Opinions on Daniel’s dreams vary widely. By the end of the seventh chapter, the beasts are revealed as symbols of four kingdoms. Most say the four kingdoms are Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome. Some stop there. Others, while acknowledging Rome as the fourth beast, insist that its ultimate meaning will be revealed in a future Roman empire, culminating in the anti-Christ who’ll appear just before Jesus returns. Others take a more philosophical approach, seeing in the kingdoms the ongoing struggle between the kingdom of man and the kingdom of God.
You may have your own opinions about all these tromping, gobbling beasts. I’m not here to dissuade you. Regardless of your opinion, you’ve got room for mine. I want to show you the dreadful reality we all face, and the ultimate truth we all can know. I also want to show you what happened when ultimate truth entered dreadful reality.
I. We Live in Dreadful Reality.
Most scholars agree that the great theme of the Book of Daniel is the struggle between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man. In
Kingdom follows kingdom. Power changes hands. The powers-that-be won’t always be; but while we live in on this earth, we’re caught in the midst of the power struggle. Some were given a carbine and told to fight a man named Hitler, whether you wanted to or not. Some were given an M-16 and told to fight a man named Hussein. Now the dreadful focus has shifted to Afghanistan.
There are all sorts of conflicts, not just wars, but political struggles, economic pressures, battles with society. Two ladies were commenting on the scene:
“You know times aren’t the way they used to be.”
“I don’t think they ever were.”
“Yes, and they’re getting that way more all the time!”
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Daniel might say the more the beasts come, the more they bite. He sees the people of God threatened by monsters. The apostle Paul called it a struggle with principalities and powers, an arena in which we face institutions, traditions and religions, godless philosophy, naked aggression. There’s law without justice, power without mercy, technology without wisdom. In the shadows, offstage, are sinister forces with a hand in it all.
The beasts make us stand in long lines–at the end of which they take away our hard-earned money. They make us the slaves of advertising, insisting that everybody dress, eat and drive the same. At the light end, you spend an hour-and-a-half with ATT on the phone, desperately trying to make these people understand we are a church and we do not have to pay taxes on utilities. At the dark end, you’re accused of a crime you didn’t commit and ground up like hamburger in the legal machine.
I believe in principalities and powers if for no other reason than I went to high school. As a character in a TV show said, “It’s the closest thing our society has to institutionalized torture.” Stephen King tells a true story about a poor browbeaten girl he knew in high school. Her name was Dodie. She wasn’t very pretty. She wore the same clothes day after day, winter and spring. The girls teased and taunted her. She thought it was because she didn’t dress nice enough. She worked on her folks so hard, they broke down and bought her a new skirt and a beautiful wool sweater for Christmas. She wore it to school. She’d gotten a permanent. She’d shaved her legs. She looked great. And the girls destroyed her.
They picked and teased, then they taunted until they broke her spirit. As King puts it, “Someone made a break for the fence and had to be knocked down. That was all. Once the escape was foiled and the entire company of prisoners was once more accounted for, life could go back to normal.”
What is this if not the dreadful reality of life, a nightmare of beasts with buzzing wings and iron teeth? Some of you are battling the beasts right now.
Daniel wants us to remember there’s more going on than we can see: We live in dreadful reality, but…
II. Ultimate Truth Governs Reality:
“Your kingdom shall reign over all the earth. Sing to the Ancient of Days. For none can compare to Your matchless worth. Sing to the Ancient of Days!”
Is it hard to believe God rules? Clarence Day thought so. In Life with Father, he says that as a child he was taught God had won the battle with Satan. He says he accepted the official line, “in spite of stray bits of evidence to the contrary.” Does the evidence–violence and evil, poverty and oppression–suggest that if God ever did have a firm hand on the reins, it’s gotten a little shaky, that He’s about to be bucked off?
One of the great themes of the Book of Daniel is the sovereignty of God. “Sovereignty” means God runs the show. Time and again, Daniel tells how people who think they’re somebody usually are proven wrong. Take the story of Cow Man. Daniel 4 tells about Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, who strutted, preened and crowed like a rooster: “Cockadoodledoo! I cut men in two! Yes, somebody died and made me God!”
Know what happened to Nebuchadnezzar? He lost it, totally–took to eating grass like an ox. His servants attended him out in the pasture, waiting for him to issue the next royal decree.
If that seems totally unbelievable, it’s really not far from what happened to Hitler, hooked on uppers down in his bunker, still plotting the destruction of his enemies, even as the tanks rolled into Berlin. What’s the real difference between Nebchadnezzar’s madness and Saddam Hussein’s ranting on the way to the gallows? The difference is Nebuchadnezzar got better!
The books will be opened at the end of all things at the Last Judgment, but the books are open even now! Nobody gets away with anything, not in God’s world, not forever. He dwells among rivers of fire; He is a consuming fire; and those who think they can clasp that power to their bosom and not be burned wind up charred husks, ashes where their hearts used to be. If they appear to be running the show, getting away with murder, it’s only for a time.
Even though we believe in the ultimate truth of God’s reign, we still must wrestle with dreadful reality. Maybe it’ll help us to know that God Himself shared our struggle. In Bethlehem of Judea in the days of King Herod…
III. Ultimate Truth Entered Dreadful Reality as a Human Being.
God became man. In
King Herod knew about the weakness of little ones. In
It bothers some people that all those little ones were killed except for Jesus. To them, it seems to suggest God didn’t care for anybody’s son but His own. True, Jesus didn’t die with the babies as Herod wanted; but He did die — at the dirty hands of Pilate. He was chewed up in the iron teeth of the system as so many others have been.
However, Jesus always had been misunderstood, even by His own family, hated and feared by the keepers of the System until they finally drove their point home. Whatever else we say about that, it’s safe to say God knows what it’s like to live in a world of monsters. He knows what it is to be human.
When we’re baptized into Christ, something happens: “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (
Is that helpful to know? Do you feel like the world’s put a sign on your back: “KICK ME”? Well, He wore it first. If we’re misunderstood, rejected, hurt — well, He’s been there; He’s done that.
In the movie Angus, a young teen struggles with being an overweight brain in junior high. He’s unpopular. He can’t get the girl. Kids taunt him. In one scene, he shares his troubles with his grandfather. After a pause, Grandpa says, “Superman isn’t brave.” He clarifies for his confused grandson:
“He’s smart, handsome, even decent. But he’s not brave…Superman is indestructible, and you can’t be brave if you’re indestructible. It’s people like you and your mother — people who are different and can be crushed and know it. Yet they keep on going out there every time.”
I wonder if sometimes we confuse God with the indestructible Superman. Christmas is a good remedy for that thinking, as is the cross.
In The Jesus I Never Knew, Phillip Yancey says the Incarnation suggests what kind of God we have. He’s humble, approachable, an underdog and something else — courageous. Ever think of God as courageous? I’ve known people who’d been making big money who walked away to serve people in need. If it takes guts for a man to give up a Lexus and become a missionary, surely it took guts for God to give up His glory and come to earth, down among us hard-to-please people who really don’t like prophets very much. Surely it took guts to pay for our ransom — not with cold, hard cash, but warm, wet blood.
If we’ve been united with Him, then it calls for courage on our part, doesn’t it? It takes courage to befriend people such as Dodie and not make fun of them. It takes courage to buck a system that loves stuff and kicks the stuffing out of people. It takes courage to put faith and love to work on the street, even at home.
George MacDonald said, “The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His.” Armed with ultimate truth, we can enter dreadful reality, as He did — if we’ve got the guts.
Have you got the guts to be a Christian?
