I’d like to ask you to work with someone around you, and try to unscramble them.

[please be sure everyone has someone to work with.....please don't be embarrassed if you are new to all of this].

- [take a few minutes --- then go over correct order --- decide how you’re going to change easels ---- get a young person to assist?].

1. [i] Creation and Early History
2. [k] Patriarchs
3. [f] Exodus & Conquest
4. [a] Judges
5. [c] Kings
6. [j] Exile & Return
7. [e] Gentile History
8. [h] First Coming of Jesus Christ
9. [d] Church Age
10. [l] Rapture & Tribulation
11. [f] Millennial Kingdom
12. [b] Eternal State

II. Walking Through the Categories

- now let me ask you to turn your sheet over to the section that has the twelve boxes and let’s talk through them a little bit.
- Of course the handout is now your property, but I would encourage you to write anything you choose to write very small, because we’re going to go through this several times.

- what I’d like us to do at this point is to go through the categories and hit the high spots.
[try to refer to easels as much as possible]

A. Creation and Early History

- Date - ? - 2090 BC

- Genesis 1-11 are very important chapters in the Bible, and there are four especially important events
- that’s why we have four blanks in your handout.....
- they are:
1) Creation of man
2) Fall of man
3) Flood
4) Tower of Babel

- by time you get to the end of Genesis 11, the story is pretty bleak.
- God placed human beings in a perfect environment, and they sinned.
- God judged Adam and Eve by expelling them from the Garden and mankind sinned to the point that Genesis 6 tells us that the thoughts of mankind were only evil continually.
- then God judged mankind with a flood, graciously saving Noah and his family.....but later you have people disobeying God by building a city so they could make a name for themselves and reach heaven by their own accomplishments.

- but there’s a significant transition in Genesis 12 because God comes to a man named Abram and He begins to make promises to him.
- that begins the period of:
B. The Patriarchs

- Dates - 2090 BC - 1805 BC

- and the four great patriarchs are.....
1) Abraham
2) Isaac
3) Jacob
4) Joseph

- at the end of this period of time, the nation of Israel was located where?
- in Egypt.
- after many generations, Egyptian rulers were raised up who didn’t know of Joseph, and Joseph’s God....and because the children of Israel were becoming such a large and potentially powerful group, the Egyptians enslaved them and treated them harshly.
- The Jews were in bondage in Egypt for over years, and then God answered their cry....
- that takes us into that period of time known as the....

C. Exodus and Conquest

- Date - 1805 BC - 1400 BC

- This is a very exciting time in the life of God’s people......

- Some of the many highlights are......
1) Crossing of the Red Sea
2) Giving of the Law [the 10 commandments]
3) Transition from Moses to Joshua

- obviously, that’s a summary of some very important events, but we’re trying to hot the high spots.
- next comes the period of the.....

D. Judges

- Dates - 1400 BC - 1043 BC

- this was cyclical period in the history of God’s nation....
- there are seven distinct periods where you see this cycle over and over....
1) The people depart from God
2) God chastises them by allowing military defeat
3) The people cry out for deliverance
4) God sends a judge to deliver them
5) The people fall back into disobedience and apathy

- in your notes, we’ve given room for four representative judges.....
1) Deborah
2) Gideon
3) Samson
4) Samuel
- Samuel was a very godly man, and he is the one that the people of Israel came to and said, give us a king so we can be like the other nations.
- God later told Samuel that this was evidence, not that they were rejecting Samuel, but that they were rejecting God Himself.
- this is a very important period of time, because as we’ll see, a significant amount of our Bible deals with these categories.
- we’re talking about the period of the.....

E. Kings

- Dates - 1043 BC - 586 BC

- in your notes, we start with the United Monarchy, and the three kings that led Israel at that time.....
1) Saul
2) David
3) Solomon

- then we have the Divided Monarchy, where Israel is really on the decline, which is why there was so much prophetic material written.....
- the two major events under that heading are;
1) The fall of Israel (Northern Kingdom) to Assyria in 722 BC
2) The fall of Judah (Southern Kingdom) to Babylon in 586 BC

[Note location of Assyria and Babylon on map.]

- the next period we know well, from our study of the book of Daniel....
F. Exile and Return

- Dates - 586 BC - 445 BC

- First deportation was in 605 BC

- Fall of Jerusalem was in 585 BC

- Captivity ended when Cyrus, the King of Persia allowed the first group to go back to Jerusalem.
- that was in 538 BC, and the man who led the first wave was a man named Zerubbabel.
- the second wave occurred in 458 BC under the leadership of Ezra
- the third wave, which was actually decreed by the Persian ruler Artaxerxes, occurred in 445 BC, and was led by a man named Nehemiah.

- that date is significant because it marks the beginning of Daniel’s famous prophecy of the 70 weeks.

- the next category we’ve listed is called.....
G. Gentile History

- Dates - 605 BC - 3 BC
- we needed to put this in here because of all we’ve learned in the book of Daniel.
- there’s definite overlap between “F” and “G”
- but we know the four kingdoms by now......
1) Babylon
2) Medo-Persia
3) Greece
4) Rome

- now the material probably becomes more familiar......
- it was after the exploits of Alexander the Great, who spread the Greek language and culture around the known world, and the exploits of Rome, that established relative peace and stability as well as constructing a marvelous system of roads.....
- that we have the period of time the Bible describes as “fullness of time”
- the perfect time for the Messiah to come....

H. First Coming of Jesus Christ

- Dates - 3 BC - AD 32

1) Born in Bethlehem
2) Began His public ministry
3) Crucified on Calvary
4) resurrected from the dead

- Jesus’ ascension marked the beginning of the.....
I. Church Age

- Dates - AD 32 - ?

- this is what the apostle Paul called the mystery, an idea unknown to the OT believers.
- it began with:
1) Great commission give to make disciples
2) Church was born on the day of Pentecost (as we have been studying in ABF’s)
3) New Testament Completed

- this is where we’re living now.....between Daniel’s 69th week, and his 70th week.
- the next event on the prophetic timetable is:

J. Rapture and Tribulation

- Dates - ? - 7 years

1) Jesus Christ returns in the clouds, dead and living believers “caught up”.

2) In heaven, Marriage Supper of the Lamb and the Bema Seat Judgment

3) On earth, great judgment.
- [go through the book of Revelation? --- here, or when you walk through each book]

4) Battle of Armageddon.
- that ushers in the....
K. Millennial Kingdom

- Dates - ? - 1000 years

1) Jesus Christ rules and reigns in complete fulfillment of the OT prophecies to Israel.

2) Satan loosed at the end of this period.

3) Final rebellion is put down.

- this is known as the Battle of Gog and Magog (Rev. 20)

- this is when we have the Great White Thrown Judgment

- that ushers in the.....
L. Eternal State

- Dates -

- new heaven and the new earth

- believers will spend eternity in heaven, and unbelievers, along with the devil and his host, will be separated from God forever in hell.

- now, those are the twelve categories, or the superstructure......
- now we’re going to attempt something that I hope will be very helpful.....
- let’s walk through the books of the Bible, in the order they occur in the Bible, and assign them to these categories.....
- we designed the handout in a way to give you room to write the books at the bottom of each category

III. Walking Through the Books of the Bible

- see Andy’s notes.

- now, we’d like to spend the rest of our time thinking about the big picture, or the themes.
- God is the Author of the Bible, and the Author of human history.
- two of the major themes are “The Glory of God” and “The Person of Jesus Christ”

IV. Looking at the Big Picture

- so let’s go through our categories, asking these two questions......

1) Where is the glory of God?

2) Where is Jesus?