 Okay. Just waiting for the recording to start. Okay. Good morning. This is BC 308 course on Revelation and Daniel. Good morning to all of you. Thank you for joining the class today. Welcome. Good morning, Thomas, Dave, Kiran, Prince, Aaron. All of you, welcome. Let's take a moment to pray and then we will get started. We'll, as usual, we'll do the course overview and get started with the introduction. All right. Could somebody please pray with us together as a class? See you, sir. Thank you, dear heavenly Father. Thank you. We give glory to you, Lord. This time, Lord, you've given us a wonderful day. It's a morning, Lord. We submit in your hand. Lord, help us to learn your word that we're going to learn the new course that Revelation and Daniel, Lord, help us. Your praise, revelation give us that we could understand the book. Thank you, Lord. I submit in your holy hand, each of the student and also a pastor's Lord. You're a 19th repro in us, Lord. Thank you. I submit all things to you. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So we are in this course. We're going to be studying, mainly studying, two books. Daniel, the book of Daniel and Revelation. And yeah, let me introduce the course. I've put out the two PDFs in the Classwork section. So you can follow with me. Let me introduce. Let's just go to the PDF. Do introduce the course here. So what we're going to do is go through the books of Daniel, Revelation, verse by verse, focusing on the end time Bible prophecy. Now, in the book of Daniel, and I will explain this a little later, there is the historical portions of it. A lot of it deals with the life of Daniel and brings out the character and, you know, the way Daniel lived his life. We won't spend too much time on that. But in the book of Daniel, we will be focusing on the prophetic scriptures, the prophetic part of the book of Daniel. And then Revelation, of course, is the entire book, you know, start to finish. We will read through it, verse by verse, and study it. Now, I know that in the second year, in our course on the end times, we did an overview of things. You know, we tried to establish a sequence of events, the prophetic timeline. We used the book of Revelation as a guide or a timeline, so to speak. And we just follow the sequence of events. But we didn't, you know, read verse by verse and we didn't go through it at that detail. It was more of an overview, a panoramic view of the sequence of events. And also, we looked at the signs of the times. So that's what we kind of did in the second year course. In this course, what we wanted to do is we want to read verse by verse, Daniel and Revelation and understand the text, the scriptures. And as we're doing that, we will also connect other portions of scripture, prophetic scripture. So that's Isaiah, Ezekiel, or Jovala, Zechariah, Matthew. You know, we will connect other portions of scripture, but our main focus is on these two books, Daniel and Revelation. The reason we picked these two books is because, one, they are primarily prophetic scriptures. You know, the book of Daniel, there is historical information, then there is prophetic information. And the prophetic information is primarily dealing with end time Bible prophecy. Not all of it, but much of it. There is a historical prophecy which has already been fulfilled and then there is some that's waiting to be fulfilled. So these two books, Daniel and Revelation, have a lot of prophetic scriptures. And also, for many of us initially, it's a little difficult to understand. So it's good for us to, you know, read them verse by verse and try and understand it. Now, just the usual formalities, you know, for grading, we will have three assessments like we did last semester and we will grade them based on that. Now, I also will make available some reference books. I have already put up these two books because we're going to start off looking at Daniel and then go into Revelation. One, both these are academic in nature, meaning they are used as textbooks in theological courses. So I've uploaded both these reference books, Daniel and Decoding Daniel. Now, I'm not expecting you to read it and I will upload the other two books on Revelation later on. I'm not expecting you to read all of these books because they are big. And I think usually it's about 300 pages or so. And also it's very academic. There's a lot of detailed research and citations and all of that. So I'm not expecting you to read it, but I would encourage you to refer to it. When I share with you in the class, I'm going to of course bring, share with you what my understanding is plus, you know, the gist of what is shared in these reference books. I will put it all together and share that with you. But for your own benefit, whenever you want to, you can refer to these books. Okay, but I'm not expecting you to read every page of it. Neither are we going to give you an exam based on these reference books. No, the exams or the assessments will be based