Daniel and Revelation

By Ed Pittman

In 1987, when Ed joined a new church, the pastor was teaching on the book of Revelation. Ed so enjoyed the teaching that he decided to read what others had to say about Revelation. He quickly learned that there were many different interpretations of Revelation and other books of the Bible that contained prophecy about the end times or latter days. He decided that he needed to do more reading and study of scripture, as well as books written by others, so he could come to his own understanding of what God was telling us about how He would bring things to an end. After much reading and prayer, his focus narrowed primarily to the books of Daniel and Revelation. The book of Daniel is about Israel in the time before Christ. The prophecy in Daniel begins with the Babylonian kingdom and continues through the Roman kingdom in such detail and accuracy that many believe it was written much later and is more historical than prophetic. It also tells us about the later kingdoms but in a much broader sense and less detail. The book of Revelation, written by John on the island of Patmos, tells us about the kingdoms that come after the Roman kingdom. Revelation tells us in great detail about Christ's message to the seven churches and the seventieth week of Daniel's prophecy of seventy weeks of years. This includes the breaking of the seven seals, the blowing of the seven trumpets, and the pouring out of the seven bowl judgments. Lastly it tells us the good news about the return of Christ and the establishment of His kingdom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098018269

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Daniel and Revelation

Ed Pittman

Copyright © 2020 by Ed Pittman

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

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www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible (NASB), Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation Used by permission. www.Lockman.org

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

The Time of the End

Revelation Chart

Part 1

The Book of Daniel

Introduction

As the world enters the third millennium since the birth of Christ, it does so amidst an unparalleled period of unrest, turmoil, and strife. While some world leaders labor tirelessly in a vain attempt to bring peace where peace does not seem possible, other leaders seem to be content on creating chaos, confusion, and human misery for reasons most people cannot begin to understand. Nations are at war with their neighbors for ethnic, religious, political, and economic reasons. The Muslim nations of the Middle East and Africa are in a violent state of turmoil with believers of the Sunni branch of Islam fighting the Shiites, while other Islamic groups who have an even more extreme conservative belief are fighting the other groups and infidels or unbelievers. This worldwide turmoil involves greater numbers of people than ever before, resulting in multitudes of families being forced to either leave their homes or be killed because of their religion or in the name of ethnic cleansing.

Third-world countries are engaged in an arms race to develop nuclear weapons capability and delivery systems. In an attempt to protect themselves, emerging and poorer nations who do not have the financial resources to develop such weapons are forced to depend on less costly biological, chemical, and dirty weapons of mass destruction for their security. Never in the history of the world have weapons capable of such mass destruction and death been in the hands of so many world leaders and terrorist organizations.

Because of these problems, and in a time of abundant wealth, countless numbers of people are dying from starvation, disease or at the end of a gun. While some world leaders struggle to bring peace to the world, they are continually faced with violence and human misery on every side. As they increasingly turn from one failed solution to another, the futility of their efforts becomes more evident. Even now, as the world enters the seventh millennium of recorded time, people are looking for someone with the leadership to provide solutions to the many problems the world is faced with. However, rather than turning to God, they look for solutions through the efforts and works of their own hands and rely on their own self-sufficiency, as did King Belshazzar of Babylon.

There is an increased level of violence against our fellow man that is driven by greed, hatred, and self-gratification. Our children are no longer allowed to be children because drugs, sex, and violence have so permeated today’s world and their environment that they are forced to grow up years before their time. Violence and sex are portrayed everywhere including in the computer games children play, the television programs they watch, and the toys they buy. As a result, newspapers are full of headlines about children committing suicide and killing other children, their parents, or their teachers. Teachers are being trained to carry and use weapons and police patrol the corridors of many of our public schools, many of which have metal detectors as authorities seek to prevent weapons from being brought into the classrooms.

Over the last one hundred years, the world has seen tremendous technological advances occur at an accelerating rate. Knowledge is increasing at a pace never seen in history, and the impact of changing technology on our lives has been and will continue to be far-reaching. Medical knowledge of the human body and its genetic makeup have increased significantly over the last few decades, resulting in an increase in the average life span. Doctors now predict that mankind will soon have a life expectancy of one hundred years. This will lead to an increasingly crowded planet, and when combined with dwindling natural resources, the result will force the inhabitants to adjust to having less space and a less desirable environment.

