I am using One Year Bible Online for my daily Bible study. For today, One Year Bible Online links here. I have found that by writing this daily blog of what I see when I read these scriptures, I get more out of them. I hope that by posting these ruminations others may get some benefit as well. If you have any thoughts or comments regarding these verses or what I have written about them, please post them. I hope that the Spirit is moving in others through these posts as the Spirit has definitely been convicting me.
In today’s passage the angel that was described in yesterday’s passage gives Daniel a detailed account of what is going to happen over the next period of time, describing the rise and fall of the world powers that will dominate in the area around Israel. It is this passage more than any other that leads many Biblical scholars to say that Daniel was written in the second century BC. They claim that it is clear that this was written after these things happened. There are other reasons why people believe that the book of Daniel was written in the second century BC, but in my experience the main one is that they do not believe that anyone could have written such a detailed account of events before they happened. A review of the other arguments for the late date for Daniel reveals that they do not stand up on their own. I believe that it is absolutely possible that someone writing in the sixth century BC could have had such detailed accounting of what was going to happen in the future revealed to them by God. I am not dogmatically committed to the book of Daniel having been written in the sixth century BC, but that is my default belief based on the claims made in the text. It will require a stronger argument than any I have yet seen to convince me otherwise.
When people consistently do what is right, it is evidence that they are righteous. On the other hand when people make a practice of sinning, it is evidence that they have not been born into God’s family. If I do not live righteously and do not love my fellow believers, I do not belong to God. If I am truly a child of God, I cannot keep on sinning. This does not mean that I will not sin because just in the previous chapter John told us told us that if we do sin, we have an intercessor with the Father. In the chapter before that he told us that if we say that we are without sin, we are fooling ourselves.
We should one another and not follow the example of Cain, who killed his brother. Cain killed Abel because Abel was doing what was righteous while Cain was doing what was evil. From this we learn to expect that the world will hate us if we live righteous lives. I need to love my brothers (and sisters) in Christ. It is not enough to say that I love them, I must also take action to show that I love them. If my actions show that I love and obey God, I can have confidence before God. But even if I feel guilty, I can trust that God is greater than my feelings and knows my actions. That knowledge can help me to no longer feel guilty and come before God with confidence. When our actions reflect our love for each other, we will receive from God what we ask for, because we will be asking for things for others. To illustrate this, if my car breaks down and I ask God for a new car, I may not get a new car. But if I was driving my sickly neighbor to their doctors’ appointments every week and my care breaks down and I ask God for a means to get them to the doctors, I will get it (that still doesn’t mean I will get a new car, although it might, it just means that I will find the means to get my neighbor to their doctors). When we seek the means to do God’s will God will provide us with it.
I was glad when they said to me, “Let us gather together with God’s people to worship and fellowship.” Let us gather before the Lord to give Him thanks and praise His name. I will pray for the peace of Jerusalem because then God will be glorified. There will come a day when there will be peace in Jerusalem, then all the world will know that God is great and mighty beyond measure.
Anyone who refuses to accept criticism will experience catastrophic failure.