11 is where we're at. I'm going to begin by having you think about references to the anointed one. This isn't a direct connection to our text, but it's an indirect one, and I think it can be helpful for preparing what we're going to look at later today. have found David, my servant. With my holy oil I have anointed him." Now that's a verb there, the word mashach, and when you turn it into a noun you get mashiach. In Greek it's the word Christ. Christ is not Jesus' last name. It is the word Messiah. He is the Christ, the Messiah. Now there's a well-known appearance of this word in Psalm 2 too. It says the kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed. Now the ESV capitalizes that word, most likely because the New Testament quotes this as talking about Jesus the Messiah, the anointed one. But curiously, I wanted to see if there were other English translations that didn't capitalize. I saw three Jewish Bibles, at least one of them was written by, or translated by a Messianic group of Jews, and I wanted to think of why would they not capitalize Messiah there? I think it's because the most immediate context seems to be the king of Judah, of whom David was the prototype. When it goes on to say, I have set my king on my holy hill, David is that anointed king. Hence, Jerusalem is called the city of David. That's the holy hill. So you might ask, do you have a contradiction? And the answer is no. Contradictions only exist when two things are incompatible. David can be God's anointed and Jesus can be God's anointed because God made a covenant to make David's descendants blessed and kings. And so you have Solomon being called the anointed. You have Josiah being called the anointed. But Jesus is the capital anointed king because he is both the son of David and the son of God. In this way, Psalm 2 or Psalm 89 for that matter, they're not just about David or just about Jesus, they're about both. Now scholars have called this telescoping. It often refers to prophecy and in some ways what I just gave you is prophetic. But you can have history be telescoped as too in terms of it being typological of things to come. So what is telescoping? Well, Tremper Longman explains it this way. He says, the image conjured by this term is that of a collapsible telescope, right? Think about a ship's captain pulling out his telescope, right? One that looked like a short one-piece tube until it's extended, revealing several parts. In the same way, biblical prophecy was often presented as one event. But as we witness its fulfillment, we see that it was really more complex than that. And Baldwin says that in this way, the more distant event appears to merge with the nearer, so that they seem to become indistinguishable from one another. So telescoping happens on a regular basis. We see it with prophecies like the virgin birth, which seems to have not just Jesus, but also King Ahaz's sons in mind. We see it in prophecies about the princes and kings of Babylon and Tyre, who are likened to the beings in the Garden of Eden. I sort of argued this point actually last week in Daniel 10 when I suggested that the Prince of Persia and the Prince of Greece can be both earthly and heavenly princes at the same time. The two authors I just quoted go on to talk about Matthew 24 and Mark 13 as perhaps the best known example of this phenomenon where Jesus predicts both the fall of Jerusalem and the end of the age. These passages are confusing to many interpreters of prophecy because we often have it set in our minds that prophecy can only have one fulfillment. So it's common to read about how one or the other of those passages are either fulfilled already with no future fulfillment or totally ignore what has already happened because the prophecy is only about the future. This is a weakness of some forms of preterism and some forms of dispensationalism which pitch their tents on opposite side of the interpretation camp. I believe the main reason God did this, I was talking with some of you yesterday morning about this very thing, was so that he would obscure prophecy from those who would seek to thwart it. If they had known that, for example, Jesus was going to die and rise again to become the king and conquer the powers, they would have never crucified the Lord of Glory, Paul says. By the way, it says none of the rulers of this age understood this, and that's the same word as the word Prince of Persia in Daniel 10. I find that interesting. Now, regarding Matthew and Mark, Baldwin's on point when she says, only after the former event had taken place did it become possible to distinguish which passages applied to the events of 70 AD and which were predictions of the more distant future. That still hasn't helped many interpreters who are still confused by this. What helps us more than anything when we're reading prophecy is to make sure we're carefully reading what the text actually says. And because I'm gonna come back to this a little bit later, and I won't spend a long time on Matthew 24 at all today, but I wanted to use this to illustrate what I mean here. That's the famous Olivet Discourse, okay, where Jesus gives his most detailed predictions about the future. Matthew begins by giving us the setting for this. It says, Jesus left the temple and