Now, before we turn to Daniel
chapter 8, which we will get to sometime this evening, I want
you to turn back to the passage that Brother Bill just read.
1 John chapter 2. 1 John chapter 2. And the reason
I had him read that portion of Scripture and want to deal with
it a little bit here before we get to Daniel chapter 8 is because
Daniel chapter 8 is another vision that God gave Daniel of the spirit
of Antichrist, or Antichrist. And that's what I've entitled
the message this evening, the spirit of Antichrist. Now, I'm one who believes that
the Bible teaches that the Antichrist or that spirit of Antichrist
is not one man that we are to look for in the future who is
coming upon the political scene. I believe that Antichrist is
a spirit. It's a prevailing spirit. A spirit
of the times. And as John wrote here, look
at verse 18, in his day now, so this was 2,000 years ago now,
and he says, little children, it is the last time, we know
what he's referring to in the last time, the Bible teaches
us that, that he's talking about the New Covenant age, the New
Testament age, we're living today. September 4th, 2011 in the New
Covenant age. I believe we're at the conclusion
of that age. I don't know how close, I wouldn't
even presume to find out. That age began at the crucifixion
of Christ, when he finished that great work of redemption for
his people, and it's been going on ever since. So John recognizes
that in his day. He says it's the last time, the
last age. The last segment of time. And
he says, you have heard that Antichrist shall come. And they
heard that. Paul preached it. And the prophets preached it.
And what is Antichrist? That means against Christ. This
is one who is in opposition to Christ. and the only way of salvation
by the grace of God in Christ. It's one who stands in some way
in opposition to the glorious person of Christ, who He is. Our religion, our salvation,
our gospel, our church is founded upon the glorious person of Jesus
Christ. If He is not who He said He is,
then we are just, we're just lying to each other. But he is
who he says he is. Remember when he was teaching
his disciples about the church, he said, whom do men say that
I am? And they had all kinds of answers,
but he said, who do you say that I am? Peter, speaking for the
whole group, said, you're the Christ, you're the Messiah, you're
the Anointed One, the Son of God. And Christ said, And what
he said, now a man can repeat those words, but what Christ
said, he said that flesh and blood has not revealed that to
you, Peter, but my Father which is in heaven, and upon this rock
I'll build my church. And that identification of him
as Messiah now, he is God and man and one person, both divine
and human, without sin, But that identification of Him as Messiah
also speaks of and includes His finished work of salvation, of
redemption on the cross. Christ and Him crucified and
died, buried, rose again the third day to put away our sins,
to redeem us, to pay the price. Now anyone who is against that
and opposed to that is anti-Christ. But John says here in verse 18,
you've heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there
many antichrists, plural, not just one. What is he identifying
there? He's identifying a spirit of
Antichrist. Now, as I've told you before,
I'm a firm believer that we cannot interpret the Bible by history
or current events, but I'm also a firm believer that we interpret
history and current events by the Bible. The other way around,
you see. And so when we look back on things
and we see them in the context of biblical prophecy and we see
them fulfilled, we can certainly gain from them. But there are
many Antichrists, many in opposition to Christ. And Paul wrote in
2 Thessalonians 2 that there's coming a day when even that which
comes in the name of Christ, generally speaking, will be Antichrist. That great falling away, that
great apostasy. However, now, that's not to say
that at given moments in history that that spirit of Antichrist
has not been embodied by one man. Sometimes it's embodied
in one man, and the Lord uses that. That's what we're going
to see in Daniel chapter 8. It's embodied in one man. Sometimes a succession of men,
like the papacy. But it's the spirit of Antichrist.
And so I believe we go wrong and misunderstand the Bible,
especially the book of Revelations, if we just look for one man to
come in the future and all that. But now let me give you some
keys here now. Now listen to what he says here.
