"Yesterday's Kings Tomorrow's News and Eternity's Lord" Daniel 7 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Daniel chapter 7.

Daniel 7 · chapter mention

You know, when I describe the Bible as a book of fulfilled prophecies, you know, of course, what I mean by that.

Not every prophecy that's given in the Bible has been fulfilled.

There are many that are still awaiting a future fulfillment, and we're going to find some of those tonight.

Nevertheless, I hope you appreciate that the Bible is alone in the books of the world with describing the future with pinpoint precision.

When the Bible makes prophecies, they're not along the lines of what so many false prophets say prophetically.

We're not talking about Nostradamus here or you know the advice columns in the newspaper.

I've told you this before, one of my favorite sites in uh Los Angeles is all the palm readers.

They have all these stores with the palm readers and tarot card stuff.

And the one next to the house of Dider and I lived in, one day had a big banner on it over it that said, under new management.

I guess if you didn't like what you got there before, you could roll the dice again, so to speak.

And when you look at the world religions, there's nothing that compares to what you see in the Bible.

You look at the the Quran and the Book of Mormon to just pick two obvious examples.

And when they describe uh future things, they describe so in almost a farcical way.

Ways that are comical.

You know, none of their predictions come true.

Uh they're so wildly off base, especially in the Book of Mormon, it's just it really is absurd.

In contrast, the Bible makes predictions that are precise and accurate and in many cases not foreseeable.

Not foreseeable.

And I just have a list.

I know many of you know these.

When you think of most Christians, when they think of fulfilled prophecy in the Bible, they think of prophecies about Christ, of course, because they're the most obvious and the most personal, but there's a whole list of others that I hope you're familiar with.

Let me give you some of the more uh, I think, impressive ones.

Isaiah 44, verse 28 is where Isaiah names Cyrus by name that will order the rebuilding of Israel, the rebuilding of Jerusalem.

Isaiah 44:28

And he he does that, you know, a hundred years at least before Cyrus is on the scene.

Nobody knew who Cyrus would be.

And yet Isaiah names him, and it's fulfilled in Ezra 1, verse 1.

Ezra 1:1

That's why Ezra 1.1 begins with Cyrus's name.

Or Jeremiah 25, verses 11 and 12, say that Babylon will rule Jerusalem for 70 years, and then Babylon will fall.

Jeremiah 25:11

And when Jeremiah is making this prophecy, you know, Assyria and Babylon were still in conflict, and so it was no sure thing that Babylon would be the victors here.

But they were.

Jeremiah was correct.

Babylon did indeed conquer Jerusalem and take them into exile.

And lo and behold, we write about this two weeks ago in Daniel chapter 5.

Daniel 5 · chapter mention

Babylon does fall 70 years later, just like Jeremiah prophesied.

And you know this is a before-the-fact prophecy, too, by the way.

Jeremiah, when he finishes the book of Jeremiah, Israel has just been taken into exile.

Jeremiah was a book they would have read in exile.

And yet, sure enough, it pinpointed the fall of Babylon.

Nahum, chapter 1, verse 10, says that Nineveh would fall because of drunkenness.

Nahum 1:10

That's a strange prophecy.

Nineveh, which was the Assyrians, were uh Nineveh was the kind of capital of the Assyrian Empire.

And Nahum, the prophet Nahum, coming well after Jonah, after Nineveh had repented and then fell back generations later into their wicked ways.

Nahum says, You're going to go down, and God's going to use drunkenness to bring you down.

And that again is a very strange prophecy.

But lo and behold, what happens is in their battle, the Assyrian king gave his troops alcohol, wine the night before the battle.

They were intoxicated, and many of them fled.

Many of them abandoned their posts, and so Nineveh was overrun.

Nahum chapter 3, verse 15 says that Nineveh would be destroyed by fire.

Nahum 3:15

And you could imagine people saying that it's a contradiction.

How can Nahum say it'll fall because of drunkenness and then be destroyed by fire?

Both of them happened.

The soldiers left, Nineveh fell, the opposing forces lit it on a fire.

Here's another one, Ezekiel 26, verse 12.

Ezekiel 26:12

It says the tire stones, tire was one of the most notorious cities there in the Mediterranean area, basin.

It's tired stones will be cast into the ocean.

Well, hundreds of years later, 250 years later to be exact, the water had changed courses there along where the Mediterranean Sea was, and much of Tyre had become an island.

There was an inlet there, and the inlet had grown, and so some of Tyre was abandoned on the shore, and the rest of it had kind of become a sort of fortress on the sea, and Alexander the Great conquered it.