was going away when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. Mark tells you the meaning of this. They were like tourists, because they came down from Galilee, and now they're just like me when I've been to Jerusalem. I'm like, wow, this place is incredible. They are just full of admiration of Herod's temple. And it says, one said, look, teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings. Well, Matthew continues it this way. It says, but he answered them, you see all these, do you not? Truly I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down. And as he went and sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately saying, tell us when these things will be and what will be the sign of your coming at the end of the age. Now when people hear that, I think most people assume that the disciples are asking just one question. And in fact, it's possible the disciples thought they were only asking one question. What's the sign of your coming? And what about the end of the age? If you read Preterists, it's common to see them taking the entire discourse as being fulfilled in 70 AD. On the other hand, if you read Dispensationalists, it's common to hear them merge the whole thing into one long discussion about the rapture, the great tribulation, in our own future, followed by the return of Christ. And both of these views have problems. So to solve them, R.T. France, in his commentary on Matthew, brilliantly notices that Jesus actually answers it as two separate questions. Verses 4-35 are mostly about the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. On the other hand, when we get to verse 36, Jesus changes the subject to begin talking about the second coming. And while some of this remains a mystery, some of it isn't mysterious at all, as we have exact matching historical records to demonstrate that Jesus was right about the destruction of the temple and the stones not being left on top of each other. So telescoping can happen like this, or sometimes it can happen with a word like Messiah, where there's actually two fulfillments of a prophecy. Either way, it's a very important topic that I'm kind of bringing up and saving here for the end of Daniel. So we're coming into Daniel 11. I want you to recall that chapters 10 through 12 form one literary unit that take up the last quarter of the book. There's three distinct sections that make up what roughly correspond to our chapters. There's an introduction, there's a vision, and there's final instructions. Now technically speaking, the introduction goes through the first verse of chapter 11, while the vision goes through the third verse of chapter 12. That makes the chapter breaks rather unfortunate in my mind, okay? Because you need to read the entire vision to consider how you're to interpret what's going on here. Now last time I showed you that there's a long chiasm that takes, All three of these chapters, if we knock off the beginning and the end of it so that we're just looking at chapter 11, we see that it's bookended with the Book of Truth and the scroll. And in the middle, there's this Prince of the Covenant who will be destroyed. We're going to look at him today. Within the chapter, there's also a smaller structure that has the center in verses 32 through 35 with a contemptible person who happens to also be the prince of this broken covenant. As for the chapter, the angel that has been speaking to Daniel is going to unfold one of the greatest, if not the single most precise prophecy in the Old Testament, and maybe in the entire Bible in all the world. It gives us a setting which may be slightly different from the previous chapter. This is verse one in the ESV. As for me, in the first year of Darius the Mede, I stood up to confirm and strengthen him. I'm gonna say a couple of things about this verse. I say it might be different from the previous chapter because this verse has some challenges. The Greek version says Cyrus rather than Darius. It was sometimes thought that Cyrus was Darius and they might be trying to harmonize that. Now I've said that Darius was the vassal of Cyrus who ruled for two years and then died. So going with the Hebrew text this would recall Daniel 9.1 and would probably therefore identify this angel as Gabriel because he's the one that spoke in chapter 9. The bigger problem is who is being strengthened here. If you read the SV it seems like it's Michael being strengthened. Now if that's the case, and Michael's the son of God, which is what I think, then I think we have a parallel here with Jesus being strengthened after the temptation with Satan. It's certainly possible because the word of God did not merely put on a husk of an angelic body in the Old Testament, nor did he merely seem to have one when he really didn't. He didn't poof in and out of existence, but he's the angel of the Lord, okay? always there presiding over Israel. He is second Yahweh. But in the created form of an angel, he would have been subject to whatever weaknesses they have, just like when he took on human flesh. So that's possible. But other translations read totally different, as if it's Gabriel who's being strengthened by Michael. That's the way the Greek reads, for example. In either case, and I prefer the Greek version