He says, whereby we know it's the last time, verse 19, look
at that. He says, they went out from us,
these many antichrists, this spirit that happened, he said,
but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, if
they'd been truly saved, true children of God, they would no
doubt have continued with us. That's what we know of true children
of God. They don't go out from us. They
continue in the faith. And he says, but they went out
that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us
now now as i go through some of these things and and and i
know it is some of its difficult i really i know that and i understand
and i know you're not going to be able to remember every detail
of these things and that's why i have notes because i can't
remember them all either but uh... but here's the important
thing and this is what all this is what i want to get our minds
before we start studying passages such as daniel chapter eight
the important thing about anti christ for me and for you is
that we not be deceived by Antichrist. If it were to turn out that I
was wrong on my assessment of this, that there's one fella
coming in the future and he's gonna take over and all that,
all right, but I still don't wanna be deceived by him. How
about that? So now how am I gonna keep from
being deceived by this spirit of Antichrist? Well, this is
what John's talking about here. And he says in verse 20, he says,
but you have an unction, that's an anointing from the Holy One,
from Christ, and you know all things. There's a knowledge there. In other words, as long as a
person abides in ignorance, ignorance of Christ and Him crucified and
the simplicity of the gospel, then you are open to deception
by Antichrist. And so he says in verse 21, I've
not written unto you because you know not the truth, but because
you know it, and that no lie is of the truth. And then he
talks about the person of Christ, who is a liar, but he that denieth
that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah. Now again, that's not
just talking about somebody who says, I deny that Jesus is the
Christ. That's included. But it has to
do with his person and his finished work. Those two issues are the
most simplistic, basic gospel message of who is Jesus Christ. What did he accomplish on Calvary? Did he put away my sins on Calvary
or did he not? Antichrist says no. He put away
part of your sins or he did some of it. Now you do the rest. And
you'll have varying degrees of how much that rest is. To some
it might be 1%, others it might be 50%. But Antichrist says no. You see what I'm saying? And
what is the issue there? Grace versus works. Same issue
that you can take right back to Genesis chapter 4, Cain and
Abel. Are you going to plead the blood
of the Lamb of God, the Lamb that was slain, or are you going
to plead something else other than Him, or with Him? Because
Antichrist will plead something else. And that's what he's talking
about here, that he is Antichrist that denieth the Father and the
Son. But now look at verse 24, and Brother Bill had that right.
That's not a permissive thing here that you give God permission
to do anything. This is a command. In fact, the
construction is such that you have no choice in this matter
but to let that therefore abide in you which you have heard from
the beginning. Now, I want to show you something here because
this is important too. What did you hear in the very
beginning? You heard the gospel, the simple gospel. of Christ
and Him crucified, the ABCs of salvation, the 1, 2, 3s. Paul calls it the simplicity
that's in Jesus Christ, who He is and what He accomplished on
Calvary. Am I righteous in Christ or do
I look for righteousness somewhere else? That's simple, isn't it? You're either going to find it
all in Him or you're going to go somewhere else in there, right?
You go somewhere else, that's the spirit of Antichrist. Right
there. Whether he's one fella sitting
somewhere in Europe or wherever or whether he's just a pervading
spirit. Whatever. And that's the key. And it's just like this. You
young people, you study in school. You study mathematics. Well,
let me put it to you this way. Whether you're studying simple
addition or linear algebra, well, one is always going to be a one.
A two is always going to be a two. And a three is always going to
be a three. And it'll never change. You see what I'm saying? You
study literature and language and grammar. Well, whether you're
learning to sing the ABC song or reading Shakespeare, an A
is always an A, a B is always a B, and a C is always a C. and
it'll never change. And that's what he's talking
about. Let that which abide in you, which you heard from the
beginning. What did you hear? You heard salvation by the free,
sovereign grace of God in Christ. And let me tell you something,
no matter what book of the Bible you're reading, no matter what
something you may be confused about in the interpretation of
a particular scripture, doesn't matter, that'll never change.
That which you heard from the beginning will never change.
Antichrist seeks to change that. That which you heard from the
beginning. You see what I'm saying? That's the mark he puts in the
mind and on the hands of people. Salvation by works. He will always
bring into question something about the glorious person and
finished work of Christ. So that's the important thing
now. Don't be deceived by Antichrist. Well, we know ultimately That
the only way that we're not going to be deceived by Antichrist
is by the sovereign power of God, who saves us and keeps us
in His grace. Isn't that right? So, with that
in mind, go back to Daniel chapter 8. Let's look at this chapter.
