And I'm gonna read through the whole chapter. Hear the word of God. In the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar, a vision appeared to me, Daniel. After that, which appeared to me at the first. And I saw in the vision, and when I saw, I was in Susa, the citadel, which is the province of Elam. And I saw in the vision, and I was at the Ulai Canal. I raised my eyes and saw, and behold, a ram standing on the bank of the canal. It had two horns, and both horns were high, but one was higher than the other. And the higher one came up last. I saw the ram charging westward and northward and southward, and no beast could stand before him. And there was no one who could rescue from his power. And he did as he pleased, and he became great. And I was considering, behold, a male goat from the west, across the face of the whole earth, without touching the ground. And the goat had a conspicuous horn between his eyes. And he came to the ram with the two horns, which I had seen standing on the bank of the canal, and he ran at him in his powerful wrath. And I saw him close to the ram, and he was enraged against him, and struck the ram, and broke his two horns, and the ram had no power to stand before him. But he cast him down to the ground and trampled him, and there was no one who could rescue the ram from his power, and the goat became exceedingly great. But when he was strong, the great horn was broken. And instead of it, there came up four conspicuous horns toward the four winds of heaven. One out of one of them came a little horn, which grew exceedingly great toward the south, towards the east, and towards the glorious land. And it grew great, even to the host of heaven. And some of the host and some of the stars it threw down to the ground and trampled on them. And it became great, even as great as the prince of the host. And the regular burnt offering was taken away from him, and the place of his sanctuary was overthrown. And a host will be given over to it, and to the regular burnt offering because of transgression. And it will throw truth to the ground, and it will act and prosper. And I heard a holy one speaking and another holy one said to the one who spoke, how long is the vision concerning the regular burnt offering, the transgression that makes desolate and the giving over of the sanctuary and host to be trampled underfoot. And he said to me for 2300 evenings and mornings, then the sanctuary shall be restored to its rightful state. When I, Daniel, had seen this vision, I sought to understand it, and behold, there stood before me one having the appearance of man. And I heard a man's voice between the banks of the Ulai, and it called, Gabriel, make this man understand the vision. So he came near where I stood. And when he came, I was frightened, and I fell on my face. And he said to me, understand, O son of man, that the vision is for the time of the end. And when he had spoken to me, I fell into a deep sleep with my face to the ground. But he touched me and made me stand up. And he said, behold, I will make known to you what shall be at the latter end of the indignation. For it refers to the appointed time at the end. As for the ram that you saw with the two horns, these are the great kings of Media and Persia. And the goat is the king of Greece. And the great horn between his eyes is the first king. As for the horns that were broken in place of which four others arose, four kingdoms shall arise from his nation, but not with his power. And at the latter end of their kingdom, when the transgressors have reached their limit, a king of bold face, one who understands riddles, shall arise, and his power shall be great. but not by his own power, and he shall cause fearful destruction, and shall succeed in what he does, and he shall destroy mighty men and people who are saints. By his cunning he shall make deceit prosper under his hand, and in his own mind he shall become great. Without warning he shall destroy many. He shall even rise up against the prince of princes, and he shall be broken. but by no human hand. The vision of the evenings and mornings that has been told is true, but seal up the vision, for it refers to many days from now. And I, Daniel, was overcome and lay sick for some days, and I rose and went about the king's business, but I was appalled by the vision and did not understand it." Let's pray. Heavenly Father, As we come here as your people, under your word, we read this divine prophecy that you gave to your servant Daniel. Lord, he did not even understand it at the time. But we know, O Heavenly Father, that although he was a prophet, he did not have the fullness of the Spirit like we do today. We thank you, Holy Spirit, that you have come to indwell us and have given us the mind of Christ that we could interpret spiritual truths with other spiritual truths. Thank you for the fullness of your revelation. And I pray, O Lord, that as we come now to this text, that you give us understanding and wisdom and insight, and that we would be able to apply it into our current lives. These ancient prophecies may seem foreign to us and irrelevant, but we know, O Lord, that sin does not change. Sin is sin and evil is evil. The faces may change, but the evil still exists. I pray that we would be sobered and prepared and that we would gain knowledge, O Lord, to identify the very evil that Daniel saw in his vision in our own day and age. Lord, I pray for myself that as I speak that you carry me along. Overshadow me, Holy Spirit. Anoint my lips, my mind, and my heart, that as I speak it would be from you. And give us all, O Lord, just divine illumination today, that we may behold your wondrous grace. In Jesus' name, amen. A study of eschatology, which we have