Questions about the future abound and people are searching everywhere for answers. Liberal thinkers tell us the world could be transformed if only each of us would be willing to look inside ourselves and bring forth the natural goodness that resides in each of us. This line of thinking begs the question, If mankind has not been able to find this natural goodness during the last six thousand years, then what reason is there to believe such a thing exists or could ever come to pass? The futility of this search can cause despair because the history of the world shows that civilizations decline rather than evolve and move on to higher levels. Today, more than ever before, society is accepting things that go against God’s Word and call it progress.

Those of us who are Christians know there is no need for this despair because there is a source we can turn to for answers about the future. This source is God’s Word, which has foretold, from God’s viewpoint, every major event in the history of the world many hundreds of years before its occurrence. No other religion includes such accurate prophecy in its written word as does our Bible. For this reason, only the Bible can give us the answers to our questions about the future. God made this provision for us because He wants us to know Him and to understand He has a plan for the future. The problem is the answer God provides is one that many people do not want, preferring to trust in their own works. Either they do not believe God exists—or if He does exist, He cannot or will not influence events in this physical world—or they are afraid that by trusting in Him, they are surrendering control of their own destiny. If we but look and trust, we will see that God gives us the answers about the future in the books of Daniel and Revelation, reinforced with supporting information in many other books of the Bible. The purpose of this book is to help everyone who reads it to understand God’s message about the future and, in so doing, see the provision He has made for us.

As a layperson, I did not begin my study of Daniel and Revelation with the intention of writing a book but only to revisit an earlier study and see what new insights God would reveal to me. My notes were intended to be a simple project designed to help organize my thoughts and use them for future reference. I knew that others who are better educated and far wiser than I am have already studied and written on Daniel and Revelation with various degrees of success. I say this only from the perspective of the numerous books that have been written on these two books with diverse theories and ideas about their meaning. I also knew that whatever feeling of completion I would have when my study was complete would not be a result of my own efforts, but rather my reliance on God to reveal the insight and understanding He wanted me to have.

In the process, something changed and what started out as only a quick review turned into an ongoing multiyear project. God began to open doors and give me insight into things I had never seen before. Someone once told me that God does not always choose the qualified—He does the qualifying. Therefore, whatever success may result from this study serves only to give glory to God and prove that He can use anyone for whatever purpose He chooses.

In beginning my study, I realized I needed to establish a theological foundation that would form the basis for my understanding of Daniel and Revelation. These points may appear simplistic, but as the study progresses, the reason for stating them will become obvious.

The first and most important foundational block is that there is only one God. He is the creator and sustainer of all there is. He is the great I AM and the Bible is His inerrant word.

The second foundational block is that there are only two basic viewpoints in all of existence. The first viewpoint is God’s divine viewpoint, which is perfect and eternal. God sees man’s greatest need from the standpoint of eternity, and that need is for salvation. This need results from the sinful nature each of us inherited as a descendant of Adam, and since this sin nature prevents us from earning our salvation, God offered His Son, Christ Jesus, who yielded His life on the cross as the payment for our sin.

The other viewpoint is the human viewpoint, and by contrast, it is short term and imperfect. As physical beings living in a physical world, we see our greatest need not from the eternal viewpoint of salvation, but from the fleshly viewpoint of physical needs and existence. This viewpoint is based on our five senses of sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste and it is this reliance on our senses that brings us into conflict with God’s will and opposes our reliance on Him through faith. These two viewpoints are diametrically opposite from each other in their purpose, and as physical beings, any understanding we might have of the divine viewpoint must come from God by faith.

A third foundational block, and one that is critical to understanding Daniel and Revelation, is that Adam, through his sin, gave Satan the title deed to the earth at which point he became the prince of this world.

And he led Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. (6) And the devil said to Him, "I will give You all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. (7) Therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be Yours. (8) And Jesus answered and said to him, It is written, ‘you shall worship the lord your god and serve him only’" [emphasis added]. (Luke 4:5–8)

Confirmation that Satan is the prince of this world is not in what Satan claimed, but that Christ did not dispute his claim. I believe that had Satan lied, Christ would have corrected him. Further, had Satan been lying about possessing what he was offering to Christ, his offer would have been meaningless and of no temptation to Christ.