Daniel's telling about his dream here, his vision, rather. He
had a vision. This is the second vision he
had. First one was spoken of in chapter 7. We spoke
a lot about Antichrist there. Remember, we went to Revelation
13 there and spoke of that. And remember, you know, when
I mention here that mark, the mark on the forehead and on the
hand, remember, go back to Revelation 7 and see the mark on the forehead
that God puts on His people. And that's the gospel. What does
he do? He consumes your mind, your affections,
your will, your heart with the gospel of Jesus Christ and Him
crucified. You can't get away from it. You
can't do it. You can't leave it. That's what
John's saying in 1 John 2. Well, listen to this in chapter
8. He says, In the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar,
a vision appeared unto me, even unto me Daniel, after that which
appeared unto me at the first. This is two years later than
the first vision. And this right here is a foretell,
this vision is of the future, and he says in verse two, I saw
in a vision and it came to pass when I saw that I was in Shushan,
or some people say Susa, S-U-S-A, in the palace, he said, which
is in the province of Elam, and I saw in a vision and I was by
the river Uli. What's he talking about? This
was the capital of the Medo-Persian Empire. Now, the Medo-Persian
Empire was not yet in effect. This is in the second year, or
the third year, rather, of Belshazzar, king of Babylon. So, this is
future. And what he's talking about is in the palace at Shushan.
That was the palace of King Cyrus in the Medo-Persian Empire. So, this is something that happens
later, and it says in verse three, He says, then I lifted up mine
eyes, and I 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.
Now, who is this ram with two horns, with one horn that's higher
than the other? Well, if you'll look at verse
20, turn to Daniel 8 and verse 20, he tells us exactly who it
is. And what are we doing here? We're
interpreting history through the Bible here. And it was revealed
to Daniel who this ram represented. This ram with two horns, one
higher than the other, represents verse 20, the ram which thou
sawest having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia, the
kings of the Medo-Persian empire. Why does it have two horns? Because
of the Medes and the Persians. There's two kingdoms united.
Why is one higher than the other? Because one came up first, that's
the Medes, and then later on the Persians came along and they
grew higher, they grew stronger, and that's what he's saying.
We saw that earlier in chapter 7 and in Daniel chapter 2 about
that Medo-Persian empire. Now look back at Daniel 8 and
verse 4. He said, I saw the ram pushing westward and northward
and southward. See, this ram came from the east.
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 he became great. This ram came conquering. Before this ram, this empire
was represented by a bear, but now it's a ram, and it's a very
strong ram. And God let them have their way
for a time. That's what it means. He did
according to his will. God let him have his way, you
see, for a time. God's using these kings as instruments
of judgment, but he's letting them have their way. And they
came from the east. And look at verse 5. It says,
And as I was considering, behold, and he goat, a male goat, came
from the west on the face of the whole earth, and touch not
the ground." This goat was moving so fast that its feet didn't
touch the ground, that's what he's saying. And the goat had
a notable horn between his eyes. Now this goat, if you look at
verse 21, look at Daniel 8 and verse 21, he tells you who this
male goat is. He says, the rough goat, that's
what he's called a rough goat here, is the king of Grecia,
that's Greece. And the great horn that is between
his eyes is the first king. Who was the first king of the
Grecian Empire? That was Alexander the Great.
And so he's that great horn between his eyes. Look at verse 6 of
Daniel 8. It says, He came to the ram that
had two horns, which I had seen standing before the river, and
ran unto him in the fury of his power. Remember we talked about
how Alexander the Great in the Grecian Empire was portrayed
as a panther or a leopard before. Swift, he conquered a lot of
territory in a short period of time, and he died young. He was
about 33 years old, but that's what it says in verse 7. I saw
him come close unto the ram, and he was moved with cholera.
That means anger, hatred. This was his motive, you see. This goat utterly destroys the
ram. And again, he's an instrument
of God, but in his mind, in his heart, what is there? There's
not doing glory to God. In his mind, in his will, is
hatred and anger and greed. And it was against him. He said
he smoked the ram. That's the Grecian Alexander
conquering the Medo-Persian Empire. and he break 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 upon him and there was none that
could deliver the ram out of his hands." Now this ram, this
Medo-Persian empire, like Babylon, they were under the judgment
of God and nobody can save you from the judgment of God. Now
that's right. It's like nobody can save us
from the judgment of God against sin except the Lord Jesus Christ. And the way He saved us from
the judgment of God against sin is to go under judgment Himself.