250 years after Ezekiel wrote, and Alexander the Great conquered it by tearing down the rocks, hurling them into the water, and making a land bridge, which is still there for tourists to go see at this very day.

Some of you may have seen it and paid too much for your ticket.

250 years after the prophecy.

And there's many others in the Bible that are like that.

Those are an example of micro-level prophecies.

Why does it matter to believers?

The Tyre fell in the way that Ezekiel said it would, or that Nineveh fell in the way that Nahum said it would, or that Babylon would fall.

I skipped this one.

Isaiah 14, verse 23 said Babylon, when it falls, will become a swamp.

Isaiah 14:23

It's in the middle of like a kind of a desert-y kind of environment.

It's going to become a swamp.

And when the archaeologists first uncovered Babylon, of course it did fall to Persia, and then ultimately to Alexander the Great, at which point it was abandoned.

And over the course of the centuries it had eroded, and when archaeologists discovered it, they discovered the water table had risen.

And many of the ruins were indeed underwater.

These are the kind of prophecies that are inconsequential in the great scheme of things.

It's not going to affect your walk with Jesus tomorrow that Nineveh was burned because of their drunkenness, okay?

But what it should do is encourage your heart that on these precise prophecies they come to pass exactly like the Bible says they will.

So that you can trust the Lord on the bigger prophecies.

So you can trust the Lord when it speaks of things pertaining to salvation, pertaining to the future of the world.

And that's what we encounter tonight in Daniel chapter 7.

Daniel 7 · chapter mention

Now there's four visions left in this book.

Daniel 1 through 6 was historic narrative.

It was the story of Daniel in Babylon and then in Persia.

It takes you through his time as the prime minister of both of those nations.

Now it switches here in chapter 7, and it switches to prophetic visions of the future.

Here we're going to describe two visions in chapter 7 and then chapter 8 that Daniel gave when the Babylonians are ruling.

So we're jumping back in time.

We've broken the narrative.

What happens in chapter 7 is a vision.

Daniel dates it here in chapter 7, verse 1, the first year of Belshazzar, King of Babylon.

So we're going back in time.

This is after chapter 4, before chapter 5.

Maybe even before chapter 4.

And if we're going back in time out of the narrative.

And then we'll get two visions later on in the book that happened when Persia was in control.

These four visions complement each other and they fill out the future.

Now it's interesting to note that chapter 2 and chapter 7 parallel each other.

Much of what you see in chapter 2 is repeated in chapter 7.

Chapter 2, if you remember, was the vision of the four nations that were coming to rule the earth, moving from gold all the way down to clay.

And you see here in chapter 7 a similar kind of vision.

In chapter 2, these nations are going to be crushed by the rock of ages.

In chapter 7, these nations are going to be defeated by the ancient of days.

So it's the same scheme that plays through both of them.

The final beast is going to be destroyed.

The statue will be brought down by God in the person of Jesus Christ in both chapters.

Let me give you an outline this morning.

It's on your screen already.

I'm going to use this title as your outline.

It's all three points.

You get them all at once.

And we're going to work through the three of them as we go through this chapter.

You have yesterday's Kings, Tomorrow's News, and Eternity's Lord.

And what I mean by this, when Daniel wrote this, this is of course future to him, but some of it has already happened for us.

So his future, some of this is future for Daniel, past for us, and yet some of it will also be future for us as well.

That's tomorrow's news.

And then you're confronted with the Lord of eternity in here, the ancient of days, who's of course the overarching figure in this whole chapter.

So I think the best way to tackle it is to look at those three headings, and we'll go through them.

We kind of begin with yesterday's kings.

Oh, they were so mighty in their time.

And now they're they're gone.

In the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel saw a dream, visions of his head as he lay in his bed, then he wrote down the dream.

He told the sum of his matter.

Now, Daniel has interpreted dreams before.

Before they've been dreams that other people have gotten.

Now Daniel gets his own dream.

He said, I, in my vision, by night, behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea.

And the great sea here is the Mediterranean Sea.

We know this.

It's repeated in Revelation 13.

The same vision is described in Revelation 13 from the Apostle John and the Alan Patmos, very, very similar.

They parallel each other nicely, all the same essential features in both of them.

The seas, the the readers here would have known, you can remember the med, the red, and the dead.

Those are the main seas here.

Not the Red Sea, not the Dead Sea here.

Certainly the Mediterranean Sea and the four winds of heaven were stirring up the Great Sea, which means the four corners of the world are colliding there.

And if you're familiar with these empires, we've been talking about the Syrian Empire and the Babylonian Empire, the Persian Empire, Alexander the Great, finally the Roman Empire would be the last part of the statue.

