Daniel 2: Meaning of Nebuchadnezzar's Dream's Statue - David Shin's Sermon

https://christiansermonsandmusicvideo... Daniel 2 - David Shin preaches on the prophecy of Daniel 2 in which God reveals to Daniel, King Nebuchadnezzar forgotten dream of an image and its interpretation. It is one of the most basic and easy to understand prophecies of the Bible. The logic and reasonableness of Daniel 2 is so powerful that critics have tried to get around it for centuries. The most entrenched attempt remains the so-called “Maccabean Hypothesis,” which claims that the book of Daniel wasn’t written when it says it was but centuries later, after the events themselves. This idea was first advanced by a Neo-Platonist philosopher, Porphyry (c. A.D. 234-305), who argued that Daniel had been written in the second century B.C. by Jews under siege from the Seleucid Greeks. Today that view permeates most of Christendom, including a majority of commentaries. The book of Daniel, millions believe, was written around 167-164 B.C., during the Maccabean revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes. All the history that Daniel wrote about was, it is said, vaticinia ex eventu, a Latin phrase for “written after the happening took place.” In short, though the book of Daniel dates itself to the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., it was supposedly written hundreds of years later. Though the Maccabean Hypothesis has always been flawed, with numerous scholars seriously challenging it, the prophecy of Daniel 2 itself helps to counter the entire notion. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the book of Daniel was written in the 160s B.C. How could anyone, living more than 150 years before the birth of Christ, predict with such accuracy the dismantling of the Roman Empire into the smaller powers that would never “cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay” (Dan. 2:43)? European nations were fighting one another well into the twentieth century: some point to the ongoing Balkan crises as evidence that they still are. A mere two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union—two years!—the world’s best political scientists never saw it coming. And here was a man, supposedly 160 years before Christ, accurately depicting modern Europe today? The essential point of the Maccabean Hypothesis was to deny predictive pro-phecy. Yet the prophetic reach of Daniel 2 is so great, extending so far into the future, that it overwhelms this ineffective attempt to nullify it. The hypothesis fails to strip the book of the one thing the hypothesis most aimed at, and that is, of course, the supernatural element of Daniel itself. Look at the power of Daniel’s prophecy. Porphyry, writing in the third century A.D., was so challenged by the book, so concerned by the rational evidence it presented for the inspiration and trustworthiness of the Bible, that he “originated” the idea that it must have been written hundreds of years later than its internal evidence indicates. Porphyry wrote his novel thesis 1,800 years ago, and if 18 centuries ago the power of Daniel’s prophecies caused this reaction, how much more significant should the book be for us today when the unfolding of so much more history has demonstrated the uncanny accuracy of Daniel’s predictions? And if Daniel was so accurate about the grand sweep of the future, isn’t it logical and reasonable to trust him on something so much more basic than making predictions hundreds of years in advance—on the dates that he gave for the book itself?