on what is discussed in the classroom, in the lectures. And these reference books are for your benefit just to go to it whenever you want to. But I will be bringing in content key, key things from those books when we talk, right? So I will do some of that work for you. All right, so we're going to start off with the book of Daniel. I have uploaded these reference books for you and you can download them from the coursework section and, you know, look to them whenever you have time, whenever you are doing some study and so on. So our plan is we're going to start off with the book of Daniel first. And then we are, you know, we will finish Daniel and then get into the book of Revelation. And so I would, I need all of us to keep our Bibles open because like how we did with the book of Romans last semester, we're going to read passage by passage and then try and explain and understand those sections. So are we ready to get started? Any questions about the course? Let me see. Any questions about the course? Anything is clear? What we're going to do? Any questions? Okay, no questions. We will get started. All right, so today we will start with the book of Daniel and I'm just going to first do an introduction to the book. Right, so this is just kind of a quick overview and some background to the book of Daniel. And then we will start reading verse powers and so on. Okay, so let's get started with the introduction. So Daniel is the author of this book, Daniel. And Daniel, of course, his name is God is Judge. And he, so the background here is Nebuchadnezzar, who was the Babylonian king had attacked Israel, more specifically Jerusalem, really destroyed Jerusalem. And then he had taken a lot of the Jewish people as captives and he transported them from Jerusalem all the way into Babylon. Babylon would be modern day Iraq. That would be the region. So they were, you know, taken into exile, a lot of the people. And he had especially ordered the selection of young Jewish people, men who could be trained in the knowledge, the learning of Babylon and, you know, almost like educate them with this new system and see if they could be useful to him and his kingdom and his empire. And so this is where, you know, we read about Daniel and his friends who are in exile. That means they are not in their own land. They're now in a foreign country. And they are, they have, they have been handpicked, selected among others to be schooled, to be educated in the learning and the wisdom and the knowledge of the Babylonians. So Daniel was one of them. Now Daniel as a young Jewish man who's being trained here in, you know, you could think about the educational system of Babylon, they are being trained there. Just a little quick overview. So Daniel spends, and these Jews, they spent 70 years, 70 years in exile. That means they're away from their homeland. They're spending their land, they're healthy as captives in this foreign country. And so Daniel spends about 70 years totally outside Jerusalem in captivity. Now, during the 70 years, Lord happens because the Babylonians are overthrown by another kingdom or empire called the Medes. But the Medes are in power for a very short time. And they are overthrown by another kingdom called the Persians. And they remain in power and then later on the Persians are overthrown by the Greeks, right? So we will come to that later. But Daniel is serving or served in the 70 year period. He served in the courts of these three empires. So he was serving, he was of course, schooled trained first, and then he was serving in the courts of King Nebuchadnezzar, or the Babylonians. Then the Babylonians overthrown, the kingdom was taken over by the Medes. So Daniel was serving under the Medes. Then they were overthrown and the Persians came into power. And so Daniel was serving under them. And it was under the Persian king that the decree was made for the Jews to return to Jerusalem. That is, at the end of the 70 year period. And so it's towards that time, when you read about Daniel beginning to pray, this we will see in chapter 9, chapter 10, Daniel praying for his people. And you know, and at the end of that, the Persians, or the Persian king, sends the people back to Jerusalem. So Daniel may have lived a little, you know, maybe five years more, or far, far more years, and then, you know, would have died. So his ministry really extended for this 70 year period approximately. And he saw the transitions happening. And he recorded the prophetic visions. Now, the book of Daniel itself has historical information, things that happened to Daniel, to his friends, to the kings that he worked under. And then it has a lot of prophecy prophetic information about events, things that would come. So it's both historical and prophetic in nature. Now, the Lord Jesus himself referred to Daniel, Matthew 24, 15. And he says, you know, when Jesus is speaking about the end times, he refers to what Daniel called as the abomination of desolation in Matthew 