Daniel 10

Daniel 10:1-21

THE VISION THAT Daniel 10:1-21. IN continuing our studies today on the Book of Daniel, we face a further record of the Prophet’s personal experiences in dealing with the Lord. These experiences are of no tame or customary character. They are, as might be expected, wholly out of the ordinary. Prophets of the Daniel type are not the product of the usual, the customary in thought and feeling. They are instead those rare souls who behold visions while others gaze into blank space; who hear voices while others hear but a sound or experience oppressing silence.We have come to believe, and with good occasion, that great souls are rare because shallowness is so common to the spirits of men; and that Daniels only appear at the intervals of centuries because God so seldom discovers one spiritually fit to receive Divine revelations.Turning to the text we ask attention to the Setting of the Vision, the Glory of the Person, and the Delayed but Prophetic Answer to Prayer.THE SETTING OF THE VISION The time of the same is carefully stated. “In the third year of Cyrus king of Persia a thing was revealed unto Daniel * * in the four and twentieth day of the first month”. Personally, we are quite inclined to believe that a revelation of the Lord’s love made to a little child is just as good a ground of his salvation, e’en though time well nigh obliterates the memory of the experience, as are those cataclysmic experiences to which mission converts so often refer. And yet it cannot be doubted that there is a certain potency in being able to point to the very day when God manifested Himself to one in mercy. That fact is felt in practically every meeting when such a testimony is made; and if it be true of the hour of conversion, it is not less, but even more true, concerning a special revelation.Unquestionably the guiding Spirit who moved Daniel to relate this experience counted it of value that the very year of the king’s reign in which it occurred, and the very month, yea even the day of the month, should be recorded.He, the Holy Ghost, with whom all wisdom is, well understood the value of definiteness, and, as we shall see later in this study, this experience was logically related to other and contributing causes, the meaning of which is made all the more clear in view of the very time at which these events took place.There are men whose comparative greatness is illustrated by the circumstance that they take neither time nor pains to record their successive duties, experiences, or even impressive observations; but God, the Holy Ghost, is Infinite, and every revelation of Himself to man with a view to definite and desirable ends, becomes an eternal record. His data is never deficient, and His diary never incomplete, wherein is a certain ground of justice in the final judgment when the books are opened. There will be no omissions. God knows the day, the year, the hour, yea even the minute of every human experience!The exact place of this revelation is clearly named.“I was by the side of the great river, which is Hiddekel”; (or Tigris.) (Daniel 10:4). It is just such details of an experience that give it permanence. The world is filled with places that are forever linked with unusual experiences. You cannot pass the place and be unmindful of the event. One always thrills to the places of his birth, his new birth and baptism, to the place of his marriage, to the place of his former residence.In court trials the place often performs witness-miracles. To take the murderer back to the place where he committed the deed is often to unman him. The sight of the same so far unnerves as to force confession, and that which is true of deeds wrought under satanic impulses is equally true of those wrought under the Holy Spirit’s guidance.There cannot be a true vision of God or an overwhelming sense of His presence and power without forever fixing the place of that experience indelibly in the memory.Even if Daniel were writing with an uninspired pen, he could scarcely do less than set down where it happened: but when it is remembered that in making this record he was being borne along by the Holy Ghost, such a major point as the place would be emphasized.

The record would come to the children of the centuries with no uncertain sound, but rather with a voice,—definite, dated, located, fixed and final.Mark alsoThe soul-exercise that led to the experience. W. C. Stephens in his volume on the Book of Daniel tells us truthfully that the date of this vision was “two years after the captors were released to return” at their pleasure, to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple. Doubtless that was the date to which Daniel had prayed since the captivity occurred; and now, at last, when God had answered his prayer, by making Darius the medium of His will and also the agent of His promise, there was an indifferent response on Israel’s part. Only a few of the multitudes of the twelve tribes carried into captivity seemed to care to return to the Land of Promise.How easy it is for a man of God, associated for a few years with the people of the world, to adjust himself to the new atmosphere and settle contentedly into the same.I know church men who, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years ago, were active in the service, apparently devout in spirit and fairly consecrated in plans, who through natural prosperity, sometimes, through a wife’s influence; at others, and still more often, by reason of commercial and social fellowships, they have been carried away into the world’s captivity, and they have even lost their taste for Christian fellowship, and their interest in the temple of God, and are the burden of every true prophet’s prayer.It is therefore easy to understand why Daniel was in such agony. There is nothing that tears the heart of the true prophet—the shepherd of God’s sheep,—like the sight of God’s people immersed in the world, and so content therewith that the Homeland and the sacred house no longer makes effective appeal.I count this church one of the greatest, one of the best in all the land, and yet, the 500, the 1,000, the 1,500, the well-nigh 2,000 members of the same who seldom turn their feet homeward, who seldom seek the inside of the sanctuary, who reveal but slight interest in either the building or the up-keep of the temple of God,—these are the pastor’s agony.Dr. F. B. Meyer is reputed as the man who said, “Some people are always telegraphing to Heaven for God to send a cargo of blessings to them; but they are not at the wharf-side to unload the vessel when it comes.”The one point at which the Church of God has lost out is this of importunate prayer.Doubtless in answer to Daniel’s prayer, Darius has made his promises, but the objective was not reached in that circumstance owing to Israel’s indifference and deadness, and so the man of God prays on.We sometimes set aside a day for fasting and prayer when there is a great issue of importance before us.