That's all around that basin.

And so when it talks about the four winds of the sea, it really is here this image of the four corners of the world colliding on the Mediterranean Sea here.

Now, for us, the Mediterranean Sea is on another part of the world, different part of the map.

But for them, their maps went around this.

Even in the Israelites, it revolved around the Mediterranean Sea with the Phoenicians who were seagoing people.

The Israelites had this fear of the sea, and their enemies came over the sea, and the whole world revolved around the ocean, so to speak.

God love the American maps.

That's all right.

We're in the middle of the map, right where God put us.

In their world, the map revolved around the sea.

And in the Greek Empire, the Mediterranean basin is what held it together.

It was enough distance for different languages developed and animosity to develop, but it was enough proximity.

You could sail across it.

It was dangerous.

Even in the time of Jesus.

I mean, how many times did Paul get shipwrecked trying this feat?

Ask Jonah how safe it is, but they did it.

They did it.

Well, here, the corners of the known world are getting stirred up.

In Revelation 13, verse 1, you're going to see the Antichrist who crawls out of the sea.

Revelation 13:1

That's this image here.

Verse 3.

Four great beasts come up out of the sea, different from one another.

At first it was like a lion.

And it had eagle's wings.

Well, that would be a great beast, wouldn't it?

I mean, what's worse than a lion?

A lion that can fly.

Look out.

What's worse than an eagle?

An eagle with a lion's jaw.

I mean, this is this thing is, it seems like undefeatable, invincible.

This is the head of gold in Nebuchadnezzar's vision.

It stands, of course, for Babylon.

Remember Nebuchadnezzar's great takeaway from this, and this is important to remember before we get to the next verse.

Nebuchadnezzar's takeaway from this vision was that he was the statue.

He's the head of gold.

He is the most mighty man who has ever been mighty, kind of attitude.

Remember, we talked about Nebuchadnezzar that there is, you know, Nebuchadnezzar was an atheist.

He just, he believed in God.

He just thought he was stronger than God.

File that away when you see what happens to this beast.

He comes out, and this, of course, represents Babylon, the lion with eagle wings.

It represents Babylon.

Babylon, by the way, somebody showed me pictures recently of the all the discoveries from Babylon.

And you see there, they have unearthed these lions and some of them and eagles that stand at the gates of the city and are brought together here representing Babylon.

As I looked, this is happening in Daniel 4, its wings were plucked off.

I mean, that's humiliating.

We once had a molting bald eagle rest in a tree in our backyard, and it was it was missing parts of its fur.

I assume it was molting or it had gotten beat up by a bigger bald eagle.

I'm not sure.

And we're looking at our our back window, and it looked ashamed of itself.

I don't know if we're giving it too many human features, what the word for anthropomorphophizing it or whatever.

But the thing looked embarrassed, how many of its feathers it was missing.

We felt kind of sorry for that guy.

Um I'm sure it went a cat or something like that.

I don't know.

Here, this this lion with wings gets its feathers plucked off of him.

This is what happened to Nebuchadnezzar.

He thought he was so strong and so mighty, and the Lord humiliated him.

Made him go out in the grass and graze like some kind of livestock, and that's what you're seeing here with Babylon.

I looked, its wings are plucked off, lifted from the ground, made to stand on two feet like a man.

This is God humbling Nebuchadnezzar.

The mind of a man was given to it, so he returned back to his thinking form.

This is Nebuchadnezzar's conversion.

It's not good for a person to think he's an animal.

That's what Nebuchadnezzar went through.

Nebuchadnezzar is converted.

He becomes really the last great king of Babylon.

When he dies, Babylon's on its decline.

The kings that came after him, we talked about this in Daniel chapter 5.

Daniel 5 · chapter mention

The kings that came after him, they were nothing compared to Nebuchadnezzar.

And soon they lost the empire to the Persians.

This happens in Daniel chapter 6.

Daniel 6 · chapter mention

Behold, another beast, the second one, who was like a bear.

This is an animal that often represents the Medo-Persian Empire.

There are bears around modern-day Lebanon.

These bears were massive.

They're bigger than our brown bears.

These things were massive and frightening.

Raised up on one side.

This is a bear that's reaching up to attack.

And look at the image that Daniel has in his mind here.

This bear rears up on its legs, ready to attack, and it has three ribs in its mouth between its teeth.

I mean, the only thing scarier than a bear about to pounce on you is a bear about to pounce on you that's already eating somebody's ribs.

You know how this fight's gonna go.

And the bear is told, arise, you think, well, maybe he's not that hungry because he's already eating, except then you heard the voice.

