I'd like for you to turn with me in God's word to Daniel. We'll look at chapter eight today of Daniel, and you'll find that on page 892. Page 892, if you're using the Bible in the chair. And just hold that open on your lap, and we'll get to that reading in just a couple of minutes. But for now, let's bow together in prayer, shall we? Father in heaven, our delight is in you. As we come this morning, we come from having experienced a full week, each one of us, in our own way and as your providence has dictated. Each one of us experiencing what we need in order to bring us conviction or comfort. But today we come here acknowledging and recognizing that this is not about us. This is about you and what you've called us to do is worship you. As we gather here today, we also recognize that your spirit moves in and among us. And he takes up the word, the word that we sing, the word that we hear in the scriptures, and he applies it to us. And he brings about in us what you so desire. and that is the image of your son. Father, bless us now as we think together about your word. We pray that you'll bless us in the study and in the hearing of it. For we ask it in Jesus name. Amen. Well, as I said, I'll get to that reading in just a minute. Let me make a few introductory comments before I read it. This morning we come to Daniel chapter 8 and we notice that there's another shift, and by now this comes as no surprise to you that there is a shift, and the shift is a language change. The Aramaic section, which started at the beginning of chapter 2, really in verse 4, is now finished. We're back to Hebrew. If I might, I've been saying to you that that we can't be sure why it is that this particular section is in Aramaic and the rest of the book is in Hebrew. After studying the section and scanning ahead, I do think that the Aramaic chapters were written to a broader audience than merely the church. In almost every chapter that we looked at from two through seven, we read about the everlasting dominion of God over all the people of every nation and language. These chapters are indeed about the dominion of God, his kingdom, his power, his might. And fittingly so that we find these chapters here in Babylon, that city that was built on the plains of Shinar, where Nimrod tried to gather every person and make them not only of one people, but to keep that language and that human autonomy going. But God is And I think that's the thrust of these particular chapters. But we also learned a lot as the church. We learned about what's happening in the world. These chapters told us about kings and governments and even the masses, how they'll respond to kings and the masses. They also gave us examples of how to respond under pressure when the world sees fit to apply that pressure to us. And so these chapters are absolutely wonderful chapters, and I hate to depart from them, but as we leave them and move to the next section, chapters 8 through 12 of the book, we can't help but ask a new question, one that's similar to the old question, but one that is new, and namely, what are these chapters? I'm going to give some general comments now, and I plan to give some more as we go along and as the chapters unfold before us. But the first thing I want you to mention, I want you to direct your attention to is this. we would do well to understand that chapters eight through 12 are not chapters and subjects that are divorced from history, but very much a part of it. In other words, we need to understand that what we looked at in two through seven, God's dominion over the whole world, is not something that is different from what we're looking at in these particular chapters, though these particular chapters are aimed with more precision to the church. And Daniel helps us to see that. How so? Well, he helps us to see it by tying in those previous chapters, that previous section, in with the chapters that we're going to be looking at now. So we shouldn't be surprised to see that there's overlap between those chapters in Aramaic and these particular you put it like this. In chapters three and six, and you remember chapters three and six. Chapter three was Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and chapter six was Daniel in the lion's den. There we got a taste of the lot of the church as it's in the hands of the world. And we'll continue to see that theme developed as we look at the rest of Daniel. So with that in mind, let's turn to Daniel chapter eight and let's look together at the text. I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that it does give me a great deal of delight to remind you continually that this is the word of God. Upon this we stand. It's the only safe footing in our day and age. And once you begin to find footing in other places, you'll find yourself sinking. This is the word of God. He's graciously given it to us for our sure establishment and our comfort. Praise be to the God who speaks. Daniel chapter eight. In the third year of the reign of Belshazzar, the king, a vision appeared to me, Daniel, subsequent to the one which appeared to me previously. I looked in the vision, and while I was looking, I was in the citadel of Susa, which is in the province of Elam. And I looked in the vision, and I myself was beside the Ulai Canal. Then I lifted my eyes and looked, and behold, a ram which had two horns was standing