Think what it would mean if, by the pressure of interest, more of us could reach the point where, like Daniel, without any appointment, we could find ourselves mourning for three full weeks tasting neither bread nor meat nor wine, and stopping not to refresh our languishing bodies, but crying on and out till God should hear!We say we want a revival. The truth is we are not deeply concerned. If we were so much concerned that we would forget meat, bread and drink, in the agony of petition, the brass heavens would break; and blessings, beyond our capacity to receive, would fall!But I must pass to the Revelation. It consists inTHE GLORY OF THE PERSON “Then I lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold a certain man” (Daniel 10:5). The vision vouchsafed is that of a man. But the phrase “a certain man” is, in our judgment, employed with purpose.We have no doubt whatever that this man was none other than the Lord Himself; that this revelation is a theophany.Christ was a man! That fact the Bible constantly emphasizes, and with good occasion. The moment that fact is forgotten His Saviour-hood is obscured.We are in absolute sympathy with Henry Van Dyke’s criticism of Canon Liddon’s presentation of Christ’s manhood. In his volume “The Divinity of our Lord” Liddon said,“Christ’s Manhood is not of itself an individual being; It is not a seat and centre of personality; It has no conceivable existence apart from the act whereby the Eternal Word, in becoming Incarnate, called It into being and made It His own. It is a vesture which He has folded around His person; It is an instrument through which He places Himself in contact with men and whereby He acts upon humanity.”Truly, as Van Dyke remarks,“If we accept this picture of Christ, the manhood of Jesus fades, retreats, grows dim and shadowy.

It wavers like a veil. It dissolves like mist.