Arise and devour much flesh.

This is the Persian Empire.

Ferocious, devouring the world, going all the way to India.

The whole Mediterranean basin fell.

But it was not going to live forever.

It's gonna give way in verse 6.

After this I looked, and behold, now this is future for Daniel.

As he's writing this, this has not yet happened.

Daniel dies with the Persians and Cyrus still in control.

But after this, I looked and behold, another, like a leopard, with four wings of a bird on its back.

And the beast has four heads, and dominion was given to it.

And this is speaking of the Greek Empire, Alexander the Great, he is the leopard here, and he conquered the world with an uncanny speed.

In a sense, historians have compared him to Hitler, how Hitler was able to conquer so much of Europe so quickly without even firing a shot, really.

And that's what happened to Alexander the Great.

He went into one unexpected victory after another, and his army multiplied, and he was even surprised by it.

By age, what, 32, 31, he had conquered the known world.

He had defeated the Persian Empire, he had defeated what was what used to be the Babylonians, he had conquered the Egyptian Empire.

He beat everybody with a ferocious speed.

This is why he was often compared to a leopard.

You didn't even know his attacks were coming, and he swung in with extreme speed, more than the eagle.

Do you see how he's more extreme than Babylon?

Babylon was a line with eagle's wings.

Here you've got a leopard with four wings.

And then different heads.

He's got the different heads on him.

It says at the end of verse 6: four heads, and dominion was given into it.

And I think when Alexander died age 33, died in 323 BC, he divided his empire in four ways, killed by his own sin and his own indulgent lifestyle.

But he divided his empire four ways.

Cassander took Macedonia, Cilicius took Syria, Lysamachus took Asia Minor, and Ptolemy took Egypt and Arabia.

And that seems to be the four heads here.

And this would have been all prophetic for Daniel.

This hadn't happened yet.

This is the greatest empire the world had ever known, divided into force, and Daniel already describes that.

It's a leopard with the wings and the four heads.

Now our next empire.

Verse 7, after this.

I saw in the night visions.

Behold, and that's a nice word for euphemism there for nightmares.

I saw in the nightmare and behold a fourth beast.

Terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong.

You should pause when Daniel describes something as terrifying.

Is Daniel afraid of anything?

I mean he his friends encountered a fiery furnace.

Daniel didn't break a sweat.

The statue?

He doesn't blink at that.

He the Persian army outside the gates.

Daniel says, hey, wake me when it's over.

He's not afraid of this stuff, but this has his attention.

It's terrifying, he says.

Great iron teeth this beast has.

It devoured and broke in pieces and stamped what was left with his feet.

I mean, this is ferocious.

This is a depiction unlike anything else we've seen in this.

He's devastating the world.

He's grinding it up in his teeth.

He's crushing what is left under his paws.

And we don't even know what kind of animal this is yet, except it's got ferocious teeth, and it's got paws with claws that are devastating.

It was different, Daniel says in the middle of verse 7, than all the beasts that went before it, because it had ten horns.

So now you're dealing with something with kind of shredder-like teeth and claws that can destroy, and ten horns going every which way.

Verse 8, I considered the horns.

Well, no kidding.

Behold, there came up among them another horn, a little horn, before which three of the first horns were plucked up by the roots.

And behold, in this horn were the eyes of a man and a mouth speaking great things.

And so we're going to get back to this vision in a second after this little poetic interlude here.

We'll get back to understanding this because Daniel doesn't understand either.

The short version is these horns represent these ten different nations, ten different kings.

Again, the book of Revelation fills this out for us.

These ten different kings that all fall under the authority of the Antichrist.

The Antichrist usurps their authority.

He feeds off of their authority.

He strips their authority from them, grows greater because of it.

He's a little horn that's unknown.

These ten kings have their power independently of him.

The Antichrist takes their power from them, creates an unholy alliance, and goes to war against God.

But here, Daniel has this first vision of this.

This is the first time the Bible describes this.

Like a beast.

Now, we know from Daniel 2 that this fourth beast is the Roman Empire.

And the Roman Empire in Daniel 2, do you see the critical difference between Daniel 2 and Daniel 7?

In Daniel 2, the statue is getting weaker as it goes down, and then you have the iron and it's mixed with clay, and that represents kind of the weakness of the Roman Empire, which had become its democracy.

It had its the authoritarian leaders of the other regimes, gave way to the democracy, which eventually deteriorated.

Even when the Caesars rose to authority, the emperors came onto the scene and stopping a Roman Republic and became the Empire.

There was still the matter of it being frayed by the authority given to the people.