A fourth and final foundational block is that God is in control. While Satan is the prince of this world, his power and authority are limited to what God allows him to do. Throughout Daniel and Revelation, the scripture shows us how God controls the events of the ages. Satan only has the power and authority to act within the parameters of God’s plan for the ages. Does this mean that God controls our lives? No! God gave us free will and we can choose to rely on our own works, or we can choose to rely on God for guidance and to provide for our needs. Daniel and Revelation show us the result of our choices.

During my study, I also learned there are, what I believe, several rules or truths about biblical prophecy that must be understood since they provide the basis for my understanding of the prophetic message of Daniel and Revelation. The most important, and the only one I will cover here, concerns the symbolism that we find throughout the Bible. I will cover the other rules as we encounter them. By symbolism, I mean that God sometimes uses symbols to provide a visual representation for expressing what He is trying to tell us. There are two critical points to understanding the symbolism found in many biblical prophecies, especially those concerning the latter days. First, if the scripture is truly symbolic and if understanding the meaning of the symbolism is important to understanding the prophetic message being studied, then God will provide the interpretation of the symbols in nearby scripture. There are times, however, when other books of the Bible must be searched for the interpretation. When this happens, I believe God is drawing our attention to the scripture in which we find the interpretation. For example, several symbolic passages in Revelation must be searched back to Genesis to find the right interpretation of the symbolism. When we are drawn back to earlier scripture, I believe there is additional information God wants us to consider when interpreting that prophecy. How do we know when we have the right interpretation? First, God wants us to know and understand the scripture at the right time, or He would not have given it to us. Second, if He gives us the interpretation in nearby scripture, He will tell us it is the interpretation of the symbolism used. If the interpretation is located elsewhere in the scriptures, then God will provide the same symbols as used in the prophecy we are studying and then give us its interpretation.

Second, if the scripture appears symbolic and God does not give us its interpretation, then we should question if the wording is symbolic. Sometimes the wording may simply be the writer’s attempt to describe some future event using words and phrases he is familiar with. Consequently, the reader should not become involved in unwarranted speculation because it may create a mind-set that could lead to disbelief of other facts or force us to further speculation when it is not warranted. It may also force us into an erroneous understanding simply because of a need to support some earlier interpretation. If this occurs, we will travel the wrong path through the prophecy and miss the meaning of God’s message.

In my study, I discovered that the critics and criticisms of Daniel are many and well-known. The most significant of these criticisms has to do with the accuracy of Daniel’s prophecies, particularly those found in chapter 11. The critics suggest that because the prophecies are so accurate, the book must have been written after the events occurred and argue for a later date for the writing of Daniel, such as 165 BC. If such a date could be proven or shown to be close to accurate, it would mean that the prophetic message of Daniel and its use as a foundation for understanding Revelation would be eliminated.

In making their point, the critics use a circular line of reasoning that goes like the following: first, because Daniel was written much later than originally thought, it is a historical book and not a prophetic book; second, since Daniel is not a prophetic book, it cannot and does not refer to the end times or latter days; third, since Daniel does not refer to the end times or latter days, it must end with Antiochus Epiphanes; fourth, because the book ends with Antiochus Epiphanes, the book must be historical and not prophetic. And around we go again and again. When we study chapter 11, we will see the fallacy of this line of reasoning.

One final point worthy of consideration is it has been my experience that when an idea or a subject draws a significant amount of criticism, then it either is so wrong it deserves the criticism or is of such great value that those who oppose it do not want it to be heard and understood. As I have read and studied Daniel, it appears to me the book has attracted a disproportionate amount of criticism from many biblical critics and scholars. Because of this, either Daniel must be extremely vulnerable to criticism and therefore attracts the most critics or it contains a message that is so important that Satan works overtime to destroy its credibility.

