Well, good morning everyone.
Welcome to our continuing Bible study in the book of Daniel. This week we're in Daniel chapter
8. This takes us back to the third
year of the reign of King Belshazzar and the vision that Daniel has. This is a second vision. Let's start with Daniel chapter
8. We'll just read through it quickly
and then look at a few things that are contained in here. In
Daniel chapter 8 verse 1, in the third year of the reign of
King Belshazzar, and he was a subsequent king to Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon
there. A vision appeared unto me, even
unto me Daniel, after that which appeared unto me at the first.
And I saw in a vision, and it came to pass when I saw that
I was at Shushan in the palace, which is in the province of Elam,
I saw in a vision and I was by the river, you lie. So in his
dream, what this vision word means here, as I was explaining
to Norm this morning, this word vision is two different words
in Daniel. When Daniel's speaking of it,
it's one word, but when the interpreter, the angel, the messenger of God
speaks of it, it's a different word. And we'll look at that
here closely here in just a minute. But he has this vision, this
dream. And remember that he is a special
envoy of the king. He's been made a governor over
all the provinces. And in this dream, he sees himself
in Shushan, the palace of the province of Yilam, which is was
kind of southeast of Babylon. And that was where the events
of the Book of Esther took place, Shushan the palace. So you might
recall that from Norm going through the Book of Esther. And so we
find Daniel goes through various provinces and conducts the king's
business and reports back to him. And so he's in this province
of Yilan, and he was by the river, or actually a canal called Yulai
that ducted water to the capital there in Shushan. And he says,
then I lifted up my eyes and saw, and behold, there stood
before the river a ram which had two horns. And the two horns
were high, but one was higher than the other, and the higher
came up last. And I saw the ram pushing westward and northward
and southward so that no beast might stand before him. Neither
was there any that could deliver out of his hand, but he did according
to his will and became great. And as I was considering, behold,
a he-goat came from the west on the face of the whole earth
and touched not the ground, and the goat had a notable horn between
his eyes." Boy, what a strange dream. If I had a dream like
that, I'd be like Daniel at the end, he'd say, my cogitation's
troubled me much. I'd be saying, what was that
all about? And he came to the ram that had
two horns, which I had seen standing before the river, and ran into
him in the fury of his power. And I saw him come close to the
ram and he was moved with collar or indignation against him. And he smote the ram and broke
his two horns. And there was no power in the
ram to stand before him, but he cast him down to the ground
and stamped on him. And there was none that could
deliver the ram out of his hand. Therefore, the he goat waxed
very great. And when he was strong, The great
horn was broken, and for it came up four notable ones toward the
four winds of heaven. And out of one of them came forth
a little horn, which waxed exceeding great toward the south, and toward
the east, and toward the pleasant land. And it waxed great even
to the host of heaven, and it cast down some of the host and
of the stars to the ground and stamped upon them. Yea, he magnified
himself even to the prince of the host, and by him the daily
sacrifice was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was
cast down. And a host was given him against
the daily sacrifice by reason of transgression, and it cast
down the truth to the ground, and it practiced and prospered.
And then I heard one saint speaking, and another saint said to that
certain saint, which spake." Boy, now, we'll look at that
word there, this certain saint here, a very interesting word.
"'How long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice
and the transgression of desolation to give both the sanctuary and
the host to be trodden underfoot?' And he said unto me, unto 2,300
days, then shall the sanctuary be cleansed. And it came to pass,
when I, even Daniel, had seen the vision and sought for the
meaning, then behold, there stood before me as the appearance of
a man. And I heard a man's voice between
the banks of Uli, which called and said, Gabriel, make this
man to understand the vision. So he came near where I stood,
and when he came I was afraid, and I fell upon my face. But
he said unto me, Understand, O son of man, for at the time
of the end shall be the vision. Now as he was speaking with me,
I was in a deep sleep on my face toward the ground, but he touched
me and set me upright. And he said, behold, I will make
thee know what shall be in the last of the end of the indignation,
for at the time appointed, the end shall be." And really what this is talking about
is not like the very the end times that the eschatology people
like to talk about. He said this is the end of this
situation which he's talking about. For at the time appointed,
the end shall be." God appoints all the times and places and
things and circumstances of every single thing. And so now that
we have this explanation of this crazy dream that Daniel had about
these rams and a goat and horns and notable horns and a little
horn. It's very plain, it's the same
exact vision that we had before, that Nebuchadnezzar had, that
you, O king, are the head of gold, and after you shall come
a kingdom of silver that's inferior to yours. And after that shall
come a kingdom of brass. In this image was the belly and
the arms. And then after that will be the
legs and the toes of iron. And so these four different eras
that were being represented in Nebuchadnezzar's dream. So he
said, the ram which thou saw having two horns are the kings
of Media and Persia. Cyrus, that would be Cyrus and
Darius or Darius, however you want to say that. And the rough
goat, the little goat that rams the other goat, is the king of
Grecia, the brass part of Nebuchadnezzar's dream. And the great horn that
is between his eyes is the first king, and that would be Alexander
the Great. Now that being broken, Whereas
four stood up for it, four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation,
but not in his power. And in the latter time of their
kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king
of fierce countenance and understanding, dark sentences shall stand up.