embarked on, can be very interesting. Some people just avoid it altogether because it's utterly confusing, all the symbolism and the figurative speech. And they just say, well, you know, this is just too confusing. I'll stick to what's clear. And they just kind of avoid Revelation or Daniel at all costs. On the other extreme, There are people who are obsessed with eschatology. Some churches make it the centerpiece of their ministry, and they devote an inordinate amount of time trying to interpret these prophecies and come up with dates and with end times predictions. And we've seen this even in our own lifetime. Perhaps the most prominent of which was Hal Lindsay back in the early 1980s in his book, The Late Great Planet Earth, which was a culmination of dispensational theology that developed throughout the 20th century. That later gave way to The Left Behind series, and it became a very sensational, right? We look forward to these end times, the events, and Antichrist and whatnot, and yet none of it seems to peter out the way they suspected. This European Union of ten nations forming a federation and the Antichrist rising up. None of it came to be. We got a European Union. But there are 24 nations, and there is still no Antichrist. And while it sold a lot of books, it certainly didn't materialize the way the prophets, our modern so-called prophets, predicted it would. Clearly, people who study these books can come to various conclusions that could lead them astray. One such man was William Miller. For those of you who don't know William Miller, he was a Baptist preacher from New York in the early 19th century. A couple of weeks ago we were doing 19th century history and evangelicalism, and unfortunately I wasn't able to cover the part of the Age of Heresies. Within that period, just a lot of heresies came about, the Watchtower Organization, the Church of Latter-day Saints. And what we see here, William Miller was the father of a lot of this. He had a very unique approach to studying scripture, and it was called the allegorical method. Nothing really meant what it was supposed to mean, but there was an allegory for something else. And it was this very chapter that we're reading today of the 2,300 days specifically that he calculated to lead him to believe that that Jesus Christ was going to return somewhere between March and October of 1844. And on two occasions, Miller and his disciples, which were referred to as Millerites, dressed in white robes and went up to and sold their possessions, quit their jobs, and were ready to be raptured into heaven to meet with the Lord. And both times, the day came and went without anything happening. And that led to what was referred to at the time as the Great Disappointment. People were disillusioned, they were disenfranchised, and they had lost faith. But some of them kept going. One of his earliest disciples was a young lady, she was a teenager at the time, named Ellen G. White. And Ellen G. White would go on with her husband to make prophecies further, saying that Christ did return invisibly to cleanse and rededicate the temple, and that became the birth of the Seventh-Day Adventist movement, which is in the very building we're in right now. Needless to say, That was not the end of it. There were many other predictions. The Russellites, Jay T. Russell, the founder of the Watchtower Organization, made several false prophecies as his successors. And in recent times, who cannot forget in May 2011, the prophetic word of Harold Camping, which already had failed once in 1994. And like all of those who make false predictions, he said, well, Jesus did return in 94, but it was an invisible return. He came to cleanse the church. And then in 2011, he staked everything on it. He literally staked his reputation, the ministry, millions of dollars, his followers. There were billboards in New York City. I mean, he staked it all. And when May 24, 2011 came and went without a thud, Camping was again embarrassed and humiliated like William Miller. And then he set one more date for October and that came and went without a thud. And Mr. Camping shortly afterward had a stroke and his demise didn't last too much longer after that. What's the lesson here? Don't get too crazy with this kind of stuff. All right? Don't try to read into the text something that's not there. That's called isogesis. Rather, we're to exegete. We're to properly understand the context, the hermeneutics, the language that's being used here, apocryphal literature, interpreting it properly, taking the symbols, and not taking it literally. You see, the problem is this. Throughout the age, Christians and the people of God in general have lived through periods of pressure and tribulation and difficulty. And we all want the end to come, right? I mean, if you're a true Christian, you're a true believer, you long for the second coming of Christ. You long for Christ to return and establish his kingdom. You long for the judgment of the wicked. And it's like my kids, when we go to Ocean City every summer, We pull out the driveway, we're not even over the George Washington Bridge, and one of them will say, Daddy, are we almost there yet? You see, we can't wait. We want to get there quick. Are we almost there yet? And like I have to tell them, well, we got two and a half hours to go. Look at the clock. We don't know how much longer to go. The Bible says this clearly. No one knows the day or hour, not the Son of Man, nor the angels of heaven, only the Father. So that brings me to our text today. Daniel was a prophet. He lived in Babylon. He was in exile. He would have been in his 60s at this point. Belshazzar was the second king in Babylon. It was in the third year of Belshazzar's reign