It descends again mysterious and impenetrable, illusory and impersonal, to envelop Him whom we love and adore, in its strange and unfamiliar folds. We grope after Him, but we can touch nothing but the hem of His mystic robe. We long for Him, but He approaches us, and comes into contact with us, only through an instrument. The Son of Man, whom human eyes beheld and human hands touched, is not the real, living, veritable Saviour, but only the form, the garment, of an inscrutable life. And if, in our dire confusion, our reasoning faith still succeeds in holding fast to the Eternal Logos, our confiding faith is maimed and robbed by the loss of that true, near, personal, loving, sympathizing Jesus, who was born of a woman, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, buried and risen again.”There has been raging of late a controversy between the men who say that Christ’s temptations were real and that “He could have sinned,” and those who say that “Christ’s Deity was such that temptation found nothing in Him to which it could appeal.”In our judgment it is not only foolish, but a wicked war of words; that each position is just so remote from the truth as to account for the controversy itself.To say that Christ could have sinned is to forget that God was in His flesh, and “God cannot be tempted with evil”, but is always Conqueror over it. To say that “there was nothing in Christ that responded to temptation” is to deny the flesh inherited from His mother, and the human blood that flowed in His veins, and so, to remove from us the very Lord whose express purpose in taking upon Him the form of man was that He might be tempted in all points like as we are, and by the very temptations learn how to succor us in our times of trial.It is a serious thing to give up the Deity of Christ, as Modernism and Unitarianism have done; but it is scarce less serious to give up His humanity, as some professedly orthodox men seem determined to do.The Christ of the Old Testament was both God and man, as well as God in man.He saw, then, “a certain man”.Distinguishing marks indicate the God-Man.His “loins were girded with fine gold of Uphaz:“His body also was like the beryl, and His face as the appearance of lightning, and His eyes as lamps of fire, and His arms and His feet like in colour to polished brass, and the voice of His words like the voice of a multitude” (Daniel 10:5-6). No one ever called into question that John’s vision in Revelation 1 : was a look into the open Heavens, and a fleeting glance of the glorified Saviour, and when John saw Him who declared Himself to be “the Alpha and Omega” He was “girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and His hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and His eyes were as a flame of fire; and His feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and His voice as the sound of many waters” (Revelation 1:13-15).It is inconceivable that these are not the one and the same Person. Christ did not wait His experience through Mary’s womb to first manifest Himself, but only to take on human flesh, thereby becoming a Saviour of human understanding, a Person of human affection, and a sympathetic Saviour from sin.But I insist upon retaining this Divinely-given and supernaturally revealed proof of His humanity; I am not even intimating that He is merely Super-Man or even Super-Human; I agree absolutely with Ian. Maclaren that when one.“Seriously recommends Jesus to the notice of the world by certificates from Rousseau and Napoleon, or when some light-hearted man of letters embroiders a needy paragraph with a string of names where Jesus is wedged in between Zoroaster and Goethe, the Christian consciousness is aghast. This treatment is not merely bad taste; it is impossible by any canon of thought; it is as if one should compare the sun with electric light, or the color of Titian with the bloom of the rose. We criticise every other teacher; we have an intuition of Jesus. He is not a subject of study, He is a revelation to the soul—that or nothing.”In other words, He is God!The sight of Him was altogether overwhelming.“And I Daniel alone saw the vision: for the men that were with me saw not the vision; but a great quaking fell upon them, so that they fled to hide themselves. “Therefore I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me: for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength” (Daniel 10:7-8). These two results have never failed when sinful men beheld His face.When Isaiah in the year that king Uzziah died saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, he cried, “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts” (Isaiah 6:1; Isaiah 6:5).When Peter saw the miracle of the fisher’s net and recognized in Christ the Lord of Heaven, he fell upon his face and cried, “Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8).When John from the isle of Patmos saw Him, he fell at His feet “as dead”.We are told that no man can see God and live, but God, even when veiled in human form, is glory in such expression as to overwhelm men with a sense of sin.It is quite impossible for one who knows what the Bible has to say upon these subjects to retain patience even with that spiritual conceit of this century which talks about “holiness” and about “eradication” and about “perfection.”In all the Old Testament not one holier man than Daniel could be found.Joseph and Daniel,—how they stand out with cleanness of character, correctness of conduct! And yet, doubtless, Joseph, had he enjoyed such a vision, would have prostrated himself to the dust as Daniel did, and cried out as every human who has ever beheld the King in His glory, with a consciousness of sin, feeling as Daniel said, that his very “comeliness was turned in me into corruption”.Or, as the Apostle Paul put it, his righteousness into the rags of unrighteousness.The boasters of this day need to hear John— that beautiful, consistent, clean-soul character—say again, and yet again, until spiritual conceit is killed by the sentence—“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the Truth is not in us. “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His Word is not in us” (1 John 1:8; 1 John 1:10). The sense of sin is at one and the same time the first and the last step in salvation. No man can be saved without taking it since Christ came not to “call the righteous, but sinners to repentance”, and no man can be sanctified without the consciousness of it, for the indwelling Spirit, who is our Sanctification, came expressly for the purpose of convicting the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment to come.Salvation is not by character but by substitution instead, through Him who bare our sins in His own body on the tree. We are doomed to a man!“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). “Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the Law” (Romans 3:27-28). THE DELAYED BUT ANSWER“Behold, an hand touched me, which set me upon my knees and upon the palms of my hands. “And he said unto me, O Daniel, a man greatly beloved, understand the words that I speak unto thee, and stand upright: for unto thee am I now sent. And when he had spoken this word unto me, I stood trembling. “Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were Heard, and I am come for thy words. “But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia. “Now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days: for yet the vision is for many days” (Daniel 10:10-14). God’s purposes are often hindered. There are those who would have us believe that two persons are here involved; first, the Son of Man in the vision; and second, some angel, or limited one, gives to Daniel the revelation. The ground of their argument is that it would be impossible to withstand the Lord, and so they say the speaker here must have been another person from the one seen in Daniel’s vision.To us the argument is faulty! The Lord can be hindered. The Lord is constantly hindered. That is not because He lacks might or power—all power belongeth unto Him; but it is because He Himself recognizes the wills of men and refuses to ride over them rough shod.Concerning Christ’s visit to Nazareth it is affirmed “He could there do no mighty works * * because of their unbelief”.