There is however one strong argument in favor of Daniel’s prophetic accuracy. In His prophetic discourse of Matthew 24, Jesus quoted Daniel several times, and in verse fifteen, He referred to him as Daniel the prophet and later intimated that He was the mysterious being that Daniel referred to when he saw one like the Son of Man. If Jesus called Daniel a prophet, then for me the question is settled.

This statement by Jesus may also give us the most significant reason for there being such a disproportionate amount of criticism of Daniel. If Satan, through the critics, can discredit Daniel as a prophet and thereby bring into question when the book was written and who wrote it, then the very words of Christ must also be questioned because it was Christ who referred to Daniel as a prophet and intimated He was the one like the Son of Man. This would mean either that Christ was mistaken or that He lied, neither of which can the Son of God do.

One final point, before looking at the historical background for Daniel, is that in our study, we must focus on the message God is giving us and not trying to understand what caused this or how something happened. We must remember that the book of Daniel is historical, and its purpose is to lay a foundation for understanding Revelation. If we lose our focus, we will get lost in the details and guessing. God is telling us what is going to happen, but not when it will happen and not always how it will happen. Our goal then is not to guess at the when or the how, but to understand what happens to people, during this time period, both dead and alive, who know or knew Christ as their Lord and Savior and those who do not. Lastly, once we understand this difference, we need to understand our responsibility in influencing the outcome.

The historical background for Daniel begins in 1 Kings 11:11 that tells us that because of Solomon’s wickedness, God decided to remove ten of the twelve tribes of Israel from his kingdom and to give them to Jeroboam, Solomon’s servant. These ten tribes later became known as the northern kingdom, as Samaria, or as the house of Israel. The two remaining tribes were known as the southern tribes or as the house of Judah.

In 745 BC, Tiglath-Pileser became the ruler of Assyria and began to threaten Samaria. During this time and in later years, the king of the northern tribes (Samaria) tried to curb Assyria’s growing power through an alliance with Egypt. This plan was not successful, and when Hoshea became king of Samaria in 732 BC, he surrendered to Tiglath-Pileser and began paying tribute. In 727 BC, Shalmaneser V became king of Assyria and Hoshea decided to stop paying the tribute to Assyria. This decision did not sit well with the king, so his armies laid siege to Samaria, which subsequently fell. In the ninth year of Hoshea (722 BC–721 BC), the Assyrians defeated Samaria and resettled the people in Halah (Mesopotamia) and Habor on the river of Gozan, a tributary of the upper Euphrates.

Then the king of Assyria invaded the whole land and went up to Samaria and besieged it three years. (6) In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and carried Israel away into exile to Assyria, and settled them in Halah and Habor, on the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. (7) Now this came about, because the sons of Israel had sinned against the lord their God, who had brought them up from the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and they had feared other gods (8) and walked in the customs of the nations whom the lord had driven out before the sons of Israel, and in the customs of the kings of Israel which they had introduced. (2 Kings 17:5–8)

The resettlement fulfilled the prophecy of Ahijah as recorded in 1 Kings 14:14–16:

Moreover, the lord will raise up for Himself a king over Israel who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam this day and from now on. (15) For the lord will strike Israel, as a reed is shaken in the water; and He will uproot Israel from this good land which He gave to their fathers, and will scatter them beyond the Euphrates River, because they have made their Asherim, provoking the lord to anger. (16) And He will give up Israel on account of the sins of Jeroboam, which he committed and with which he made Israel to sin.

The Assyrians then resettled other people from the territory of Babylonia and Hamath to Samaria. These new inhabitants of Samaria brought their own customs, gods, and idols with them. Because the Assyrians had resettled the government and religious leaders of Samaria, there was no one to lead the people of the remaining members of the house of Israel. As a result, the customs and idols of the new inhabitants were incorporated into the daily life of the remaining Israelites. From this time on, history loses track of the ten tribes and they became known as the lost tribes of the house of Israel.

The covenant God made with David and the prophecy of Jacob tell us that the house of Judah would inherit the scepter and become the kingly or lawmaking line. To fulfill His Word, when God removed the ten tribes from Solomon’s son Rehoboam, He left the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin.