that God had revealed this prophetic vision to Daniel. And it was a vision of what would happen in the near future, our past, his future, during that period of time. And it was a terrifying vision. And so much so, we see that he was sickened by it. He would die long before the fulfillment of those visions would come to pass. And rightfully so, we should look to this as evidence of the inerrancy and fallibility of scripture. I mean, when we look at the prophecies here in Daniel chapter 8, we're going to be doing a history lesson. For Daniel, it's the future. For us, it's the past. There's a history lesson here. It's a very accurate prophecy, so much so that critics of the Bible, people who want to pull the carpet out and say, no, the Bible is not the word of God, say, no, Daniel couldn't have possibly prophesied this. It's too precise. It's too accurate. This had to be someone who lived in the first or second century BC who wrote this, and it's anachronistic. No, Daniel wrote this. He received a vision from the Lord and prophesied of the very future that was to come. And while his future is our past, there is a reality that his past is our future. It's a little riddle there. But what I mean by that is what happened and what he prophesied and what he sees is not an isolated event on the scope of human history. It repeats itself. over and over and over again. And it will culminate in one final climactic event at the end of the age before Christ returns. The key for us is to understand how do we, as Christians live, how do we respond to this? Do we start the hysteria? Do we start reading all the sensational books? Do we start trying to make predictions? Do we start quitting our jobs and selling everything off and preparing for the end? No. A couple of years ago, There were a few people I knew that were really worked up over the four blood moons prophecy of some televangelist who I don't really care for, but I won't mention his name. Needless to say, that four blood moon prophecy came and went without a thud. But people were already like packing their freezers for like this apocalyptic event like we're going to live in a Mad Max movie. We don't have to do that, right? God will preserve his people. And that's not how we're to respond to these kind of things. We need understanding. We need understanding. That's exactly what Daniel needed, and it's what the Lord commanded the angel Gabriel, right? In verse 16, Gabriel, make this man understand the vision. In the same way God gives us understanding. So let's unpack this prophecy and see what it's talking about. Well, in verses 3 through 14, we have a vision of several things going on. There is a ram and there is a goat. And there's a ram that appears with two horns, one bigger than the other, and then a goat that appears that seems to just fly across the floor without his feet touching the ground and just demolishes the ram and overcomes everything. And out of this goat, who has one big horn, it breaks off and four little horns come up. And out of those four little horns is a little tinier horn that comes up that just causes utter devastation. Lot of horns, goats, rams, lot of symbolism, right? Well, what does it all mean? Well, thankfully, it is explained to us very clearly. As we look later in the chapter, in verse 20, the ram that you saw with the two horns, these are the kings of the Medes and the Persians, and the goat is the king of Greece, and the great horn between his eyes is the first king. So right off the bat, there's not much mystery here. It's a very clear indication. It is speaking of the Medo-Persian kingdom and the Greek kingdom. Now, just backtrack a little. In Daniel chapter 2 and in Daniel chapter 7, God gave visions regarding the four successive kingdoms that would be coming. Right? Daniel was in Babylon. And then would come the Medo-Persian kingdom, then the Greek kingdom, and then finally the Roman Empire. And it is out of the Roman Empire that we see ultimately is going to be the arrival of Antichrist, and back in chapter 7 we see, and the kingdom of God will come and bring this kingdom to nothing, and ultimately we see more of our eschatology towards the end looking there, but not much focus in chapter 2 or 7 is given to the second and third kingdom. We know about Babylon, we know about Rome, but not much attention was given to the Medo-Persian kingdom and the Greek kingdom. And chapter 8 is where we focus on those two kingdoms. Two things in particular are going on. The Medo-Persian kingdom is going to come and it's going to conquer. And its conquest is going to be pretty, pretty widespread. The two horns represent both the Medes and the Persians coming together to form one big kingdom, the Persian being the larger horn with the larger power that overcomes. The ram is charging in all directions, north, south, east, west, and this is attested to historically in that the Medo-Persian kingdom had really spread across the whole ancient Near East. It was a fierce kingdom. It spread to Babylonia, Syria, Asia Minor, the west to Armenia and to the great Caspian Sea, north and into Africa in the south. It was an expanse kingdom. In fact, Daniel's vision of this into the third year of Belshazzar's reign would have emboldened him. Remember at the end of Belshazzar's reign, many years later, the writing on the wall, we learned in chapter six, when they called Daniel in, it was the queen who said, why don't you get Daniel? He's an aged prophet. He came in, he read the writing on the wall. Of course he knew it was coming, because God had told him years ago. Mido-Persh is coming in, your kingdom's over, king. And that very night, the Medo-Persian kingdom came in, and pretty much that was the end of Babylon. It is