Scripture Daily

Context No. 1975 of 4322 · Daniel (Greek)

Context · Reflection

Daniel (Greek) 11:1-6: in context

1“As for me, in the first year of Darius the Mede, I stood up to confirm and strengthen him. 2“Now I will show you the truth. Behold, three more kings will stand up in Persia. The fourth will be far richer than all of them. When he has grown strong through his riches, he will stir up all against the realm of Greece. 3A mighty king will stand up who will rule with great dominion, and do according to his will. 4When he stands up, his kingdom will be broken, and will be divided toward the four winds of the sky, but not to his posterity, nor according to his dominion with which he ruled; for his kingdom will be plucked up, even for others besides these. 5“The king of the south will be strong. One of his princes will become stronger than him and have dominion. His dominion will be a great dominion. 6At the end of years they will join themselves together. The daughter of the king of the south will come to the king of the north to make an agreement, but she will not retain the strength of her arm. He will also not stand, nor will his arm; but she will be given up, with those who brought her and he who became her father, and he who strengthened her in those times.

The angel shows Daniel the truth of things to come: kings will arise in Persia, one growing strong through his riches; then a great king will rule with wide dominion, only to have his kingdom broken and divided to the winds; kings of the south and north will rise, ally, and fall. It is a detailed foretelling of the rise and fall of empires and rulers, laid out before they happen, revealing that the whole sweep of history to come was known to God.

The remarkable thing about this passage is what it implies: that the entire sweep of coming history, the rise and fall of kingdoms, the ambitions of kings, the wars and alliances and collapses, was known to God and could be foretold before it happened. History, which to those living through it seems a chaos of clashing powers and unpredictable events, is here shown to be known to God in advance, unfolding within his knowledge and under his sovereignty. The empires that rise and fall, the kings who ascend and are broken, are not outside God's governance; he knows and rules the whole course of history. There is deep comfort in this for those who look at the world, then or now, and see a chaos of powers, a tumult of nations rising and falling, wars and upheavals and shifting alliances that seem beyond anyone's control. This passage says that history is not chaos, that the rise and fall of nations is known to God and unfolds under his sovereign hand. He changes the times and seasons, Daniel says elsewhere; he removes kings and sets up kings. The kingdom is the LORD's, the psalm says, and he rules over the nations. The powers that seem to run the world, and to run it toward disorder, answer to God and are within his governance; the kingdoms rise and fall within his purpose. This does not mean we understand what God is doing in the tumult of history, or that the rise and fall of nations is easy to reconcile with his goodness; much remains hidden. But it means that history is not a runaway chaos beyond anyone's control; it is under the sovereign hand of a God who knows its whole course, who set the rise and fall of empires within his purpose before they happened. When we look at the world's upheavals and the tumult of the nations and are tempted to despair that everything is out of control, we may remember that the God who foretold the rise and fall of kingdoms to Daniel governs history still, and that the powers of the world, however they rage, are within the purpose of the God who rules over the nations.

When I look at the world's upheavals, the tumult of nations rising and falling, wars and shifting powers that seem beyond anyone's control, and am tempted to despair that everything is chaos, can I take comfort that God knew and foretold the whole sweep of history, that the rise and fall of kingdoms unfolds under his sovereign hand, and that the raging powers of the world answer to the God who rules over the nations?

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