Judah, your brothers will praise you; Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; Your father’s sons shall bow down to you. (9) Judah is a lion’s whelp; From the prey, my son, you have gone up. He couches, he lies down as a lion, And as a lion, who dares rouse him up? (10) The scepter shall not depart from Judah, Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, Until Shiloh comes, And to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. (11) He ties his foal to the vine, And his donkey’s colt to the choice vine; He washes his garments in wine, And his robes in the blood of grapes. (Genesis 49:8–11)

The tribes of Judah and Benjamin would occupy the territory of the southern kingdom known as Judah. Although the people of Judah had seen what happened to their brothers in Samaria, Judah continued their sinful and idolatrous ways. Judah escaped a fate like that of Samaria, however, by forming a loose alliance with Egypt and by submission to Assyria. In doing this, Judah also showed its lack of faith in God by seeking help from an earthly king and kingdom rather than from the God that gave them the land and with whom they already had a covenant ensuring them of prosperity in the land.

Assyria completed its final conquest of Egypt in 663 BC by gaining control over all northern Egypt. The final threat to Assyria did not come from Egypt, but from Babylon and the Medes. Babylon began its conquest of Assyria around 626 BC in a battle at Babylonia and continued until 610 BC with the fall of Harran. A few years after defeating Assyria, Babylonian king Nabopolassar died and his son, Nebuchadnezzar, inherited the throne. Under Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon became the dominant kingdom for all nations to fear. Egypt tried unsuccessfully to aid Assyria against Babylon, but after the defeat of Necho at Carchemish (Jeremiah 46:2), Egypt withdrew its forces back to its borders.

Because of Egypt’s weakened state, Judah quickly became a vassal state of Babylon around 606 BC as its leaders tried to appease Nebuchadnezzar. Their efforts were unsuccessful, and Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem that same year to begin Jeremiah’s prophecy of seventy years of captivity. On capturing Jerusalem, one of the first things Nebuchadnezzar did was to resettle many Judeans to Babylon. Included in the first group was a young man named Daniel.

After a rebellion in 598 or 597 BC, Nebuchadnezzar again attacked Jerusalem and carried off still more captives.

Then he led away into exile all Jerusalem and all the captains and all the mighty men of valor, ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and the smiths. None remained except the poorest people of the land. (15) So he led Jehoiachin away into exile to Babylon; also the king’s mother and the king’s wives and his officials and the leading men of the land, he led away into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. (16) And all the men of valor, seven thousand, and the craftsmen and the smiths, one thousand, all strong and fit for war, and these the king of Babylon brought into exile to Babylon. (17) Then the king of Babylon made his uncle Mattaniah, king in his place, and changed his name to Zedekiah. (2 Kings 24:14–17)

A second group of Judeans were resettled in what was formerly Assyrian territory. Included in this group of captives was the prophet Ezekiel. In 589 BC, there was a second revolt, this one led by Zedekiah, king of Judah. This revolt was no more successful than the previous one, and Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem a third time and captured it in 587 or 586 BC. In 582 BC, the third and last group of Judeans was resettled to the Babylonian kingdom and included in this group was Jeremiah, another of God’s prophets.

Daniel 1

The Beginning

In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. (2) And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the vessels of the house of God; and he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his god, and he brought the vessels into the treasury of his god. (3) Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, the chief of his officials, to bring in some of the sons of Israel, including some of the royal family and of the nobles, (4) youths in whom was no defect, who were good-looking, showing intelligence in every branch of wisdom, endowed with understanding, and discerning knowledge, and who had ability for serving in the king’s court; and he ordered him to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans. (Daniel 1:1–4)

Chapter 1 is a beautiful chapter that tells us much about Daniel and his relationship with God. The information given provides the foundation for the remainder of the book and directly confronts many of the issues raised by critics from both the secular and scholarly realm.

The first four verses tell us that God delivered up Jehoiakim and some of the vessels used by the Jews as part of their temple worship into Nebuchadnezzar’s hands. Judah’s defeat should not have come as a surprise since Jeremiah had been sounding multiple warnings about the pending destruction of the land and subsequent captivity. However, rather than repent or change their wicked and rebellious ways, like many people today, the Judeans chose to pay little attention to Jeremiah’s proclamations from God. This refusal eliminated the possibility of any of them escaping their prophesied captivity.

