Daniel 8

How would it feel to you if you were given a road map to the rest of your life? A complete story of how your life would unfold. To know how it would end, to know what the obstacles you would have to face would be. Not only that, but this road map would give you an indication of what your kids' lives would look like. What your grandchildren would have to experience.

How their lives would end. If you're anything like me, you'd be terrified by this idea. On the one hand, it's nice to think about the clarity and maybe the security that would come from knowing exactly what was going to happen with you. Knowing how that job interview was going to go. Knowing whether you would be a success in your business or whatever.

But on the other hand, it makes you absolutely terrified to think of the pain that might be lying in wait. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Last week, we looked at Daniel chapter seven, and we saw the prophecy of a kingdom that was to come that was greater than all the kingdoms of the earth. It was a kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the fourth kingdom that had no end, that would last forever and ever, Daniel said. Unlike the kings who had ruled the other great kingdoms, this kingdom would be ruled by a king who was just, who was merciful, who was completely righteous.

And just as Daniel seven gave us so much information about this fourth kingdom, this kingdom that would be ruled by the Son of Man, the majestic Son of Man. As much as Daniel seven gave us an insight into this kingdom, it now turns its focus onto two of the human kingdoms that were described in Daniel chapter seven. Two of the three that we saw. For Daniel, it says that this was the most troubling visions or experiences that he had ever had. Imagine that.

The most troubling. Daniel had seen everything. Have a look at Daniel's reaction verse 27 at the end of this whole thing. It says, "I, Daniel, was exhausted and lay ill for several days. Then I got up and went about the king's business.

I was appalled by the vision. It was beyond understanding." For us, however, as we stand on this side of history, as we stand on this side of the cross, on this side of the prophecy, it is one of the easiest visions to comprehend. And we have a fantastic interpretation that the angel Gabriel gives Daniel. What Daniel prophesied in chapter eight was future for him.

It was something that still lay ahead, but it's history for us. It's history for us. One of the reasons that I love studying Daniel, one of the reasons I love studying this chapter is that it gives us a study of history, and I love history. But it's also a really good place for us to learn about prophecy and how God is in control in shaping the story of humanity. And this message should demonstrate to us the absolute reliability of God's word.

What God says will happen does happen. What God promises to happen will come to fruition. When we see these things predicted in the Bible and see that they come true, it gives us a massive reassurance that the things that have been promised to happen will actually happen. And so let's have a look at this chapter, chapter eight. It takes a break from the story of chapter seven.

There's an explanation here that it was in the time of King Belshazzar. If you remember the story, King Belshazzar was a Babylonian king. So this is again jumping backwards in time. We finished Daniel six at the end of his life. He was roughly 90 years old, and he had been through two kingdoms.

He had been through four kings. And as we come into this section of prophecy, it takes a jump back in chronology. It doesn't flow on like a narrative. And so we go back to the time of Belshazzar in the Babylonian Empire. It says that Daniel was in Elam at the Fortress of Susa.

This is where modern-day Kuwait is, if you were interested. And it's about 250 kilometres north of the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Later on, this citadel, this Fortress of Susa became the capital for the Persian Empire. And it would have been where Queen Esther and Nehemiah lived several hundred years later. So that just places it in history for us.

We're not sure if Daniel was actually there when he saw this vision or whether he was transported there in his vision. And so I probably would say it was the latter. He probably wasn't in the capital Susa at that time. He was probably in the city of Babylon rather. And so rather than us rereading this chapter again, I'm just going to outline the visions once more.

The basics is that Daniel dreamed of a mighty ram, a ram with two horns, it says. One of the horns and they were both really big, it says. But one of these horns was bigger than the other one. And this ram went about and conquered and trampled and destroyed everything in its path.

To the north, to the east, to the south, everything was destroyed. Daniel himself was troubled by this vision. But then a second animal came, a second beast, and this beast was a goat that had a single horn in the middle of its head, kind of like a unicorn. And this goat was even more destructive and more swift and more ferocious than the ram. And it went about also destroying and killing and gaining power as it went, but it conquered and it destroyed the ram, the two-horned ram.

And so Daniel receives this explanation from the angel Gabriel in verses 20 to 24. This is what Daniel saw. He saw these animals, these beasts, and then the explanation comes to him from the angel Gabriel. From verse 20, the two-horned ram, Gabriel explains, represents the kings of Media and Persia. The shaggy goat is the king of Greece.

