"The Abomination of Desolation" Daniel 11 Sunday Evening Worship Service

I looked up a list of the earliest predictions of President Trump's presidency.

I thought I would serve you in this way.

The and I'm not talking random people in the street.

Well, we'll get to some random people in the street later, but like people with blue check marks on Twitter.

That's what I'm talking about.

So they're they're allegedly verifiable of some some regard.

The oldest, the first major personality, according to this article I found, to predict President Trump's presidency was actually a conservative radio host from Virginia of all place, John Fredericks.

Never heard of him.

But in April 2015, before he'd even announced he was running, he started to count down on his Twitter page days until the presidency of Trump.

Many people thought it was a joke, and I think he thought it was a joke when he first started it, but he kept it up all the way through, and he is vindicated and now known as the first person to predict his presidency.

There are some others.

Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert cartoon, in August 2015, said that Trump would win.

And uh when he was interviewed about it a few months later, he said, quote, My background as a trained hypnotist helps me understand Trump's skills as a salesman and alpha male master persuader.

Close quote.

So despite the fact that he appeals to his experience as a hypnotist, it still counts as the second earliest prediction of his presidency, followed by the Alaskan radio host Tom Anderson, a few days after Scott Adams said it on a radio show.

There's a few others that I'll skip over.

Uh some interesting ones.

Number eight on my list is a uh social media expert who wrote an algorithm that predicted crazy things like Beyoncé's pregnancy and also Trump's victory.

Sanjeevare is his name.

And then my favorite too, a Russian polar bear predicted a Trump victory by choosing to bite a Donald Trump flag painted or planted in a pumpkin instead of a Hillary Clinton flag planted in a pumpkin right next to it.

That was the predictive.

It was big news in Russia.

Perhaps you heard about it.

And number 10, a Chinese monkey.

And a similar pick this one and not that one.

The article didn't say how many of those animals got things incorrect.

Um, it only records for posterity's sake those that were correct.

Uh, I tell you that for amusement.

I'm glad you laughed.

I tell you that for amusement.

But as we get into Daniel chapter 11 tonight, I want you to contrast what those kind of predictions are like.

Daniel 11 · chapter mention

Falling back on my trained experience as a hypnotist and which pumpkin a polar bear bit, and to get something a little bit more precise.

When we get into Daniel 11 tonight, we're going to see detailed prophecies of the future.

Now, the first half of these things have all taken place now.

So by the time we're reading this tonight, most of this chapter has already been achieved.

In this sense, it's very similar to Daniel 8.

If you were with us uh a couple, well, a couple weeks ago and we did Daniel Daniel 8.

I know some of you volunteer in a wana, so you're only here every four weeks.

And so you you you got here Daniel 8, which was all of the story, and now Daniel 11.

We do talk about things other than that on Sunday night, but listen, you just won the lottery.

So most of these events have already taken place, but I want you as we go through this tonight to see the detailed precision in which God predicts the future or God describes the future.

I don't even like using the word predicts when it comes to God because God's not a passive predictor here.

He is the agent that brings history to pass.

He is the one that acts.

His sovereignty is what causes the plans of humanity to unfold.

And so it's not even a prediction any more than an architect designing a building could be said to predict the shape of the building.

He is the architect, he is the designer.

And so that's where we find ourselves in Daniel chapter 11.

Daniel 11 · chapter mention

If you recall the context of this, we looked at it last week is coming out of Daniel 10 when Daniel had the terrifying vision of the uh of the nightmares that we looked at, and the he would have been praying for help, and the angel appeared to him.

Well, first the Christophany, Jesus, appeared to him in a vision and strengthened him, and the angel came and described how the angel was delayed answering Daniel's prayer.

And so this is not a normal prayer.

This is a prayer that Daniel prayed, that angels fought over his answer.

So this is not, Lord, help me with my surgery or help me pass the test or help me have a good day or have a good flight.

This is not that category of prayer requests.

This is the kind of prayer that when Daniel was praying it, angels fought.

Demonic angels were fighting righteous angels, and God was dispatching a messenger to strengthen Daniel, so much so that God himself, in the person of Christ, appears to Daniel in the vision to strengthen him so that he maintains his composure to receive the vision.

That's the level of importance this prayer request is.

And if you recall, it's all pouring out of where Daniel had been studying the book of Jeremiah and saw that the Babylonian captivity was supposed to end.

The Israelites were banished, kicked out of Israel because of their sin.

They had neglected the Sabbath years, they had neglected the year of Jubilee, they were banished for 70 years, one for each Sabbath year they had missed.

They were now supposed to come back to the promised land.

Daniel understood this from reading the book of Jeremiah.

He then sets himself to pray for the return, and we commented how incredible it is that prophecies declared something would happen, and Daniel prayed for it to happen anyway.

Daniel understood that God's uh prophetic uh decrees are not just accomplished, they require means to achieve, namely, in this case, Daniel's prayers.

And so Daniel prays, even though Cyrus had banned uh prayers to anybody except him himself or um the king at that time, and he really was tricked, Darius was, and so Daniel prays and gets fed to lions, and the lions end up eating Daniel's adversaries, you know that part of the story.

And that's the vision that is transcribed in Daniel chapter uh nine.

This is the 70 weeks.

Nevertheless, the Cyrus commands the Israelites to return, and they don't all return.

Very few of them return.

Probably 40,000 return in all.

That's a small remnant of all the Israelites that are spread abroad.

And so Daniel was expecting revival to break out.

He was expecting Israel to be reconstituted.

He was looking for the temple to re be rebuilt.

He wanted to go back to the days of 1 Kings 8, where Solomon was dedicating the temple.

That's what Daniel had in his mind.

And instead, what he gets is this hodgepodge pile of cobblestone.

You know, something that's such a weak temple, it made those who saw it cry.

This was not what Daniel had in mind.

And so Daniel goes out.