24, 15. And he, Jesus, the Lord Jesus, mentioned Daniel by name, recognizing that the book of Daniel was truly the words of the prophet Daniel. Right. So I just wanted to point out that so that even Jesus recognized the authorship of the book of Daniel being that of Daniel himself. Okay. Now, Daniel, this is just, this is just introduction, just general information. It's, it's the last book, among the major prophets, or the writings of the prophets. And, and then after that we have some of the minor prophets. Some of the minor prophets. So when we talk about, when we think about the purpose of this book, there is historical record that shows how the Jewish people were formed in their faith in Jehovah God in a foreign land. And so you can see that coming through, through the story of Daniel and his friends. So that's one of the key things that come out of this book, that here you have Jewish people in a foreign land. And as they remain true to their God, faith in their God, in a foreign land, and sometimes in very difficult situations, we will, we know the story of, you know, the, the Jews being made for a forced to worship the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up. We also know the story of, that we read about in chapter six, when no, when there was a decree not to worship anybody else, but Daniel chose to, you know, pray, and then he was thrown into the den of line turned pray towards Jerusalem and he was thrown in the den of lines. So we know these stories, but it's showing us how Jews would remain faithful in their faith in Jehovah God prevails, even in a foreign land. So it really brings out that encouragement. It really brings out that sense of dedication and consecration to Jehovah God, and it brings out God's faithfulness, how his people prevail, even in the midst of difficult situations. So if you say, you know, what is the purpose of this book of Daniel? This is one of the key things that come out. But there's also the prophetic text, meaning God is revealing to one of his people. And in this case, it's Daniel, whom he has raised up as a prophet, and is speaking or revealing things to come. Now, very interesting. So that's the second purpose of the book of Daniel, that God is revealing to one of his prophets, Daniel, things to come. But what's so interesting about the book of Daniel is, it starts the prophetic text, it starts from his time, that means from the Babylonian kingdom, and it goes all the way into the eternal kingdom. That is, the kingdom of God being set up on the earth. It goes all the way to that. So that's the revelatory character of the book of Daniel. It is giving us revelation. It's an unveiling of secrets that God is revealing to the prophet Daniel. And like I said, what is very interesting is, it starts from his time on the time that Daniel was all the way to the coming kingdom, the kingdom of Jesus Christ. So that's very, very unique in the revelation of the prophetic text that we see in Daniel. I just forgot to mention the dates here, of course it's there. So Daniel was, he ministered between 605 BC and 535 BC. That's a period of almost 70 years. Those are the dates that we should just keep in mind. Okay, going back to this, so the revelation that's in the book of Daniel is very, very unique. And it's so expansive in its timeline, its timeframe, as we will read in Daniel chapter 2 itself, which hopefully we'll get to today. You see a revelation of the coming kingdom. It's quite amazing. In chapter 7, we will see Daniel giving such a powerful description of what the kingdom, the coming kingdom will look like. It's again a very powerful revelation and very interesting. In Daniel chapter 9, we will see he mentions about the Messiah. He mentions about the Messiah. This is really fascinating, really wonderful that Daniel would speak about the coming of the Messiah and talk about the death of the Messiah. So again, the prophetic revelation in Daniel is very, very unique and very, very fascinating, very amazing. The other part of Daniel's revelatory character, the book of Daniel, the revelatory character is, there is what we would refer to as the near fulfillment of certain prophecies. And then there is the far fulfillment, which some of those prophecies are still out in the future. And you have both kinds of revelations or prophetic revelations in the book of Daniel. So when he said near fulfillment, meaning he spoke about empires, that actually some of them happened in Daniel's lifetime itself. So he was living in the kingdom of the Babylonian kingdom under Nebuchadnezzar and he prophesied Daniel about the Meads and about the Persians. And Daniel saw these things happen in his lifetime. Now he went on to prophesy also about the Greeks and the Romans, which he didn't necessarily see, but they all happened right after. So that's the near fulfillment of prophetic, the revelatory prophecies in Daniel. I mean, they were fulfilled. But then, like we said, he also spoke about the