also interesting that in the Zodiac, Persia was under Ares, and the symbol of Ares is a ram. Evidence also exists that when the Persian kings were on military marches, they carried a gold ram's head with them as a symbol of their nation. So we could see that as the one fulfillment. Now we see the GOAT, right? We use GOAT today as the greatest of all time. Well, if there was one person in the ancient world who might have been considered the greatest of all time, it would have been Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great would have been the Macedonian general who unified all the Macedonians and Greeks together at the age of 21. I want you to think about this. At the age of 21 was one of the most sophisticated and intelligent military leaders of his time. In fact, so intelligent was he on military and war tactics that till today, militaries around the world still study his tactics and use them in their war programs. Alexander was a genius. And by 26 years old, he led the Greeks into conquering almost the entire world from Europe to India. And so you see the image of the goat just flying across the land without its feet touching the ground. That's how swiftly Daniel referred to it as an eagle in chapter seven, just swiftly. Just conquered Persia means everybody just crumbled under Alexander the Great. But Alexander was a really, really lascivious person. When it came to immorality and sexual sin, he knew no limits and no bounds. And at the age of 32, he was basically eaten alive by all kinds of sexually transmitted diseases. So he died very young. He had no children. He had no successors, no heir. And so he had four generals, and those four generals are those four horns that are being referred to here, who basically duke it out for power in the empire. And so they can't come to an agreement. They agree to divide Alexander's empire into four separate empires. And out of those four kingdoms, We see Cassander, he takes Macedonia and Greece. Lysimachus takes Thrace and much of Asia Minor. Seleucus takes Syria and regions to the east. And Ptolemy takes Egypt. Now, I'm not going to get into all the history of these four generals. Obviously, we know the Ptolemies is where you eventually come to the rise of a lot of things there, especially with Rome. But the real focus is of the Little Horn. The Little Horn is the one we want to focus on here. He comes out of the Seleucid Kingdom. in Syria. And he takes center stage for the rest of the prophecy. Now it's interesting because Alexander is really the big horn that you would think, right? Looking at history and having a prophetic vision looking forward, you would think that the focus would be on Alexander. He's the great one. He's the greatest of all time, right? But God's focus is not on the big horn. His time was cut short quickly. It's on this little horn. It was a small-time general who would come much later, after the Seleucid Kingdom, who would rise up out of the ranks and become one of the most wicked and cruel dictators in the ancient Near East in his time. His name is Antiochus Epiphanes IV. The phrase Epiphanes should give you a clue to his blasphemous nature. The term Epiphanes means illustrious God. And that's where the focus of the prophecy is. Why? God is not concerned with the mighty and the powerful of this earth. They come and go. What God's real concern is, is with the people or the leaders who attack his people. You see, unlike all the other kings, it tells us something about this little horn, this And notice, it's a little horn, it's not a big horn, it's little, but yet, this little horn is a threat to the people of God. Notice what it says in verse 9, it grew exceedingly great towards the south, towards the east, and towards the glorious land, in verse 9. That's why he takes a prominent position here, because he has focused his gaze on the glorious land. In the big scheme of things, God is really concerned not so much with who's in power in the kingdoms on the earth. There have been many kingdoms, mighty kingdoms, and they all come and go. There are many great leaders, and they come and go. But what God is really concerned about is how it affects the church. That's what God cares about. How do these governments, how do these states interact with His people? What threat are they to the advance of the Kingdom of God? That's what concerns the Lord. Otherwise, to God, these nations are all a drop in the bucket. Isaiah chapter 40 verse 15 tells us this, Behold, The nations are like a drop from a bucket and are accounted as the dust on the scales. Behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust. Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor are its beasts seen up for burnt offerings. All the nations are as nothing before him. They are accounted by him as less than nothing, emptiness. God does not care about who's in power and who's... God raises kings up, He disposes of kings. Everybody is nothing like dust, like maggots to Him, right? The pump of the men of this world strutting around like peacocks, not realizing they are nothing but grains of dust before the Creator. But God is really concerned, and his zeal is for his people. As the Lord said to Israel in the Old Testament, they are the apple of his eye. They are a peculiar people God had chosen from all the nations of the world, and we as Christians, we as the church, both Jew and Gentile, make up the true Israel, the spiritual Israel of God. And what concerns God truly is how these empires, these nations, these states treat his people. In fact, all of history will culminate in Judgment Day on one issue. How did the nations respond to my chosen people? Matthew 25, 31 through 46, right? We've read it often, the separation