He starts walking back, he leaves the capital city where he's the prime minister, goes walking along the Tigris River, and is praying for help from God.

For weeks he's praying, and he's getting nothing.

And remember, last time he he prayed, he got a very detailed vision of the future.

Now he's praying and nothing happens, and weeks go by, and then an angel appears after the Lord, and the angel strengthens him, and the angel tells him what's going to happen in the future.

And that's the content of chapter 11.

It's the speech from the angel.

It's Daniel's description about what the future will take place in the future for the nation of Israel, why they're not back and reestablished in the land.

Now, the over let me give you the overarching theme of this so you don't get lost in the weeds in case you run out of time and you don't get the big theme.

I've got four lessons for you at the end, but we'll see if we get there.

But the overarching theme of this whole chapter is that the punishment for Israel did not end at the 70 years.

When God said because of their sin they would be exiled for 70 years, that was not an atonement for sin.

At the end of 70 years, there still remains purging.

There still remains punishment for Israel.

Until they will return and surrender their lives to their Savior, until they will put their future faith in Christ and His future coming to earth, they will continue to be chastised by God.

That is the point of this chapter.

Daniel expected their punishment from God to be over and the glory of Solomon's temple to return.

Instead, he's going to get what we see here tonight.

It's going to be broken up into four periods of Israel's judgment.

God's going to give them four different periods of his judgment.

And as we go through this time, the first one goes pretty quickly, and we'll see how God's unveiling his plan.

I mean, the judgment for Israel, it's not going to be 70 years under Jeremiah.

It is going to be hundreds of years, hundreds of years.

Four different kingdoms are going to come and judge Israel.

The first will be Persia.

Persia.

And this is where we start in verse 1, chapter 11, verse 1.

As for me, in the first year of Darius, so we're going back a few years.

Remember, he's praying chapter 10, verse 1, the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia.

Now he's going back in his mind in the first year of Darius to meet.

I stood up to confirm and strengthen him.

Daniel is reminiscing how a few years ago he was supportive of the new Persian king.

But now in the future, and that's, I think that's the angel talking, how the angel was supporting, propping up Darius.

But now, a few years later, I tell you the truth.

Behold, three more kings will arise in Persia.

And a fourth will be far richer than all of them.

This is the overarching summary of this.

We're going to go through a period of kings.

The first empire here is the Persian Empire, and there's going to be four different kings in the Persian Empire that will be reigning over Israel.

Now there might be some other minor kings that come and go in here, but there's four that have the angels' attention, four that are significant for the punishment of Israel.

Verse 2.

Now I'll show you the truth.

Three more kings will rise in Persia.

The fourth will be richer than all of them.

So after Cyrus, who's the current king, also called Darius, after him, he's gonna die, and then Cambyses will be his son.

He'll reign as king.

Then there will be a fake king after him.

This is not in Daniel, this is just from history.

A fake king named Pseudo-Smeritus.

Pseudo Smeritus is called Pseudo because he wasn't a legitimate king.

In fact, he looked so much like Cambyses that he presented himself as him.

And this was a day without fingerprint identity, without driver's license.

So he got away with passing himself off as the real king, and lo and behold, he would have a better job being king than the real king.

And so the Persians replaced the real king with the fake king, the pseudo-king.

He was a phony, but he got away with it.

That's your third king.

The fourth one is where you find the trouble.

It says at the end of verse 2.

He's going to be stronger than all of the other ones, far richer than all of them.

In fact, he's going to be so rich, it's going to go on to say that he's in the middle of verse 2 there.

He's going to become strong through his riches.

He'll stir up the kingdom against Greece.

After this, from Darius becomes Xerxes.

Xerxes is the king from the book of Esther.

That's this king.

This is the fourth king.

Now Xerces is known, or Ahazarius, he's often called, but Xerxes is the name I'm going to go with.

He's known as probably the wealthiest king the Persian Empire ever had.

The Persian Empire was at its zenith under him.

He was the wealthiest Persian king there was.

He built out the army, he conquered really the world.

But it gives you a little note here, a little ominous note at the end of verse 2.

And the whole book of Esther is taking place in this time, by the way.

But an ominous note in here that he's going to be provoked to go against Greece.

He's going to stir up against the kingdom of Greece.

And he'll attack them.

And he did attack them and he humiliated them.

And then this chapter is going to skip about 150 years between verse 2 and verse 3.

There's 150 years of blank space there.

150 years after Xerxes humiliates the Greeks, Alexander the Great comes on the throne.

This is verse 3.

Says, then a mighty king shall arise who will rule with great dominion and do as he wills.

And so this leaves the Persian Empire and goes to the Greek Empire.

Alexander the Great.

150 years after the Greeks were defeated by Xerces, they'd stored this away in their minds.

Alexander the Great goes to avenge their defeat, to avenge their loss, and he attacks the Medo-Persian Empire.

He attacks them, he conquers them, he humiliates them.

It's a long grudge, you know, 150 years, but they remembered.

This is verse 3 a mighty king will arise who will rule with great dominion, do as he will, is Alexander the Great.

And we talked so much about Alexander the Great.

I don't want to rehash everything we did in Daniel chapter 8, but remember that he's probably the most significant military genius ever.

Daniel 8 · chapter mention

At just a young age, in his 30 to 33, he conquered what really was the known world.

He didn't conquer the whole world, but what was the known world?

He united so much of Africa and Europe and the Middle East all the way into India.

He defeated everyone.

I mean, at the end of his life, and he died through his own sin and drunkenness and debauchery.

But at the end of his life, he declared, of course, that he was grieved because he had no more worlds to conquer.

Everything there was had already bowed in authority to him.

And he was 33 years old.

And he died.

But part of his victory was in overrunning Israel.

He had trampled over Israel.

It was part of the Medo-Persian Empire hill.

He swept over them.

And that's why it's significant for the angel.