better, the purpose seems to be to reinforce the heavenly spiritual battle that we talked about last week going on in chapter 10. And that allows for a transition then to this incredible series of almost 50 verses. As we begin to look at the vision of the future, I'm going to point out one more important feature of our of our chapter here, which is that, remember there's a second chiasm that takes up the second half of the book. Chapter 11 is parallel to chapter 8 in that. And this is important because I said chapter 8 is about Antiochus Epiphanes. And we're going to see he is a major focal point, but he's not the end point of chapter 11. So let's get into this. Gabriel unfolds the vision. He says, now I will show you the truth. And rather than speaking through language of fantastic beasts with many horns or heads like we saw in chapter seven and eight, it's just a straightforward explanation of the future that's very much a lot of what we've already seen, although it's much more detailed. So in what follows, I'm going to get rather tedious. I might put some of you to sleep even. I don't know. But I'm going to do this for a reason that you'll find out when I'm done with it, okay? So verse 2, So just like we've begun with before, we start with the Persians. Now, there's slight disagreement on who exactly these kings are, but they're probably Cambyses, who is the son of Cyrus, who was the cause of the initial trouble that caused Gabriel to be delayed in the previous chapter. Then you have Smeridia Magnus, then you have Darius, the son of Hystapis, and then the fourth king would be Xerxes the Great. This is the guy who's depicted in the movie 300, if you've ever seen that. very much like what it says about this king here. Okay? Very rich, great, stirring up the kingdoms of Greece. In fact, in that movie, Xerxes becomes the forerunner who stirs up the Greeks. He does it through King Leonidas in the great battle of Thermopylae and eventually, through a continued poking of this sleeping, great, wild animal known as Greece, there will come one named Alexander the Great. He is the mighty king, in verse three, who arises to rule with great dominion and do as he wills. Now, Alexander's biographer, Quintus Curtius, said almost this exact same thing when he wrote, he seemed to the nations to do whatever pleased him. But not even the mighty Alexander could really do whatever he wanted because it says in verse 4, as soon as he had arisen, his kingdom will be broken and divided. By whom? Well, by God, of course. His unsurpassed empire in life would be matched only by his inexplicable sudden death at such a young age. And God, as we have seen twice now, divided that kingdom into four parts. We've seen a leopard with four heads in chapter seven. We've seen a goat with four horns in chapter eight. And now it says it's a divided kingdom to the four winds of the earth. So Alexander is nothing to God and God scatters his empire to the four winds. And I want you to think about this, especially in our days right now, okay? If that is how the most powerful man in human history is to God, what do you think he thinks about politicians and dictators today? Now, these winds represent the four generals of Alexander who took control of his empire. These are not his posterity, nor according to the authority with which he ruled, for his kingdom will be plucked up and go to others beside these. That's what Daniel said. So with those words, we're ushered into a great battle between the two most powerful of the four. The first is called the King of the South in verse five. That is, south of Israel. In this case, Ptolemy I, Soter, general of Alexander, the son of Lagos, king of Egypt. It's from his line that the famous Cleopatra is descended. The other here is called one of his princes, in verse six, he's called the king of the north. This is another of Alexander's princes or rulers. This is his general, Seleucus I, Nicator. He was by far the largest of the four territories. It's to the north and east of Israel. And Gabriel explains that he shall be stronger and shall rule, and his authority shall be a great authority, which is exactly what you see with the Seleucids. Now he skips a little bit of history, and then he says, after some years they will make an alliance, in verse six. And then he gets very specific. He says, the daughter of the king of the south will come to the king of the north to make an agreement. This is Bernice Phenophorus, I practice these names all week long. The daughter of Ptolemy. the second Philadelphius, the son of Ptolemy I. So, Gabriel predicts here her wedding to Antiochus II Theos, grandson of Seleucus. The two have a child. This displeased his other wife, oops, Laodice, who apparently poisoned him and he died. And later, Bernice was murdered along with many of her Egyptian entourage and the child. Then it says, next, from a branch from her roots, one shall arise in his place. This is now in the south, Ptolemy III, Eurgates, brother of Bernice. It says, he shall come against the army and enter the fortresses of the king of the north, and he will deal with them and prevail. Jorgitz conducted a campaign against Seleucus II and overran almost all of Asia, creating the maximum extent of the Ptolemaic Empire. In