Oh, more scary stuff. And his power shall be mighty,
but not in his own power. And he shall destroy wonderfully.
He was such an evil person. that the things that he did this
wonderfully doesn't mean like magically or something like that.
It means the evil that he committed was so significant that it was
readily noticeable. He shall destroy wonderfully
and shall prosper in practice and shall destroy the mighty
people and the holy people. And through his policy, Also,
he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand, and he shall magnify
himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many. He
shall also stand up against the prince of princes, but he shall
be broken without hand." This is what we always find. And the vision of the evening
and the morning which was told is true. Wherefore, shut thou
up the vision, for it shall be for many days." He said this
in the NIV, I think it says, this is at a future date. So
shut it up. And I, Daniel, fainted. And I
was sick certain days afterward. I rose up and did the king's
business. And I was astonished at the vision, but none understood
it. What an interesting thing we
are. It's just, as we've been going
through here, we... Get to the right chapter here. So it's more layering, as we're
gonna say. In Daniel chapter seven, In the
first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream
and visions in his head in his bed. And when he woke, he said
he told the sum of the matters. Remember from Daniel chapter
seven, verse one. And so this is in the third year
of Belshazzar. I think he reigned like 17 years
before he died. before Cyrus came in and took
the kingdom. But in the third year of King
Belshazzar, he had a vision. after that which appeared to
me at the first. So it's a similar vision, but
it's got more detail and it's got more information in it. And
it's like here a little, there a little, and God reveals things
to him as he's able to absorb those things and take them in. And we find that's kind of a
common thing where even Jesus said to the disciples, I have
many things to tell you, but you're not able to bear them
yet. So, he knows our frame, what we're capable of, and so
we see Daniel kind of gets, even after he has it explained to
him, he says, I fainted. just from the experience of not
only the explanation of the vision, but the ones that explained it
to him, a certain one and a messenger. So the whole experience was quite
astonishing to him. And I wanted to point out And
I was talking to Norman about this earlier this morning, that
this word vision, there's two different terms for vision here.
And one of them, when Daniel speaks of, I had a vision, and
he thinks of it as like, well, I had a dream or a mental dream
or revelation, but he didn't understand what it was about. He just had this vision. And
then when the messenger that interpreted for him comes and
speaks about a vision, it's a totally different word. And it represents
things from God's perspective. And so in the first case, when
Daniel says, I had a vision, it's like a dream. And then when
the angel says, The certain one says, Gabriel,
make this man understand the vision. It's the word, the view. And it's the view from God. It's the God's perspective of
God's view of this is what's going to happen. That he is foreordained
and determined and set all things. He sets up kings. That's what
Nebuchadnezzar said. Nebuchadnezzar said in Daniel
chapter 2. He sets up kings and he takes
down kings and he does this and does that and none can stay his
hand or say unto him, what doest thou? He is the sovereign, eternal
ruler. And so we have this situation
where Daniel has a dream and then the dream is interpreted
and we have the understanding. Isn't that a lot like the gospel? There's a section in your bulletin
that Norm put in there from Octavius Winslow. To some, the Bible is just words
on a page, and they can read it. sort of know what those words
mean and maybe have some level of cognition about it, but they
can't really understand the spiritual aspect of it until it's revealed.
And that's kind of what we find here in these visions. Daniel
has a vision, but he doesn't get it. He sees it clearly in
his mind, but he doesn't really understand it. And then the Lord
sends someone to him to reveal it to him, to explain it to him.