And that's why it's significant for Daniel to know.

I mean, forget the seven-year captivity.

You're going to be ruled by the Persians for four more Persian kings, and then you're going to be conquered by Alexander the Great.

And then verse 4, as soon as he had risen, Alexander the Great, his kingdom will be broken and divided towards the four winds.

Remember, he went all the way east, conquered the whole known world, circled back, came back into the Middle East, back into Babylon, towards the center there, and this is where he died.

He didn't get to reign over the empire he built.

He died almost immediately.

And it didn't get passed down to his posterity.

That's what verse 4 says.

It's going to be broken and divided towards the four winds of heaven, but not to his posterity.

Do you see the specificity of this prediction?

It says that this king is going to rule the world, conquer the Persians, won't even get a chance to reign over it, it will die, and his own posterity won't take over the kingdom.

He had a brother.

His brother, I think, was, if I recall correctly, mentally retarded, not mentally stable, and the kingdom didn't go to him.

He had a half-son.

And then he had a son that was born after he died.

You know what I mean by half-son.

It wasn't with his wife, it was an illegitimate son.

And then he had a son that was with the person that supposedly was his wife.

And he was born after Alexander the Great died.

And so there's three people that are possibly related to him that could take over the empire.

I mean, one is born after his death, and the other is an infant, and the third is not mentally stable.

And so what happened, if you're familiar with the story, is Roman generals or Greek generals rose up and killed all of them.

They killed the two babies, they killed his brother, and then they divided his kingdom into fours.

And notice the phrase, it's in Daniel 11, verse 4 here, his kingdom will be divided towards the four winds of heaven.

Daniel 11:4

And it's not according to the authority with which he ruled, but his kingdom will be plucked up and go to others besides these.

His kingdom will be divided, these four people, and it's going to go to other people also.

It's not about how wise they were, how good of rulers they were.

It's not about who was related to him.

And this is so much in Daniel 8.

Remember, it's the different horns that come up.

Cassander took over Macedonia.

The two key ones that focus on Ptolemy took over Egypt and Cilicious took over Syria.

And for the rest of this chapter, you're going to see Egypt and Syria is going to be the focus.

Egypt is to the south, Syria is to the north.

So for the rest of this chapter, when it talks of the southern kingdom, it's talking of Egypt.

The northern kingdom is talking of Syria.

The Ptolemy line in Egypt and the Silicious line in Syria.

Even though the kings will come and go, that's the kingdom of north and south.

North is Syria, south is Egypt.

Just remember that the geography is all by Egypt here.

So on our map, they're, you know, more or less equal.

But from Israel's perspective, Syria is to the north.

From Israel's perspective, Egypt is to the south.

So the kingdoms will be divided, and this is going to lead you to the third empire, north versus south.

The Seleucid versus the Ptolemaic dynasties.

They're going to reign over this part of the world.

This is going to take you all the way from 300 BC to the Roman Empire, really.

And we're going to cover these kings all the way down to the 20th verse.

This is going to go over 200 years, and these 200 years is a period of war.

These different empires fight each other.

These two dynasties fight each other.

They hate each other.

They're violent towards each other.

And you think, why is this important?

Why do I need to know that these two dynasties hated each other and fought massive wars against each other?

Who cares?

Well, I have an answer to that question because I've been thinking about it all week long.

It's had that answer has very practical implications to me.

The reason you should care about this is because these are the people that were trampling over Israel.

These are the instruments that God used to judge and purge his people.

God withdrew prophets from Israel for this time.

The last prophetic voice here was Haggai weeping about the temple, Malachi pointing forward to the Savior, and here Daniel wrapping all of this up and saying, You guys are going to be judged.

Daniel's in his mid-80s at this point.

He's not going to live to see this.

Even though God spends 400 years purging and cleansing Israel, he did it first by giving them a warning.

And the warning is so precise.

It's so precise.

Look at verse 5.

The king of the south, this will be Ptolemy, one of the generals from Alexander the Great.

He'll be strong.

But one of his princes will be stronger than he, and he will rule.

So when Ptolemy fails, somebody else will come up behind him who's even stronger.

And his authority will be a great authority.

Between the Ptolemy line in Egypt and the Seleucid line in Syria, it begins a power struggle.

This power struggle goes and goes and goes.

Egypt initially is stronger.

That's the point of this verse.

Egypt has great authority.

The southern of the four divisions of the Greek Empire.

Verse 6.

After some years they'll make an alliance.

And the daughter of the king of the south shall come to the king of the north to make an agreement.

But she shall not retain the strength of her arm, and he and his arm shall not endure, but she shall be given up, and her attendants who fathered her, and he who supported her in those times.

So they're going to make these two groups, the north and the south, they're a war over and over and over again.

Antiochus Theos was the third king of Syria at this time, and just think of that name, Antiochus was his name, Theos God.

His name was Antiochus the God.

Antiochus decided I need to make a peace treaty with the king of Egypt.

And so they made a peace treaty the old-fashioned way.

He said, I want to marry his daughter.

That's his thinking.

I want to make peace with Egypt, so I'm going to marry his daughter.

The king of Egypt was happy to do this, thinking that now I've got a spy in Syria, this is all good.

The problem is that the king of Syria was already married.

And so what he did was he divorced his wife to marry the Egyptian princess.

Which happened.

However, his wife did not go quietly.

Historians tell us that she waited until her ex-husband remarried, the king remarried, and then she walked into the palace, and none of the guards stopped her, and then she murdered the new wife.

And then she gathered soldiers to her, and she went and tracked down all of the bridesmaids from the marriage and murdered them also.

She poisoned them, made them drink poison.

All of the bridesmaids.

So you don't really realize what you're signing up for when you're asked to be a bridesmaid in a wedding.

That's what it means here in verse six.

She killed her attendants.

And everyone notice the phrase the end of verse six.

