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 wife
said to her husband one morning over breakfast, “I had
a dream last night and I dreamed that you gave me a pearl necklace.
What do you suppose that means?” Her husband answered,
“You will find out tonight.” And sure enough, that
evening he gave her a book entitled Interpreting Dreams. We
may think this is funny but have you ever had a dream or a vision
during your sleep that was serious or caused you to be afraid?
In the Old Testament God sometimes used dreams and visions to
communicate to His prophets. However, these were not your ordinary
dreams and visions. They left the prophets exhausted - sometimes
for days. The next chapter in our study in Daniel is the first
recorded dream/vision of the prophet Daniel. But we are not
given all of the details. We are only given a summary. But this
is normal in scripture.
Daniel's
Dream.
In the first six chapters of Daniel we have seen God pursue
Nebuchadnezzar, defeat Belshazzar, and witness to Darius. God
used those chapters to show us that He cares for the unbelieving,
godless leader of a nation. God even gave King Nebuchadnezzar
a dream of the future just because the king wanted to know.
We were challenged by the faith of Daniel and his friends when
they were unwilling to compromise their faith in God in order
to save their lives. We were glad when God rescued them and
honored them in this world. Those
chapters were about actual historical events, and now we come to six
chapters of prophecy - dreams/visions that God gave Daniel.
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In
the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon Daniel
saw a dream and visions in his mind as he lay on his
bed; then he wrote the dream down and related the following
summary of it. Daniel said, “I was looking in my
vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven
were stirring up the great sea. “And four great
beasts were coming up from the sea, different from one
another. (NASB) Dan. 7:1-3 |
Daniel’s first dream/vision occurred during the reign
of Belshazzar. It was about four beasts: a lion, a bear, a leopard,
and a dreadful and terrifying beast that comes up out of the
human race.
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