in front of the canal. Now the two horns were long, but one was longer than the other, with the longer one coming up last. I saw the ram budding westward, northward, and southward, and no other beast could stand before him, nor was there anyone to rescue from his power. But he did as he pleased and magnified himself. While I was observing, behold, a male goat was coming from the west over the surface of the whole earth without touching the ground. And the goat had a conspicuous horn between his eyes. He came up to the ram that had the two horns, which I had seen standing in front of the canal and rushed at him in his mighty wrath. I saw him come beside the ram and he was enraged at him. and he struck the ram and shattered his two horns, and the ram had no strength to withstand him, so he hurled him to the ground and trampled on him, and there was none to rescue the ram from his power. Then the male goat magnified himself exceedingly, but as soon as he was mighty, the large horn was broken, and in its place there came up four conspicuous horns toward the four winds of heaven. Out of one of them came forth a rather small horn, which grew exceedingly great toward the south, toward the east, and toward the beautiful land. It grew up to the host of heaven and caused some of the host and some of the stars to fall to the ground, and it trampled them down. It even magnified itself to be equal with the commander of the host, and it removed the regular sacrifice from him, and the place of his sanctuary was thrown down. And on account of transgression, the host will be given over to the horn along with the regular sacrifice and it will fling truth to the ground and perform its will and prosper. Then I heard a holy one speaking, and another holy one said to that particular one who was speaking, how long will the vision about the regular sacrifice apply while the transgression causes horror so as to allow both the holy place and the host to be trampled? He said to me, for 2,300 evenings and mornings, then the holy place will be properly restored. When I, Daniel, had seen the vision, I sought to understand it, and behold, standing before me was one who looked like a man. And I heard the voice of a man between the banks of Uli. And he called out and said, Gabriel, give this man an understanding of the vision. So he came near to where I was standing, and when he came, I was frightened and fell on my face, but he said to me, son of man, understand that the vision pertains to the time of the end. Now, while he was talking with me, I sank into a deep sleep with my face to the ground, but he touched me and made me stand upright. He said, behold, I am going to let you know what will occur at the final period of the indignation, for it pertains to the appointed time of the end. The ram, which you saw with the two horns, represents the kings of Media and Persia. The shaggy goat represents the kingdom of Greece, and the large horn that is between his eyes is the first king. The broken horn and the four horns that arose in its place represent four kingdoms, which will arise from his nation, although not with his power. In the latter period of their rule, when the transgressors have run their course, a king will arise, insolent and skilled in intrigue. His power will be mighty, but not by his own power. And he will destroy to an extraordinary degree and prosper and perform his will. He will destroy mighty men and holy people. And through his shrewdness, he will cause deceit to succeed by his influence. And he will magnify himself in his heart and he will destroy many while they are at ease. He will even oppose the prince of princes, but he will be broken without human agency. The vision of the evenings and mornings which has been told is true, but keep the vision secret, for it pertains to many days in the future. Then I, Daniel, was exhausted and sick for days. Then I got up again and carried on the king's business, but I was astounded at the vision and there was none to explain it. Shall we pray just briefly again? Father, as we open our ears to your word, we hear strange and difficult things. Help us. Help us to understand them, not just as pieces of prophecy vision applied to history, but help us to see them as they are in truth, the words of life, your words, and how they are for our sure establishment and our comfort, especially when one such as Daniel was so vexed by them. For we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Well, let me ask you a question. Have you ever met that person who absolutely loved to talk about the end times? I mean, they just couldn't get enough. Pries and Posts and Oz were part of their every, it was almost like cereal. You know, they just couldn't get enough. You know, have you had your Posts today? That sort of thing. They actually devoured books and memorized charts. The mere mention of the phrase left behind produced a little shiver up their spine and a rise of excitement in their voice. The phrase the second coming was the only time that you could see the actual whites of their eyes and their teeth. To put it simply, the end was their entertainment. You ever met a person like that? The end. Is there entertainment? Perhaps. I know I have. I would find it hard to believe if you haven't met a person like that. But if so, I want you to understand something. Daniel provides a point