this campaign, he in fact carried off to Egypt their gods, exactly what was predicted. This seems to be a fascinating parallel to me to the princes of heaven fighting in Chapter 10. You keep getting these references to the gods, the silver and the gold, and don't forget the spiritual war from chapter 10 is never far away. This victory doesn't last long. The same king he overran, Seleucus II Callinicus, quickly recaptured his lost territory. And Gabriel predicts that he will make his way down into Egypt, but will not be successful. After him, it says, his son shall wage war and assemble a great multitude of forces. They will fight and fight all the way to his fortresses. And then the sons here refer to Seleucus II Karenus and Antiochus III, the Great. This is the father of Antiochus Epiphanes. This guy will last a little while here in the passage. So Seleucus II is murdered after only three years, but Antiochus ends up ruling the region for almost 30 years. He's the one in verse 10 who will keep coming in overflow and pass through. But the king of the south would be moved with rage and fight against the king of the north. This is Ptolemy IV, Philippator, king and pharaoh. He's raised a great multitude. In this particular case, there's a war that takes place that becomes one of the biggest wars of the ancient world. He raises 70,000 infantry, 5,000 horses, and 73 elephants, just for fun. Antiochus III has 62,000 infantry, 6,000 cavalry, and 102 elephants. This war takes place in Gaza, and even though Antiochus had the bigger army, he loses. This causes Ptolemy's heart to swell with pride. Nevertheless, Though he inflicts heavy casualties, in verse 12, and even makes peace with Antiochus, he does not press his advantage. In fact, one ancient historian says he gave up all honorable pursuits and turned to a life of abandonment, which is basically what Daniel's predicting. In response, in verse 13, the King of the North rises again with a multitude even larger than the first. In 212 to 205 BC, Antiochus earns his title, the Great. Ptolemy V, Epiphanes, only six years old, comes to power and Antiochus moves against him in Egypt. The battle is fought at Penaeus, that's Caesarea Philippi, at the foot of Mount Hermon in 200 BC. I point this out because the reason all of this is predicted is because Israel is right between the north and the south fighting all these wars. So guess where half the wars end up being fought? Right in the middle of Israel, okay? They're always in the middle. They cannot escape their geography. It's at this moment that it finally passed the rule of their land from the Ptolemies in Egypt to the Seleucids in the north. Verse 14, next, many shall arise against the king of the south, and the violent among your own people will lift themselves up in order to fulfill the vision, but they will fail. So Judea is now split into factions. Some support the Ptolemies in the south, others the Seleucids. The violent ones might be a messianic party who tried to usher in the end, and they failed. The king of the north would throw up siege works and take a well-fortified city. Here we have Antiochus the Great besieging Sidon and the garrison of Scopus in Jerusalem. Josephus tells us that the Jews freely followed Antiochus and joined forces in besieging their own city. And Gabriel agrees in verse 16, he shall stand in the glorious land with destruction in his hand. In verse 17, he shall give him the daughter of women to destroy the kingdom, but it will not stand or be to his advantage. Antiochus actually makes an alliance with Ptolemy through a betrothal of his daughter, Cleopatra, to Ptolemy V. It didn't work because Cleopatra seems to have loved her new husband more than her father. So Antiochus turns his face to the coastlands and captures many of them until a commander puts an end to his insolence and he turns him back upon him. Capturing the Greek islands, he reaches Thrace in 196 BC, but ignores the Roman warnings to stay out, and he's defeated by the Romans at Thermopylae in 191 BC, who then drove him out of Ajominer in the defeat of Magnesia in 190. This is through a commander, Lucius Cornelius Scipio, just like it was predicted here. Antiochus could never get enough of war. So he turns his face back to the fortress of his own land in Asia Minor, but it says he would stumble and fall, meeting a fameless death at Elimias in 187 BC, as he attempted to take the Temple of Bel in order to pay tribute to Rome, because Rome is starting to grow in power by this point. In his place, it says, will arise in verse 20, one who will send an exactor of tribute for the glory of the kingdom, but in a few days he will be broken, neither in anger nor in battle. This refers to Cellulus IV Philippator, who sent Heliodorus to plunder the temple at Jerusalem, but then he was killed by Heliodorus, his own general. And we come in verse 21 next to the center of the prophecy. In his place shall arise a contemptible person to whom royal majesty has not been given. He shall come in without warning and obtain the kingdom by flatteries. This is the biblically infamous type of the Antichrist, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the son of Antiochus the Great. He took out Heliodorus without bloodshed but was not at