He was made a curse for us. He went under the wrath of God. He was made sin, you see. You
cannot escape the judgment of God. And so in salvation, as
we say we escaped the judgment of God through Christ, but in
reality we didn't escape that judgment. We were judged in Christ,
but we did escape His wrath. Our sins were judged on the cross.
So there you have a picture of that. So man may be used of God
in a great way, but he's still responsible for his motives.
Look at verse 8. It says, Therefore the he-goat waxed very great,
he grew strong. And when he was strong, this
he-goat, when he was strong, the great horn was broken, for
it came up Four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven.
When Alexander was at his strongest, he died at 33 years old at the
height of his power. Most historians say he died of
a fever due to a drinking binge. In other words, he conquered
the world, but he couldn't conquer himself. Then that man's problem
We can't conquer ourselves, you see, that's our problem. But
after Alexander came up four notable ones toward the four
winds of heaven. Now that's the four kingdoms
that Alexander's empire was divided into. Now look at verse nine.
And he said, out of one of them came forth a little horn. Now
there's that term, a little horn, again. You remember hearing that
before in Daniel 7. What was the little horn in Daniel
7? It was Antichrist. Exactly who it is. What is it
here? All right, here's where it gets
kind of heavy now. And I want you to listen very
carefully. Listen, let's read the verse first. And out of one
of them came forth a little horn which waxed or grew exceeding
great toward the south, toward the east, and toward the pleasant
land." The pleasant land is Israel. That's what that's referring
to. In other words, this little horn came up and went against
Israel. And it says in verse 10, it says,
it waxed great. This little horn grew great.
even to the host of heaven, and that means literally against
the host of heaven. This is someone, what he's talking
about here is something or someone, some spirit, that is so inflated
and so proud that it stands in opposition to the invincible
army of God. Think about that. The host of
heaven. The Bible calls our God the Lord
of hosts. He's the Lord of a great army.
What does that mean? That doesn't just mean numbers.
He took 300 under Gideon and destroyed the Midianites. They
were outnumbered. It wasn't just the number, it
was the power of God. And that's a picture of our Savior
on the cross standing against the powers of hell and the powers
of Satan and the powers of Antichrist and defeating them. He's the
Lord of hosts. He defeated my sin. He defeated
death. He defeated hell by the blood
of the cross. The shedding of His blood, think
about it. The shedding of His blood is our victory. But here's
a little horn that sprang up. that is so inflated, so self-righteous,
so proud, so self-confident that it stood against the host of
heaven. And verse 10 says, and it cast down some of the host
and of the stars to the ground. Now that's talking about the
ministers of God. It's talking about the people
of God. This is a persecution here of the people of God. This little horn was allowed
by God. to go after the people of God
and to wreak havoc on the people of God. And he stamped upon them,
it says. Now what's that talking about?
It's talking about persecution of the people of God. You can
make an application here of the persecution of the people of
Israel under these foreign invaders. Sometimes they had it pretty
good. Sometimes even under foreign invaders they had it pretty good.
Sometimes they had it pretty bad. And that's a picture of
the church. Sometimes the church is under
a hard persecution. Read the book of Acts. Read of
the early New Testament believers and what they suffered for their
testimony of Christ because they wouldn't speak peace to the world.
That's what Antichrist does. Antichrist will speak peace to
the world. Christ will not. That spirit
of Antichrist has been in the world all along, hasn't it? If
Abel had spoken peace to Cain, Abel would have got along with
Cain just right. But he wouldn't do it. He wouldn't
do it, and he wouldn't do it because God's word, God wouldn't
do it. You see, my friend, without Christ,
we cannot speak peace to people. We cannot tell people they're
okay. I never read an obituary. I never read an obituary. to the point to where if religion
is mentioned, they're gone to heaven to be with the Lord. I
don't care who they are, what they believe, what they've done.