But to him, it's kind of a puzzle. But God makes us, you know, it's
interesting that we get both sides. Just the same as Octavius
said in Thessalonians, the word of God came to you, not in word
only, but in power and the Holy Spirit. And we get both sides
of that in Daniel. We see, well, here's what Daniel
experienced, and here's what God sent to him. And so we get
to see both sides of that, and more layers of this revelation
that was given to Daniel. And in Daniel, Two, when we were
there, Nebuchadnezzar had the vision, the dream, that he couldn't
even remember what the dream was. So Daniel came and the Lord
revealed to him what the dream was and what the interpretation
was. that great image whose brightness
was excellent in Daniel 2, and the head was of gold. And he
said, now, O King, art this head of gold. And then the breasts and arms of silver,
and the thighs of brass, and the legs of iron, and the feet
part of iron and part of clay. So what did Nebuchadnezzar do?
I don't like the part where I'm just the head of gold and then
these other kingdoms are going to replace me. So he went out
and made an image entirely of gold. He said, I am, nobody's
replacing me. And then we saw how that turned
out with him. And again, throughout this we
find the hand of the Lord involved because he says, this kingdom
is going to take over this kingdom, and this kingdom is going to
take over this kingdom, and this kingdom is going to take over.
So we have the Babylonians, and we have the Medo-Persians, and
we have the Greeks under Alexander, and we have the Romans, and then
we have this stone. cut out without hands that comes
and rolls over everything and his kingdom shall stand forever,
it tells us there in Daniel 2.44. And breaks in pieces all these
other little kingdoms that are inconsequential to him who rules
everything. In the second vision, And this
is Daniel's first vision. This other one belonged to Nebuchadnezzar,
but this is Daniel's first vision there in Daniel chapter seven.
It was four great beasts. Remember last week we said, well,
he said, I had a dream, I had a vision that was four great
beasts. And we had a lion with eagle's
wings and we had a bear with three ribs in his mouth that
was supposed to devour everything. And we had the leopard with four
wings of a fowl. And the terrible beast with iron
teeth and ten horns and a little horn springing from the ten horns
and all these. symbolical things that were given. And then again we have the Ancient
of Days appears and Son of Man to whom dominion was given forever
and ever. And the Son of Man who comes
with clouds. And we spent some time looking
at the pictures, the Ancient of Days with fire and judgment. and the Son of Man who comes
satisfying the requirements of judgment and taking care of the
issue that's of sin for the satisfaction of the Lord's people. And again
in Daniel, in the interpretations, these great beasts are four kings
which will rise out of the earth. No mystery there. There's going
to be four kings. And he said that the fourth beast
shall be the fourth kingdom upon the earth, which shall be diverse
from all kingdoms and devour the whole earth and tread it
down and break it in pieces. And the 10 horns out of this
kingdom are 10 kings that shall rise and another shall rise after
them. And he shall be diverse from
the first and he shall subdue three kings. And he'll speak
great words against the most high and wear out the saints
of the most high and think to change times and laws, and they
shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the
dividing of times." The end result always is Jesus wins the victory. All these are carrying out his ordained purpose. I remember David said, why do
the heathen rage, and the people imagine vain things, and the
kings of the earth... are up against the God Almighty,
and that's again quoted in Acts chapter 4. And it says, for of
a truth-conscious Pilate, and the Gentiles, and the Jews, and
everybody's all gathered together to do what God before determined
to be done. and the sacrifice of his son
in behalf of his people. So this is really just alluding
to that. And we find in Daniel chapter
9, we get the next layer, which includes Messiah the prince who's
cut off, but not for himself. So in chapter eight here, we
have the third year of Belshazzar and this vision that came to
Daniel after he had the first one and more revelation given
to Daniel regarding these kings and these things that are to
come and the ram with two horns. He says, well, those are the
Medo-Persian empire. Cyrus came in and took that possession
of all that land and kingdoms that was formerly from Babylon. And Belshazzar's dad, Nebopolassar,
he was out fighting against the Persians, and he surrendered
and was exiled to the east somewhere, I think. And Belshazzar, his
son, was reigning kind of in his stead because his father
was out of the kingdom all the time. And that's why he told
Daniel, if you interpret this dream for me, you'll be third
in the kingdom because Neville Plasser was first, and then Belshazzar,
and then Daniel would be the third. And so this, Darius was
given, he was the son, he was married to Cyrus's daughter.
So he was given to rule this kingdom of Babylon, this province
of the Cyrus's Persian empire. And so the ram which thou saw
having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia. So that
would be Cyrus and Darius. The goat from the West, it says,
with a notable horn between his eyes in verse 21 of chapter eight,
The rough goat is the king of Grecia. Comes right out and says
that's what's gonna happen. And this is like in the future.