first received as king. The center of the chapter is actually verse 22. Armies will be utterly swept away before him and broken, even the prince of the covenant. That prince of the covenant is most likely the high priest of Israel, a fellow named Onias III, who was murdered by Antiochus. This is a type of Christ himself, hence the center of the chapter. After that moment, alliances were made with Antiochus, which allow him to begin to gain power It says, the small people, this could refer to Jason, Onias' brother, who promptly gave a bribe to Antiochus in order to give him the priesthood, which he was given in 175 BC. Verse 24 returns to Antiochus. He will come into the richest part of his province. He will do what neither his fathers nor his father's fathers have done, scattering among them plunder, spoil, and goods. He will devise plans against strongholds, but only for a time. So Antiochus is consolidating his power, he's biding his time until he will strike Egypt, it says, and he will stir up his power and his heart against the king of the south with a great army. This is his first invasion of Egypt in 170 BC. Though they had superior numbers, Egypt lost that war. Gabriel predicted in verse 26, he will not stand, even those who eat his food, shall break him. His army will be swept away and many will fall down slain. Then the two kings, the one still Antiochus and the other Ptolemy IV Philometer, will have their hearts bent on doing evil, Daniel says. They will speak lies at the same table but to no avail, for the end is yet to be at the appointed time." Take note of that language. It is God who determines the end from the beginning, not warring kings. Antiochus in verse 28 shall return to his land from Egypt with great wealth, but his heart will be set against the Holy Covenant, and he shall work his will and return to his own land. In 169 BC, on his way back to the north, he went through Judea and ransacked the temple, taking huge amounts of gold and setting a garrison in the citadel. Antiochus has just attacked the God of gods. Verse 29, at the appointed time, he will return and come into the south, but it will not be this time as it was before. The appointed time means that God has all this under his sovereign control. It has all been predestined. All of it. This happened in 168 BC. It says in verse 30, but ships of Kittim shall come against him and he will be afraid and withdraw and will turn back and be enraged and take action against the Holy Covenant. These ships are the islands of the Mediterranean and they probably are the ships of the Romans. Antiochus returns to Jerusalem in 168 where he makes a deal with Jewish renegades as he paid attention to those who forsake the Holy Covenant. In 167, Antiochus earns his infamy. Verse 31, forces from him will appear and profane the temple and fortress and will take away the regular burnt offering and they will set up the abomination that makes desolate. Remember that language. This was essentially predicted back in chapter eight as well. He seduced with flattery those Jewish rebels who violated the covenant with all the blasphemous things that we saw them do in that chapter. First Maccabees said, then you and your sons will be numbered among the friends of the king and you and your sons will be honored with silver and gold and many gifts. Antiochus sets up an altar to Zeus and sacrifices a pig on it in the temple. More cosmic battles. Verse 32, but the people who know their God will stand firm and take action. That refers to Judas Maccabees. And it talks about him as someone who knew his God. He was no Saturday only Jew. He was a believer in Christ. Judas and the priests of Israel, then it says, were the wise among the people and made many understand, even though there was dark and dangerous days of war and persecution, it says sword and flame and captivity and plunder, through all this persecution that Israel would then go through, some would prove faithful, some would not. Some would fall by the sword and be killed. If you ever get the chance to read 4 Maccabees, chapters 8 through 12, it's an incredibly vivid account of one woman's seven sons who were one by one taken before Antiochus and made to recant their faith. Each one remains faithful, and his mother is made to watch as each one in turn is brutally martyred in front of her eyes. This kind of stuff, it says, will happen until the Time of the end, for it still awaits the appointed time. Now that's verse 35. It's at this point that interpretations begin to vary greatly. Some confine the rest of our chapter to the days of Antiochus. Preterists move us into the days of the Caesars. Futurists see things moving into the days of Islam and the Papacy and even the still future Antichrist. The starting point for why, I believe, is because of the language of the end and the appointed time. So let's kind of look at this briefly. It begins, and the king shall do as he wills. The question is, what king? Well, if you read from the previous verse, it seems like it's still Antiochus, because there's no transitional language. Verse 36, he will exalt himself and magnify himself above every god and will speak astonishing things against the god of gods. He will prosper till the indignation is accomplished, for