{"id":1137,"date":"2010-09-08T21:19:10","date_gmt":"2010-09-09T02:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/2010\/09\/08\/daniel\/"},"modified":"2010-09-08T21:19:10","modified_gmt":"2010-09-09T02:19:10","slug":"daniel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/08\/daniel\/","title":{"rendered":"Daniel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A lot of Daniel will be familiar, and thus easy, for you [my son]. But parts of it are tough. Let me try to help you make sense of everything. Those stories that you already know in chapters 1-6 are more than just entertainment for kids. They make a <strong>very important point<\/strong>: God will protect his people even when they are in exile. This is even more important when you understand the rest of the book.<\/p>\n<p>The rest of the book (chs. 2 and 7-12) says this: you (Israel) are going to be in exile for a long time. It doesn&#8217;t tell us exactly how long, but it says that there are going to be <b>four kingdoms<\/b> (four parts of the statue in ch. 2 and four beasts in ch. 7). Only when the fourth kingdom arrives does God&#8217;s kingdom come and smash the kingdoms of earth.<\/p>\n<p>The most important chapter of the book is <strong>chapter 7<\/strong>, because this is the &#8220;big picture&#8221; that makes sense of the rest of the prophecies. The two animals in chapter 8 are kingdoms #2 and #3 from chapter 7. The war described in chapter 11 is during the time of kingdom #3 and then at the end (v. 36) it jumps to #4 (and the key for this is given in chapter 7). A lot of this is too much to take in when you &#8216;re reading quickly through the Bible, but one day you &#8216;ll want to come back and try to &#8220;crack the case.&#8221; It&#8217;s a lot of fun; perhaps you remember a few weeks ago when I seemed <strong>really happy<\/strong>. That was the week I was studying Daniel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A lot of Daniel will be familiar, and thus easy, for you [my son]. But parts of it are tough. Let me try to help you make sense of everything. Those stories that you already know in chapters 1-6 are more than just entertainment for kids. They make a very important point: God will protect\u2026 <span class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/08\/daniel\/\">Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible-reading-guide","category-prophets-besides-isaiah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}