You remember we read in the, I've named you Cyrus, though
you're not born yet. Like 400 years before he was
born, the Lord said, I'm gonna have someone named Cyrus. and
he's going to cause the Jews to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild
the temple in the city. So the king of Grecia and the
great horn that is between his eyes is the first king, Alexander. And he was born in 356 BC in
Pella. And he died in Babylon in 323
BC. And he was only 33 years old. And they kind of surmise that
he probably was poisoned. That happened a lot. so-and-so ruled nine months and
he was poisoned, and so-and-so ruled two years and he was poisoned. Not a healthy thing to be the
king of anything back there. Not a long-term engagement. So
the horn is broken, that's Alexander, he dies at 33, and then four Four horns spring up out of his
king. Remember, he conquered most of
the known world, clear to India, Egypt, the Mediterranean area. He had four generals. When Alexander died, they divided
up the empire into four regions. and Egypt, Syria, Asia, and Greece. And Ptolemy, he became the king
of Egypt, the province of Egypt. And one of his descendants was
Cleopatra during the Roman times, so kind of follow that down. Cassandra was king of Macedonia
and Greece. Lysimachus was king of Asia and
Seleucid was king of Syria. You might have heard of the Seleucids.
I think they're mentioned in other Bible history there. So these four kings divide up
the spoils of Alexander's kingdom according to God's purpose. But
they were all kind of Greeks, so they kind of spread the Greek
culture everywhere. One of the wonderful things about
that is that the Greek language was so precise. So it's somewhat
frustrating when we get to the reading of the Scripture and
we find out that, well, this word's been translated They just
use the same word for two different things, and it causes some confusion
sometimes. So then we have this, out of
these four kingdoms they rule for a while, and then this other
Greek person comes up, this little horn. which whacks great. And he's a deceitful guy, and
he's a liar guy, and he's a kind of a, he flatters people, and he knows
how to work the politics, and he knows how to connive people
and get what he wants and so he waxes great even to the host
of heaven and he came to power and his name was Antiochus Epiphanes. His real name was Mithridates.
in Greek. His father's name was Antiochus,
and that was kind of a kingly title name. In England they always
have King Edward, no matter if his name was Harry or Dave or
Steve. When he becomes king, he becomes
King Edward the 19th or whatever. Well, Mithridates became Antiochus
Epiphanes IV, I believe. And he was just an evil, evil
guy. Much like what Norman's been
going through, Judges, and before that the other Old Testaments.
Most of the time they had some evil dude being king. They didn't have very many good
kings, but they were all accomplishing the purpose of God in redeeming
the church. So this little horn comes out
of these four, takes away the sacrifice. He kind of takes over
this realm in Jerusalem. He's really mean. He hates the
Jews. And in Daniel 8, 23, it says,
and in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors
are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance and understanding
dark sentences shall stand up. And so he began to rule. And if we go into the, the book of the Maccabees and
those historical apocryphal books that used to be part of the Bible
until 1836, we find that he killed 40,000 Jews in three days. And then he sold that many more
into slavery. And he kind of wrecked the temple.
And he set up an image of Jupiter. He set up a statue of Jupiter
in the temple. And it says he practices craft
and he says he He says through peace he gains
a lot of his objectives. He killed some people, sure,
but he didn't kind of militarily subdue the kingdom. He talked
people into stuff. And he talked a lot of the holy
ones, what they're referring to here is Israel, the Jews,
into worshiping Jupiter and sacrificing to Jupiter and doing all those
things that were contrary to God. And so he was an unscrupulous person
that led them down the wrong path. And they said, OK, fine.