what is decreed shall be done. Sounds like the same person. And certainly Antiochus did do this to some degree. But when you read the next two verses, they don't describe Antiochus at all. He shall pay no attention to the God of his fathers or to the one beloved by women. He shall not pay attention to any other God for he shall magnify himself above all. He shall honor the God of fortresses instead of these. A God whom his fathers did not know he shall honor with gold and silver with precious stones and costly gifts. Now I want you to think of the Greeks here because that's what Antiochus is. For centuries they've worshiped the Olympians. These are the gods of his fathers. And by the way, the god beloved by women is probably someone like Adonis, so it's still one of the gods. But Antiochus actually went into Egypt and offered sacrifices to basically all of those gods. And in fact, when he goes into God's own temple, he sets up an altar to Zeus, who many think is the god of fortresses. But Zeus was already worshiped in Greece as the god of gods. So it doesn't fit Antiochus at all. So instead of seeing Daniel as being mistaken and that he didn't know the future, he only knew the past, and then they use this as proof to say he's writing a book when Judas Maccabees had retaken the temple, that's the liberal position. Some people try to harmonize this with slightly later history. For example, Calvin understands this to be the prophecy, not of Antiochus, but of the Caesars. For example, Caesar Augustus was considered the son of God and the savior of the world. A couple of titles you know who those properly belong to. After his death, he was proclaimed Divus Augustus, God Augustus. And so the new worship they were ushering in was of themselves. That's what These interpreters tell us. Now that does actually fit the idea of this being a god his fathers did not know. Verse 37, he shall honor the god of fortresses instead of these. That's given as proof. Who is this strong deity, the god of fortresses? It's themselves, the Caesars. By force they extend and maintain their power. So some see this going to the last several verses all the way up to the birth of Christ at the end of our chapter. Julius Caesar is sometimes said to fulfill these prophecies, and there's some reason to think so. Julius took his army to Egypt and defeated Ptolemy XIII in the Battle of the Nile. He extended his empire to Arabia, Edom, Moab, and Ammon, like it says in verse 43. While he was conquering, he got news from the east and the north of Egypt that a rebellion had broken out in Pontus in Asia Minor. That's the Battle of Zila in 47 BC, which ensues that no, which is no minor skirmish because this is the place where Caesar utters his most famous lines, I came, I saw, I conquered. On his way to Pontus, he passed through Judea and Syria and enters into an alliance with the Jews who helped him at Zila. That would be the meaning of he shall pitch his royal tents between the sea and the glorious holy mountains. But his end is very much like the last part of verse 45. He will come to his end and no one will help him. In fact, Julius was assassinated by those closest to him. And in this way, the time of the end for many interpreters is not the end of all things, but the end of the prophecies here, which they see as the birth of Christ. There's problems with this, though. While it's popular to claim that Julius proclaimed himself as a living God, that's actually quite debated. Even if he did, that's not the same thing as saying you're magnifying yourself above every god, which Julius never did. In fact, a good case can be made that the worship of Julius was as much imposed from without as it was from him. For example, what god of gods would refuse the royal crown just a month before he's assassinated, which is what Julius did? Some have looked in various ways then to 70 AD. Others see Caesar Titus or a much lesser known Jew, John of Giskala, who both lived at the destruction of the temple. And there's some good reason for this as well. Jesus himself clearly saw the events of this chapter and the next as being in his own future. Let's return to the Olivet Discourse for just a minute. Matthew 24 15 says, when you see the abomination of desolation spoken by the prophet Daniel standing in the holy place, let the reader understand. And then he goes on to say, run away, flee from Jerusalem. Don't be anywhere near that because they're coming to take it. I believe very strongly that Jesus is predicting here the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. And yet this quotation is found in the earlier part of Daniel 11 and also in chapter 12 where it seems to be about Antiochus desecrating the temple in 167 BC. In other words, there's a double fulfillment going on. There's a couple of problems seeing that what we're looking at in the last part of Daniel 11 is only about 70 AD though. First, most of our earliest commentators all see a future Antichrist here. Why would they do that? Did they not know what happened to Jerusalem? Well, of course they did. Second, and more importantly, the vision does not end at the end of chapter 11. And this is where I think it gets interesting for us this morning. It continues for a couple more verses. We read, at that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble such as never been seen since there was a nation till that time. But at that time, your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name who is found written in the book. Now this particular verse is actually not that difficult to see being fulfilled in the first century. Michael arising could be seen as the coming of the incarnate Christ, and the time of trouble could easily be the terrors of the Roman army surrounding Jerusalem. The names of those written in the book then would refer to Christians, all of whom escaped the destruction of the city precisely because they believed Jesus' prophecy 40 years earlier. But the next verse is the real problem, the next two verses. