Out of one of them came a little horn, which grew exceedingly great toward the south, toward the east, and toward the glorious land. It grew great, even to the host of heaven. And some of the host and some of the stars it threw down to the ground and trampled on them. It became great, even as great as the Prince of the host. And the regular burnt offering was taken away from him, and the place of his sanctuary was overthrown. And a host will be given over to it together with the regular burnt offering because of transgression, and it will throw truth to the ground, and it will act and prosper. Then I heard a holy one speaking, and another holy one said to the one who spoke, “For how long is the vision concerning the regular burnt offering, the transgression that makes desolate, and the giving over of the sanctuary and host to be trampled underfoot?” And he said to me, “For 2,300 evenings and mornings. Then the sanctuary shall be restored to its rightful state.” – Daniel 8:9-14
It can be easy to get lost in any prophecies, especially ones that depict future events. This is partly due to the fact that our nature seeks to understand the details and the “how”. We want to know what is going to happen. That’s one of the reasons that people get so into passages like Genesis 1 and Revelation, among many others, is because those have glimpses of what will happen, but they don’t share all the details – and we want to know the details! God, however, wasn’t intending to share with us the details, because that’s not the question we should be asking. For example, the better interpretative question to ask for Genesis 1 is not “what happened at creation?”, but “who created?”. That passage tells us a ton about our God who created the world. The same holds true here in Daniel.
Chapter 8 is another vision Daniel has, this time about a ram and a goat. The ram was powerful, but the goat overtook it and then grew a bunch of horns, but would be eventually overthrown. After that, things would be restored to their rightful state.
This passage is more about endurance than about knowing exactly what would happen. We can know this for a few reasons: 1) the main idea of this book is that righteous suffering leads to victory and we see victory at the end of the dream, 2) the other visions, though different in detail, match the idea of evil being finally overthrown by good, and 3) the ending of the dream focused on the idea of things being made right – justice and restoration.
This world is stuck in long-suffering brokenness and sin that has marred everything. Evil reigns here and all good can do is endure until everything is made right. While we don’t need to know exactly what or when that will happen, what God makes clear is that it will and justice and righteousness will be restored. When endurance seems impossible, this is what we can rest in; this gives us hope and patience to endure the temporary evil now.
This should encourage us to hold fast to Jesus (faithfulness, similar to what we’ve seen in Daniel’s life) and rest in the fact that He (and therefore, us) will win in the end.