Everyone who supported her in those times.

All the bridesmaids murdered.

It's incredible.

This is written hundreds of years before this happened.

Daniel predicted even the bridesmaids would be murdered.

Well, verse 7, a branch from one of her roots, the jilted princess, she will arise in his place, so one of her descendants will take over the Syrian kingdom.

He's going to come against the army and interest enter the fortress of the king of the north and dwell with them and will prevail.

By the way, the murdered wife Bernice, she had a brother from Egypt, so the Egyptian army is now going to attack the Syrians to avenge.

I mean, imagine if you're the king of Egypt and you marry off your daughter to the Syrians, and then you find out she was murdered by the Syrian king's ex-wife.

So he invades.

That's what it means there at the beginning of verse 8.

They steal their gods and their medals.

And verse 9, later there's going to be new kings.

I mean, when it's talking south and north, it's not saying there's one king there.

You're a line.

It's king after king after king.

This war goes on for a long time.

But in verse 10, his sons will wage war and assemble a multitude of great forces, which will keep coming and overflow and pass through, and again shall carry the war as far as his fortress.

So now there's a new invasion, a new king in Syria.

Antiochus the Great is his name.

The Syrian king has two sons.

When a hundred years after this war with Egypt go by, they avenge the earlier murdered bride.

They finally want to avenge.

I mean, just think of the complexity of this.

Xerxes attack attacks Greece.

150 years later, Greece attacks the Persians to make up for that.

Through that war, the kingdom is divided.

Now the Syrian king marries an Egyptian princess who ends up murdered.

Egypt invades Syria to avenge her death.

Fifty years after that, the Syrians attack Egypt to avenge all their gods getting stolen.

Eventually, the king of Syrias will be.

A guy named Antiochus the Great.

He's the one of the two sons that survived and won the war with Egypt.

It's the first time Siri gets a victory in this.

He's going to come and his fight with a great army here.

Look at verse 11.

The king of the south, which is Egypt, was moved with rage.

He's going to come out and fight against the king of the north, and he's going to raise a great multitude, but it won't be given into his hands.

There's lots of fascinating stories about this in history books, this battle.

One side, the the north, the Syrians, had 75,000 soldiers.

The south had 73,000 soldiers.

You're dealing with 150,000 soldiers in a battle here.

Much of this battle takes place in Israel, by the way.

It's right between them.

This is where this is unfolding.

The king of the south had 5,000 horses and 73 elephants.

It's a very precise number, but apparently they were counted.

Verse 12 When the multitude is taken away, his heart will be exalted, he'll be cast down tens of thousands, but he won't prevail.

Probably in this battle, 10,000 soldiers died, 300 horses died, some people say, and five elephants died, if you're curious.

By the way, they used elephants like battering rams.

That's how they used them.

These houses aren't stable.

So just in the fields, the elephants would trample over fields.

And when they got to the palaces and the fortresses, the elephants would batter down the doors.

I mean, they'd run into them with their heads and try to batter down the doors.

And you've got soldiers chucking things off the top of the wall and shooting arrows and throwing swords down on top of the elephants.

That's how they were used.

It's amazing that only five of them died.

Verse 13, the king of the north will again raise another army, greater than the first.

And after some years, he's going to come on with his great army and abundant supplies.

Now Syria restocks.

They get new elephants.

In those times, many will rise up against the king of the south, and there's going to be many attacks against Egypt, and there'll be violence.

And notice this phrase, among your own people shall lift themselves up in order to fulfill the vision, but they shall fail.

In other words, in this war between Egypt and Syria, Israel is caught in the middle.

Israel is ruled by the Syrians, but some of the Israelites are going to side with the Egyptians, thinking that if the Egyptians win, we'll finally be rid of the Syrians.

We'll finally be rid of them.

And I'm using the words Egyptian and Syrian just because it is the easiest and Ptolemaic and Seleucid.

But no, they're not like, I don't think they're ethnically Egyptian or ethnically Syrian.

It's the Greek Empire that's divided, although they've now totally intermarried.

They had a totally different approach to culture and ethnicity than we do now.

It's not about skin color, in other words, it's it's about language and assimilation and the line of rulers which were Greek originally.

Anyway, there's Jews that are caught in the middle of this, and that phrase down in verse 13, among your own peoples, violent people, among your own peoples.

You have the New American standard that says robbers among your own people.

The Hebrew word there is covenant breakers.

These people are violent and they break God's covenant in order to fulfill this vision from the angel, but they will fail.

They will go to war.

They'll revolt against the Syrians, thinking if we side with the Egyptians, we can overthrow the Syrians and we'll finally have our freedom.

These are rebels in Israel, apostate Jewish revolutionaries.

They were nationalistic, they believed in the independence of Israel, and these are the seeds that are going to be experienced, they're going to grow to fruit during Jesus' lifetime with the zealots.

In Jesus' lifetime, these are the zealots.

They wanted to overthrow the Roman Empire.

They were not devote Jews.

They played like they were devote Jews.

They played like they cared about the temple.

They didn't really care about the temple.

They didn't really care about the Sabbath.

They really did care that the Romans wouldn't let them have their own temple.

They really did care that the Seleucids wouldn't let them worship however they wanted to.

It wasn't about devotion to God, it was about nationalistic independence.

So they lift themselves up to revolt and they also fail.

Notice the end of verse 14.

They will fail.

They fought for their freedom from Syria by siding with the Egyptians, and they lost.

Then the king of the north, the Syrian king, is going to come in and he's going to throw up a siege work, verse 15 says.

He's going to take a well-fortified city.

The forces of the south will not stand, even its best troops.

There will be no strength to stand.

This speaks of the conquering of Jerusalem, verse 16.

But he who comes against him will do whatever he wants, and none will stand before him, and he will stand in the glorious land with destruction in his hands.

This is Antiochus.