of the goats and the lambs, right? Kind of symbolic in our own prophecy here. And what does he say in the end? When I was hungry, you fed me. When I was thirsty, you gave me drink. When I was in prison, you came and visited. When did we do this for you? When you've done it to the least of these, my brothers, you've done it unto me. On Judgment Day, God really cares about how this world treated his people. Because we are the body of Christ, an extension of Christ. God is going to hold everyone into account. All the men of this world, the men of the age, the powers of this world who mistreat, who vandalize, who abuse, who persecute, who murder, who kill, who butcher, and maim, and rape the people of God will stand before him on judgment day. And they will give an account. God is no respecter of persons. Every single person will give an account. Well, let's get into this little horn a little bit. Let's get into this little horn a bit. Now, I think I should note before we proceed that the little horn here is not the same little horn spoken of in Daniel 7. Remember, Daniel 7 spoke about a little horn that would come up out of the fourth empire. That would have been the Roman Empire. Some think that the fourth empire in Daniel 7 is referring to Greece, but that is unlikely for many reasons, which I don't have time to get into now. consensus of scholarship seems to agree that the Fourth Empire, Daniel 7, is speaking about the Roman Empire, and the little horn there is speaking about the final or climactic Antichrist. The little horn here is not referring to that. And these symbols, you know, they don't, you can't restrict them to one meaning. They can have different appropriations and different meanings. But there's something similar. There's a common denominator here. Although the little horn of Daniel 7 and the little horn of Daniel 8 are not the same person, it is the same demonic spirit that energizes both of them. And so there is a connection. And so we see this Antiochus Epiphanes, who is this Seleucid general, dictator, who would become, if you may, the prototype of all Antichrist to come in the future. Daniel would later refer to Antiochus and his activity with the phrase abomination that causes desolation. Christ would use this very designation as well, referring to the future Antichrist. And so who was he? Who was this evil person? Well, in about 175 BC, he came into power and succeeded his brother through intrigue and murder. He was not the first Antiochus, he was Antiochus IV. He gave himself the blasphemous name Epiphanes, meaning illustrious god, although his detractors did a play on words and called him Epimanes, madman. And he was a madman. He was absolutely insane. And he was filled with evil. His atrocities are well known in Jewish history. If you're a Jewish person, you're familiar with the name Antiochus because he is at the basis of the celebration of Hanukkah, the Feast of Lights, the Feast of Rededicating the Temple, which took place at the end of the Maccabean Revolt. And so the Book of First Maccabees gives us a record of the life of of Antiochus and how he interacted with God's people. So let me just kind of break it down. Antiochus wants to overthrow the Ptolemaic tetrarchy. And in order to do that, he stations himself in Palestine and particularly in Jerusalem. He just comes in and wipes out the area. The first thing he does is have Onias III, who was the high priest, assassinated. And he puts in his own priest, a puppet priest, and decides he's going to come in and take over Jerusalem. He goes to battle in Egypt, and it doesn't go well for him. He fails. Back home in Jerusalem, rumors are starting to go around. Well, Antiochus, he died in the battlefield, so let's put back a true priest. When he comes back and he sees this, he sees this as insurrection. How dare they overthrow my high priest in sedition? And so what does he do? He orders his troops to kill. In three days, 40,000 Jewish people died. In a three-day period. I want you to think about that. In three days, his troops slaughtered 40,000 bodies. That's a lot of bloodshed. That's pretty bad, but he actually gets worse than that. To really let everybody know who's boss, he goes into the temple. He knows the temple is the centerpiece of Jewish life. He goes into the temple, right into the Holy of Holies. No one is to enter the Holy of Holies but the high priest once a year, and desecrates it in a way that is unimaginable. He erects a statue of Zeus, the Greek god, in the Holy of Holies and slaughters a swine and spills the blood of an unclean swine on the altar before God. Unimaginable how horrific this is. Not only that, but he forces the priests to drink the blood and to eat the swine flesh or die. Some priests took the sword rather than sin against God, but there were a great number of priests who bowed their knee and submitted. Think about that. Think about that. He took the swine blood and defiled the whole temple with the swine blood. There is no animal more unclean in Jewish life than the swine. To take the blood of a pig and smear it all over the temple was a desecration that we cannot even consider how offensive, how repulsive, and how utterly disgraceful that would have been to the Jewish community. You see, when people paint a swastika on a Jewish synagogue, that's bad. This is a billion times worse. This is on a level that is so bad it's called the abomination that causes Desolation. It's referred to in Daniel 9, 27 and 11 of 31. In 167 BC, things got worse. Again, Antiochus was defeated. He killed another 20,000 Jews and he made the practice of Judaism illegal. You could no longer circumcise your sons. You could no longer honor the Sabbath. You could no longer keep a kosher