And so Daniel describes that Roman Empire is becoming weak.

Now you hear in Daniel 7, and there's nothing weak about this.

This is intense.

It's the worst of all the empires.

It's ferocious.

There's no feet of clay here.

It is weird.

We'll look at more in a little bit, that he's speaking like a man.

It doesn't say he is a man, he he lacks the heart of a man.

But he speaks great things.

Looks like a person.

Again, Revelation 13 solves that real for us, but we'll we'll solve it later.

These are yesterday's kings, and it's becoming tomorrow's news here as Daniel jumps in the future.

He takes the Roman Empire and goes into the future.

Do you see how this would be confusing for Daniel?

Confusing for anybody.

Before the New Testament is written.

Because the Roman Empire is described as something that will be strong and then grow weaker, and then here ferocious leading to the Antichrist.

How can they both be true?

We understand now because the Roman Empire did lead to the Savior and brought the world to the right time with the Greek language and currencies and roads for the gospel to go forth in the world and the Savior to be born.

The Roman Empire fell, and in the end times will be reconstituted in some form led by the Antichrist.

And Daniel will get back to that later tonight, and then he has more to say to us about that next week in chapter 8.

But for now, we switch to eternity's Lord.

As I looked, thrones were placed, and the ancient of days took his seat.

So thrones plural, but only one person sitting on them.

Now Daniel's vision goes from these the four most impressive empires the world has ever seen.

And Daniel says, Enough about them.

Let's get to some real authority.

Here's a throne room in heaven.

And the thrones are set out where people can reign, but they're empty.

And then one person comes in, the ancient of days, takes his seat in the throne room.

His clothing was as white as snow, demonstrating his purity, his radiance.

The hair of his head was like pure wool.

Revelation 1 describes this as it seems like he's on fire.

He's holy and he's capable of judging.

He's pure.

It's like fiery snow.

His throne was fiery flames.

Ezekiel's going to have a similar vision.

His wheels were burning fire.

His throne has wheels, and there's fire, and there's a guy on it who's on fire, and yet he's white.

I mean, this is an incredible picture.

A stream of fire issued and came out before him.

Thousands and thousands served him.

Ten thousands, time ten thousand stood before him, and the court sat in judgment, and the books were opened.

This is the scene that you take that takes place in Revelation, where the Son of God comes in John chapter, in Revelation chapter one, looking like this image.

Then later on, he summons his ten thousand angels around him in chapters four, five, and six to judge, and he begins to open the scrolls.

And of course, the first book is the book of judgment, and everybody in heaven is mourning because there's nobody who's capable of opening this book.

Nobody is righteous enough to bring judgment upon the earth.

And John is weeping, and he's told, don't weep anymore, because there is one who can open the scrolls.

That one is the, behold, the lion who looks like the lamb that had been slain.

He is the authority, he's the lion of the tribe of Judah, but he's the lamb that was slain.

He's worthy to open the scrolls.

He's worthy to take them and open them and give judgment to the earth.

And then he goes through the judgments, and he he the angels are around him, sitting in judgment with him, and he goes through, and first he's condemning the liars to the lake of fire.

He resurrects the dead and judge them and condemns them to the lake of fire.

And then he opens up the book of life with the names that have been written in it before the foundation of time, and those are ushered into eternal life.

This is Revelation 20 now, into his kingdom.

That's the image that Daniel is seeing.

John was not the only one there to see this.

John just took several chapters to describe it.

Daniel sees him standing in judgment.

By the way, that phrase Ancient of Days, it makes you think of judgment.

He's the eternal Savior.

More on that later.

Then I looked, verse 11, because of the sound of the great words that the horn was speaking.

So this is interrupted here.

God's judgment is unfolding on the earth.

The books are opened.

Daniel is focusing on the books being opened, and there's an interruption.

Who can interrupt this?

The interruption here is the little horn talking.

So how can the little horn talking interrupt the wrath of God coming into the world?

And you get to revelation, and this makes sense because in Revelation the strolls are opened in chapter 5, and then you go into chapter 6, or the judgment horses sent from the throne room of God in the world, and then the Antichrist comes to power.

This is what happens in Revelation 12 and then 13, when the dragon is thrown out of heaven to the earth.

There is an interruption.

The dragon leads a revolt.

The devil leads a revolt in heaven, and he's flung down to the earth.

He crashes onto the earth with his mortal headwound, and he empowers the Antichrist to crawl out of the waters, it says in Revelation 13, verse 1.

Revelation 13:1

And he goes to war.

He takes his empire, his ten nations, and they go to war against God's people.