of comparison and contrast to that sort of person. How so? What do I mean? I want you to think about it. Here's Daniel. He's not simply reading books about the end. He's not simply charting the end. Here is a man who has been given the opportunity to see behind the veil. He has a glimpse of hundreds of years into the future. He is living the end time lover's dream. And I want you to notice his response. It's not that of entertainment, not at all. This man at the end of this chapter is exhausted. In fact, the text says that he was exhausted and ill for several days. What Daniel saw made him ill. Incidentally, I'm not going to say anything about this later, but I will say now that oftentimes people who are so infatuated with the end times ought to take Daniel's own model and get up and get about their business, not to mention his own response to this horrifying vision. What Daniel saw made him ill. That is completely different from the response that we often see from the end times junkies today. Today, it's just entertainment. In fact, the more fanciful it is, the better it is. If we can make a good movie out of it, then all the better. It's not something that exhausts us. It's not something that makes us ill to the hearing. I can tell you, I'm not gonna spend a lot of time with this, but I can tell you one reason why I think that we don't get ill, we don't get exhausted when we think about the end times, at least the popular Christian culture. It's this. In popular Christian formulations of the end times, the church is gone by the time the difficulty arrives. It's gone. but not here. Here the church is persecuted. The saints are trampled. And it's because Daniel loves the church, the saints in his own time, and the saints of future generations, they are his brothers and sisters, and to think of them suffering The way he sees it portrayed in this vision exhausts the man. You know, I couldn't help, when I was thinking about Daniel this past week and thinking about this, I couldn't help but think about some of those wicked kings in the Old Testament. And they're wicked and they repent and God says to them, okay, the judgment that I promised you, it's going to come after you in the time of your children. And you almost see relief in them. What a response. Oh good, it's not gonna happen to me, just my grandkids. But that's not Daniel. You see, Daniel is a man who loves the people of God, his brothers and sisters, for hundreds and hundreds of years to come. And it exhausts him to think about their treatment at the hands of evil people. That's the difference between Daniel and the folks who are entertained by the end. And so as we begin this chapter, I want for you to understand that what we need is an attitude like Daniel. These things ought to trouble us. They ought to, shall I suggest, exhaust us. So with that in mind, let's look at our first point. I want you to know that kings will be kings. Kings will be kings. As we noticed in the last section, that the kings of the earth vie with one another for the very throne that the other possesses. They desire not only those thrones, but the very throne of God. In seeking to displace each other, they desire to trample upon God and to seek and seize his authority. That's what I mean when I say that kings will be kings. And you can see that in the text. And there are a couple of things that show that progression. And I want us to look at that progression. I want us to see that in the text. I want us to see what the kings of earth are like. But before we do that, I want us to see something else. I want us to see what it is that we are seeing in the vision. So let's just pause here and think through what it is that we're being told. When we open up to chapter eight, Daniel is in his third year in the reign of Belshazzar. Now you remember that this is Nebuchadnezzar's grandson. This is the son of Nabonidus. And Nabonidus is not in Babylon at the time he has gone. Evidence indicates that he is refurbishing pagan temples He is a co-regency then with his father, Nabonidus. This is that Belshazzar. Now, during this third year, Daniel has a vision. And he tells us that it reminds him of the vision that he had while Belshazzar was in his first year of co-regency. And so he's connecting this particular vision, this particular section with the previous section. Now, in the present vision, and he is in a vision, he is not in Babylon, but in Susa. Now, why is that significant? Well, for this reason. Darius I made this. of Persia. In other words, in spite of Daniel's being under Babylonian rule and living in Babylon in this vision, he is in the Persian Empire and the Persian Empire, you remember, comes after the Babylonian Empire. Now, why is it then that he is in the Persian Empire? Well, there's a good reason for that. Though this vision takes place during the time of the reign of Babylon, The vision is not about Babylon. In fact, the vision treats Babylon as if Babylon has already fallen. The vision is really about two empires that will succeed Babylon. And we know that because the angel Gabriel tells us that. The vision is about a ram and a goat, he says. And according to Gabriel, the ram represents the Medo-Persian Empire, and the goat represents the Greece, the Greek Empire. These are animals that signify, represent kingdoms that will come after Babylon. And so despite the