Daniel

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to return a word to you on this matter. If it is that our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning, fiery furnace, even He will deliver out of your hand, O king. And if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or do homage to the golden image which you have set up.

— Daniel 3:16-18 (KJ3)

"But if not" — Faith that doesn't demand deliverance but trusts God regardless.

And when he had learned that the writing was signed, Daniel went to his house. And his windows were open in his roof room toward Jerusalem. He knelt on his knees three times in the day, and prayed and praised before his God, as he was doing before.

— Daniel 6:10 (KJ3)

Daniel's consistent faithfulness in prayer sustained him when crisis came.

In that moment fingers of a man's hand came out and wrote on the plaster of the wall of the king's palace before the lampstand. And the king saw the palm of the hand that wrote.

— Daniel 5:5 (KJ3)

MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN — Numbered, Weighed, Divided. Babylon fell that very night.

I was looking in the visions of the night. And behold! One like the Son of Man was coming with the clouds of the heavens. And He came to the Ancient of Days. And they brought Him near before Him. And dominion was given to Him, and glory, and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.

— Daniel 7:13-14 (KJ3)

The divine Son of Man receives an everlasting kingdom—Jesus' favorite self-title.

The ram which you saw with two horns are the kings of Media and Persia. And the shaggy goat is the king of Javan (Greece). And the great horn between his eyes is the first king.

— Daniel 8:20-21 (KJ3)

The only Old Testament prophecy that explicitly names future empires.

And many of the sleeping ones in the dust of the ground shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to reproaches and to everlasting abhorrence. And those who act wisely shall shine as the shining of the expanse, and those turning many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever.

— Daniel 12:2-3 (KJ3)

Clear teaching on bodily resurrection and eternal rewards.

Seventy weeks are decreed as to your people, and as to your holy city, to shut up the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to atone for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy.

— Daniel 9:24 (KJ3)

Six goals of the seventy weeks—all pointing to the Messiah's work.

And after sixty-two weeks, Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself. And the people of a coming ruler shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end shall be with the flood, and are determined the desolations, and war shall be until the end.

— Daniel 9:26 (KJ3)

"Cut off" — a violent, substitutionary death. Fulfilled in Christ's crucifixion.

Know, then, and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and to rebuild Jerusalem, to Messiah the Ruler, shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks. The broad place shall be built again, and the wall, even in times of distress.

— Daniel 9:25 (KJ3)

From the decree (445 BC) to Christ's triumphal entry—precisely 483 years!