God's people flee out into the wilderness in Revelation 13.

They're hiding from him.

They're hiding from the Antichrist.

That's the interruption that Daniel sees here.

Here, John describes it as the dragon giving his power to the Antichrist.

Daniel describes it as a little horn talking, interrupting God's judgment.

The beast was killed.

Of course he's killed.

His body was destroyed and given over to be burned with fire.

This is the Antichrist's fate.

As for the rest of the beast, these other nations and their kingdoms, their dominion was stripped away from them.

But their lives were prolonged for a season and a time.

These other ten nations.

They lost their authority, but their lives were prolonged.

And again, you go to the book of Revelation, you see what that means, that the Antichrist was feeding off of it.

He had taken their own alliances and had used them for himself.

He didn't slaughter the kings, he leveraged them for a period of time.

I saw verse 13 in these nightmares.

Behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like the Son of Man.

And he came to the ancient of days and was presented before him, and to him was given dominion and glory and kingdom.

This is the language from Revelation 5.

That all peoples and nations and languages should serve him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion, shall not pass away.

His kingdom is one that shall not be destroyed.

What a contrast between all these terrifying beasts.

The Babylonians thought they were invincible, with their wall and their river, and their lion statues guarding them, Nebuchadnezzar making the statue of gold, and he's discarded.

The Persians thought there was nothing more powerful in their law.

I mean, you can do whatever you want to a Persian, but don't suggest that his law can be changed.

That's the whole theme in Daniel chapter 6.

Daniel 6 · chapter mention

You see it in the book of Esther.

Once the king gives a verdict, it cannot be changed.

And now you say, Persian Empire, who?

Alexander the Great.

Trademark the Great.

Hashtag the Great.

Who again?

Oh, the Roman Empire.

And their Caesars.

The world never knew any power like the Roman Empire.

What happened to them again?

Visigoths?

I mean, come on.

In the ancient of days.

His kingdom will never be destroyed.

As for me, Daniel, verse 15, my spirit was anxious.

The visions in my head alarmed me.

You've read Left Behind series.

We know who wins, is the joke.

We know who wins.

Why would Daniel be alarmed?

The Ancient of Days wins.

Why would he be alarmed here?

Because of how terrifying the Antichrist is.

Just because you know who wins at the end doesn't diminish the fear of the suffering that's going to come upon the world.

And this obviously is vexing Daniel.

I approached one of those who stood there.

This is very similar to what John does in Revelation 5, approaching and asking, well, how can this be?

I approached one of those who stood there and asked him the truth concerning all this.

So it seems to me like he's asking an angel, what's going on?

The angel told me, made known to me in the interpretation of these things.

These four great beasts are the four kings.

These are yesterday's kings who will arise out of the earth.

But the saints of the Most High will receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever, forever and ever.

Without end.

So the angel says, short version, the good guys win.

But Daniel is still stuck on what he saw.

He's had an encounter with the Antichrist.

He's not just going to roll over and go back to sleep.

I desire to know the truth about the fourth beast, which was different from all the rest.

And let me just say now that Daniel does not get all the answers.

And all the answers Daniel gets, he's not allowed to tell us, too.

We learn that later on in the book.

He's going to seal up some of his answers.

He's going to seal up what is written.

The angel seals up some of this.

So Daniel has seen horrible things.

They're different, he says in verse 18.

This Antichrist is different than all the rest, different than what he saw in chapter 2, different than what Nebuchadnezzar saw.

It's exceedingly terrifying.

Its teeth of iron, its claws of bronze, and it devoured in broken pieces, and stamped what was left with its feet.

What about the ten horns, he asks in verse 20, that are on its head?

And that other horn that came up, before which three of them fell, and the horn that had these eyes and a mouth that spoke great things.

That seemed greater than his companions.

Nothing compares to the Antichrist rain.

He is the Antichrist.

No wonder Daniel is panicking.

This horn made war with the saints and it prevailed over them.

This is why Daniel has to stop.

I mean, have you seen that line before?

What Daniel sees here is this Antichrist going to war against God's people, and the Antichrist wins.

Jesus refers to this in Matthew 24, verse 15 to 22, as the abomination of desolation.

Matthew 24:15–22

Nothing this horrible has ever happened, Jesus says, and nothing this horrible will ever happen again.

2 Thessalonians 2 verse 4 describes it this way: the Antichrist will take his seat in the temple.

2 Thessalonians 2:4

Revelation 12, verse 13 says the dragon will go after the believers in the wilderness.

Revelation 12:13

Revelation 13, verse 7 says he will wage war on believers.