Messiah. He also spoke about the coming kingdom. He spoke about the Antichrist, who is yet to come. So those are far fulfillment. They are yet to be fulfilled. The coming of the Messiah is fulfilled, but the kingdom of the Messiah, the coming of the Antichrist, those things are yet to be fulfilled. So that's another very distinctive character of the revelations in the book of Daniel. There are near fulfillment, there are far fulfillment of prophecy. Another interesting feature about the book of Daniel is, you know, we know that most of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew. But in the book of Daniel, it is interesting that some parts of the book of Daniel between chapters two to chapter seven were written in Aramaic. The other portions were written in Hebrew. So these portions were written in Aramaic. And there was also the inclusion of some Greek words in these portions. So that's interesting. Of course, this is because of the influence of where Daniel was. He was in captivity in Babylon. And so writing there, obviously it could have, the decision could have been because of the audience, the people around that he would want them to read. So it was written, those portions were written in Aramaic. And there were also some influence, you know, so that the Greek Empire had not yet come in. But there were Greek speaking people who were dispersed in that region. And so there was that influence that Daniel was exposed to. And so there was those Greek words included in those portions between chapters two and seven. So that's the, again, a very different aspect about the book of Daniel. Certain portions were written in Aramaic. The rest of it was in Hebrew. We could say it was done deliberately because of where Daniel was living at that time. And the language of the people that he was amongst with the intent that they may also read what he is recording. And also there was the influence of some of the dispersed Greek speaking people in that region that would have influenced him to use certain Greek words. So that's something just to keep in mind. Now, in studying the book of Daniel, you know, usually the very most common way is and even if, you know, it's a regular reader of the book of Daniel would immediately identify that there are, there seem to be two halves, two portions in the book of Daniel. Daniel, the first six chapters have a lot to do with the life of Daniel and the Jewish people there, his Daniel and his four friends. And we could immediately recognize that from chapter seven onwards, he doesn't speak too much about himself. It's all about prophecy. You know, it's the visions that God is giving him that he's recorded. He does mention a little bit about himself in chapter 10 when he, you know, struggles to understand the vision and how he pasts and prays. But other than that, there's not meant to much mentioned about himself in chapter seven to 12. It's all a record of the visions. Yes, see, so anybody reading the book of Daniel will, you know, will see these two distinct portions in the book of Daniel. Usually, the book of Daniel is, you know, studied that way that okay, one is the historical story, the stories, the experiences of Daniel and his friends. And then there is prophecies visions from chapter seven to 12. Another way that people would study the book of Daniel is just by looking at, you know, okay, there is the chapter one, which is the introduction to Daniel, just giving us the context that Daniel and his friends were in Babylon. And then there is the atomic portion that is chapters two to seven, and then there is chapters eight to 12. And the atomic portion deals with the Gentile kingdoms, the Babylonians, the Medes and the Persians and the Greeks, all the way to the Romans that he prophesies about them. And then chapters eight to 12 deals specifically with what would happen to Israel, while the Gentiles are taking over or gaining up a hand over them. So this is another way that people could look at it. Our approach is going to be, we are not going to be looking at the historical section that is about Daniel and his life and character. Maybe we'll just mention some things in passing, but our approach is going to be to go straight to the prophetic portions of Daniel. So starting from chapter two, chapter five, chapter seven and on, we will just be looking at all the prophecies, the visions Daniel had and understanding those visions. We will leave out the experiences of Daniel. We will just mention them in passing because most of us are familiar with it and the stories of what happened to Daniel and his four friends. We will just mention that in passing, but our main interest is in studying the prophecies, the visions that are in the book of Daniel. So we will focus in on that. Couple of other things about the book of Daniel. I'm just, you know, doing all of this in as a background is that the book of Daniel was never questioned for its authenticity up until the sixth century BC. So, sorry, up