kitchen. Any practice of Judaism was made illegal. He ended the daily sacrifices and made it mandatory for Jewish people to eat unclean meat or die. Horrific. What really is concerning is how the Jewish people reacted during this time. It literally split the Jewish community. Half the Jews said, well, listen, this is just the way it is. This is the government that's installed. They had been Hellenized already from years of Greek influence. And they said, let's just go with the flow. We want to save our lives, save our families. Let's just go with the program. So there were a lot of Jewish people who participated in this pagan, defiled, desecrated religion. who supported Antiochus, but there were a lot of Jews who said, no, we will not, this is horrific, this is sin, this is wickedness. One such man was named Judas Maccabeus. He was a priest, and he was outraged by this, and rightfully so. Judas Maccabeus gathered a group of other faithful Jews and enacted what we would call the first guerrilla war in human history. And for three and a half years, that war raged. And little by little, they chewed away and chomped at the bit of Antiochus and his regime. In the end, they succeeded. They retook Jerusalem. There was a rededication at the temple. That's where we come up with Hanukkah, the Feast of Lights. It was at that final battle where there was not enough oil to keep the menorah lit, and God miraculously kept it lit. And they purged the temple, and every Jewish person who had turned against God and turned against the nation, they slaughtered. Antiochus died. He was at battle and he came back and got a mysterious illness. Mysterious illness caused him immense pain. He suffered an agonizing death and went completely insane and lost his mind and died a miserable, tormented death. God took him out. There's some lessons to learn here, isn't there? There's a lot of lessons. The first lesson is this. Antiochus is a prototype of many Antichrists to come. He will not be the first and he will not be the last. But he is the progenitor. He is the archetype. If you want to know what Antichrist looks like, look at Antiochus. It wasn't about his politics or policies. It wasn't about whether what his beliefs were or what kind of person he was. He had a program to annihilate the people of God. He had a program to desecrate the people of God. He had a program to exalt himself against God. And he had a program to legislate, to create laws that forbid or prohibited God's people from worshiping God correctly. And on top of that, had instilled laws to cause God's people to sin. That's antichrist. It says in 1 John 2.18 that there are many antichrists. Throughout the church age, we would see different manifestations of this. And we would see this power, particularly in the Roman Empire. Nero, Caesar, Domitian, who would have been the Caesar during the time that John was writing Revelation. The Roman government clearly had an Antichrist agenda and slaughtered thousands if not millions of Christians in a 300 year pogrom that when it existed. I could look back to the Inquisition during the Middle Ages. No wonder why the reformers, you read the reformers, Calvin and Luther and all them, you know who they thought the Antichrist was? None other than the Pope. Why, the Pope said, I'm the Holy Father, I'm the Vicar of Christ, I'm the head of the church. It's blasphemous titles. Not only that, but the Pope had a program of murdering anyone who disagreed with him. If you lived during the time of the Inquisition, if you dared think differently, if you dare spoke differently, or anyone suspected that you thought differently than the powers that be, you were persecuted. You were brought in for questioning, you were labeled and you would be imprisoned, you would be brought to court, auto-defay, you know the whole deal. You go further down in history. French Revolution. The French Revolution was unlike the American Revolution, it was a revolution rooted in atheism. Napoleon Bonaparte thought he was the son of God. He wanted to outlaw religion in France. And anyone who dared oppose him, he would, that little horn, which he was a little horn, short in stature, put his pinky down and made sure you suffered the ultimate consequence. You dare not speak or think or act in any way that would break from the government or you would suffer for it. We see it in regimes today, North Korea. Little horn Kim Jong-il. Kim Jong-il thinks he's God. Antiochus Epiphanes had a coin minted Deo Epiphanes, the son of the illustrious god. Kim Jong-il thinks he's the son of a god. And he replaced the Ten Commandments with the Ten Commandments of fealty to the dear leader of North Korea. R.C. Sproul spoke several years ago and wrote about that in the waning days of Francis Schaeffer's life, Francis Schaeffer was an apologist in the later 20th century, he died some time ago, and in one of Sproul's interactions with Schaeffer, he said to Schaeffer, he says, what do you think the biggest threat to Christianity will be in the future? Schaeffer, without hesitation, said, statism. Not statehood, statism. Whenever you see the term or the little conjunction ism after, it means a worldview, a belief system. And in the worldview of statism, the state is supreme. The state has ultimate authority. The state determines what is right and wrong. And we have seen that develop over the last hundred years, haven't we? We've removed God from society. We've removed the Bible from society. Whatever the government says is right is right. And whatever the government says is wrong is wrong. And if you defy the government, you're a bad guy. And this is all over the world. I'll take a quote here from Sproul. I had found it earlier. Sproul says this, the