I dreaded Daniel, but he was next, part of my four-year plan to study through the Bible.
I intended to stick to it. I’ve forgotten why, but in January 2025, I decided to study the 12 Minor Prophets backwards. I mean from Malachi back to Hosea. And after Hosea, I would squelch my dread and study Daniel. That was my plan,
and I was sticking to it.
I always go back and forth between the Old and New Testaments in my Bible study. I study as far as I’m capable; I’m no scholar, theologian, biblical historian, philosopher, or linguist. I don’t read Hebrew or Greek. I’m just curious and persistent, and I like to study, especially the Bible. I want to know, understand, and grow in wisdom and insight.
As I study, I depend on three things: the Holy Spirit’s guidance, my penchant for ferreting out meanings, and the insight and expertise of biblical scholars. I use three or four Bible translations, two reliable study Bibles, Strong’s Hebrew and Greek Concordance, and a good selection of conservative commentaries from my husband Bill’s library.
What I always dread about Daniel is not chapters 1-6. I enjoy those early chapters a great deal, their stories, their victories, their wisdom. It’s chapters 7-12 I dread. I remember the 1960s too well, when certain popular Christian writers put Daniel 7-12 together with John’s Revelation and “figured everything out.” They interpreted visions and messages, made charts and diagrams of Daniel’s “seventy weeks,” explained what his ram and goat meant, the four beasts, the great horn, the ten horns. They seemed to understand everything apocalyptic. They even named names, organizations, countries.
Their books made me dizzy — and skeptical. I guess I should be ashamed to say skeptical. What I really mean, I think, is their books and articles “put me off.” They repelled me. I lost interest in end-time study, in eschatology. After that, I preferred to read quickly through Daniel 7-12 and Revelation. It was easier that way. No study, just read the text and move on to another book of the Bible.
This year, when I spent six months studying the minor prophets backwards, I absorbed a lot. The word grace is not prominent in Old Testament Hebrew. No matter — call it what you will — grace was all over the place in the words of those twelve prophets. Yes, God’s warnings and judgments stood in the forefront, yet His offer of favor, mercy, goodwill, kindness, forgiveness, and salvation to the repentant and obedient weren’t far behind. Throughout the Old Testament, God’s good grace was an offer on the table, from Adam and Eve to Malachi. It was then. It is now.
I enjoyed the twelve minors, but by mid-June, Daniel stood waiting, waiting for me to jump in, though still with dread. But this time through Daniel, at a slower pace and with more deliberate study, I realized those earlier end-time writers rarely, if ever, explored the prophet’s reactions to his terrifying visions and messages. Repeatedly in chapters 7-12, Daniel was laid low by fear and anxiety. He trembled, fell to his knees, then prostrated on the ground. Once, he remained sick in bed for three weeks.
Furthermore, these revelations from God were not one-and-done. As far as scholars can tell, they were spread out three decades, recurring again and again, each more frightening than the last. Seeing the future was also confusing. More than once, Daniel asked what the visions meant, what would be the outcome of the messages? But he never received a clear answer.
Daniel cruised through his early “food test” in chapter 1, then Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams, Belshazzar’s writing on the wall, and even the lions’ den at age eighty or more. Fear was never mentioned. But the prophetic messages and visions of the future were altogether another matter. The symbolic beasts, the man dressed in linen, Gabriel, the visions of future events, the people, countries, and God’s end-time judgments unnerved Daniel. Terrified him.
Words suggesting Daniel’s fear appear 15 times in chapters 7-12. This includes the word fear itself, but also alarm, dread, anxiety, and others. Multiple times, I had hurried through, overlooking or brushing past Daniel’s emotional agony of the terrifying predictions from the Lord. Seeing the near and far future was harrowing.
This time, I was compassionate and shaken by Daniel’s suffering. God’s beloved Jewish prophet, a high official in a hostile foreign land, saw God’s wrathful hand of judgment. Like no one else until John the Revelator centuries later, Daniel saw the dreadful end of the wicked — their finish — and it was painful.
I’ve pondered whether Daniel’s fear was mostly caused by the unearthly beings he saw in his visions or by the words he heard. Commentators did not definitively answer my wondering. I’ve decided it was both. The Lord used two of Daniel’s human senses to deliver His messages — Daniel’s eyes and Daniel’s ears — and both shook his soul.
We are like Daniel. Our senses affect us, especially what we see and hear. I fear the unknown, what lies ahead, both what I can see, and what I can’t see about my future here on earth. Daniel’s visions reminded me that not knowing is often good. Here are a few other valuable lessons I gathered during my journey through his prophecies.
Fear is a bully. It shouldered its way in, pushed Daniel around, created distress and worry, as it does me. Daniel trembled, was shaken. Fear creates a tempest. It rattles the ground of our souls like earthquakes rattle our bodies. Earthquakes sometimes roll on and on, sometimes they jolt. Daniel’s visions did both.
Fear feeds on isolation. It appears Daniel was alone during the visions. (I mean without human companionship.) Jeremiah had Baruch. Daniel mentions no one. We count on human help and companionship. In Genesis 2:18, God said we need it, and he made Eve. Daniel stood alone. No one to notice. No human hand to hold through the visions. No one to say, “I saw it, too. I heard it, too. You’ll be okay.”
Though without human companionship, Daniel was comforted by two envoys from the Lord. The angelic Gabriel helped Daniel “understand the vision” (8:16), and later the “man clothed in linen” assured Daniel he was a “man greatly beloved” (10:11).
In the 1800s, British theologian Joseph Parker spoke of alternatives regarding human companionship: “Shut yourself up in your own parlor, enjoy your own honey….or acquaint yourself with the world’s woe and the world’s bitter grief.” Parker recommended the latter. Apparently, Daniel would have agreed. He did not shut himself away, nor did he decide to go about the “king’s business” and ignore God’s messages. He saw and heard the world’s coming judgments, griefs, and woes. He suffered. Then he wrote God’s apocalyptic warnings for his fellow Jews and for us.
Daniel evidently learned fear begets fear. When he tried to think of nothing, he thought of everything. But he was no Chicken Little. He recognized his own inability but clung to God’s ability and prayed. His personal and national confession in chapter 9 is one of the great prayers of the Bible, an example for us. While Daniel prayed, Gabriel came “in swift flight” with comfort and insight.
Daniel never quoted David’s words in Psalm 17:5, but I think he practiced them. He committed his way to the Lord; he cast or rolled every care on Him. Fear is real in even the greatest of God’s people, but it can be rolled onto the Lord.
The book of Daniel ends well. The “man clothed in linen” had the last words: “Go your way till the end, And you shall rest and shall stand in your allotted place at the end of the days” (12:13).
I believe that’s what Daniel did.
These are words for me, too. Go. Rest. Stand. Till the end.
About the Writer: Brenda Evans lives and writes in Ashland, Kentucky. You may reach her at beejayevans@windstream.net.