Have you? And if you knew somebody who
died like that, who didn't really know the Lord, if you went and
told their relatives that they weren't with the Lord in heaven,
what do you think would happen? But we all have that kind of
language, you see. That's that spirit now. And that's
why we have to be careful. Sometimes we'll get chastised,
we'll get persecuted rather, just for our silence. You ever
been in that position? I have. I'm sure you have. But
see, that spirit of Antichrist will speak peace where there
is no peace. And that's what brings on that persecution. The
people of Antichrist, the people of Satan, the people of the world,
they love darkness and hate the light. John 3, 19 and 20. That's why the Lord told
His disciples, don't be amazed if the world hates you. It hated
me, for it hated you. Remember He said, if I had not
come and spoken to them, they'd have no cloak for their They
cloaked their sin in religion, but he came along and he exposed
their religion for what it was. Self-righteous, works-oriented
religion. Well, this spirit of Antichrist,
this little horn here, will persecute the people of God. And look at
verse 11. He says, "...yea, he magnified
himself even to the prince of the host." In other words, he
magnified himself against Christ. He's anti-Christ, you see. He
magnified himself against Christ. Now you remember in 2 Thessalonians
chapter 2, let me just read that to you. When Paul spoke of the
great falling away, he spoke of the man of sin who'd be revealed
in his time, And he spoke of that one who would come in verse
4. He says, "...who opposeth and
exalteth himself above all that is called God." What that means
is all that deserves to be of God. In other words, he will
oppose things in this sense. He will take things unto himself
that belong only to God. And we talked about that last
time. He'll claim to be the vicar of Christ. He'll claim to be
the spokesman of God in the sense not of just reading and invoking
the Word of God, but in writing the Word of God. My Word, or
my interpretation of it. He will claim to be able to forgive
sins. In essence, that's what he'll
do. And he says, or all that is worshiped so that he as God
sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.
That's Christian in name only. It's Antichrist. All right? Back to Daniel 8. He says in
verse 11, he says, Yea, he magnified himself even to the prince of
the host, and by him the daily sacrifice was taken away. Now,
the daily sacrifice being taken away, what does that refer to?
Well, he says, "...and the place of his sanctuary was cast down."
Well, obviously that has an allusion to the temple and the sacrifices
of the temple. And all of that pictured Christ
and Him crucified. All of that pictures the blood
of Christ for the forgiveness of sins. And what this Antichrist,
this Antichrist spirit, Even if it's embodied in one man,
or if it's many antichrists, as in John's day, in some way,
they're going to cast off and diminish the glorious power of
the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ to save us from
our sins. That's where his guns are aimed,
you say. His guns are aimed at the person
and work of Christ. Say something, do something,
believe something that will diminish or devalue in the minds of the
people that follow Him and hear Him that will diminish and devalue
the blood of Christ. Said it this morning, quoting
in him, what can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of
Jesus. How many people do you know sing
that hymn and they don't really believe it? Or their doctrine
declares something else? It says in verse 12, look here,
he says, "...and an host was given him against the daily sacrifice
by reason of the transgression and it cast down the truth to
the ground and it practiced and it prospered." So what is being
said here is that this Antichrist, this spirit, this little horn,
will have a great following. He'll have a host of his own.
The host was given over the transgression against the daily sacrifice by
reason of transgression. In other words, he'll find some
other way to deal with sin and put away sin other than the blood
of Christ. That's what that means. Some
other way. How are you going to deal with
sin? How am I going to deal with sin? What did we hear about that
from the beginning? Remember what John said, that
which you've heard? We've heard from the beginning that the blood
of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. That's gonna be under attack
here. Under attack. All right. Well,
let me give you something here. If you read commentaries, many
of you probably don't, or if you listen to messages on this,
you may hear a name. A name of a man. And the name
of that man is Antiochus Epiphanes. Actually, Epiphanes is not his
name. That's just what he called himself. You know what Epiphanes
means? You ever made a statement, we
had an Epiphany moment? That means we had something glorious
happen. Something great and high and
glorious from God. And this man named Antiochus,
now some preachers pronounce it Antiochus. because the city
of Antioch was named after him, Antioch in Syria. And that has
a lot of significance in the early church, Antioch does. I'll
show you that in just a moment. But this Antiochus Epiphanes,
he was a descendant, the son or the grandson of one of those
four kings that's mentioned here, these four notable ones in verse
8. When Alexander died, there were four notable ones. One of
them was a Seleucid king. That was his nationality. And
this Antiochus Epiphanes was either his son or his grandson.
