Daniel 11

You remember last time you said that Daniel 10 to 12 forms a huge long prophecy. It's massive. So we sort of fall right into the middle again of this continuing monologue from this angel who's delivering a message to Daniel. If you are a bit of a sci-fi fan, you'll know about the movie series called Back to the Future. Back to the Future.

It's one of my favourite movies. And then it's a story about a guy called Marty McFly, who's played by Michael J. Fox, who whizzes backwards and forwards in time. You know, and he breaks the space-time continuum to defeat bad guys, to save lives and ultimately to get the girl. It's the stuff of dreams for any nerd. The name of the movie series is really cool as well.

It's a play on words: back to the future. Back to the future. Because, okay, well, it doesn't really quite make sense. You don't go back into the future.

But if you watch the movie, you'll understand that he gets transported to the past and he tries to get back to the future. So that's where the name comes from. This morning, we're going to be looking at a prophecy made about Israel's future, but which is our past. Their future is our past, and the prophecy has a very important message for them, but also for us. In fact, it has far-reaching implications for us today.

In fact, you could say that it involves or touches on our future. So as we read and we look through and we work through Daniel chapter 11, we will be going back to the future. So we have, yeah, we have just looked at Daniel 10. And in Daniel 10, we see that Daniel is touched by the pre-incarnate Christ. He is touched by and he is spoken to by Jesus.

And Jesus outlines this whole future that is awaiting not only Daniel, but more directly the people of Israel. And so this prophecy it continues, and we will be going on with that. It's a long chapter, so we're not going to be able to read the whole thing. But what I will be doing, what we'll hopefully be doing is sort of just break it down into chunks and really highlight where this passage is going. I will be summarising where it's going, but I encourage you to go and read your Bible this week.

Go and read this chapter in your family devotions or your personal time to make sure that I am doing the right thing here. Keep me accountable. But, yeah, it's just a huge chapter, so we're not gonna be able to cover it all. The first 35 verses, just as context here, the first 35 verses deals with world events that would occur almost five hundred years before Jesus is born.

Okay? First 35 verses. Five hundred years before Jesus. But for Daniel, who was writing this in May, it was a prophecy. For us today, it's history.

So we're going to have a look at this and we're going to break it down. The first two verses of chapter 11 talks about the Persian and the Greek wars. Now we've mentioned this before. Persia and Greece were symbolised by different monsters, different creatures that came up out of the ocean. And so we have another prophecy here about what was happening.

It says that after Cyrus, who Daniel was then serving on there, four more kings would rise up to rule over Persia. Four more kings. The fourth, the last one, would be the richest, would be the most powerful of the kings of Persia. His name is Xerxes. If you know your Bible, you'll remember that Xerxes married Queen Esther, the Jew or Jewess, and he was the pinnacle.

He was at the height of the Persian empire. Then verse three says there is a mighty king. Have a look. Verse three says there's a mighty king who would rise up. And this is Alexander the Great.

After his death, there were no heirs to take his throne, it says. If you know your history, he actually had a legitimate illegitimate son. He had a brother and an infant son by his wife. But all of them were murdered after he died. They were murdered as people were trying to vie for control over his kingdom, and they were trying to eliminate the competition.

So when all these heirs were taken care of, so to speak, their kingdom was divided into four. Four generals took parts of the kingdom. Two of those four was the generals Ptolemy and Seleucus. And they in fact become the emphasis for the rest of chapter. So the empire of Ptolemy and the empire of the Seleucids.

And the amazing thing is, as Daniel predicted it here, oh sorry. As the book of Daniel predicted here, it's what happened. Then our second part is the real meaty chunky part of Daniel chapter 11, and that talks about the battles between these two empires. The empires of the Ptolemies and the empires of the Seleucids of the North and the South. And we're not talking here of the battle, you know, the civil war of America, the North and South.

It's actually, from Israel's perspective, where Israel was located, the kingdom of the North, which was Syria under the control of Seleucid, and then his descendants of Ptolemy in the South, which was Egypt. Jerusalem, however, is right smack bang in the middle. And so Jerusalem is looking up and seeing that's the Northern Kingdom, and they look south and they say that is the Southern Kingdom. Okay. So that's just to put it into perspective.