reality of statism replaces God as a supreme entity upon which human existence depends. A decline from statehood to statism happens when the government is perceived as or claims to be the ultimate reality. He goes on to say, in the 19th century, Hegel argued in his extensive and complex study of Western history that progress represents the unfolding in time and space of the absolute idea, Hegel's vague understanding of God, which would reach its apex in the creation of the Prussian state. The assumption that Hegel made in the 19th century was made before the advent of Hitler's Third Reich, Stalin's Russia, Chairman Mao's Communist China. These nations reached an elevation of statism never dreamed of by Hegel in his concept of the Prussian state. You see, remember what I said a couple weeks ago, man is always grasping for ultimate authority. What was the temptation in the garden? Eat of the fruit and you shall be like God. Antiochus is just the ultimate realization of man grasping for what he cannot have, and that's to be God. And there are many antichrists. There are certain aspects of the antichrist character we should look for. In verse 23, it says, he's a king of bold face and understands riddles. This speaks of his character as one who's hard-nosed. And riddles could be better translated sinister schemes. This is someone who understands the politics, the malevolent politics of scheming and lying and duplicity to create a system to make people believe a lie and to deny the truth. It says in verse 25, he will make deceit prosper and in his own mind he shall be great. This man will be given over to lies and deceit, his ego and his vanity are rude and satanic pride. He will be a mighty man, but not of his power. Truer words are never spoken. An antichrist is not empowered by himself, but empowered by the dragon, by Satan. But they can never do more than God allows. Verse 25, he will be a man who exalts himself against God. and ultimately makes war against the people of God. There are many antichrists, but the real antichrists are the ones that threaten the people of God. You don't realize this, guys, that there are people in this world who utterly hate Christians. No, that can't be, not in America. Yes, in America. Wake up. There are people who hate us with a passion. And if they could, they would kill us. The only thing that's preventing them from killing us are laws that protect us, right? That's number one. And those laws could change, right? Antichrists raise up and they change laws, they change times, they change seasons. And God's restraining grace. Those are the only two things that prevents the unbeliever from killing us. Go look around the world. People are being slaughtered every day for their faith. You think Americans are somehow more enlightened or morally better? No. The same evil spirit that energizes the hatred to murder Christians in the Congo or in Eritrea or in Pakistan or in Singapore is the same evil hatred and benevolent spirit that exists in unbelievers here in America. Don't you be naive for one minute. Antichrist is alive and well. Antiochus is the progenitor of such evil. There is a second lesson to learn here. A second lesson to learn how God's people respond to this. Well, the first thing I want you to see is what it says in verse 27. I, Daniel, was overcome and lay sick for several days. I would be sickened by such a vision too. I would not be happy if I had a vision of that was the future of God's people. But notice what it says. I rose and went about the king's business. He got up and went back to work. There's nothing you could do. People panic and they start reading into the future and think, well, this is going to happen and that's going to happen. Don't worry about that. Leave that in God's hands. Get back to work and be about the king's business. It'd be about the true king's business, right? When Jesus was lost in the temple, his mother and father panicked, where were you? Didn't you know it was about my father's business? Didn't Jesus tell us in Luke 19, 13, occupy till I come. So we ought not to get frazzled about the events going on, and we ought not to worry too much about what is gonna happen or not gonna happen. Too many Christians worry about the future. The future hasn't even happened yet. And none of us are given prophetic visions of it. Worry about today, for Jesus says today have enough worries of its own. The most important thing is keep busy, be about your business, occupy till Christ comes. Jesus never told us to do anything else. That's the second lesson that we could take from this. The third lesson that we have to take from this is that we have to have a spirit of understanding. We have to have a spirit of understanding and understand that things will get worse before they get better. And we have to have an understanding of who our true brothers and sisters are. I think what really grasped me was in studying about Antiochus is how the Jewish people were divided. That there were Jewish people who bend the knee to Antiochus, supported his policies, and turned against their own people. That happened even in World War II when Hitler began his program of extermination of the Jews. There were many Jews who basically became turncoats. They sided with the Nazis and they were made sergeants and commanders over the extermination of their own people. I mean, how do you stand before God on Judgment Day and be such a turncoat? I mean, this is beyond Judas. Well, nothing's beyond Judas, I correct myself. Judas is the culmination of all this. But why were there people of God who would even for a second think that Antiochus was a good guy? Why would believers for a second think that Antiochus was a friend of Jews? How could Jewish