Revelation 13:7

Jesus says it'll be.

Again, the same language in Revelation 12 and 13.

Then the ancient of days comes and judgment is given this time for the saints and the Most High.

Remember, this whole period begins with judgment being poured out on the earth for those that are left.

And now you have the saints taking possession of the kingdom after the Antichrist revolt.

In other words, after the abomination of desolation, after all this happens, now the saints take possession of the kingdom.

That's why Revelation 20 comes after Revelation 12 and 13, where Jesus establishes his kingdom.

The dead in Christ are resurrected and they're ushered into the kingdom.

Thus he said, as for the fourth beasts, because now we lost.

We're back looking at tomorrow's news again.

There will be a fourth kingdom on the earth.

It's going to be different than the other kingdoms.

This is the angel speaking to Daniel.

This is going to be a different kingdom, Daniel.

It's going to devour the whole earth.

It will trample it down, it will break it into pieces.

This describes the Antichrist's reign of terror in the second half of the tribulation.

As for the ten horns, out of his kingdom ten kings shall arise.

So, in other words, the Antichrist kingdom will be a conglomeration of ten minor kingdoms.

And another shall rise after them.

That's the Antichrist.

So the Antichrist does not originate this.

And when you get to the book of Revelation, you see how this plays out.

The seals are unrolled at the beginning of the tribulation, the seven-year period, which Daniel will describe in chapter 9.

We'll look at that in a few weeks.

The seven-year period, it starts with God pouring out his judgment on earth.

At the midpoint of the tribulation, you've got these nations that are gathering together against God's people.

They're attacking Israel.

Of course, the church has been raptured.

They're still attacking Israel.

Israel's unconverted still at this point.

Israel will be converted in this great war, Zechariah describes in Zechariah 12 and 13.

But at this point they remain unconverted.

The world is attacking them.

The Antichrist channels that to his advantage, takes the power from that ten nation alliance that's attacking God's people, declares himself to be in charge, seats himself at the temple, makes a covenant of peace with the nations, stops the war.

That peace is so short, so short.

Because the nations will soon turn on the Antichrist.

He goes to war in the north with Gog and Magog.

He returns, he hides in the desert as the nations turn against him.

His time is so short.

It's three and a half years, is how long it lasts.

And Daniel's describing it here, taking those ten horns together, becoming in charge of them.

He's going to rip away three of them.

He'll speak words against the Most High, of course.

His rebellion is that of blasphemy.

Not just as a blasphemy.

Look what else he'll speak words against God's people.

He'll wear out the saints of the Messiah.

It's blasphemy, it's persecution.

He shall think to change the times and the law.

He's going to take the Jewish law and make it about him.

He's going to take the calendar and make it about him.

He's going to give a new table of religious festivals.

He's going to suppress Israel's holy days and make them about him.

He's going to adjust the calendar, the times and the laws to be about him.

Nothing like this has ever happened.

A time?

A second time.

It's plural that time, so that's one plus two equals what's one plus two?

And a half a time.

That eaks you three points.

See, you guys are math geniuses.

I know apocalyptic literature can be tricky to understand, but it's not that tricky.

If you can count to three and a half, you're doing well.

And by the way, Daniel 9 27 is going to clearly say three and a half as well.

So these times line up here.

Verse 26: the court will sit in judgment.

His dominion will be taken away.

The devil will get thrown out of heaven.

He'll be consumed, and he'll be destroyed.

In the end, he'll be cast in the lake of fire.

The kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be given to the people of the saints of the Most High.

Those who are believers to the tribulation, they will be rescued.

Now you've got the sheep-goat judgment at the end of the tribulation, where the sheep are ushered into the kingdom, the goats are ushered in the lake of fire.

Meanwhile, in the kingdom with the saints, resurrected Christians, saints who survived the tribulation, the tribulation martyrs, all of them together will be serving the kingdom of the Most High with an everlasting kingdom.

All his dominions shall serve and obey him.

Here's the end of the matter, Daniel says.

As for me, Daniel, my thoughts alarmed me greatly.

My color changed.

I kept the matter in my heart.

Remember, at this time, the Babylonians are still on the throne when he receives his vision.

He's got to play it straight.

He can't let them know.

Well, there's two figures in this chapter that are unlike anything else.

One is the Antichrist.

You understand that he's he is a person, he's demonically inspired.

The dragon uses him.

The dragon leverages him.

The devil himself leverages the Antichrist, speaks to him, fills him.

He's filled with the power of Satan, but he is a person.

Daniel says he speaks like a man.

He has the eyes of a man.

He's a man.

Unlike anyone the world has ever seen.

