My New Study of the Book of Daniel for Churches

A new book of mine—a study of Daniel designed for churches—was published a couple weeks ago by Heritage Christian University Press. This is the fourth book in a series; previous books of mine in this series have focused on the book of Exodus, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Gospel of Luke. How should I describe this series? These studies are beefy—usually fairly long chapters for books aimed at churches (sometimes 6000 words per chapter or more)—and are informed by scholarship but are trying to arrive at a devotional or theological meaning of the text relevant in the twenty-first century. 

This new book on Daniel is unique in the series because my son, Josiah, drew pictures for the book, appearing before each chapter. The cover art of the book is one of his original drawings, representing the mountain of Nebuchadnezzar's dream in Daniel 2.

My book has an introduction and twelve chapters, one for every chapter of Daniel. As I said, it's designed for churches, so I tried to write the chapters in such a way that the book would be useful for teaching or preaching in a church context. That goal determined some of what I chose to discuss, specifically that I do not have discussions of the major critical issues regarding the book of Daniel. I think I mention the historical obscurity of Darius the Mede, but I do not dwell on it, because that issue seems to me completely unimportant when trying to understand the story of the lions' den in Daniel 6—or, at least, when trying to understand how the story might help Christians. For the same reason, I never broach the issue of the date of Daniel. 

Here is a section of the preface that describes the approach of my study. 

Daniel is a difficult book, deceptively difficult. The first six chapters are so familiar to most Christians, even very young ones, that we might think that the book is filled with children’s stories. While the stories in the first half of the book present complexities of their own, it’s the second half of the book where the real difficulties lie. Some Christians spend all their time here, in the apocalyptic visions of Daniel 7–12, trying to relate these ancient prophecies to today’s headlines, attempting to discern how close to the end times we live. Other Christians avoid these visions like the plague. This book encourages a different approach. I do not think that God gave us the apocalyptic visions in order to map out a scheme of the end of history, but he most definitely intended for believers to read and value these chapters. While I acknowledge that the reading strategy I propose in this book is not void of its own share of complexity, I have tried not only to explain the nature of the visions and some of their details but also to show how they can help us cope with life as it is now. 

If you end up reading this book, you'll probably get tired of my saying that I don't know the best interpretation of a passage. I don't know what to do with the Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9. I don't know how to interpret all the details of Daniel 11, especially at the end (but I shy away from an Antichrist interpretation, the traditional Christian approach). Even in the absence of confidence on these matters, I think these chapters have relevance to believers today.