Reading: Daniel 10-12, Psalm 58

I really enjoy complicated stories where the real plot, the real point of conflict or contention, is not revealed until the very end. Mind blowing plot twists that force the reconsideration of an entire story from the beginning are great. When they occur on or near the last pages of a book or scenes in a movie, I feel like I am in the presence of great art. One of my favorite stories of this sort is The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton. Throughout the book the reader thinks they know what is going on, but in the last chapter it is revealed that the villains and heroes are not who they thought they were, and that the conflict they were in is not the conflict at all. The first time I read it, I literally turned back to page one and started reading it again immediately, now that I knew what was going on.

Daniel is a prophet of the exile. His people are coming to grips with the reality that they are not who they thought they were. Or, to put it another way, their story was not what they thought it was. They are God’s chosen instruments, but the way they are going to become what they were always supposed to be is not the clean, clear route that they imagined. Instead, they have been conquered, exiled, mistreated. Even when something good happens to them, like the decree of Cyrus sending them home, things don’t go so well. There is opposition and difficulties. Even the best intentioned leaders make bad choices. Foreign rule continues, and sometimes things like Haman’s decree make life really scary. Though God always comes through to preserve their existence, one can hardly say they have an easy time of it.

The final scenes in the book of Daniel take the form of a wild but reassuring vision. A really shiny guy in linen robes (like the high priest’s ) shows up and tells Daniel that the moment he started praying in chapter 9, this man was sent to tell him some things. We get one of the more bizarre conversational asides to the modern conception of the spiritual reality in his comment that he was delayed by the Prince of Persia. There is a whole book to be written on what is going on here, but I’ll just connect this to the whole idea that there is more going on “behind the scenes” in the Story than anyone knows. Daniel and his people see the conflict on one stage, the one they are living in, but there is another conflict behind that one, in which the nations represented by Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Israel, and others are at war in a whole other way. In that war, the Prince assigned to Israel, a character named Michael, is much more significant than Israel as a nation is on the world stage as they see it.

Anyway, what is it that this messenger was sent to tell Daniel? He is going to reveal something of the future to Daniel, to reassure his people of what is about to take place. But not everything. In chapters 11 and 12, the messenger tells Daniel to seal up certain plans in a scroll and not reveal them. We will see that scroll again, but not for a very long time. Aside from the sealed up words, there is a remarkably detailed account of the history of the ancient near east from the time of Daniel until the middle of the second century before Christ. One historical figure, Antiochus IV “Epiphanies,” has much of his life story spelled out. His means of ascension though murder, his military and political campaigns involving advantageous marriages, his desecration of the temple in Jerusalem, and his death by drowning. Whether or not one believes that Daniel 11 is about more than this period of history, it is hard to argue that it is anything less that an prophecy about some of the worst persecution the Jewish people will face until the middle of the 20th century.

Why is the messenger telling Daniel all this? Some will almost make a fetish of scenario building about the future based on this, parts of Ezekiel, and the book of Revelation. While there may be some future telling going on here, I have noticed that there is one thing these scenarios all seem to have in common: they scare people a lot. I don’t think fear is the point of the message to Daniel, for him or for us. I think this is similar to the message he received from Gabriel in yesterday’s reading: Things are going to get rough. Really, really rough. But it is not the end of the Story. The centuries leading up to the birth of Christ were some of the most chaotic in Jewish history. They were massively persecuted, fought a war of independence, restored the temple, fell into internal conflict, and fractured into the various religious and political parties we read about in the New Testament. Over all of this was the rise of the Roman Empire, which would dominate the history of the region for a thousand years. Daniel’s vision is a reassurance that God is still in control, there is more going on behind the scenes that anyone knows, and that he will still in the end be faithful to his promises. This is the message of the book of Daniel. It is not a message of fear and confusion, but of reassurance and comfort. Though life is confusing, chaotic, and difficult, God will make all thing new.