He defeats the Egyptians and he destroys, devastates Israel because of these violent people that were rebelling against him.

The North ultimately wins the battle.

That's the point there in verse 16.

And you see how awful this is for Israel.

Not only did the Israelites choose the wrong side to fight on, but they didn't get their independence anyway.

When the Syrians won, they didn't give them their independence.

Verse 17.

Antiochus will set his face to come with the strength of his whole kingdom.

He will bring terms of an agreement and he'll perform them.

He will give him the daughter of women to destroy the kingdom.

But it shall not stand or be to his advantage.

So Antiochus now is going to make peace with the Egyptians and with the Israelites.

After destroying Israel and Jerusalem, he now goes back to Egypt to make peace.

The phrase here, terms of an agreement.

Literally in the Hebrew, it means they're going to sit at a table, they're going to negotiate a treaty.

It's a meaningless treaty.

I like the phrase terms of an agreement.

Meaningless treaty.

You know how you know what percentage of treaties in world history have been broken?

Hundred percent.

That's right.

Hundred percent.

So this one is no exception.

But there's part of this.

Antiochus is going to marry his daughter, Cleopatra.

He's going to marry her off to Ptolemy, the Ptolemaic king, the Egyptian king.

And he does this because he thinks she'll be a spy for him.

He thinks, I'll marry my daughter into the Egyptian world, and now she'll spy on the Egyptians for me.

This is shows Antiochus' foolishness.

He thinks that Cleopatra will love him more than her husband.

That also fails because she rejects her her father.

The guy Antiochus was nuts, of course, extremely violent.

So she rejects her her father and sides with her husband, so he loses his daughter to the Egyptians.

That just makes him more bitter.

That's why, verse 18, after this, he'll turn his face to the coastlands.

He'll capture many of them in some Mediterranean basin.

He'll now go to war against the old Greece Empire.

But a commander will put an end to his insolence.

Indeed, he will turn his insolence back upon his head.

What that means is that once Antiochus the Great had conquered that part of the world, he decided to go against the Mediterranean Islands and against the Greco Empire.

But he was finally defeated.

This is 190 BC, he was finally defeated, because he didn't fully appreciate that the dynamics of the Mediterranean basin had changed.

No longer was the Greek part of the empire the main player.

Rome had risen, and he didn't appreciate that.

So he starts invading these islands, thinking he can just defeat the Greeks.

He did not expect to be attacked by the Romans, which he was, and he lost.

When he loses to Rome, you know this from Jesus' lifetime.

The way Rome, this is back at the beginning of the Roman Empire, the way they expanded their empire, if you rebelled against them and you lost, you remember what they did to you?

They taxed the lights out on you.

And they taxed you into oblivion.

And so that was to teach you a lesson.

It taught other nations a lesson.

If the Roman Empire wants to invade you, surrender fast and they won't tax you.

Just say, I speak Rome, whatever you want.

I got it.

I'll put on a toga.

You tell me what you want from me.

I'm in.

If you do that fast, they don't punish you.

But if you fight against them, like the Seleucids in Syria did, they will tax you to death.

And so Antiochus the Great has to come back to his kingdom having lost the battle, and he's got to raise taxes.

And you see this in verse 19.

He's going to turn his face back towards the fortresses of his own land.

He goes back to his own temples.

But he will stumble and fall, and he won't be found.

Now, what happened in his death here?

He goes back to try to take the gold out of his temples to pay off the Romans, and his own people killed him.

Nobody knows what happened to his body.

His people got so upset with him for losing the war and plunging them into death.

They they murdered him, and nobody even knows what happens to his body.

Well, verse 20.

Just again before we go on to verse 20, just ponder again how precise and incredible that prophecy is.

It doesn't tell you he's going to be murdered by his own people and you won't find his body.

Instead, it says he's going to stumble and fall and won't be found.

But lo and behold, that's what happens.

Then verse 20.

Shall arise in his place one who will send and be an exactor of tribute for the glory of the kingdom.

The ESV is kind of funny there.

An exactor of tribute.

Do you know what that means?

He's going to tax you.

An exactor of tribute for the glory of the kingdom.

Oh, is this translated by an IRS agent?

I don't an exactor.

You don't kid, don't call him taxes.

Call him a tribute for the glory of our country.

So the next king, after Antiochus, will be an exactor of tribute for the glory of the kingdom, because he's got to pay off the Romans.

But within a few days, he will be broken.

Neither in angle, anger, nor in battle.

This new king, the razor of taxes.

He's going to die, just naturally.

When Rome defeated Syria, of course they by the way, the tax Rome gave on Syria was a thousand talents a year.

In his place, now you're a couple kings away.

Verse 21 will arise a contemptible person to whom royal majesty has not been given.

He shall come in without warning, and he'll obtain the kingdom by flatteries.

This is Antiochus Epiphanes.

And he is easily the most brutal king.

He's the king that was presented as the Antichrist in Daniel 8.

We see him again here in Daniel 11.

Antiochus Epiphanes.

He's obviously a villainous king.

He was not a legitimate king.

He had no royal blood in him.

He was not connected to the Greek leadership that had established this part of the Seleucid Empire.

He just politicked his way and he moved his way up to the ranks of the military, had favors accumulated through different generals, and they installed him as king.

His story, by the way, I pointed this out in Daniel 8, was very similar to Hitler.

The same kind of tricks that Hitler used to take over the German nation is what Antiochus used to take over the Seleucid dynasty.

Verse 22.

Armies will be utterly swept away before him and broken.

Even the Prince of the Covenant, meaning even Israel is going to fall to him again.

At that time, an alliance is made with him, and he'll act deceitfully, and he'll become strong with a small number of people.

So again, he breaks more covenants.

He makes peace with all these people.

He makes peace with the Egyptians, he makes peace with the Greeks, he makes peace with the Romans, but he's going to break all of that and act deceitfully towards them.