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the sky above. And those who turn, many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever. This is talking about the resurrection and we're gonna look at it all next week. Preterists have to either spiritualize this resurrection and say it's like the new birth, or they have to go back 40 years to Jesus' resurrection, and remember that strange verse in Matthew where a bunch of other people rose from the dead that day? But that doesn't seem to fit. Why would you go backwards 40 years to see that? Okay, I think that the New Testament passages that speak of a bodily resurrection, get it from Daniel. And therefore, it seems to me that what makes the most sense here from verse 36 on is that we're seeing a telescoping of prophecy that has multiple fulfillments. Antiochus, the Caesars, 70 AD, perhaps Islam, perhaps the papacy, perhaps even into our own future, which lies in shadow and mist. And why not? If past prophecy, of the first coming was deliberately obscure to stop people from stopping it, why wouldn't God do that with the second coming as well? I grew up in this stuff, and I'm telling you, people claim to know a lot more than I think they really know about what's coming in the future. We need to be humble when we come to passages like this. As we think about this incredible chapter, I have probably three thoughts for us. First one is this. I have bogged you down with a ton of information that I promise neither you nor I will remember much longer after today. The Ptolemies, the Seleucids, the dates, the battles, other things. I did this on purpose. Tell you a story. Back in 2001, during my last year in seminary, I attended the Evangelical Theological Society national meetings that were down in Colorado Springs because I was going to seminary at that point in time. The theme that year was on a raging debate that was taking place at that time on something called open theology. Open theology has been around in one form or another for a very long time, but I happen to be at its modern epicenter from my old association of churches when my pastor, John Piper, called out my professor, Greg Boyd, for teaching heresy. The heresy was this idea that God knows all things that are knowable. But the future's not knowable to anyone, and therefore, God does not know the future. Rather, it is, what they'll say is, mostly open to the free will decisions of humans, even though God decrees a few things to happen, like the death of Christ. But when it comes to events like these things, he has to make guesses. Now, he's a really, really good guesser, but at the end of the day, that's what it is, he's guessing. Now, I'm not gonna go much into that other than to say that I remember at that conference one of the papers that I heard that year, and it was on Daniel 11. It's the only other time I've ever heard anybody talk about this whole chapter. I don't remember the author, but he basically went through this chapter in painfully tedious detail to prove that God couldn't possibly guess about the things in this. It is statistically utterly impossible, given the precision, the detail, and the accuracy of the predictions. This is precisely why some liberals hate this chapter so much, and why they have to date Daniel to the second century BC, and say that for most of it, it's history, and for the rest of it, he got it wrong. I strongly believe that Daniel wrote this book, and Gabriel gave this prophecy to him in the sixth century. It's absurd to think that a nameless Jew could voice this kind of a forgery upon the population that would immediately accept it as an ancient book and then consider it sacred scripture within like a year of its coming on the scene. The simple fact is, perhaps more than any other chapter in the Old Testament, Daniel 11 ought to give us unshakable confidence that God both knows and controls the future of the human race. Kings are nothing to him. Time is meaningless to him. Plans and schemes to overthrow him and his people are perfectly in his sovereign and omnipotent hand. I cannot think of a better chapter to meditate on in days when our own civilization seems so fragile and its future up for grabs. This is where the rubber meets the road, friends. Either God is who he says he is, and you must believe and trust him about the future, turning to his son Jesus and resting in him, or you need to give up the pretense of being a Christian and walk away. But just know that if you do that, that doesn't change who he is