until the third century AD. So the book of Daniel was written in the sixth century BC. And up until 38 AD, the third century, people accepted it. The Jews regarded it as part of their holy books. It was part of the prophetic scriptures, part of the writings. And therefore it automatically became part of the canonized scripture. Nobody questioned. But in the third century AD, there was a man, Porphyry, who began to attack or question basically the book of Daniel, and he raised up a lot of objections, questioning, you know, is it really part of the holy scriptures? He was questioning the detailed prophecies in the book of Daniel because we will find as we look at it, some of Daniel's prophecies were so detailed that he began to claim, Porphyry, that it's not possible that somebody can prophesy in such detail. And therefore it must have been written after these events happened. So of course, you know, he's just trying to question it, but nobody actually questioned the book of Daniel because it was known and it was accepted as a work of this prophet of God. And that this is what God spoke and this is what God revealed to Daniel. This man began to question a lot of these things, question, of course, even the miracles were questioned. The textual problems, that means, you know, highlighting the fact that there were Greek words in the Adamic section and those kinds of things. The problems of language were being highlighted and sometimes they were questioning the historical accuracies. But none of these things, none of these objections or attacks on the book of Daniel have actually been able to stand. Everything has been refuted by facts. And now I'm not going into the details, but if you're interested in, you can read the reference book by Oldworth, I think, the first one, Daniel. And he explains these things in detail and giving all the references from where he pulls out the information. But none of these things have been able to stand against the book of Daniel. Just a couple of things more here in terms of background. One of the challenging aspects of the book of Daniel is interpretation. And like we said, both Daniel and the book of Revelation, many people find it difficult because it uses a lot of horror. The visions and the Revelation there has a lot of images which are difficult to understand. So interpretation of the book of Daniel has been a challenge. I'm not saying we cannot understand it, but it's been difficult. It requires some amount of careful study. So that's a challenge with the book of Daniel. So not only is the interpretation of the images that people see, as in the visions that Daniel has, or Nebuchadnezzar had, or others, the images there. So what does that mean? He's seeing this. He's seeing a ram and a goat and things like that. But what do these things mean? And so what we will find is that if you carefully read the text, a lot of these images are interpreted for us. So the meaning of what the vision is, is given to us as we read along in the book of Daniel. So that will be our first way of understanding is what is the interpretation already given to us in Daniel that will help us understand these images that Daniel is seeing, or that are mentioned in the visions. That's our first step. Then there are certain aspects of Daniel's prophecies that are actually fulfilled by history. So we have the advantage of looking back at the prophetic text, plus what actually happened in history, and then matching them. And wherever you find that there is a match, we know that that's the fulfillment of what was spoken. And this is especially true in the 11th chapter of Daniel. That when we read chapter 11, it's very detailed prophecy. But a lot of that, not all, but major part of chapter 11 is a near fulfillment. That means, historically, whatever Daniel said in chapter 11 was fulfilled, and we can actually match what he said, what happened, we can match it. Now, in chapter 11, he does prophesy about the Antichrist. So that's in the far fulfillment. The major part of chapter 11 has near fulfillment. So that's the other aspect of interpretation. So let me repeat, in our interpretation of the book of Daniel, there are two things we're going to do. One is we're going to look at how the images and the visions are explained for us or interpreted for us in the book of Daniel itself. That's one thing. Second is we're going to match it with actual historical happenings. He said this, this, this. Okay, this, this, this happened. It matches. So then it helps us understand what he was actually talking about. Okay, so that's the approach in our interpretation of the prophecies. Now we, like we said, yes, it's not easy. But if we do a careful study, we will be able to interpret it. It's not impossible or not difficult. It just requires careful study, which we will do. Another aspect of the book of Daniel is the theology, meaning what does the book of Daniel tell us about God and about the spiritual realm. And that is also very