He's in contrast with the Ancient of Days.

Psalm 9, verse 7 says that Yahweh is enthroned forever.

Psalms 9:7

Psalm 90, verse 2, before the mountains were formed, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.

Psalms 90:2

Psalm 82, verse 1 says that God, because he's an everlasting God and sits on an everlasting throne, he can judge the nations.

Psalms 82:1

And that's why this title, Ancient of Days, is connected to the judgment seat.

That's why Daniel brings it out right here.

There's all the thrones.

The Ancient of Days takes a seat.

He will judge the earth.

One like the Son of Man.

Of course, you understand that the Savior has two natures.

He is fully God and fully man, truly God and truly man.

He is truly the Son of Man, but He's also the Ancient of Days.

The second person, the Trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ, has not always been fully man.

He has always been the Ancient of Days.

He has not always been the Son of Man.

Do you see the distinction?

He has always been the Lord of the universe.

He has not always been the Son of Man.

He acquires the title Son of Man at his incarnation when he takes on a second nature.

So you have the triune God, and you have the Son of Man, one of the members of the Trinity, one of the persons of the Trinity.

And together they execute judgment.

This is why Revelation 20, verse 4 says, I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom authority to judge was committed.

Revelation 20:4

I saw the souls of those who'd been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God who had not worshipped the beast or its image, they had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands.

They came to life and they reigned with Christ for a thousand years.

That's not all the prophecies I wanted to talk about tonight.

We began by talking about those particular prophecies about Babylon and Nineveh and Tyre.

Just to let you know that the scripture is credible when it speaks about details.

Here we've seen the big picture prophecies, the nations, the most impressive nations the world has ever known, rising and falling according to God's timetable, right down to the month.

But of course, when we think of prophecies, we think of the prophecies of the Son of Man.

Micah 5, 2, the Savior would be born in Bethlehem, but would be from Nazareth.

Isaiah 7, verse 14, he'll be born to a virgin.

Isaiah 7:14

Hosea 11, verse 1, he'll flee after his birth to Egypt and be summoned back.

Hosea 11:1

Time fails me to give you all the prophecies about how he would heal the sick and give sight to the blind and bind up the brokenhearted.

Minor prophecies even.

Zechariah 9, verse 9, he will ride into Jerusalem on a donkey.

Zechariah 9:9

Zechariah 11, verses 12 through 13, he'll be sold for thirty pieces of silver.

Zechariah 11:12–13

Psalm 22, he'll be crucified.

Zechariah 12, verse 10, his hands and his feet will be pierced.

Zechariah 12:10

Exodus 12, he'll be the Passover lamb.

Daniel 9, verse 26, we'll look at that in a few weeks.

Daniel 9:26

He will die before the temple is destroyed, which he does 40 years before.

And perhaps most importantly, Psalm 16, verses 8 through 11, he will be resurrected after his death.

Psalms 16:8–11

All of that is yesterday's news.

But how you respond to this kind of prophecy determines how you will spend eternity.

Do you believe the message of Jesus Christ, who is the ancient of days and the Son of Man?

Because it was described perfectly before it happened.

This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming and is now in the world already.

Little children, if you are from God, you have overcome them.

Because he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

Lord, we're thankful that you hold history in your hands.

The most ferocious empire, this reconstituted Roman Empire.

It keeps Daniel up at night, it does not keep you up at night.

Lord, we fear for what will happen to the world when the Antichrist comes to power.

We know already there are many Antichrists in the world.

There are those who oppose your gospel and rebel against you, and yet they cannot even cast a shadow over your kingdom.

You've promised to go away and prepare a place for us and to come back and get us.

And to take us to be with you forever.

So, Lord, we look forward to that day.

We share Daniel's dread about what will happen to the earth.

We share Daniel's confidence that we will be spared.

We see ourselves in the chapter, we see ourselves reigning with you, we see ourselves ushered into heaven, we see ourselves as having a spirit in us that is greater than the spirit that is in the world.

We're grateful, Holy Spirit, that you have given us faith, that you seal our hearts, that you give us an understanding to your word and an arrow to the future.

We have confidence that we will be spared the wrath of the Antichrist because we fall under your care.

We belong to you.

We're grateful for this chapter.

The profound way in which you describe the future.

Give us courage and confidence to face tomorrow.

Because if you know these things, you certainly know what is in store for us tomorrow.

We trust you and we love you, Lord.

It's in your Son's name we pray.

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.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, iBCBA.com.

If you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emanuel.

We're located in Northern Virginia, and for more information about when and where we worship, check out our church website.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week.

You speak Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.