But for nearly three hundred years, history tells us, these two kingdoms fought each other, trying to buy power, trying to expand their boundaries and so on. But poor old Israel is always caught right in the crossfire. All armies had to go through Israel, had to go through Judea, Jerusalem to get to the borders of the other nations. And so history confirms the accuracy of the predictions that Daniel gives us of this ongoing conflict. When you study the history books, it almost reads like a soap opera.

Let's have a quick read of verses six and seven. So these kingdoms are fighting. And after some years, they will become allies, verse six says. The daughter of the king of the South, that's the one in Egypt, he they will go up to the king of the North to make an alliance, but she will not retain her power, and he and his power will not last. In those days, she will be handed over together with her royal escort and her father and the one who supported her.

One from her family line will arise to take her place. He will attack the forces of the king of the North and enter his fortress. He will fight against them and be victorious. Just to give you a snippet of the amazing accuracy of this prophecy, I'll tell you about this particular incident. History tells us that there was an Egyptian Syrian alliance that took place in February.

Ptolemy the second. So this was the king after the gen, you know, the first one, obviously, who he offered his daughter, Bernice, to Antiochus the second, which was who was the king of the North. The and he was the grandson of Seleucus the general. Ptolemy the second demanded, however, that, so he gave his daughter to him in marriage, but he was married already, the king of the North. So the king of the South said, I demand that you divorce your wife, take my daughter as your bride, and we will form an alliance.

We will be friends. And so that's what he did. The king of the North divorced his wife, who was named Laodice. But of course, this made Laodice very angry. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

And so after only two years of marriage, Bernice's father, the new bride's father, the king of the South died. And the king of the North saw this as an opportunity to not divorce, sorry, to remarry Laodice, his former wife, and to make Bernice, the new bride, a concubine. So not a wife anymore, but a concubine. This absolutely obviously infuriated everything, but it wasn't as bad as what happened next. Laodice, the old wife, was carrying a massive grudge towards her father because he had ditched her for the younger model.

And so soon after their remarriage, Laodice poisoned both her husband and then killed Bernice, the new wife, killed their child and her whole entourage. But meanwhile, back in Egypt, Bernice's brother came to hear of this news. And so he invaded the Northern Kingdom, killed Laodice, and beat up the entire Syria. I told you it sounds like a soap opera, doesn't it? But the amazing thing is this is exactly what happened according to the prophecy.

Now, obviously, not the same details, but very much in line with what was told would happen. And after this fighting for roughly two hundred years, we come to the section, the next section which is from verses 21 to 35. And this really zooms in on one particular king, one particular man. And we come back to our old friend Antiochus Epiphanes. Remember him?

That really bad bad guy, the little horn in Daniel chapter 8. He is a forerunner and a type of future antichrist. So he was the king of the North. Okay? He was that yellow area's king.

And he was a guy who had huge grandeur views of becoming the king of Greece. And he attacked and continually, yeah, attacked Egypt. Let's have a look at verse 29 to see just an interesting prediction fulfilled. Verse 29. At the appointed time, he will invade the South again, but this time, this time, the outcome will be different from what it was before.

Ships of the Western Coastlands will oppose him, and he will lose heart. Then he will turn back and vent his fury against the holy covenant. He will return to those who forsake the holy covenant. His armed forces will rise up to desecrate the temple fortress and will abolish the daily sacrifice. Then they will set up the abomination that causes desolation.

I know this is a lot of history, a lot of information, but just keep with me here. History confirms again that this prophecy is accurate. In one hundred and seventy BC, Antiochus builds up his army, tries again, but he makes sure that he's gonna do a good job. He builds this massive army. Thousands upon thousands, hundreds of thousands of people of soldiers and chariots and whatever.

And they begin their descent down to Egypt. Obviously, going through Jerusalem again. The Southern Kingdom hears of this. They get really scared because he's got this massive army. And they, in fact, write to Rome to Rome in Italy.

Now Rome was beginning their descent, ascent to power. They were really becoming a powerful nation, a superpower in their own rights. So they go right across the Mediterranean, and they call out to Rome for help. Rome comes down, and they sail across with also a nice big army. And about four miles from that border between the Roman general meets with Antiochus.