fact that Daniel was in Babylon at the time of the vision, he is seeing the future. Now let me fill this out just a bit. Daniel is standing on the bank of the Uli in the Citadel of Susa. What does he see? Well, he sees a ram. And the ram has two horns, actually three, but two horns, one larger than the other one, in front of the canal. And it's budding, it's head budding toward the west and toward the north and toward the south. In other words, the Medo-Persian Empire was expanding. Incidentally, this is the bear in the vision of chapter seven. This is the bear that was rising and had the three ribs in its mouth and was commanded to rise and devour me. This is that kingdom. Now it's under the symbol of a ram. Now, while Daniel is watching this ram headbutt in all of these different directions and conquer, While he's watching this, there appears a goat on the horizon coming from the west, and it's moving fast. In fact, so fast is this goat moving that it doesn't touch the ground. Now, think about this. This is the Greek empire that was pictured as a leopard with wings in chapter seven. Remember that? The leopard with wings particular chapter. Now, this king of this Greek kingdom is a clear reference to Alexander the Great and his kingdom and the speed at which it spread. And the goat, and the goat rushed at the ram, must have been an incredible sight, hurled the ram to the ground and trampled him. Now, in 334 BC, which would have been, think about this, which would have been about 200 years or so from the time of Daniel's writing. In other words, Daniel was seeing things hundreds of years into the future. 334, Alexander the Great would meet the Persian army at the Granicus River, and Alexander's army would literally overpower them. The Persians would suffer thousands of casualties, and Alexander would only suffer hundreds. Two years later, they would meet again, and at that point, Alexander would completely trodden them underfoot. However, Alexander, as we see in the vision, would enjoy a short period of time as ruler. Once he rose to power, the vision says, he would lose it, he would die. And so we find that here. And it's in that context that the kingdom of Alexander is divided up between his four generals, or what we see here, the four horns. And it was in that context that there is one little horn that arises out of those four. Now, We're gonna talk about that little horn in just a bit, but we need to return to what I said earlier. There's a progression in the text here when we think about the kings of the earth, when we think about kings being kings. Kings seem to move fast and furious. One nation rises, another one falls. God is the one who does this. Remember chapter two. God is the one who raises kings up and brings kings down, which is always a mystery to me when I hear people talk about America as if it has longevity of the everlasting. It's a mystery to me, especially in light of reading the scriptures as we do. God raises, God brings them down. They don't seem to last long. It's fast. It's furious. each desiring to dominate the other until eventually they ascend to the throne of the almighty. You see, they needed to learn the lesson that Nebuchadnezzar learned. And that was that the Lord of heaven humbles those who walk in pride. That's what the rulers of the earth need to learn. But I want you to see the progression. There's an interesting progression that happens in this particular chapter. Look in verse four, let your eye look there. This is of the Ram. And it says that the Ram did as he pleased and magnified himself. Then let your eye go down to verse 8. This is of the male goat, the Greeks, led by Alexander, at least initially, trampling the Medo-Persians. And what does it say? It says, is out of the four horns, the four generals that take over after Alexander's demise. And the one who should arise from those four generals, this one would magnify himself to be equal with the commander of the host. In other words, who is the host? It is God himself. And so there is a magnification of a little bit, there is a magnification of more intensity, until the magnification arises to the level of saying, I am equal with God. It's little wonder that this little horn, the man in this vision, who we will learn more about, his name is Antiochus, would take for himself the name Theos Antiochus Epiphanes, meaning the illustrious God, The Jews used to call him the madman, but that's the name that he took for himself, seeing himself as equal to the commander of the hosts, the God of heaven. We need to learn a lesson, and that is that kings will be kings. The leaders of this world, we need to keep in mind, are not different from one another. They're simply more of the same. There is a desire to magnify themselves rather than purpose to glorify the God of heaven and earth. And you even see this among men who try to establish themselves squarely in the evangelical camp. There is an unwillingness to speak with forthrightness and boldness for the glory of God revealed in Jesus Christ. And they're afraid to do that. They're afraid to do that, and they're afraid to do that because they know that even Christians won't support them. How is that so? And so they resort to the thing that every ruler and king knows, self-glorification. We need to keep that in mind because the second point depends upon it. And it's