or what he tells you about your own future if you do that. A second thing I've been thinking about is I told you about this whole idea of telescoping the future because in my opinion this makes the most sense of the difficulties of the passage as well as making it a climactic ending to this book. Why has there been so much disagreement about verse 36 and later and hardly any before that? Well, because we have multiple fulfillments. Why does the language change from very descript and fairly obvious when you look at it after the fact, to almost mythopoetic, larger-than-life language like you find in Isaiah or Ezekiel, starting in verse 36 and onward. I think it's because God is making it intentionally confusing. And to paraphrase Clifford, it appears that the prophet sees the ultimate enemy of the Most High God and his people, not as Antiochus or any human empire, but as a more radical power persisting among the succession of empires, with the most radical evil being that of death itself having to end in resurrection. Why do we have not one, not two, not three, but at least four entirely different chapters dealing with almost the same history in this book? It's because they do not deal with precisely the same history and because they look at what they have from different points of view. Chapter two saw this four great kingdoms with that statue of Nebuchadnezzar, but with the kingdom of Christ ruling them in an already of Christ's first coming. Chapter 7 saw four great kingdoms being focused on the destruction of the temple in order to give the Jews this warning so that they would listen to the Messiah's words when he told them that it was coming. Chapter eight told us about the three great kingdoms and put the emphasis on Antiochus Epiphanes because that man would serve as a type of great evil to come. And chapter 11 puts it all together and reminds us of all these things but takes our minds further into the future, into history, all the way to the resurrection of the dead. And hence, the scope of this prophecy is greater than the rest. And that's the way to write a good story. Now, finally, let me conclude by returning to a theme of the last two weeks. I'm not going to go any deeper into what all it might mean for the Antichrist to fulfill these chapters. Anyone know why? It's because I don't have any idea what it means. And the more I study prophecy, the more I understand I don't have any idea what it means. I just don't. It's confusing to me, and I'm not going to pretend that it isn't. I do believe an end times figure is probably in view, even as I certainly believe that many Antichrists are in view, starting with Antiochus, going to Julius, going to Nero and Titus, and the Jews who betrayed their own people. The Papacy and Islam have long been discussed for how Antichrist they have been, and some kind of last day figure has been the speculation, not just of Christians, but of many other world religions as well. Indeed, there has hardly been a figure more discussed in world history other than Jesus Christ than the Antichrist. But what is Antichrist, if not the spiritual foe of God and his people? Is he not the culmination and physical embodiment, not only of human wickedness, but of satanic evil in heavenly places? And as such, what must we do about that? Well, we do what Daniel did, and we humble ourselves and pray diligently about these matters. We must do as Paul did when discussing the spiritual battle, and then he concluded after, you put on the armor, praying with all prayer and supplication in the spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints. In the midst of what feels like overwhelming hopeless spiritual evil all around us, the temptation is to give up or to give in to it. But Sinclair Ferguson rightly concludes this for us. We must not lose sight of the fact that the whole function of this prophecy is to encourage Daniel to faithfulness in prayer. By showing him that the real conflict lying behind world events is spiritual, in chapter 10, the Lord is teaching Daniel that the real weapon of the church is prayer. Fail in the work of prayer and we fail to understand this great vision. What should we do? We should pray. Father, we ask you would help us to understand not only what we have heard in this chapter and to think on the prophecies of our own future and what it might be, but more than that, Lord, to turn to you to pray that you would comfort us and give us hope, give us encouragement, that you would be strong as the sovereign over this world to bring about your will on earth as it is in heaven, that you would bring us to our knees to humble us, to pray and repent of our sins as we've seen Daniel do in chapter nine, that you would cause us to turn over our anxiety and our worries in days like this to you, the only one who can Take that away and give us hope. I pray, Lord, that you would show us the meaning of what it is to internalize a passage that's so strange and obscure and historical and prophetic, and to make it something that would cause us to turn to you as our living God and our Savior. That's what we need more than anything else, and I would pray that you would help us to do that. to the end that we would worship and glorify you better. In Christ's name we ask, amen.