And he says to Antiochus, well, I don't think this is a very good idea. If you do this, we'll be forced to attack you. Antiochus then says to the general, his name was Papillius, He's absolutely disgusted and says, well, okay. I'm just gonna go back to my tent and I'm gonna have a good think about this and I'll get back to you with an answer. The general, however, takes his sword and makes a circle in the sand around Antiochus and says, you will not leave this circle until you've made a decision.

Completely humiliated, Antiochus obviously says, well, I can't do this. I can't fight against the Romans and against the Egyptians or the Ptolemaic kingdom. So he retreats. But this man Antiochus, he's just one of those egomaniacs. He's completely humiliated.

And he's like a bully that's sort of being humiliated at school. Instead of not bullying anyone, he just goes and picks on someone else. And going back through Jerusalem, he attacks Jerusalem. In one week, he kills eighty thousand Jews for no reason. Eighty thousand Jews he kills.

He goes into the temple. He builds an altar to Zeus. Now it's just an abomination. It's so disgusting. He builds an altar to Zeus, but the worst thing is he slaughters a pig on the altar, and he sprinkles its blood around the temple.

Imagine being a Jew and seeing this happen. You would have been absolutely distraught. You would have been broken. And he just does it because he has the power. He just does it because he's been humiliated.

It was so horrific. And the amazing thing in scriptures here again is it talks about the abomination. It talks about an abomination. Let's see. Verse 31.

His armed forces will rise up to desecrate the temple, and they will abolish the daily sacrifice. Then they will set up the abomination that causes desolation. This was an abomination to the temple. This was an abomination to the Jews. And it meant that the temple was unclean.

The Holy of Holies, the most holy place, was unclean, and so they couldn't even come to worship God in their temple anymore. And it left the temple desolated. Okay. So why do we say this? Why do we need to understand this?

Why is it important for God's people, even today, to know about this? Back then, the Jews couldn't have done anything about it. They didn't have any power at all to change what would happen. Today, we don't have any power to change what happened. So why is it important for us to understand this part of history?

Well, it's important to know this because we see God, again the creator and the orchestrator of human history being involved behind the scenes. And we hear again and we see again in Daniel chapter 11 those theological passives that we talked about last time. Remember the theological passives? The wordings that show that God is ultimately in control. Let's have a look at verse five.

It shows that God uproots the empire and gives it to others. It will not go to his descendants nor will it have the power he exercised because his power will be uprooted and given to others. This is Alexander the Great. This is one of the greatest figures in history. Who ends his reign?

God does. Who uproots his empire? God does. God gives his empire over to others. Verse 24 says that he will plot to overthrow the fortresses, but only for a time.

But only for a time. It's limited. God was the one who cut kingdoms and rulers short. He was the one who would intervene when His people cried out to Him. He used the Persian rulers to rebuild the temple of Jerusalem.

That's an amazing thing. Israel is taken out into exile. Nehemiah and Ezra come to the Persian king and say, we want to build our temple. And they are allowed to go back. They are given gold to buy all the necessary stuff to build it.

God moves the hearts of those rulers to send back the Jewish people to their land. And so despite all the terrible wars, despite the rise of powerful rulers who oppressed God's people, God is ultimately the one who remains in control of Israel's fate. That is what it's trying to say here in chapter 11. But that's Israel's future, but it's our history. But we come to a section in Daniel 11 that actually goes further than that, and we haven't dealt with that yet.

That is verses 36 to the end of the chapter. And that actually doesn't reflect past. This moves into future. It's future music. And it correlates to the antichrist.

It correlates to the story of Revelation that we find in the New Testament. What we have here is a prophecy of the end time. The time just before Jesus Christ comes to return to judge the people on earth. Have a look at verse 40. It says, at the time of the end, the king of the South will engage him in battle, and the king of the North will storm out against him with chariots and cavalry.

The arch enemies of the North and the South will in fact stop fighting each other in order to attack the one king who exalts himself above God. But the most significant thing, and we can ask, well, isn't this just continuing on with the whole North versus South thing of the Egyptians and the Syrians and so on? The most important clue that this is not talking about the past, but in fact something that will be coming in the future is that history tells us these things never happened. These things never happened. While the prophecies of the rise and the fall of Persia, Greece, of the Ptolemaic empire, the Seleucid empire, are so clearly visible, and it happened with such amazing accuracy, verses 35 to the end of the chapter shows has no correspondence, no correlation to what happened in history.