this, the subjects of the king of kings, the subjects of God, will be hated by the kings of this earth. Now, here in this vision, we have the unfolding plan of God. Now, if you were writing a book on history, if you were writing a book on the overthrow of Babylon or the overthrow of the Persian kingdom, the ascension of the Greek kingdom. You would write from any number of angles. You might think about the economics of Medo-Persia. You might think about the military prowess of the Greek army. You might even focus on the talents of Alexander. Or you might think about Antiochus and his cunning, his deceit that brought him into power as it did. Each history would be written from some different human perspective. That's only natural. We expect that when we go to the bookstore. We look at the back of the book and the inner flaps to find out what's the perspective that this history is being written from. But I want you to understand something. This is God's book. This is God's book. And these chapters are told from God's perspective. And we notice that God's attention focuses upon that little horn. Why? It focuses on that little horn because of where the little horn's attention falls. Look at verse nine. Out of one of them came forth a rather small horn, which grew exceedingly great toward the south, toward the east, and toward the beautiful land. The beautiful land is the land of Israel. It's the church under age. Now, let me put it like this. Daniel helps us to understand that God focuses His judgment toward one issue. How do the nations respond to my people? That's crucial. I want to tell you something. That's wonderful. I mean, when you think about that, when you think about the God of heaven and earth, who is unfolding for us his perspective of history on these unfolding kingdoms. And he says, you know, my concern is not necessarily about other cities all around, although the whole earth is his. My concern is about his attention on the beautiful land, on my people. That's a comfort. That is a comfort. But, as much of a comfort as it is, we need to understand something else. We need to understand that the nations will hate the church because they hate the church's God. It's the very thing that we learned in Matthew's Gospel. You remember chapter 10. If you're a part of His family and they hate the head of the house, they're going to hate the head of the house's children. If they hate the master, they're going to hate the disciples. This should come as little surprise, and if a man is willing to call himself the illustrious God, it seems likely that he would try to eliminate the people who would claim that such a claim just isn't so. And this brings us to think about that little horn. Antiochus IV, or Theos Antiochus Epiphanes for a minute or two, he rose to power in 175 BC. Again, I want you to just think about this. Daniel is now reporting things that will happen in about 450 or 500 years from his own time. But his rise doesn't concern us. What does concern us is his interaction with the church. Now, there are several things I want you to notice when we think about this little horn and his interaction with the church at the time of his power. The first is this. I want you to notice that he worked from within the church to bring it down. He worked from within the church to bring it down. Verse 23 says, Antiochus did it through insolence and intrigue. He did his work through insolence and intrigue. The man was cunning and deceitful. How so? Well, just take this for example. take the way in which he, early on in his rule, worked within the church under age in order to divide it further and further. You see, Antiochus saw the high priesthood as a political office, not as a religious office, obviously so. And there was a high priest at the time of his ascension to power by the name of Onius, Onius III. And Onius III despised the influx of Hellenism, the Greek culture coming more and more into Judaism, into the beautiful land. He opposed it. Well, not everyone who was a Jew opposed that sort of thing. In fact, some of them had that same kind of thing that every ruler has, a desire for power and self-glorification. And Jason, Onias's brother, was just such a man. And so Jason goes to Antiochus and his court, and he says, I'll tell you what. If you make me high priest, I'll see that you get a bigger tribute than my brother is willing to give. And so that's what happens. He is made the high priest. And Jason allows the Greek culture to be introduced into Judaism to a greater extent. In fact, after visiting Jerusalem, Antiochus said, I want you all to be called Antiochites, showing his approval of the influx of Hellenism and Judaism at that time. So what does he do? He gets inside the church and he begins to divide it. Now, I want you to know something. I'm not going to go into great detail here, but I just want you to know this. That's what we see today. We see people coming inside the church and we see cracks beginning to develop because people are introducing deceit and using insolence in order to divide the Christian church. We are living in a time where we need to be together in the faith of Jesus Christ. Because if we're not, we will be divided very much like Antiochus was able to divide the early church underage. However, his destruction was not simply achieved through intrigue and deception and working his