He's going to become strong, even though he has a small army because of his shrewdness.

But verse 24 says, Without warning he will come to the richest part of the province, and he'll do what neither his father's nor his father's fathers have done, scattering among them plunder, spoil, and goods.

He'll devise plans against strongholds, but only for a time.

He was a master of the pyramid scheme.

He would take gold and silver from one temple and move it to another and tell people how how rich he's making them because he's conquering the world.

Then he would take gold and silver from that temple and move it back to the other other temples.

He kept dividing it and multiplying it.

Eventually you can't.

It's an old school, it's a temple scheme, really.

And you can't get away with that for long, and he eventually failed.

But that's what it means here.

And then verse 24 describes this whole system.

But then he changes course.

He starts making treaties and trying to last on trade.

That won't last forever, though, verse 25.

He's going to stir up his power and his heart against the king of the south with a great army.

He's going to go back and attack Egypt.

I mean, it's like that's what Syrian kings do when they get bored is invade Egypt.

The king of the south will wage war with an exceedingly great and mighty army, verse 25 says.

But he will not stand, for plots will be devised against him.

Back in chapter 8, we talked about how he ended up dying.

But just know he goes to war against Egypt.

His own army turns against him.

Verse 26, even those who eat his food will break him.

In other words, the soldiers that were protecting him, his own secret service, are going to be the ones that do him in.

His army will be swept away.

Many will fall down slain, verse 26 says.

And as for the two kings, their hearts will be spent on doing evil.

They will speak lies at the same table.

Again, making these treaties that don't mean anything, but to no avail, for the end is yet to be at the time appointed.

Verse 28.

He's going to return in Tychus will to his own land with great wealth.

He's going to come back rich, but his heart will now be set against the holy covenant.

And he will work his will and return to his own land.

He comes back after Jerusalem again.

This is the battle that's described in Daniel 8 in detail, just to summarize it to you.

He comes back.

He has his guards take over the temple.

They invade Jerusalem.

Remember, Jerusalem is out of the way.

That's the key point of this.

You have to go out of your way to attack Jerusalem.

You know, if you wanted to go from Syria to Egypt, you have two different ways to go.

Follow the Jordan River down or go along the Mediterranean Sea.

Jerusalem is out of the way.

But Jerusalem has a temple.

And so he goes after it.

His soldiers take over the temple, they end temple worship.

They then end Sabbath restrictions.

By law, you have to do work on the Sabbath.

By law, the businesses have to be open on the Sabbath in Jerusalem.

He sets up idols all over Jerusalem.

He sets up a statue to Zeus.

Remember, even though he's he's you know from the Seleucid dynasty in Syria, it started with the break off from the Greek Empire.

So they they worship Zeus.

They have all the Greek gods.

They establish a Zeus idol in the temple in Jerusalem.

And he mandates the people worship there.

So think of all he's doing.

Oh, he also, side note historians say, he would just have open debauchery, open debauchery.

The prostitutes in the street, he wanted them in the street doing their acts publicly.

He wanted to shame the Jews.

That's what he was after.

Shaming the Jews.

He slaughtered a pig in the temple to defile it.

The Jews rejected pigs as unclean.

So he doused the temple, the holy part of the Israelite temple that had been rebuilt under Haggai.

He covers it in pig blood and then puts a Zeus statue in the middle, then mandates the people come in and worship Zeus.

If your family doesn't keep your business open on Saturday, he doesn't go after the business owner, he goes after the wives and children.

He starts slaughtering kids and women, women and children.

He's killing them because their family won't worship Zeus.

He's letting the men live, just killing the women and children.

This is what's described in verse 32.

He's going to seduce with flattery those who violate the covenant.

But the people who know their God will stand firm and take action.

Imagine the bloodshed that's happening in Israel during this time.

And these are not what we would call even believers, really.

And they're put in a very, very difficult situation.

Are they going to worship Zeus and spare their life?

Or are they going to reject worshiping Zeus and risk their life when they're not even in a saving relationship with God?

Remember, they're being purged by God.

This is a punishment from him.

This is a no-win situation.

Verse 33, the wise among the people will make many understand.

In other words, there'll be some people in Israel that will help people know what to do.

Though for some days they will stumble by sword and flame, by captivity, and by plunder.

They're beaten.

They're annihilated.

When they stumble, verse 34, they'll receive a little help, and many will join themselves to them with flattery.

Look at how brutal this is.

This is the Maccabean period where the Maccabeans rise up to defend the Israelites.

This is the Hasidic.

Hasidic Jews come from this period.

They were the equivalent of the zealots, and you're 150 years later now.

We're like a you know a hundred AD here.

They rise up to go to war against the Syrian king.

They rise up to defend Israel.

Judas Maccabees.

But verse 35, the wise will stumble.

So that, and here's the key verse.

If you've got one key verse in this chapter, the wise will stumble.

Remember, I said there's a main point.

This is the main point.

So they may be refined, purified, and made white until the time of the end.

For it still awaits the appointed time.

And that's the point right there: to purge the Israelites, to make them white, to sanctify them.

What does that mean?

To burn off the sin in their life, to burn off the idolatry in their life, to burn off the dross.

Nothing is as effective as bringing people to faith in God as going through suffering.

It purges out the idols of your life.

When you're going through inevitable destruction, you know it brings your thoughts to God.

And there's this phrase, which rounds out our third period of judgment here.

To the end of the time.

To the appointed time, the end of verse 35.

This brings you into the end times.

And now there's a jump.

The fourth point here.

So first we saw Israel was purged by the Persians, then by the Greeks, the Greeks, then by the Seleucids versus the Ptolemaic line, and then fourthly by the Antichrist.

That's our fourth time period here, and it begins at the last part of verse 35.

They're awaiting the appointed time, even to the end, some translations say.

And that's the key phrase.