In Gadara the pig-keepers prayed Him to depart out of their coasts, and He responded to their petition.In all of His parables He hinted the constant human interference. Take the parable of the Kingdom as an illustration.

The seed was sown, but the fowls devoured it: some fell upon stony places and withered, some fell among thorns and the thorns choked it, and His own explanation of this parable is that the “people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them”; hindering.Take the parable of the Kingdom of Heaven and the sower of the seeds, and the enemy’s work of the tares. What are they but hindrances? And the birds lodging in the branches of the mustard tree, what are they but hindrances? And the leaven which the woman hid in the three measures of meal, what is that but hindrance?In all probability the prince of Persia, Darius himself, animated possibly by some controlling evil spirit under the command of Satan—the God of this world—stood in the way of his answer to Daniel’s prayer, exactly as the present world rulers stand square across the path of every true prophet’s prayer for righteousness at the present time.There is no objection to the fact that Michael came to help Him, since all ministering spirits are the servants of His will and do His pleasure; and who shall attempt to compute their accomplishments?Still further evidence of the fact that this is the Lord is revealed in the circumstance that again the prophet sets his face to the ground; again his tongue is stilled in his mouth, and he cannot speak until this One whom he calls “My Lord” recovers his strength and returns breath to his body, touching and strengthening him, even as John in the apocalyptic vision was lifted up by the right hand of the Holy One, and encouraged by His word, “Fear not; I am the First and the Last: I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore”.The language is akin, “Fear not: peace be unto thee, be strong, yea, be strong”. And when he had thus spoken Daniel was strengthened, and said, “Let my lord speak; for thou hast strengthened me”.The circumstance that Michael came to his assistance here instead of disproving his Lordship rather evidences the same. When Jesus faced the Adversary in the temptation, to the point where the devil left Him, angels came and ministered unto Him.God’s agents are often angels and arch-angels.Dr.

Gumbart, many years ago, in an article published in one of our religious papers referred to his visit to the Dore Gallery in London, where he had looked upon Tissot’s water color, representing the ministry of angels in this very time of “HIS .”At first the picture seemed grotesque and it was difficult to discover the artist’s thought. But after a while the whole conception broke vividly upon Gumbart’s mind.

The body of Christ, exhausted after the fearful strain, lay prone upon the ground. Scores of angel hands, so painted that the angels seemed to be invisible to the beholder, touched every portion of His body. No angel face or form was visible; nothing but the hands only; and Gumbart said:“As I thought upon it, tears streamed down my cheeks. Yes, I thought, we cannot see them but they are there. We feel their touch and in the time of trial when the soul is sick, angel hands are touching us and through their invisible finger tips, filled with the Divine magnetism, we are refreshed and strengthened, and charged with even the powers of Heaven itself.”Who can doubt, in the performance of His will, these spirit-agencies are at His command; and who would attempt to compute what fullness they have contributed to life?But to conclude:God’s plan will find eventual completion. The remaining verses read:“Now will I return to fight with the prince of Persia: and when I am gone forth, lo, the prince of Grecia shall come” (Daniel 10:20). This is a plain reference to the fact that when the battle of Marathon shall occur, God will be against Persia and with Greece, and here again “Prophecy is the mould of history.” The truth of Scripture found justification; and the Lord, with Michael, the arch angel, was adequate in that day to turn the tide of all world-affairs.It is that thought with which I conclude today, for the centuries have not spent His strength; the wars of the ages have not shortened His arm. He is God still!Republicans may hold their convention and, in search of votes, straddle the liquor question. Democrats may hold their convention and in defiance of Scripture declare for “strong drink.” But “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision”. While men may temporarily thwart His will and for a time hinder, He can call His arch angel Michael, and as Jonathan and his armor-bearer went through the hosts of the Philistines to see them flee, fall and perish, so God, calling only the archangel for his companion, shall ride forth conquering and to conquer. “The Son of God goes forth to war, A kingly crown to gain: His blood-red banner streams afar, Who follows in His train? Who best can drink His cup of woe, Triumphant over pain; Who patient bears his cross below, He follows in His train.

“The martyr first, whose eagle eye Could pierce beyond the grave, Who saw his Master in the sky, And called on Him to save: Like him, with pardon on his tongue, In midst of mortal pain, He prayed for them that did the wrong Who follows in His train?

“A noble army, men and boys, The matron and the maid, Around the Saviour’s throne rejoice, In robes of light arrayed. They climbed the steep ascent of Heaven Through peril, toil and pain: O God, to us may grace be given To follow in their train!”