This is the one with the horn in the middle of its head. And the large horn between its eyes is the first king. The four horns that replace the one that was broken off represent four kingdoms that will emerge from his nation but will not have the same power. In the later part of their reign, when rebels have become completely wicked, a stern-faced king, a master of intrigue will arise. This is the little horn.

He will become very strong, but not by his own power. He will cause astounding devastation and will succeed in whatever he does. He will destroy the mighty men and the holy people. When Daniel first sees this vision, he is, remember, in the empire of Babylon. Babylon is safe.

Babylon is secure. It is the richest, most luxurious, glamorous empire that the world had seen. And he's just going about doing whatever he was doing as the prime minister, and all of a sudden, he sees this vision. The angel Gabriel tells him that there is a new empire that is on the horizon, that Babylon will not last forever. It doesn't say how long.

It doesn't say this will be next year that the empire will come to destroy Babylon or whether it'll be fifty years or a hundred years. But it says also that there would be a time when Nebuchadnezzar and his empire would be destroyed. This horn, interestingly enough, the two horns, one bigger than the other, represents the two nations that formed the Medo-Persian Empire. The Persians were much stronger than the Medians. And so this is represented in the two horns, one being longer than the other.

And this kingdom grows and it establishes this empire, conquers, and destroys everything in its way. It is vicious. It is strong. But then we see this unicorn goat. And the goat, the angel says, represents the Greek empire.

And a single horn, if you were to understand your history, would be Alexander the Great. The Greek empire grew to world domination under the leadership of Alexander. He was a son of Philip, the king of Macedon. And his dad, the king, enlisted a guy called Aristotle, one of the greatest philosophers of their time and perhaps of all time, to instruct this young man, his personal tutor. Philip always told Alexander that he would be a great leader.

And from an early age, Alexander was convinced that he would rule the world. Imagine that. Imagine your kid who hasn't learned how to chew properly with their mouth closed telling you that they're going to be world leaders. They're gonna rule over the world. Anyway, this is what Alexander thought of himself.

Alexander, however, didn't love his dad really all that much. Alexander had a huge chip on his shoulder because his dad, King Philip, was a huge womaniser and cheated on his mum over and over and over again. He was just your typical unruly king. And so at an early age of 18, Alexander started leading armies. He became a general.

And when he was only 20, his father was conveniently murdered. Now, there's all sorts of theories by historians on exactly how it happened, but a few people believe that it was a plot that was hatched by Alexander's mother. And so he became the ruler of this small empire of the Greeks. It was small. It was pretty humble.

But in a decisive battle against the Persians and remember, this guy knew that he was going to be a world leader. In a decisive battle against the Persians who was the world superpower of the time, he won against the Persians. And at the age of 23, he becomes the greatest, most powerful emperor of the world then. And so Alexander, that single great horn on the goat becomes the biggest and most powerful man on earth. For ten years, however, this guy just conquers and he pushes into Asia.

He pushes into Pakistan. He goes over the Alps. He just does things that no one has ever heard of. But in ten years, at the age of 33, he instantly dies. He dies.

And we see in Daniel that this horn is broken off. This horn has just snapped off. No warning. Nothing. And then the prophecy says that four horns emerge on this goat.

Four horns. And again, it is so amazing how detailed this is because the historians tell us that four generals rose up instead of Alexander in his place. Alexander didn't really, he had kids, but he didn't really expect that he was going to die. He didn't really love them too much either, apparently. And so he didn't make any plans for any of them to become the heirs if he was to die.

And so when he did, the whole nation, the whole empire was sort of just hanging in limbo. And then he had four great generals who had to decide who was going to lead it, and they couldn't decide who was going to be the next king. So what they did is they divided this huge empire into the four states of the Greek empire. They were, for your information, Cassandra ruled Greece. A general called Lysimachus would rule Asia Minor.

Seleucus would rule Syria. And Ptolemy would rule over Egypt. Okay. So that's another history lesson. Now we come to this part where a little horn, a little horn grows out of one of these four horns.

And it is boastful and it is destructive and it causes more pain and more damage than all of these other beasts did. This single horn. Most scholars would agree that in Daniel 8, the little horn is actually represented by a guy you may have heard of called Antiochus Epiphanes. If you are a history buff of ancient history, you will know of this guy. His capital city became Antioch.

Antiochus, Antioch. Antioch was the hub, was a big missionary church in the New Testament. His name Antiochus Epiphanes means great. Epiphanes means great. Antiochus the Great.