And he came up on the scene, and I'll tell you what, this
man, and incidentally, somebody, I mentioned this one time and
said, well, preachers ought not use all those big names. And
I said, well, I didn't name him. I wish they had named him Sam
Smith, but they didn't, you know. So anyway, I didn't write this
now, folks. So, I mean, you've got big names
in the Bible. They're just there. But this
was his name, and Antioch was named after him. But this Antiochus,
now some people say this little horn is Antiochus Epiphanes,
who appeared on the scene later. And he sorely persecuted Israel. Oh, he hated the Jews. He had
a, you talk about anti-Semitic. This fella, he came from an insignificant
background. He usurped the power of another,
and his goal was to exterminate the Jews. Now, you know Cyrus
the Persian, his goal wasn't to exterminate the Jews. He let
them worship however they wanted to. In fact, he let them go back
and rebuild the temple and the city, the walls of Jerusalem.
And you will read about that in Zechariah and Haggai and Malachi. But this Antiochus, he hated
the Jews. And his goal was to exterminate
the Jews, and he magnified himself. He said, I'm Antiochus the Great,
the Glorious, the Epiphany of rulers. That's what he said.
He exalted himself, you see. And he set out to destroy the
daily sacrifice, the way the Jews worship. He cast down the
truth to the ground and sought to practice and prosper idolatry. And in 168 BC, 168 years before
Christ, so you can see this is later than Daniel, He ordered
the Jews to adopt the Greek religion. Now, you know what the Greek
religion was, don't you? That's belief in many gods, Zeus, Hera,
all those, and then the Roman counterparts, Jupiter and all
that. That's what they believed. Well, he ordered that to be the
state religion of Judea. That's what Antiochus did. And
he set up a statue of Zeus in the temple, the Jewish temple. And he sacrificed a pig in the
temple to honor Zeus. Some say he poured swine's blood,
some say it was just broth over all the holy vessels. And some
people will identify that as the abomination of desolation.
Well, that was an abomination of desolation. Because those
are things that were set apart. We talked about being set apart,
sanctified this morning. And how in the book of Exodus,
God told Moses, you build that tabernacle and institute that
priesthood and those things were to be set apart and sanctified
for the Lord God of Israel. and to typify and to picture
and to teach sinners the only way of salvation by the blood
of Christ, by His righteousness alone. And don't you use them
for anything else. And if you use those things for
anything else, you know what it's called? It's an abomination.
That's what an abomination of desolation is. There's not just
one abomination of desolation in the history of the church.
There's many. And this was one of them. By
this man. You think about it. Herod! Read
about Herod in Acts chapter 12. He brought about an abomination
of desolation. You remember the Roman Emperor
Nero? His whole purpose was to kill Christians. He blamed Christians
for the burning of Rome and he wanted people to go after him
and gave him leave to kill him. So there were many, many times
like this. But this Antiochus, he was infamous
in his hatred for the Jews. Look at verse 13. Daniel says,
Then I heard one saint... You know what a saint is. That's
a sinner saved by grace. That's a child of God. One who's
washed in the blood of Christ and clothed in his righteousness.
He said, I heard one saint speaking and another saint said unto that
certain saint which spoke, The saints talking to each other,
that's what he's talking about. This is the true people of God. And here's what they say, "...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 under the foot?" It's almost like,
it's very simple. How long is this going to go
on, this persecution under this ungodly man? in verse 14, and
he said unto me, unto 2,300 days. If you look in your concordance
on the word days there, you might have the term evening and morning.
