Christ in the Book of the Holy Prophet Daniel

The Christian looks at the Old Testament with the constant anticipation of Christ that was experienced by the Jewish world as they awaited their Messiah. As we approach the Nativity on our Festal Calendar season, we also take a moment to remember the Holy Prophet Daniel and more specifically the Three Children. On December 11, we commemorated St. Daniel the Stylite who not only was named after the Holy Prophet Daniel, he was also buried on top of the remains of the Three Children, Radshach, Meshach, and Abednego. The Book of the Prophet Daniel is filled with foreshadowings of the Messiah's impending coming. Not just His second coming which is often times considered when looking at the apocalyptic narratives, but also the first coming too. Scripture is a multi-layered cake and different parts of Scriptures often times have multiple meanings. We can see the multitude of meanings in the apocalyptic literature of the Holy Prophet Daniel especially.

We start in Daniel 2. Many people see this as a foreshadowing of the world empires before the second coming of Christ. While this is certainly one way of reading it and also one of the more traditional ways of reading it, we must remember the multitude of meaning that Scriptures have and remember there might be another meaning. In Daniel 2, there is a statue with a gold head, silver chest, bronze waist, iron legs, and iron and clay feet. A stone is thrown at the statue's feet shattering it to pieces. Nebuchadnezzar is troubled by the statue's image in his dream and seeks out to find someone who can interpret the dream. None of the astrologers of the Emperor can give an adequate interpretation until the Holy Prophet Daniel, with discernment given to him by the Only Wise God, is able to decipher the dream's meaning. The statue shows the successive Empires that shall dominate the world, one after the other. Tradition understands them as Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. The rock that is thrown at the statue will bring an abrupt end to the current era, dismantling the present kingdoms, establishing an everlasting kingdom. Most see Rome as the end of history and so look for some kind of antichrist from this passage. While the apocalyptic narrative definitely foretells the antichrist, this is a narrative of the Messiah. It was in a period in which Rome was being divided up into a Triumvirate, the Republic was dissolving after the Julius Caesar's dictatorship and his son Octavius Augustus was reigning upon the newly erected throne of the Roman Empire when an infant was born. Octavius was proclaiming himself to be the son of a god but the one that was born was the Son of God. Octavius proclaimed the Pax Romana but the Son of God proclaimed the Pax Christi. Indeed, a new kingdom, the Church, was established from the rubble of the Roman civil wars which savaged the world. The clay and iron couldn't withhold and Christ came down and established His own kingdom. It was a kingdom not of this world. It was a rock thrown from Heaven.

In the very next chapter of the Holy Prophet Daniel, we see the Three Children refuse to bow down before the false idol of the Emperor's. As a punishment, the Three Children are thrown into a fiery furnace with flames so hot that the men who threw them into the fire all died the moment the flames came near to them. Assuredly, Nebuchadnezzar had presumed the Three Children would be incinerated but he was in for a surprise. When Nebuchadnezzar looked into the furnace, he saw a fourth man in the furnace. The Hebrew text does not possess a definitive article so it is very possible he presumed it to be one of his own gods, but he recognized in the fourth figure and proclaimed that it was "one like a son of god!" Christians understand that this divine being who appeared in the furnace was Christ Himself. The Angel of God in the Old Testament is commonly held to be a Christophany or an appearance of Christ. And this is identified later in the text as an Angel of the God of the Three Children. While Nebuchadnezzar may not have understood who the being was, later generations have given new meaning to his words which shows that the Three Children very clearly understood that this being was not only a son of god but the Son of God who had come to save them from the fires of the furnace.

Once more, we see in Daniel 7 another prophecy of the things to come and the end of the world. There are four successive beasts. The beasts are identified in tradition as Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. From the Roman beast, there stem ten kings and from there, a little horn comes out with great blasphemies, speaking these until fire is reigned down upon the beast from Heaven and the eternal kingdom of the saints is established. One like the Son of Man is then seen ascending upward to the Ancient of Days. While this is typically interpreted in the Cosmic Battle between Christ and Antichrist, there is an additional foreshadowing of this battle which is found in the incarnation of Christ. Christ comes into a divided Roman world that is wrested in its factionalism. From the chaos of the civil wars comes the Roman monarchy and the claims that the Emperor is the son of a god. But Christ comes in a very unique and unexpected way. He ushers in the true Peace while Rome claims a time of peace for itself. He is the Son of God but Rome can only claim such. While this is indeed is a very prophetic text about the coming antichrist, it is also a text which prophecies the initial conquering of Christ on the Cross and His establishment of His earthly Kingdom, not of this world.

Daniel 11:36-45 has baffled many scholars and eschatologists for years because there is failure to understand the often times dual fulfillment of prophecy. While there is grounds that this is a prophecy for the coming antichrist, it is also a Messianic prophecy of the first coming of Christ too. This is missed when people get fixated on the futuristic interpretations of Scriptures and fail to see that the Lord's Day has been here for quite some time. This is why He invites us into His Church now. Because the Church is the Kingdom of God. It is very easy to see how Herod fulfills the description of the one described in Daniel 11:36-39. He was thought of as a Jew being an Idumean but proclaimed the gods of the Romans and the Greeks. He thought of himself above all the priests and above all in the land of Judea. He sought the blood of all the infants throughout the land of Judea going against the natural maternal inclinations of women. He spoke great blasphemies against the Most High God and sought the death of the One Who was God in the flesh. Herod then supported Mark Antony in his war against Octavius as the King of the South attacked the King of the North and the news of the Messiah's coming brought great trouble to Herod. This was brought to him by the three kings of Orient. Herod would eventually succumb to madness, killing his own son and then dying of an illness. In Daniel 12:1, we finally see Michael the Archangel taking the stand for the Israelites, just as was done in Revelation 12. Revelation 12 is also given a double-meaning in its reference not only to battle of Christ and Antichrist but also the Virgin Mary's fleeing to the wilderness to give birth to the Messiah.

All throughout the writing of the Holy Prophet Daniel we see the presence of the Coming of Christ foreshadowed in not only the first but also in the second coming. It is revealed for Christians that there is a cosmic battle between Christ and Antichrist and the enemies of Christianity and the followers of the Kingdom that is established not of human hands. But we are given the hope that our side is victorious. We see in the coming of Christ in His incarnation that He has already proclaimed victory. He set up and established a Kingdom already. The prophecies of Daniel are fulfilled in the Nativity which is why the Holy Prophet Daniel's celebration falls just before the Nativity and not afterward. It is a poetic way to end the narrative of the Holy Scriptures that point to and foreshadow Christ. Christ is all throughout Scriptures and Christians are given this revelation because they have been entered into the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, the Church. The Church is the eschatological fulfillment of these pages and the Church is what the infant Christ established. The Church is what was brought to life when Christ stormed the gates of Hades. The Church is what proclaims the victory of Christ! Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit! Unto ages and ages, Amen!