Daniel 7 “The Battle”

Here in chapter 7, Daniel is allowed to see into heaven itself. He gets to see the Ancient of Days seated on His throne of fire. He gets to see the millions and millions of spirit beings surrounding the throne and serving Him. He gets to see the Messiah. He actually gets to see and talk to angels and ask them questions, and, of course, he gets to see human history as it truly is – a long series of horrible, cruel beasts that culminate in the rule of the AntiChrist who would even oppose God Himself.

What Daniel saw is the spirit world. We can’t see it. It’s there, but we can’t see it. For whatever reason, in the Lord’s order of creation, He gave us eyes that can only see the material world around us. In a way, that is unfortunate, since the spirit world is quite real, and, not only is it quite real, but it is profoundly affecting your life and mine even as I type these words. When the Lord asked Satan where he’d come from, he answers, “From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it” (Job 1:7), and, of course, we all know what he was doing. The same thing he is doing now: “prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (I Pet. 3:8).

The Bible of course is filled with revelations of the spirit world’s interactions with us – right back to Satan in the Garden tempting Adam and Eve. The Angel of the Lord (probably Jesus Himself) met Joshua before the battle of Jericho. An angel stood in Balaam’s way. In Daniel 3, an angel (again probably Jesus) was with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace. In Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 4, a “watcher” came down and announced his judgment.  

When Jesus was here, everywhere He went He ran into people possessed by demons. We remember the man who “lived among tombs, and no one could bind him, not even with a chain … Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself” (Mark 5:3-5). When Jesus asked the demon its name, it replied, “Legion, for we are many.” A Roman legion had something like 5,000 to 6,000 soldiers! In saving Mary Magdalene, Jesus had to cast out seven demons (Luke 8:2)! In Luke 18:10-13, Jesus healed a woman “who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years." Please notice where He found her – in the Synagogue. As on many other occasions, when Jesus had to cast out demons, He was in the Synagogue – which, in our terms means they were at church. Demon-possessed people at church. Demons could drive a man to “live among the tombs and cry out,” and they could also be present in people who “went to church."

I say all of that, not to simply frighten us all, but to call to mind what the Bible clearly teaches and what we find here in Daniel 7, that the spirit world is quite real and impacting us daily. Our problem is we are too much like Elisha’s servant who had to have his eyes opened to see the surrounding hills filled with chariots of fire and be told “More are they that are for us than them that are against us” (II Kings 6:16). Paul of course reminded us in Eph. 6:12 that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood (which we can see), but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

What I want to suggest is that this is part of what made Daniel who he was – that he did see that spirit world. His many dreams and visions certainly gave him a front row seat, and he’d been seeing them since at least Nebuchadnezzar’s dream back in chapter 2, at a time when Daniel was probably only about 20 years old. By the time Daniel was an 80-some year old man and being thrown in a lion’s den, he didn’t need to be told, “More are they that are for us…” In a sense, it would be no surprise for him to spend the night with an angel. By that time, he’d seen them many times and even spoken personally to them (as here in chapter 7). It had to greatly strengthen his faith that he was keenly aware of the spiritual war raging around him —that the events he “saw” in this world were only expressions of that much greater battle going on in the spirit world.

You and I could envy Daniel the privilege of actually seeing the spirit world, but then we live on this side of the Cross and have a Bible at least twice the size of Daniel’s! As Peter said, we hold in our hands, “the more sure Word of prophecy” (II Peter 1:19). We have even the rest of the book of Daniel itself, not to mention the book of Revelation. Although we may not be allowed to “see” the spirit world, we are quite well equipped to “walk by faith and not by sight.” Jesus told Thomas, “You believe because you’ve seen. Blessed are those who haven’t seen and yet believe” (John 20:29).

My point in it all is that, by faith, you and I can be just as aware of the spirit world as Daniel was. If that knowledge strengthened him to be a man of God even in Babylon, then it can do the same for you and me. Is that not Paul’s point there in Ephesians 6? “We wrestle not against flesh and blood…

God help us all today to lift up our eyes and look beyond the faces and the bad news and the threats. Help us to see it’s all just a part of the battle, that the “stone cut without hands” will yet smash this world’s evil and the Son of Man will ascend His throne. The same Jesus who walked with Daniel’s friends in the fire walks with you and me all day every day.

God help us be like Daniel and see the battle!