Page 317 - Daniel

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coming of Christ with hundreds of details. Ezekiel 12:13 predicted King
Zedekiah would be taken captive to Babylon and die there “yet he shall
not see it,” which was fulfilled when he was blinded before being taken
into captivity as a prisoner (2 Kings 25:7). Other illustrations include
Isaiah’s prediction of the specific cities to be captured by the Assyrians

on their way to Jerusalem, only to have God halt their advance before
they could attack it (Isa. 10:28–32). In a similar way, prophecies
concerning Syria, Phoenicia, Tyre, Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, and the
Philistines are given in Zechariah 9:1–8. However, proof texts are not
needed, as the issue is a clear-cut question of whether God is omniscient

about the future. If He is, revelation may be just as detailed as God elects
to make it; and detailed prophecy becomes no more difficult or
incredible than broad predictions.
Keil attempts to mediate between the skeptic and the position that this

is detailed prophecy by distinguishing between prediction of details and
prophecy in general. Accordingly, he considers it unimportant whether
the details of the prophecy precisely correspond to history. To Keil, the
general fact that world kingdoms will not endure and in the end God’s
people will be delivered constitutes the burden of this passage:

Accordingly, the revelation has this as its object, to show how the
heathen world-kingdoms shall not attain to an enduring stability, and

by their persecution of the people of God shall only accomplish their
purification, and bring on the end, in which, through their destruction,
the people of God shall be delivered from all oppression and be
transfigured. In order to reveal this to him (that it must be carried
forward to completion by severe tribulation), it was not necessary that
he should receive a complete account of the different events which
would take place in the heathen world-power in the course of time,

nor have it especially made prominent that their enmity shall first
come to a completed manifestation under the last king who should
arise out of the fourth world-kingdom. 6

But Keil concedes to the critics far more than the record requires. If
the text is properly interpreted, the alleged historical errors fade, and
Daniel’s record stands accurate and complete—although not without
problems of interpretation such as are true in any prophetic utterance.