Following his conquest of Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar ordered the chief of his officials to select some of the finest young men from the royal family and nobility of Judah. In addition to being good-looking, those picked were required to demonstrate intelligence in every branch of wisdom, and after being removed to Babylon, they would receive additional training in the literature, language, culture, and law of the Chaldeans for three years to prepare them for service in Nebuchadnezzar’s court.

And the king appointed for them a daily ration from the king’s choice food and from the wine which he drank, and appointed that they should be educated three years, at the end of which they were to enter the king’s personal service. (6) Now among them from the sons of Judah were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. (7) Then the commander of the officials assigned new names to them; and to Daniel he assigned the name Belteshazzar, to Hananiah Shadrach, to Mishael Meshach, and to Azariah Abed-nego. (8) But Daniel made up his mind that he would not defile himself with the king’s choice food or with the wine, which he drank; so he sought permission from the commander of the officials that he might not defile himself. (9) Now God granted Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the commander of the officials, (10) and the commander of the officials said to Daniel, I am afraid of my lord the king, who has appointed your food and your drink; for why should he see your faces looking more haggard than the youths who are your own age? Then you would make me forfeit my head to the king. (11) But Daniel said to the overseer whom the commander of the officials had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, (12) Please test your servants for ten days, and let us be given some vegetables to eat and water to drink. (13) Then let our appearance be observed in your presence, and the appearance of the youths who are eating the king’s choice food; and deal with your servants according to what you see. (14) So he listened to them in this matter and tested them for ten days. (15) And at the end of ten days their appearance seemed better and they were fatter than all the youths who had been eating the king’s choice food. (16) So the overseer continued to withhold their choice food and the wine they were to drink, and kept giving them vegetables. (Daniel 1:5–16)

When Daniel and his three friends arrived in Babylon, the king gave instructions that those selected were to be given his favorite foods and wines during their training. This created a dilemma for Daniel and his friends because the Chaldeans did not slaughter the animals and prepare the meats according to Mosaic law. They also did not make a distinction between meat that had previously been offered as a sacrifice to the Babylonian gods and meat that had not. Because of these conflicts, Daniel and his friends decided that regardless of the possible penalties, they would not defile themselves by eating the meat they were given. Through their actions, they were choosing to rely on God and not let their commitment to Him be affected or altered by changes in their circumstances. Instead of relying on their own works, they were acting on their faith and trusting God to protect and make provision for them. Their reliance on God is made even more significant because, by most standards, Daniel and his friends had many reasons they could have used to justify turning their backs on God and adopting the culture of the Babylonians. First, God had allowed the heathen Babylonians to defeat Judah, despite their being his chosen people. Second, despite Daniel and his friends being faithful to God, they were punished along with the rest of the people who rebelled against God and ended up in Babylon and were now being forced to learn the language, customs, and laws of their captors; and third, Daniel and his friends were forced to accept Babylonian names that referenced false gods.

To find a solution to their problem, Daniel asked the commander in charge of overseeing their training if he and his friends could be exempted from eating the special diet provided by the king. At first, the commander refused because he feared he would be punished if Daniel and his three friends lost their healthy appearance. To ease the commander’s worry, Daniel proposed a ten-day test during which he and his friends would eat and drink only vegetables and water. At the end of ten days, the commander was to compare the appearance of Daniel and his friends with those who had eaten the king’s food. If their appearance had not deteriorated, then Daniel and his friends could continue their diet. If their appearance had deteriorated, then he and his friends would willingly eat the meat and drink the wine provided by the king. When the ten-day trial was over, the commander agreed that Daniel and his friends looked healthier than the others in the group and agreed to continue to provide Daniel and his friends with vegetables and water for their meals.

And as for these four youths, God gave them knowledge and intelligence in every branch of literature and wisdom; Daniel even understood all kinds of visions and dreams. (Daniel 1:17)

Verse 17 undermines much of the criticism leveled at Daniel. The scripture tells us that God blessed Daniel and his three friends, giving them knowledge and intelligence in every branch of literature and wisdom, not just those of the Jewish nation. The scripture also tells us that God gave Daniel the ability to understand visions and all kinds of dreams. God’s response to Daniel’s faithfulness lays the formidable foundation for understanding Daniel.