Daniel 8:1
In the third year of the reign of king Belshazzar a vision appeared unto me, even unto me Daniel, after that which appeared unto me at the first. In the third year of the reign of king Belshazzar a vision appeared unto me, even unto me Daniel, after that which appeared unto me at the first.
The vision was given to Daniel in the third year of the reign of king Belshazzar, after that which had appeared to him at the first, as a vision received from God. That third year was 553 B.C., 53 years after Jerusalem was taken and the 70-year captivity began and 35 years after the city and temple were destroyed. It came before the fall of Babylon and before Daniel studied Jeremiah's prophecies in the first year of Darius.
It opens one of the wonderful prophecies given to reveal the mysteries of ages to come, seen by the Ulai. It includes the prophecy of the 2,300 days and the cleansing of the sanctuary. Its symbols apply to Rome and its historical actions, and its little horn is Rome, not Antiochus Epiphanes.
Even Daniel himself did not fully understand it, for with the prophecies of chapters seven to twelve it was ordered to be shut up and sealed until the time of the end. The unexplained 2,300-day period troubled him, and he could not see how it related to the promised seventy-year captivity and restoration. Mistakenly supposing it ended with the seventy years, as the captivity neared its end he prayed for Jerusalem and its desolate sanctuary. Chapters eight and nine contain prophetic periods whose reckoning begins in 457 B.C. Its full understanding belongs to the closing period of this world's history as prophetic light given especially for the last days, whose foretold events are now being fulfilled and will soon come to pass, with the assurance that Daniel would rest and then stand in his lot and place at the end of the days.