way into the church. Secondly, he attacked the ordinances and worship of God's church. Antiochus issued an edict demanding a fusion of all nationalities of the empire into one people. Now, when you think about this for a minute, he probably wasn't thinking, I'm going to get those Jews. He was probably thinking about himself. I'm going to magnify my name and I'm going to do exactly what Nimrod did. I'm not even sure he was thinking about Nimrod, but you get the idea. I'm going to consolidate people of my empire into one people. We're going to have one culture, one language. We're all going to be the same, very much like what you see in Genesis chapter 10. Now, often persecution that comes upon the churches like that. It's not aimed directly at the church, but it's aimed at the self-glorification of the individual. And it's very much like what we find in Daniel chapter three. Everyone's going to bow down to this particular statue, 90 foot tall, and no one's going to be able to pray to anyone else but me. And all of a sudden, Christians say, you know, I'm trying to be a good citizen, but here's where the buck has to stop. I can't cross that line. And persecution then comes upon the church. That's the way it comes. And so here we find that Antiochus desires to build for himself one people, this huge one empire with a monolithic culture, and that affects the early church. Now, knowing that Jerusalem would require extra work, Antiochus and his regime brought an elderly philosopher into Jerusalem in order to supervise the implementation of Greek culture, of the Hellenization of the culture. And this particular philosopher identified the God of Israel with Jupiter. He said, no, no, no, you're not going to call him Yahweh anymore. This is Jupiter that you're going to worship. And he ordered that an image of a bearded individual be set up in the temple, a likeness that resembled Antiochus. And the Jews spoke of this as the abomination of desolation. Heathen rites were also observed in the temple. Slime sacrificed on the altar. Can you imagine how the Jews must have thought and felt? Just like in 11 through 14, the regular sacrifices stopped. In addition, we find that copies of the Bible were ordered destroyed. It is in verse 13 of Daniel's vision that we see that the little horn will fling truth to the ground and perform its will and prosper. You know, that's something that we need to get into our heads. We've not yet come to grips with the fact that by God's permission, one who would fling truth to the ground will prosper. We've not yet come to grips with the fact that we look much like the pattern of Romans 1. Our nation is moving downhill and it's under the judgment of God. And we wonder, and we wonder why it is that we have the candidates that we have. We can't figure out why it is that we can't get a Christian into the government who will actually glorify God. Really? Can we not see it? in patterns like this one. We can't do it because we are a sinful nation. We are under the judgment of the living God. And the more we seek for a political power, a king, a prince, you name him, the more we seek for human deliverance, the less we will have deliverance. Because the more we will need to see, says God, that you still don't see where your deliverance rests and in whom it rests. The little horn, by the permission of God, will fling truth to the ground and will prosper. And I want to tell you a third thing, and this is hard for me to tell you. This little horn trampled the people of God underfoot. I want you to look at verse 10. The church here is You know what Daniel's doing, don't you? It's a beautiful thing that he's doing. He's taking us back to the Abrahamic language, isn't he? When God said, Abram, you will have children as many as the stars in the heaven. And here God is saying to Daniel in this vision that they are taking my people, my stars, and they are flinging them. This little horn is flinging them to the ground. The end will come. The end would come. Here's the thing about this chapter. There's a repeated reference to the end here. Look at verse 17. Understand that the vision pertains to the time of the end. Verse 19. For it pertains to the appointed time of the end. Look at verse 26. For it pertains to many days in the future. Now, here's the question. Here's the question that we have to ask when we look at this particular text. Does the reference to the end, in these verses, in these verses, pertain to the end of time, to the second coming of Christ, the eschaton, whatever you want to call it, or do they refer to the period when Antiochus' reign of terror would end? Is that the end? In other words, when the one Holy One asks the other Holy One, how long is it going to be that the regular sacrifices are stopped? And then the other Holy One says to him, 2,300 days. In other words, is the end in view an end of the particular terror that Daniel sees? Which is the end? Well, I want to tell you, You may or may not agree with me, but I think that the end here refers to the end of Antiochus. I think it refers to the end of Antiochus. Now, having said that, even though there seems to be a very pointed end in mind in this particular text, I need to say something else. It seems likely that Antiochus is used here as a foretaste of the Antichrist to come. I want you to think about a couple of things. Think