Everything before verse 35 has already happened, before Jesus was even born, fulfilled exactly like it says.

Everything after verse 35 is still future.

Still future.

For example, verse 36.

This king will do as he wills.

We're now up to the Antichrist.

He will exalt himself and magnify himself above every God.

He will speak astonishing things against the God of gods.

He will prosper until the indignation is accomplished.

And that's the phrase right there, until it's accomplished.

For the first time, we get hope of the end of this, when God's purpose in purging Israel is accomplished.

For what is decreed here by the angel will be done.

Think poor Daniel.

Daniel was distressed that there was still punishment after 70 years of captivity.

And the angel says, 70 years?

You haven't seen anything, my friends.

You got 400 years of this, followed by a break.

Remember, that's the break between the 69th and 70th week in Daniel chapter 9.

Daniel 9 · chapter mention

That's the church age fits in there.

And then a restoration of the 70th week.

The 70th week for Israel, even though the church is removed from the earth, the 70th week is not good for Israel.

You understand that, right?

It's a continuation of this purging, it's the great tribulation.

And it will be led by its own Antiochus.

Some people have a hard time saying that verse 36 jumps to the future because after all it keeps saying the phrase the king.

It doesn't have to be Antiochus still.

And that's why I told you, no, it doesn't have to be, because when you see the kingdom south, it's all kinds of kings come from the south.

It doesn't say, and hear a new king.

It's just king after king in the south, king after king in the north.

And then it settles in on Antiochus as the consummate image of this rebellious king, and then it jumps back to the 70th week.

It jumps into the future to the end times to this new king.

Daniel chapter 7 calls him the little horn.

Daniel 7 · chapter mention

Daniel chapter 8 calls him the fierce king.

Daniel 8 · chapter mention

Daniel chapter 9, he's called the prince that will come.

Daniel 9 · chapter mention

2 Thessalonians chapter 2 says he's the man of sin and the son of perdition.

2 Thessalonians 2 · chapter mention

Revelation 13 calls him the beast.

John has the best title for him.

John simply calls him what?

The Antichrist.

That's who this is, the Antichrist.

And behind the scenes doing all of this, it is Satan himself, demons working with Satan against God's nation.

It's true that there are other rulers involved.

Revelation 17 says there's ten kings that side with the Antichrist, but they are puppet kings.

Revelation 13 says he has a cohort.

He has a false prophet that's with him.

But the false prophet just does his bidding.

He's a toy of the Antichrist.

The Antichrist here it says in verse 36 will exalt himself above other gods.

Look at verse 37.

He'll pay no attention to the God of his fathers or to the bel or to the one beloved by women.

He won't pay attention to any other God.

He'll magnify himself above all.

As we've preached through Revelation, remember we talked a lot about this.

He disdains the gods.

He has no affection for religion.

That's not Antiochus, by the way.

Antiochus put his Zeus altar up.

You can't say he disdained all religion, but the final Antichrist, he will.

He disdains the love of women.

Likely, I think many commentaries say that means he's going to be a homosexual.

Another way of taking it is that he just eschews family.

He rejects family.

He sees no use for the family and attacks family.

I don't know what the right way to take it is.

In the Hebrew, it just says he rejects love of women.

He will not pay attention to any other God.

He's going to magnify himself above all.

That's the key phrase for the Antichrist.

Daniel 7, 23 says he will trample the earth underfoot.

He alone is God in his mind.

Verse 38, he'll honor the God of fortresses instead of these.

In other words, military might is the only language he speaks.

A God of whom his fathers did not know, he will honor with gold and silver, with precious stones and costly gifts.

He'll deal with the strongest fortresses with the help of a foreign God.

Those who acknowledge which I think is speaking of the false prophet.

Those who acknowledge him, he will lead with honor.

He'll make them rulers over many, and he'll divide the land for a price.

In other words, he gets these ten kings that Revelation describes, and he tells them, You get to rule over a part of this empire, but for money.

Through this, he takes over the earth.

Ezekiel 38 describes this he's going to take over the modern day Stan nations Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, even up.

Into Russia.

His empire will go all the way up there.

It will unite the ten kings of Europe.

It will go down through Syria, go back to the king of South, down to Egypt.

In fact, it's even listed that he's going to conquer Sudan.

He's going to expand even what Alexander the Great had.

He's going to unite them all through subterfuge, through love.

You see why Antiochus is the perfect example of him?

This guy has no right to be king, neither did Antiochus.

But he's going to make this peace by commerce, by paying people off.

He's going to sign a peace treaty, which he will break, just like all the other kings in Daniel 11.

Verse 40.

The time of the end, the king of the south, which is Egypt, remember, will attack him.

The Arab nations, I think, will rise up and attack him.

The king of the north, Syria, and the alliance they had up all the way up with the Stan Nations, will rush upon him like a whirlwind with chariots and horsemen.

You already see this divide in the Arab world today, by the way.

But it will come out in full view then.

The Persians against the Arab nations.

And it'll come like a whirlwind with chariots and horsemen with many ships.

He'll come into countries, he'll overflow and pass through.

The Antichrist will give Israel some certain freedoms, he'll protect Israel.

He signs a covenant, he sets up his headquarters in Jerusalem.

He re-establishes the temple for Israel.

He gives them certain freedoms.

But then at the midpoint of the tribulation, you remember this from Thessalonians in Revelation, he's going to break his covenant with them.

Verse 41, he'll come into the glorious land speaking of Israel.

Tens of thousands will fall.

This is the battle described in Zechariah 10 through 13.

Tens of thousands will fall, but these will be delivered out of his hand.

Edom and Moab, the main parts of the Ammonites, that's important because in Revelation 13, the Israelites go into hiding out there in the desert.

Remember, when the dragon comes after them, they hide in the desert, and that's because Edom and Moab are protected from him.

He will stretch out his hand against the countries.

The land of Egypt will not escape.