We're good with that, we'll go along. And Israel just had a
history of idol worship. This was just another page in
the chapter of their history. And so as we move through here,
we have this interpretation delivered by Gabriel by the command of
that certain saint. And so if we go over to Daniel
8.13, we find that. Daniel relating this, he says,
I heard one saint speaking, and another saint said to that certain
saint, which spake, how long shall the vision concerning
the daily sacrifice and the transgression of desolation to give both the
sanctuary and the host be trodden underfoot? That certain is an interesting
word, and it's declared as palimony. Palimony. And the root word of
that is the same word that we find in Isaiah chapter 9, verse
6, where it's describing Christ as, from the root word pele,
which means wonderful and marvelous, and for unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given, and the
government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall
be called Wonderful, Pele. The base word of that, Pelmone,
the counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince
of Peace. And we find a lot of those things
described here in Daniel chapter eight. And so we find this certain one,
this Palmanese saying, make this man to understand the view. He had a vision, so now make
him understand the view. Make him understand from God's
perspective what's going to go down and what the purpose is. And again, we mentioned that
in 2 Maccabees 5.14 it said, And there were Jews destroyed
within the space of three whole days, fourscore thousand, whereof
forty thousand were slain in the conflict, and no fewer sold
than slain. And he took away the vessels
of the temple. Seems like that's what the same
thing Nebuchadnezzar did. And the golden lamps and the
ark and the table of gold and sacrifice to idols on the altar. They profaned the holy place. And you know, the Jews did the
same thing. But they just did it under the guise of worshipping
God. But they were doing the same
thing. Well, let's not sacrifice that good lamb that we could
sell for 50 shekels in the marketplace. Let's give them that old beat-up
lamb that's got the mange and blind in one eye and kind of
gimping along on three legs. We can't get any money for that
one anyway, so let's sacrifice that one. And that was their
approach to the whole thing, that the spiritual significance
of what they were doing was lost on them. So this one, this Antiochus,
takes away these items from the worship and kind of wrecks the
temple and the purpose of it and says, he shall stand up against
the prince of princes. same prince of princes that we
recognize from Isaiah 9. Not the high priest as Grodius
or Michael, reading Gill's commentary here, but God himself, who is
king of king and lord of lords, the only potentate to whom all
princes above and below are subject. Him Antiochus stood up against
when he profaned his temple at Jerusalem, forbid his worship
of God, persecuted and destroyed the people, and set up the image
of Jupiter in the temple." And that was his commentary from
1 Maccabees. Some view that as the abomination
of desolation that is mentioned in Matthew, but I think that's
the wrong date for that because in Luke it says when you see
the armies encircling Jerusalem in Luke 21, then you'll know
it's that which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet. And also
in Matthew 24, 15, it mentions that too. So it appears that
that's more likely the time when 70 AD after Christ is dead and
Vespasian and Titus come in and the siege of Jerusalem took place
for 30 some months and there was three million Jews in there
for the Passover and the carnage was just horrendous. And we'll
talk more about that as we get into Daniel 9 and going forward. But by cunning words and guile,
he just talked a lot of the Jews into from worshiping God. It was just wasn't really worshiping
God to them anyway. So it wasn't that much of a jump
for them to say, OK, we're going to worship Jupiter. which he
set up in the temple. Antiochus, though, he meets his
end in a horrible way. A miserable disease takes him
out, and it's kind of similar to what we found happened to
Herod in Acts chapter 12, 23, where it says he was eaten in
worms. In 2nd Maccabees 9.5 says, but
the Lord Almighty of Israel smote him with an incurable and invisible
plague. Or as soon as he had spoken these
words, a pain in the bowels that was remedy less came upon him
and sore torments of the inner parts so that worms rose up out
of the body of this wicked man and while he lived in sorrow
and pain his flesh fell away and the filthiness of his smell
was noisome to all his army." Second Maccabees 9-9. Awful way
to go and he He only lived, he only reigned
like 17 years I think. But this episode, the part of
the vision that concerned Antiochus Epiphanes, was about 378 years
future to the time of Daniel where he had this vision in the
third year of Belshazzar. Antiochus Epiphanes ruled from
175 BC to 164 BC, 15 years according to the purpose of God. One quick more word before we
close out, but in 164, we had the revolt of the Maccabees and
where they kind of took over Jerusalem and they cleansed the
temple and rededicated it. And that's where
the Hanukkah holiday comes from for the Jews is from the anniversary
of the cleansing of the temple and the rebuilding of the They've
made new implements in the temple and new vessels and all that
stuff that was destroyed by Antiochus and reestablished their sacrifices
and did all that stuff. And so they put a new candle
thing in there. And so they have Hanukkah, that
festival of lights that they celebrate now. So we come to the end of Daniel.
Chapter eight, God is in charge, sets up kings. In Daniel 2.21 says, he changes
or makes them diverse the times and the seasons. He removes kings
and set up kings and he giveth wisdom unto the wise and knowledge
to them that know understanding. So next time, we come to Daniel
chapter 9, Messiah the Prince, and the visions concerning that,
and all this timetable that has everyone kind of in a tizzy all
the time. So until next time, be free.