about the fact that he's not the only little horn that we've encountered. we encountered a little horn in the last vision, chapter seven. But that little horn, remember, grew out of the fourth kingdom, which was Rome. And it was that little horn that had the eyes of a man and made boasts. And I said, this is the epitome, the embodiment of human autonomy. And so here we have, again, that image of the little horn taken up and used here to describe for us a man who would claim for himself the status of God. And I think that the idea is just as we would see Daniel chapter 7, the little horn that grew up out of that fourth kingdom throughout history, so too we will continue to see him in the likeness of men like Antiochus. So I think that's first, and I think you have to understand that what we're seeing here is human autonomy embodied in Antiochus, and we'll see it again and again in the kings of the earth. But also, like the Antichrist, the power of Antiochus is not his own. Now, you remember that the ruler of Greece, his power was not his own. We read that in verse 22, it wasn't his own. And neither is the power of the little horn, Antiochus. He had a supernatural source, you'll remember. His power was not his own power. This is the work of the evil one. I want you to think ahead to Revelation chapter 13, and you remember where the beast that rises out of the sea gets his power. He gets his power from the dragon, from the evil one. from Satan himself. And so now we begin to learn that the embodiment of human autonomy, which will rise up in power, in halls of power, in people in government, we understand that they're driven not by just selfish ambition and desire for self-glorification, though they are, but that has a deeper seat. There is a demonic element to that sort of thing. and it's something that we'll see over and over and over again. But here's the thing, and this is the thing that's best of all, his downfall, his downfall, Antiochus, his downfall, Alexander's downfall, and every ruler like them, it will come, it will come not through men, You see that, verse 25? His kingdom will be broken without human agency, or literally, without human hands. How can we not think back to chapter two and the stone that was cut from the rock, not with human hands, that was flung at the kingdoms of the earth, destroying them all? Now listen to me. We need to learn this lesson. We need to learn this lesson and we need to get it into our heads good. Because here's the thing that we want to do. We get restless. We see our nation heading in a bad direction. And we want to do. But we're spending all of our time doing things that will spin our wheels. I'm not saying we shouldn't do things that are good and helpful for the nation. We should. But we do them to the neglect of the things that we really ought to be doing. You know, when Arnold Palmer would start a new golf season, I'm not a golf fan, I've heard this second hand, but when he would start a new golf season, you know what he would do? He would go to his old instructor when he was growing up and he would say, Mr. So-and-so, My name is Arnold. Teach me how to play golf." And his instructor from all those years back would take him through the basics. How to swing and how to stand. You see, that's a great model for us as Christians. We need to go back to the basics. You know, fathers leading their families into church. Us listening to the Word of God and actually saying, how does this apply to our lives and how can I take it outside of these walls? Can I have some time for devotions? Can I call my family around the table? And can I talk to them about the things of God? And can we pray together? You know, those things aren't hard. It's not rocket science. But they're the basics. And I want to tell you something. They belong to the kingdom of God. And that is what will bring down the nations of men. That is the kingdom that is not cut out of rock with hands of men. It's the kingdom of God. And here's the beautiful thing about it. Daniel's not finished telling us about that kingdom and the way that that kingdom will come visibly. He's gonna talk to us about that in the next chapter. This is the Messiah's kingdom. The Messiah who now reigns and the Messiah to whom we must bow. Praise be to God for his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this day and for the way in which you have revealed to us in little snippets what's happening in history so that we can then begin to apply them to the course of human affairs and events. You started by telling us in this book that there were things that happened in the world of men but they are all by your appointment. Father, we need to trust you, and we have a tendency to fail in that. Help us to do that more and more, to put our trust in you, to find our way in you. Father, thank you for the Lord Jesus, for the way in which he has revealed himself as king, having died upon the cross to forgive his subjects all of their sin, having lived that righteous life in order that they might be imputed with his righteousness. Not that they might stand on their own, but that standing in him, we might be your children, sons and daughters of the living God. Father, until that time is consummated, we realize that we will be treated no better than the Lord Jesus. Make us happy with that. Make us content with that until he comes again.