Prophecy can get weird.

And I, Daniel, was overcome and lay sick for some days. Then I rose and went about the king's business, but I was appalled by the vision and did not understand it.

Daniel 8:27

Prophetic literature produces some strange stuff. Here we have Daniel, the prophet who authored the book that bears his name, admitting that the vision he saw and faithfully recorded made no sense to him. That’s right... the author had no idea what he wrote down actually meant. This is a rare moment... the prophecy was well beyond the grasp of the moment. And it challenges a basic interpretative principle.... “determine author’s intention”. In this case, the intent of the author is to write down the vision and be perplexed by it. 

God even sent his angel Gabriel to help the prophet to understand the vision, (That’s right... the Christmas Gabriel) but even then the angel could only reassure the prophet that the vision was “for the time of the end” (Daniel 8:17, 19). Then Daniel is instructed to “seal up the vision” because it would only be clearly understood in those latter days. Daniel has to stay unclear on it all. This is some hard stuff to read.

To understand the book of Daniel then, means we should assume that God meant for some of these prophecies to get clearer over time in the unfolding of progressive revelation in the biblical text. And personally, I find the Book of Revelation in the New Testament to fit wonderfully with these more esoteric portions of the book of Daniel. It is as if God has finally chosen to “unseal” Daniel’s visions with the further insight of Revelation. Classic, normal, literal, dispensational hermeneutics help bring insight into Daniel’s dilemma. And scripture then can help interpret scripture. The one book of apocalyptic prophecy in the New Testament helps bring light to the most apocalyptic major prophet of the Old Testament. In Bible College days I took a course called “Daniel/Revelation” that helped bring some order to the weirdness of both books. I’m still convinced (without going way overboard with “conspiracy walls” filled with end line charts, current news clippings, and yarn-line connections) that this is the best approach to both books.