But what set this guy apart and the reason why this was placed in Daniel for God's people was that he was a man who absolutely despised the Jews. Absolutely hated them. There's a whole history that we won't go into, but the Jews hated him as much as he hated them. They would have these, you know, fake parades as he would go through the state of Judea. And everyone was forced to shout out, "Epiphanes."

"Epiphanes," when he came by. You know, the great. The great. The Jews, however, they would have a play on this word and say, "Epimanes." Epimanes, which means madman or fool.

And so, you know, they would kind of sound like they were saying it. They might get away with it, but if you listen really closely, they were saying, you're an idiot. You're a joke. And so the Jews hated him as well. And the Jews who had returned by this time to the promised land, in the Persian Empire, they were given permission to go back.

And so they had established themselves. They had built the temple again, the second temple, and they were sort of settling back in. But by the time Antiochus became the king of the southern kingdom. Well, sorry, Judea was under the Greek empire's rule. They were oppressed by the Greek empire.

And so, you know, this guy, for some reason, had it in for the Jews. He forbade circumcision. He said, "You Jews can't show your covenant allegiance to the Lord your God by circumcising your children." He absolutely forbade it. He outlawed the Sabbath observance.

They could not work on the seventh day of the week. He made it a criminal offence for anyone to possess or read the Bible. And so as you can imagine, the Jews just absolutely rebelled against him. They would not stand for any of this. But history tells us that punishment was severe and brutal.

Absolutely brutal. On one occasion, this is horrendous, Antiochus forced a Jewish mother to watch as her seven sons were fried to death on a large hot metal pan. And then her eyes were taken out, so she was blinded. Meaning that that was the last thing that she ever saw. Cruel, vicious.

He slaughtered 80,000 Jews on one occasion in an uprising. But the vilest thing that any Jew, and if you were to talk to a Jew now, an Orthodox Jew, they would tell you about Antiochus Epiphanes. They would tell you about the Maccabean revolt, if you've ever heard of that as well. It was an absolutely horrible time for the Jews. And the vilest thing, though, from their perspective came at a time when Antiochus set up an image of Zeus in the Temple of Israel.

In the Temple of Jerusalem, he built an altar to Zeus. And interestingly enough, this statue resembled Antiochus. He ordered the Jews to worship the image and to their absolute horror, he slaughtered a pig on that altar, their altar, the Jews' altar. He slaughtered a pig, and he sprinkled its blood on the altar. In doing this, the Jews said he defiled the temple completely, desecrated it.

It was an act that is referred to in verse 13, if you have a look, as the rebellion that causes desolation. The rebellion that causes desolation. What does it mean? It meant that the faithful Jews were forced to leave their temple because it was absolutely dirty. It was defiled.

It was a blight to the Jews' faith. And so the temple was left for the first time since they came back absolutely desolate. No one went in. No one dared. And so in this dream, Daniel predicted that Antiochus would invade the holy land and desecrate the temple.

So this is a journey, a vision that lasts about two hundred, three hundred years. Daniel sees this. He is absolutely horrified. I don't know if he understood about the desolation or all that sort of stuff, but he felt, he physically felt what an abomination this was. And he had to write it down.

He had to put it down on paper to give his people the knowledge. And so we're left here. It just finishes there. We're left here in Daniel chapter eight going, so what? That's fair enough for them.

But why did God want it to be put in this Bible for God's people to read two thousand, twenty-five hundred years later? I think one of the greatest things about this story, one of the things that is revealed about God's character is that He is always in control. This sounds funny. This sounds funny for a God who allows His temple to be desecrated and defiled. But the fact that God foretold this event four hundred years before it happened, three hundred years before it happened, is an absolute indication of His knowledge of everything that happens, that nothing is out of His control, nothing is out of His reach, nothing is out of His vision.

He knows what is going to happen four hundred years in advance. He knows what'll happen an hour from now. Nothing is out of His control. God has so much control that He can share it with a human being. He is so confident that He can say this is exactly what's gonna happen, and it exactly happened like that.

Archaeologists have dated this to before these things happened. Carbon dating, science has proven that these recorded writings were written before these things happened. It's amazing. We serve a God that is so much greater than we can imagine. God is in control.

He's in control of history. He's in control of time. God's plan will not be frustrated. And so the message here for the Jews is, remember, we just finished chapter seven. That said there is a time coming when the King is gonna come.