people who knew the book embrace policies that were everything against God's will? Who are we loyal to, man or God? You see, when you're loyal to God, that's all that matters. I'd rather die for my faith than bend a knee to an ungodly ruler. We dare not bend the knee to any ruler of this world who commands what God forbids or forbids what God commands. We may honor our rulers and submit to them in reverence, but at the end of the day, we have to remember we obey God rather than men. You see, during that time, it made very clear who the true believers were and who the false believers weren't. And then whenever there's pressure, whenever there's tribulation, there will always be a division. When things heat up, the churches will divide. Good, so be it. We'll separate the wheat from the tares. I've said it many times, I do believe persecution's coming in some form or another down the pike in this country. I don't see that as necessarily a bad thing. I mean, it's bad that we suffer. I mean, nobody, I'm not one of those people, yeah, bring it on, I like to suffer, right? We're not sitting here like masochists wishing for hard times. But the fruit that comes out of persecution is it weeds out the false believers. The people who really don't belong to Christ, they'll be exposed real quick. You'll know who the true believer is and the true believer. So in that sense, as things escalate in the world system, and things will escalate until we come to the end of days, and there's ups and downs throughout the church age, and I don't know, I sense that we're at close to the end of the church age, but I'm not a prophet. The world could go on another 10,000 years for all we know. But in every age, there is a tribulation, there is a suffering, there is a pressure. Remain faithful to the end. Remember what Jesus says, he who is faithful to the end shall be saved. It doesn't matter how well you start, it's how you finish. Pastor Paul and I spoke about this the other day, we were speaking about evangelicals, particularly we were referencing Harold Camping. He started off so good, but he ended so bad. He who perseveres to the end will be saved. I'm not Camping's judge, but a tree is known by its fruits, and I would not want to leave this world with those kind of fruits bearing on my tree. Stay faithful to the end. There's so much I could say or want to say, but time gets away, doesn't it? Ultimately, we have to remember that what happens here is something that was horrific for the Jewish people. But it was cut short. It lasted for about three years. The prophetic word of 2,300 days, I'm not going to get into the minutia of how to interpret that. Obviously, as I said, people interpret that to be 2,300 days means 2,300 years. And you get to William Miller's prophecy and camping ran with it, too. Let's just look at it as a figurative, a symbolic number that the days will be cut short. It is limited at a fixed period of time. Antiochus did not rule forever. His time was cut short, it terminated, and he was done. And so is the case for every evil ruler in history. Their time is ultimately cut short. Not by human doing, but by the doing of God. It's amazing, you know, people, how many people attempted to take Hitler out, they couldn't do it? You know how many people attempted to take Hitler out and their plans failed? God allows these evil men to prosper for a season, but he was undone by himself. He stood in a room when he heard that the forces of Russia and America were coming, he put a gun to his head and boom, it ended it. God took him out. God knows how to exalt the humble and humble the exhausted, doesn't he? You see, in the end, the theme of Daniel continues, God is sovereign. God is the supreme ruler of this universe. He is the king. He is the Lord of all. And no matter how bad things get, we have to trust in him and be faithful to him no matter what. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for this time. Lord, as we consider how your temple was desecrated so long ago, how the Holy of Holies was just defiled. We also remember that you, the true temple of God, who walked and tabernacled amongst us, was desecrated and defiled. You came to your own and your own received you not. They falsely accused you, they beat you, They humiliated you. They spilled your blood on Calvary. Together, the Jews and the Romans desecrated your temple. But you promised that if the temple would be destroyed, you would rebuild it in three days. And you rose from the dead, you conquered death. Lord Jesus, you are building your church now. A true temple. soul by soul, being built up into one spiritual building. Jews, Gentiles, men, women, people from all nations, tribes, and tongues. And the gates of hell shall not prevail. We know the dragon knows his time is short. We know that antichrists continue to pop up and little horns are all around us. But we thank you, Lord, that their time is cut short, that your sovereign rule will last forever. Encourage us and strengthen us. We live in strange times. We live in times where it's hard to discern what is truth from error. but we know that you are true. May every man be found a liar. We could rest in the surety of your word. We are confident in the sufficiency of scripture and know that you will never fail us. Help us, as our brother said earlier, not to trust in chariots, not to trust in horses, but to trust in the name of our God. Hallowed be thy name. Amen. Let's stand and say this quote together. 1 Corinthians 11 says, over the depths of the riches and the wisdom and knowledge of God, how I'll search for his judgments and how I'll scrutinize his ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repayed? To God be the glory forever and ever. Amen.