Rome, we know, started to rise in power, and they slowly ground out an empire, but by no means resembles anything of what is pictured here in Daniel 11. And so it raises this interesting aspect of prophecy. Often what happens in Old Testament prophecy is that he views or comes to understand a revelation of the future. And so he sees the near future. He sees, you know, the details of that.

He looks at that mountain. But oftentimes, they look right over that to the distant future too and they tell it as if it's going to happen in the same time span as the near future, but there's this whole gap between the two. So you can understand from his perspective, he's looking up and he sees two mountain peaks. Well, it looks like one, but he sees two. And he doesn't understand that there's actually a time gap here.

It happens so often. It happens in Isaiah. Isaiah gives prophecies about Israel's return, but in the same breath, he talks about Jesus Christ coming, which was four hundred, five hundred years later. So God gives a revelation to a prophet, but He doesn't give the timeline. And so what we see here is perhaps something of that happening.

He, Daniel sees something of the struggles between the kings, but there's also this time of future that he only understands as the time of the end. Okay. That's just a little bit of Bible college 101. But the Bible says that this king, this king who sets himself up above God, will invade many countries. This is not just about the kings of the South and North fighting anymore.

He will actually invade many countries, and he will sweep through them like a flood, the Bible says. His sphere of influence will go to the ends of the earth. That's a bit different, isn't it? That's a bit different to what we've just been reading. It says that he will have all the gold and the silver of the Egyptians, the Libyans, and the Nubians, which were the three wealthiest countries of the time.

So in other words, he will be amazingly rich, amazingly powerful. There's nothing that can stop this guy. And so this power invades the whole world, yet in the last verse of chapter 11, it says he will come to his end and no one will be able to help him. The wealthiest, the richest, the most powerful king, the one who sets himself up against God Himself will come to an end. Why does God want us to understand this?

Why do we need to know this? Well, the Jews who first read Daniel and heard all about what was going to happen to them, they were told about the rise of Greece. They were told about the rise of Persia. They were told about the battles between the Seleucids and the Ptolemaic armies. They were told even about the rise and the fall of Antiochus, that you know, they would be absolutely destroyed by him.

The fact that they were told this was to show the power of God who controls the future. God who holds the power of the future in His hands. God sent an angel to Daniel to explain what would happen before any of it even seemed possible. That would have given the Jews, the first years, so much comfort. In a time that was so up in the air, a time where they were on the verge of extinction, God says you will not become extinct.

All these things will happen, but I'm going to be there with you through it all. He knew what was coming and nothing was going to surprise Him. Those words every now and then, those theological passives where God raises up, where God brings down, where God gives over, those theological passives indicated that God was orchestrating and guiding the course of human history to meet His purposes. So what? It's good that the Jews could know that, but why do we need to understand that?

Well, the last part of Daniel chapter 11 tells us that a difficult time is coming. And it's even more difficult than what the Jews faced. That's interesting, isn't it? It's more difficult than what the Jews faced. Daniel 11 says that if you think Antiochus and the Seleucid armies were bad, if you think that the struggles that God's people faced then were bad, there's a power that's coming that is far more wealthy, far more powerful.

It's a power that will wilfully attack God's people and will conquer countries like a flood. It will conquer countries like a flood sweeping through the streets of Toowoomba. Like the Jews of twenty five hundred years ago, we have no idea who or what that will be. But this is why it's important for us to know. We have a God who holds the future in His hands.

We have a God who holds the future so well in His hands that He can tell us pinpoint accuracies of what's going to happen. We have a God who tells us that nothing will surprise Him. Nothing is going to catch Him off guard. At the time of the end, in fact, God says that even this antichrist, this one that sets himself up against Him, will come to his end, and no one will be able to help him. All his power, all his allies, all his followers, all his wealth, nothing will protect him when God brings about his downfall.

That is the God we trust in. That is the God who writes this for His people. Israel's future? Yes. That's become our past.

The future for Israel is our history, but there is also a future that awaits us. The wonderful assurance is that the same God who saw His people through all the darkness and all the pain of those days in Greece and the divided kingdoms, that same God will see His people through today, will see His people through the present and into the future. And as the time draws near, as that darkness starts to creep in, and it will, a powerful enemy approaches, but our God is more powerful. Our God will conquer. Our God holds the future firmly in His hands.