The King. The one who is going to rule in absolute mercy and justice and power and complete righteousness. He is not gonna be anything like this Antiochus, this guy who defiles and destroys, who causes an abomination to our worship. He is the absolute 100 per cent opposite of this man. So we see that God has a plan.

And for these people, Jesus was coming. But for our life, for our life, we know that whether we struggle with real physical threats, with persecution as a Christian, as a person who stands up for certain rights and values in this life, God is in control. Whether we face those persecutions, whether we get hammered by people because we will not relent, we will not back down, we will not compromise, there is so much comfort in knowing that God is not giving up on His plan. God is in complete control of what is happening in this story of humanity. The amazing thing is that Jesus, He came for those guys, and that was their eternal hope.

That was their hope that they longed for. But for ourselves, we have the hope that Jesus is coming back too. He is coming back. Our situations may be so terrible that we can't see the forest for the trees. The Jews may have had the prophecies of Daniel.

And as clear as they seem to us, looking back, having historians write down these things and for us to be able to piece them together, it may have been completely, you know, blurred and grey and cloudy. They may have had no idea of what was happening. We know that they were absolutely terrified when Antiochus Epiphanes did these things and performed a genocide against these Jews. But likewise, in our scary and topsy-turvy world, we can have belief that our God is in absolute control despite things seeming so uncertain. Just think about it.

Ten years ago, 09/11, the world was turned upside down. Something so phenomenally out of a sci-fi fiction story happened. And for ten years, the ringleader, Osama bin Laden was chased. I don't know about you, but, you know, by year eight, by year nine, I was thinking, man, this guy's gone. There's no way that they're gonna find him in 6,500,000,000 people.

Last year, he was found. Last year, he was brought to justice. Is that an act of God? Well, it's certainly an act of justice. Despite a world that has changed so much in ten years, this threat of terrorism, this thing that weighs over our heads all the time whether we see it or we don't, God is still in control.

We need to remember to keep our attention on the hope that lies ahead for us. That was what Daniel chapter seven and Daniel chapter eight meant for the Jews. There is a time coming when God's kingdom is going to be established once and for all. Don't lose sight of the hope. Don't lose sight.

This is what's going to happen. This is what's going to occur with your people. Don't lose sight of what's going to happen. One Peter, one Peter talks about it as the living hope. The living hope that we find in Jesus Christ.

Despite the things that are happening around us, the things that wait ahead for us. Compared to the incomparable riches that are waiting for us in heaven, these things are nothing. These things are nothing. We look forward and we hope to a life that is free from death, free from disappointment. No more mistakes.

No more sin. No more sadness. No more hurting each other. No more floods in Australia that devastate and destroy. No more famines in Kenya that kill painfully, slowly.

No more Syrian dictators killing his own people for his own place in history. God is in control. God is in control. Keep your perspective on the living hope. God is in so much control that He can tell us exactly what's going to happen.

Nothing surprises Him. The last thing that we get out of this passage is a warning that the end of chapter eight reveals something so phenomenal happening to Daniel in his absolute exhaustion and his illness at experiencing the supernatural. There's a stern warning here, I believe, for people nowadays that find it neat, that find it cool, that find it, you know, fashionable to try and explain what God is going to do and how He's going to do it and when He's going to come back. The people who look at all the six-six-six numbers and the antichrist and can tell you this is exactly what's going to happen. There's a stern warning here for us that Daniel who was a man who knew God, who spoke with God, who saw visions so many times in his life, saw something of God's power every time and was wiped out for days, weeks at a time.

This wasn't a cool thing. This was an absolutely terrifying thing where a man saw a glimpse of God and was nearly killed. It was nearly, you know, undone by it. If Daniel, the great wise man who was used to interpret the dreams of three generations of kings, if he was appalled and physically sick because of these prophecies, if he could understand these things, then be absolutely destroyed by it, how much trust and how much faith should we put into weirdos that put YouTube clips up on this is going to happen, and watch out for these things. I think there's an absolute warning here for us to not be too proud and not be too clever in how we analyse God's plan for history.

God Himself says that there are things and mysteries that belong to God alone. There are things that we as humans don't need to know. But what we do know, and that is what we need to focus on, what we do know is that we need to cling to the God who controls history, the God who channels it according to His own purposes. Who raises up leaders and He tears them down when they become proud. The God who waits patiently for sinners to repent, but casts judgement when His time of waiting is over.

The truth is the thing that the Jews even look forward to is that Jesus wins. Jesus wins.