And he said, then shall the sanctuary be cleansed. Now here's the question. Some people say that this person,
Antiochus Epiphanes, was the Antichrist and that he is the
little horn that was spoken of in Daniel 7. Some people say
he couldn't be because that horn came out of Rome. Well, understand
this now. When that little horn comes out, The Babylonians and
the Greeks and the Medo-Persians were all combined into Rome,
so that doesn't answer the question. Yes, he's the little horn. Let
me tell you something, the little horn is Antichrist, Antiochus
Epiphanes, he's Antichrist, and any other ruler down through
the ages who partakes of this kind of behavior in the abomination
of desolation is Antichrist. He's just one embodiment of that
spirit that John spoke of in 1 John 2 that stands against
our Lord and the only way of salvation by the grace of God
in Christ. That's what he is. And so they ask the people of
God, and we don't ask that question too much today because we're
not really under a hard persecution like these people would be. How long is this going to last?
Well, he says 2,300 days. Now, a lot of times in the Bible
you can take days and weeks and months and you can symbolize,
you'll see a symbol. But here it's a little different.
It's actually 2,300 days. That's what that means. There.
How do you know that? Well, look in your concordance.
It says evenings and nights. It says, where is it there? I'll find it here in a minute.
Evenings and morning and evening. That's a different word. Actually,
2,300 days. Incidentally, the Seventh-day
Adventists, they take that verse 14 and they couple it off into
the thousand, make it 2,300 days, and that's why they thought the
Lord was coming back in 1842. Well, He didn't come back. and the temple wasn't cleansed.
So now they say, well, he didn't come back, but there's a literal
temple in heaven and it was cleansed. How do they know that? The Bible
doesn't say anything like that. That's just speculation. Don't
listen to that, see? Remember what you heard from
the beginning now about who Christ is and what he accomplished and
what this spirit of Antichrist goes after. It doesn't matter
if you believe he's coming back tomorrow. He may, I don't know. I know this, I know this, that
sanctuary is going to be cleansed." Well, it just so happens that
Antiochus Epiphanes, if you look at 2300 days, that's about, what,
six months, six years and three months? That's about the length
of his reign, about six years. And he was killed. And the temple
was cleansed by a family, a Jewish family called the Maccabees.
You may have heard of them in history. But that was about the
length of his reign. So, yes, was Antiochus Epiphanes,
was he Antichrist? Oh, yes, he was, but he's not
the only one, and don't fool yourself to think he was. There
are many Antichrists. Many Antichrists. Antiochus Epiphanes
Look at verse 14, it says, "...and he said unto me, unto two thousand
and three hundred days, then shall the sanctuary be cleansed." This is when he was broken. Look
down at verse 25. It's talking in the interpretation,
and I'll come back to these verses next time, but just look at this.
It says, and though his policy also, through his policy, this
is this little horn now, this same person, this same spirit
of Antichrist, through his policy also he shall cause craft to
prosper in his hand, that's deception, and he shall magnify himself
in his heart, that's self-righteousness and pride, and by peace shall
destroy many, he's going to speak peace, peace where there is no
peace, to the destruction of many, This is the spirit of Antichrist,
and he shall also stand up against the prince of princes. He'll
stand against Christ. But he shall be broken without
hand. What does that mean? Without
human hands. In other words, human hands aren't going to destroy
him. It's going to take divine hands to destroy him. And you know, that's the power
of Christ. You know what happened to Antiochus
Epiphanes? He got a sudden dreadful disease
and he was eaten by worms from inside out. Does that remind
you of anybody else? You remember King Herod when
he lifted himself up and he was struck with a disease and he
was eaten by worms? You see, Antiochus Epiphanes,
whether you believe that the little horn is exactly him or
not, I don't care. I'll tell you what is here, though,
that we all know. This is the spirit of Antichrist. And he's a powerful spirit. And
the spirit of Antichrist is against the world. He's in the world,
and he's against Christ, and he's against the gospel that
we believe. And so what is our hope? What is our only hope? Our only hope as it always has
been and always will be, is to be found in Christ, not having
mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which
is through the faith of Christ, even the righteousness of God,
which is by faith. Is that your hope? I tell you
what, if that's your hope, if Christ is truly your hope, I
guarantee you one thing, you will not be deceived by Antichrist. And you know why? Because you
have an unction from the Holy One. And you know all things. If you know Christ, you know
it all. You may not know all the details. You may not know
how to express it and write it down and theologize it. But if
you know Him, you know everything you need to know to be saved
and not to be deceived by Antichrist. All right.