I was surprised to learn that the Hebrew scholars do not regard Daniel on the same level as the other prophets. The reasons they give is that there can be no prophet during a captivity and Daniel did not receive his instructions directly from God but through intermediaries - angels. Therefore they do not include Daniel’s prophecies with the other prophets. They ignore the fact that Daniel received visions directly from the Lord and he would have had to hear personally from God in order to interpret dreams, which he did.
Why Jesus has to be the Messiah
I think the real reason Daniel is not taken seriously is because none of his prophecies line up with what the Jews want to believe about their future in the latter days.
The Jews envision their messiah coming and ruling the world with them. It is at this time that the orthodox Jews believe that the Gentiles will be their slaves. I am not making this up, they really believe this. They are currently pushing for the building of the third temple and they believe that the messiah will not come until the temple is erected. Then the messiah, who they see as a mere man, will come and instigate a world peace, the Jews will be exalted and everything will be wonderful. They fail to take into consideration that if their messiah is a mere man, then that perfect world will only last as long as his lifetime. Enjoy it while you can.
There are prophecies of a world healed of its infirmities, but in order to understand how the Bible reveals the fulfillment of a coming utopian future, we must begin by examining Daniel’s prophecies and how they co-ordinate with the rest of scripture.
One of Daniel’s portraits of the future is in the ninth chapter of his prophecy which is known as the “Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks.”
In this chapter we are shown that Daniel had been reading the prophet Jeremiah and he discovered that Jeremiah had foretold that the captivity would last seventy years. We can imagine Daniel’s exhilaration when he realized that their seventy year sentence had reached its conclusion. This knowledge propelled Daniel into a heartfelt and earnest prayer of repentance for his sins and the sins of his people. In response to that prayer, Daniel was visited by an angel who revealed the secrets of the future to this one who was to God “greatly beloved.”
Daniel is told that Jerusalem, which had been destroyed would be rebuilt along with the temple. The city would be destroyed again, but before that an anointed one would be killed (Daniel 9:26). Some translations interpret anointed one as Messiah. Now let’s stop here and take a look at the history that has already been fulfilled.
After the captivity, the Jews were restored to the holy land. The Persian king Cyrus ordered the temple to be rebuilt. Jesus came before that temple was destroyed, and He prophesied that the city would be annihilated because she “did not know the time of her visitation” (Luke 19:44); that the Messiah had come. Her rejection of the “anointed one” resulted in His being killed. The city and the temple were destroyed by Titus in 70AD (just as the Lord had prophesied), forty years after Jesus’ death and resurrection from the dead.
This fulfills Daniel’s prophecy perfectly. Even if the Jews did not recognize Jesus as the messiah at that time, they still acknowledge that He did miracles. The secular Jewish historian Josephus also recorded that Jesus did miracles, which certainly would qualify Him as being anointed. So we see in Daniel’s prophecy the anointed one killed before the destruction of the city, and the “prince that is to come” emerges from the people who destroyed the city in 70 AD (verse 26).
We have to understand at this point, the element of duality in this prophecy in regards to the city’s invasion and destruction. It may happen again. Jesus’ prophecy in Matthew twenty-four is clearly speaking about another attack on Jerusalem in the generation before He returns.
Today the Jews have returned and are returning to the nation of Israel. They are currently awaiting a “prince that is to come,” who they believe will be their long awaited messiah. But Daniel’s prophecies do not reveal a benevolent deliverer, but quite the opposite. Another piece to the puzzle is added in Daniel’s chapter eleven.
This chapter is in two parts. The first part from verses twenty-one through thirty-one describes the advent of Antiochus Epiphanes, an evil ruler who was dedicated to destroying the Jew’s religion. Antiochus was eventually defeated by the Maccabees which is foreshadowed in verses thirty-two through thirty-five of Daniel’s prophecy. These verses serve as a bridge that transitions us to the picture of the final prince that is to come, the antichrist, (Daniel 11:36-45) of whom Antiochus is a foreshadow. We can see that this villain will be operating through the great tribulation of the latter days, also prophesied by Jesus which is known as the time of Jacob’s trouble (Matthew 24:21, Daniel 12:1). In Daniel’s prophecy we see that this time continues until the very end and all history cumulates at the last judgment at the feet of the Ancient of Days, God Himself.
Then we have to ask, where is the Jew’s vision of them ruling the world from Jerusalem with their messiah in prophecy? When are those prophecies of a warless world fulfilled?
So far we have seen that the “anointed one” that was killed before the destruction of the second temple was Jesus, who prophesied that He would return as “lightning” (Matthew 24:27). It is here we need to examine Zechariah’s prophecy which was deposited through his pen by the Lord to complete the picture of the future initiated by Daniel.
We see in verses one and two of Zechariah’s message, that Israel is enduring yet another brutal captivity. This correlates to the time of Jacob’s trouble which is the tribulation. This judgment was prophesied by Ezekiel. God would bring Israel’s enemies upon them (Ezekiel 36:16,) and this captivity would continue until the Lord’s return as we are shown in Zechariah’s prophecy.
We see in Zechariah that it is God who descends upon the Mount of Olives, the place from which Jesus also prophesied of this event in His Olivet discourse (Matthew 24:3).
When Jesus returns He destroys the world’s oppressors including the antichrist and the beast, the last world empire. He then begins His rule from Jerusalem. The prophecies of the time frame of His rule vary in the accounts in the Apocrypha in II Esdras and the Book of Revelation. Esdras is told by an angel that this time will encompass 400 years. In Revelation it is one thousand years. In either case this time is far longer than a mere man can live.
Because Jesus is God manifest in human flesh (I Timothy 3:16), Jesus’ reign of peace will last far longer than a man’s average lifetime. This is one reason why Jesus had to come twice, once to be the last sacrifice for the sins of the people fulfilling all the foreshadows of the temple services and the prophecies in the Old Testament. After His resurrection from the dead He ascended and received His resurrected body which would enable Him to live forever and reign on earth for such a long time.
This same Jesus who is the image of God (Colossians 1:15) who dined with Abraham, (Genesis 18) will be the finale of all the Jew’s expectations and they will finally be able to “Look upon Me (God the Father) whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him (Jesus the Messiah) as one mourns for his only son” (Zechariah 12:10).
When all the prophecies concerning the messiah in the scriptures are taken into consideration, they only paint one portrait, no matter how many attempts are made to circumvent them. Jesus has to be the messiah because there is no other benevolent anointed one appearing in scripture after the destruction of the temple in 70AD. The antichrist, the evil prince that is to come is the false messiah that will deceive the Jews and all those who reject Jesus. According to the notes on Daniel eleven in the Holman Bible, one ancient manuscript describes this “prince that is to come” arriving upon “the wings of horrors.”
The Jews will never rule the world from Jerusalem with their “messiah,” except for possibly a brief interlude of deception before the antichrist demands to be worshipped in the place of God (I Thessalonians 2:3,4), the “abomination of desolation” (Matthew 24:15, Daniel 9:27).
While the Jew’s dream of world domination will never be fulfilled as they have imagined, the repentant survivors of the time of Jacob’s trouble, will be privileged to serve under the Anointed One that was killed, resurrected and supernaturally returns to be the true King as He always was and is, the Messiah Jesus.
Copyright 2020 by H. D. Shively