Foreword — Our God Reigns
I have to tell you honestly where this book comes from. Not from a calculation, and not from a chart. It comes from wonder — the kind of wonder that keeps you awake at night, not from fear, but from awe.
There is one thing in the book of Daniel that has never let go of me. It is not the lions' den, and not the fiery furnace, and not even the seventy weeks that this book is about. It is this: that the proudest kings the ancient world has ever known — the men who set Jerusalem ablaze, plundered the temple, and carried God's people away in chains — end their own story face-down on the ground, praising the God of an exiled boy.
Daniel had every reason to think that God had lost His power. His city lay in ruins. The house of YHWH had been ransacked; the holy vessels stood on display upon the conqueror's tables. And yet, in the middle of that night, out of the mouth of an exile there breaks loose a song of praise that the centuries have never been able to silence:
"Blessed be the name of God from everlasting to everlasting, for wisdom and might are His. He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and He sets up kings; He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. He reveals the deep and the hidden things; He knows what lies in the darkness, and with Him the light dwells." (Daniel 2:20-23)
That is the tone of the whole book, and it is the tone of this book. For now watch what happens — and this is the wonder I cannot get past. That song does not stay inside the walls of a prayer room. It leaps over. It lands, line by line, in the mouths of the pagan kings themselves.
Nebuchadnezzar, the man who supposed that heaven itself belonged to him, bows low and says: "Truly, your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings, and a Revealer of secrets" (2:47). And when the furnace is heated seven times hotter and One appears who walks with them through the fire, it sounds again from his lips: "Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who sent His angel and delivered His servants [...] there is no other god who can deliver in this way" (3:28-29).
It is as though the writer wants to show us that no throne, however high, lies beyond His reach. The king who proclaimed himself a god issues, at the end, a circular letter to all peoples, nations, and tongues — and what does it contain? Worship:
"It pleased me to make known the signs and wonders that the Most High God has done for me. How great are His signs, how mighty His wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and His dominion endures from generation to generation." (Daniel 4:2-3)
And after seven years in which the greatest sovereign of his age grazed like a beast in the field, until he lifted up his eyes to heaven and his reason returned to him, he writes down the words I cannot read without falling silent:
"His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are counted as nothing. He does according to His will with the host of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth. There is no one who can stay His hand or say to Him: What are You doing?" (Daniel 4:34-35)
No one who can stay His hand. Nothing that escapes His grasp. No king He does not set up, and no king He does not remove. Read it again, slowly, and notice who is saying it: not the prophet, but the emperor — broken, restored, and worshiping.
Even when the empire changes, the song does not change. When Darius the Mede, against his own will, has Daniel cast into the lions' den, and the stone is laid over the opening and sealed, he passes the night fasting and sleepless — and at the first light of morning he runs to the den and cries out with a trembling voice. And the answer that rises up out of the darkness is once again a testimony: "My God sent His angel and shut the mouths of the lions, so that they have done me no harm" (6:21-22). Whereupon this king too issues his decree, that throughout all his realm the God of Daniel shall be feared:
"He is the living God, and He endures forever; His kingdom shall not be destroyed, and His dominion shall last to the end. He delivers and He rescues, He works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth — He who has delivered Daniel from the claw of the lions." (Daniel 6:26-27)
Do you see what is happening here? From Babylon to Persia, from the furnace to the den, from the proudest mouth to the most frightened — everywhere it ends at the same place: our God reigns. He removes and He sets up. With Him is salvation and deliverance. He reveals what is hidden. And nothing, nothing at all, escapes His hand.
And there — not at a date, but here — is where this book begins. For if this is the God who changes the times and removes the kings, then the timeline you will find in the chapters that follow is not cold and not mechanical. It is not a clock ticking on its own; it is the heartbeat of an Architect who knew the end before it began, and who sealed it until the time when He would open it. Every reckoning of years in this book is, in the end, an act of homage. Every calculation runs out into worship. I have tried to count like a detective — but I cannot help ending like a child.
Perhaps I should give you one more thing, and it is the deepest of all. Before the furnace was lit, the three friends said something that sets the whole tone: "Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace — and He will deliver us, O king. But if not, know this: we will not serve your gods" (3:17-18). But if not. That is faith that worships even when the outcome is not yet visible. That is the heartbeat with which I ask you to read this book. For the God who measured out the seventy weeks is the same God who walks with His own through the fire, who shuts the mouths of the lions, and who — when the last week closes — brings His own Bride home.
So read this book as a detective, and pray it as a child. And let us together, with the exiles and even with the kings who bent their knees, join in the oldest song that ever rose up out of Babylon:
Blessed be the name of God from everlasting to everlasting. For wisdom and might are His; He changes the times; He removes kings and sets up kings; He reveals the hidden things — and with Him the light dwells.
Our God reigns.
— For the Bride.