He will become the ruler of the treasures of gold and silver, all the precious things of Egypt, the Libyans and the Kushites, down into Sedan, will follow Ethiopia, even will follow his train.

He wipes out the Egyptian army.

He wipes out the northern army.

He brings devastation to the world.

But then verse 44 describes his end.

News from the east and the north will alarm him.

He'll circle back up towards those stand nations with great fury to destroy and to vote many to destruction.

This is the battle that's described in Revelation 18, where the armies attack.

His empire falls apart.

Everybody turns on him.

And he's trapped out there.

The river dries up, remember.

And he's trapped in Revelation 18.

He will pitch his palatial tents between the sea and the glorious Holy Mountain.

The sea there is the Mediterranean Sea, the Holy Mountain being Jerusalem.

Yet he will come to his end with no one to help him.

That is a sad ending to the Antichrist life, but don't shed a tear for the Antichrist.

I've got a couple brief points for you before you go.

Thanks for sticking with the long.

I mean, I wanted to crash this all in one sitting.

I wanted to teach you all things.

I didn't want to subject you to it again next week.

A couple brief lessons.

What's God doing in this chapter?

Why the history lesson up to the Antichrist?

I'll just give you a couple points real quick.

First, the Father is punishing or purifying Israel.

And I went back and forth with what word to use.

The father is purifying, he's purging, punishing.

The father is continually, God is continually disciplining Israel because they keep worshiping idols.

They reject the Savior that's prophesied by the prophets in the Old Testament.

They reject the one who comes from David's line.

They reject it.

And so they're continually disciplined by God.

This is part of the covenant the Israelites made, that they would be disciplined by God.

It's the Mosaic covenant.

They keep it, they'll be blessed by God.

If they reject it, they'll be persecuted.

You get this from all the way to 1 Kings 18, where the rain was withheld on them because they worshipped Baal.

All the way through Daniel's prophecy.

And you'll see this in the New Testament too.

The church age comes in to provoke the Israelites to jealousy that will result ultimately in their conversion.

They will turn to Christ in the future.

In those days, Romans 11 says, all Israel will be saved, but in the meantime, they're under the chastisement of God.

Second.

Much more could be said about that, but second, the Spirit is prophesying the future.

And this chapter stands, it's remarkable.

It's not about Jesus, but it's about the power of the prophetic word that will come to pass.

And so many prophecies, if you remember, we looked at Daniel chapter 8.

Daniel 8 · chapter mention

We took all the prophecies about Christ and showed how they were fulfilled exactly as well.

You can believe this is the you can believe that Jesus forgives sins because he can tell the man to take up his mat and walk.

You can believe Jesus is coming back for his church and is going to establish his kingdom on the earth because all the historical things he prophesied also came true.

And then thirdly, the Son is plagiarized by the Antichrist.

That's a big takeaway from this.

The Antichrist is going to act like the Son.

He's going to elevate himself up with the authority that only the Son has.

We talked about this morning in Mark 8 that Jesus alone has that kind of specific authority.

He alone has intrinsic authority because of who he is.

He alone does not need positional authority.

He has his own, his own identity, is his authority.

The Antichrist will imitate that.

He will be a fraud, but he will try to imitate Christ.

That is why he's called the Antichrist.

He's opposed to the true Christ.

He will act like Christ, setting up peace in the temple.

He'll act like Christ trying to care for Israel.

But he is not the shepherd.

He is a wolf.

He is a wolf.

I want to leave you just with this encouragement.

There are those that say Daniel must have been written hundreds of years after it was written.

Because how else could the prophecy be so exact?

You understand the logic?

How could Daniel predict the reign of Antiochus with such detail if he wrote before Antiochus was born?

Now, for somebody who believes the Bible, that's a really dumb question.

And there's no dumb questions, but that is one.

You should just know there's so many reasons why we know there's an older date for Daniel.

The language that's used in it, the Hebrew that's used in it is much older.

One of our elders, Scott Fott, described to me today, he said, the Hebrew that's in Daniel would be like Shakespearean English.

So imagine writing something in perfect Shakespearean English today, except for this difference.

The language of Daniel's lifetime was not known during the Seleucid dynasty.

It'd be like you writing like Shakespeare, never having read Shakespeare, and nothing from Shakespeare ever discovered in your lifetime.

It's absurd.

If you wrote like Shakespeare, that would mean you found a time machine.

And that's what you have here with Daniel.

He writes exactly like the pre- or the end of the exile period of the Jews, not like hundreds of years later.

They didn't even have the alphabet discovered that the Jews use during the Seleucid dynasty.

It's very clear.

But also, Daniel's not a liar, and God's not a liar.

You can believe God's word.

You can believe that Christ is true because his word is true.

He is the way, the truth, and the life.

And so when you think of Daniel 11 in your mind, don't get frustrated if you don't remember all the king's names.

You won't be quizzed on this in heaven.

I promise.

You won't need to know the Seleucid dynasty in heaven.

You will not be quizzed on it.

If you are, just, I don't know.

I won't be of any help to you in heaven there.

Take it up with the Lord.

But what you will need to know from this chapter is that God's word is always true.

It's always true, even in the details.

Lord, we're thankful that your word is truth.

That you give us truth.

You speak it clearly.

And so we have confidence in your word.

We know that we can lead a holy life and that your word tells us how to live.

We know there's no salvation except through Jesus Christ, because that's what your word says.

Every detail of your word is true.

It's perfect, altogether righteous.

And so, Lord, we submit our lives to you because your word is perfect.

Even parts of your word we don't understand, we know it's true.

So, Lord, we want to be obedient to you and your word because your word is truth.

Cause us to grow in righteousness, cause us to grow in godliness as we pursue you.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You have been listening to Emmanuel with Pastor Jesse Johnson.

You can find more resources like this at IBCVA.com.

Here is a parting word from Pastor Jesse.

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