interesting in to observe in the book of Daniel. First of all, like we said, Yahweh or Jehovah God, the God of the Jews, comes out as the almighty, sovereign God who rules over the kings of the kingdoms. That comes out in the book of Daniel, especially in chapter four, when Nebuchadnezzar himself acknowledges, is there any God like the God of Daniel? Of course, he's a friend of Jehovah God. He may not know it fully, but he refers to the God of Daniel. Is anyone like that? And chapter four says, you know, the most high, the most high, he raises up whom he chooses, he puts down whom he chooses. That means God is sovereign over the sovereigns of the earth. He is king above the kings of the earth. That again comes out in chapter six, when Darius, the mead, the kingdom king of the meads, you know, he has Daniel thrown into the lion's den. Daniel comes out without any harm and he says, you know, there is no God like the God of Daniel. So again, it emphasizes God, the most high God, Jehovah God, the God of the Jews is sovereign over the rulers of the earth. So that comes out very, very clearly in the book of Daniel. The book of Daniel, very interestingly, also gives us insight into heaven. This is in chapter seven. Daniel is able to see and into heaven and he sees God the Father, whom he refers to as the ancient of days. Very interesting title because you don't find it elsewhere. The ancient of days. And he also sees the eternal word and it is Daniel who calls him the son of man. Again, a very interesting title because this title, the son of man is used in chapter four when the Jewish boys, the three of them are thrown into the fiery furnace. And the king says and says, look, I see another one in the furnace like the son of man. In Daniel chapter seven, Daniel is having a vision of heaven. He sees the ancient of days and he sees the son of man. Now this title is so important because when Jesus walked the earth, the eternal word, when he became the incarnate word and when he walked the earth. He used the same title for himself. He called himself as the son of man and said, you will see the son of man coming in the clouds of glory for the Jews. It's like this is the same title Daniel used of the one standing at the right hand of God at the ancient of days. And now here you are having somebody using this title for himself. So for the Jews, they understood this title as a very reverential title. It's what Daniel talked about. The son of man standing at the ancient of days and to him was given authority over all the kingdoms, Daniel chapter seven. And now Jesus is using that title for himself, saying that he is who Daniel saw in Daniel chapter seven. So in terms of theology, the vision of Daniel is so powerful because he's seeing the ancient of days. He's seeing the son of man, the eternal word. You see, and then in Daniel chapter nine, Daniel talks about the Messiah. He talks about the Messiah being cut off, meaning killed. So this is another important part of the theology that comes out of the book of Daniel. That how much of this Daniel himself understood, we don't know. We know that he struggled to understand some of his visions. And that's why, you know, he said like, I can't understand these visions. He, you know, he fastly prayed, he's got what is the meaning of these things. So, but he spoke about the Messiah. He spoke about the Messiah being cut off. He spoke about the son of man and the saints of the most high and the kingdom being given to the saints. That's chapter seven. So a lot of deep insights about God, about the triune nature of God, about the Messiah is given to us in the book of Daniel. And also another aspect that we will see that we see in the book of Daniel is the recognition of angelic beings. Now we know Isaiah and also Ezekiel had a lot of, especially Ezekiel had a lot of encounters, spiritual experiences and encounters. But the book of Daniel is very interesting because of its angelic emphasis on angelic encounters, especially when you come into chapters nine and 10. Daniel is talking about the angel of God coming and helping him understand the vision, giving him strength and saying, you know, reading the message from God. So Daniel recognizes angelic beings in operation. So this is again a very important aspect of the book of Daniel. The theology side that comes out very beautifully in this book. Okay. I'm going to pause here. I know it's our break time already. I'm going to pause here. I didn't give any time for questions. Let me see. Any questions so far? We're still in the introduction. We're just introducing the book of Daniel. Is everybody with me so far? Did we lose anybody? All good. So, fine. Everybody's following. I can see your messages in the chat. Let's pause here for now. And then we will come back in 10 minutes and continue just a little bit more, a little bit background information before we get into, we will start with chapter two. Okay. So let's pause and we'll be back in 10 minutes. Thank you.