Sermon Questions

1. I raised my eyes and saw, and behold, a ram standing on the bank of the canal. It had two _______ and both _______ were high, but one was higher than the other, and the higher one came up last.
2. Match the description with the correct identity. Choose from (Medes, Antiochus Epiphanies, Persians, Alexander the Great, Seleucids, Ptolemies).
3. Conspicuous horns
4. Two horns
5. Goat from the west
6. "Out of one of them came a little horn"
7. Dan 8:3 “I raised my eyes and saw, and behold, a ram standing on the bank of the canal. It had two horns, and both horns were high, but one was higher than the other.” What kingdom was the one higher than the other?
8. What does the horn represent in the context of Dan 8:1-14?
9. Antiochus Epiphanies sought to spread Hellenistic culture, which meant the culture of what country?
10. Who was the upstart regime who assisted the Ptolemies in defeating Antiochus Epiphanies in Egypt?
11. TRUE or FALSE: In response to his defeat in Egypt Antiochus Epiphanies ordered the Sabbath to no longer be observed, brought an end to sacrifice at the temple in Jerusalem in 167 B.C., and then deliberately defiled it by burning pig’s flesh on the alter and placing an object sacred to Zeus in the Holy of Holies.
12. What instructions did Jesus give to the apostles when the “abomination of desolation” is seen?

Discussion Questions

1. According to Dan 8:12, and discuss these questions regarding Antiochus Epiphanes.
2. What does “the little horn” do?
3. Why will Antiochus Epiphanes be permitted to perpetrate his evil work against the nation of Israel?
4. From the book of Maccabees on the persecution of Israel by Antiochus Epiphanes. "Moreover king Antiochus wrote to his whole kingdom, that all should be one people, and every one should leave his laws: so all the heathen agreed according to the commandment of the king. Yea, many also of the Israelites consented to his religion, and sacrificed unto idols, and profaned the sabbath. For the king had sent letters by messengers unto Jerusalem and the cities of Juda that they should follow the strange laws of the land, and forbid burnt offerings, and sacrifice, and drink offerings, in the temple; and that they should profane the sabbaths and festival days, and pollute the sanctuary and holy people: set up altars, and groves, and chapels of idols, and sacrifice swine?s flesh, and unclean beasts: That they should also leave their children uncircumcised, and make their souls abominable with all manner of uncleanness and profanation, to the end they might forget the law, and change all the ordinances. And whosoever would not do according to the commandment of the king, he said, he should die. (1 Maccabees 1:41-50)"
5. As we read in Dan 8:1-14 and this quote from Maccabees, we see the prophecy fulfilled in the history of world events. Do current world and domestic events give you cause for concern? What causes you to feel threatened by the world today? What causes us to be anxious in the face of events of our day?
6. Just as God has provided prophecy of history, He promised in His Word to provide for his people. Read over several of these passages and discuss how these promises should comfort His people:
7. John 15:18 - If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.
8. 1 Peter 4:12-14 - Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.
9. Matthew 5:44 - But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
10. 2 Corinthians 12:10 - For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
11. Luke 6:22 - Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man!
12. Matthew 5:10-12 - Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
13. 1 Peter 3:17 - For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.
14. 1 Peter 3:14 - But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled.
15. 1 John 3:13 - Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you.
16. Read Psalm 121 as a group or individual.
17. Does this Psalm change our view of how we are protected and watched by God?
18. Should this Psalm turn us from an exclusive view of the earthly events of this world to a view of how God works in the world and in history? What prevents us from seeing the world from God’s view?
19. How do we keep our lives tethered to the promises of these verses so that we keep on mission for His kingdom?  

Sermon Outline

The scope of these verses, is about 350 to 400 years of history, culminating in a great storm for the people of God. The purpose of Daniel 8 can be summed up in verse 26, which tells Daniel to seal up the vision because this vision refers to many days from now.

Daniel 8:26 – ²⁶The vision of the evenings and the mornings that has been told is true, but seal up the vision, for it refers to many days from now.

Pastor Chris will show that the God we worship is the God of history. God knows the end from the beginning. But not only is he the God of history, as he will be revealing that to his people, he is also our father, and he loves us. What God is doing here in these verses is acting as a father to shepherd his people through a storm that is coming.

The God of History

What is going on here is the progression of historical events on the world stage that God is telling his people about. In order to understand the vision that Daniel has, we need to walk through that history, which then culminates in a storm, which is revealing the fact that God is also a father. In the opening verses of Daniel 8, Daniel says that he has revealed this vision in the reign of King Belshazzar.

Daniel 8:1-2 - ¹In the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar a vision appeared to me, Daniel, after that which appeared to me at the first. ²And I saw in the vision; and when I saw, I was in Susa the citadel, which is in the province of Elam.

That should bring us back to Daniel 5. Under the reign of King Belshazzar, Daniel was given this vision during the reign of the Babylonian Empire. He is in Souza in the area of Elam, which is about 200 miles from the capital of Babylon. Either Daniel is on a trip, or more likely, as it is in the book of Ezekiel, in the Spirit Daniel is taken to this location.

·        Daniel is given a vision there on the bank of a canal. He is given the vision of a ram, and this ram has two horns.

Daniel 8:3 - ³I raised my eyes and saw, and behold, a ram standing on the bank of the canal. It had two horns, and both horns were high, but one was higher than the other, and the higher one came up last.

When the scriptures use the language and the symbolism of horns, in the ancient Near East, the horn symbolized power, prestige or status.

In general, the horn represents power or status. Therefore, “lifting up the horn,” of someone means bestowing power, wealth, and prestige. Conversely, “cutting off the horn” is the removal of one’s power and influence. – Dictionary of Biblical Imagery

o  If the ram has a horn that is high, it is talking about power and prestige. This ram can do whatever it wants.

o  When the horn is cut off, it is the removal or toppling of a leader, or a Kingdom that is destroyed and the power and the status is removed.

·        This ram has two large horns, one larger than the other, which means that this ram represents a Kingdom which is composed of two different peoples, although one of them is more prominent than the other.

Daniel 8:4 - ⁴I saw the ram charging westward, northward, and southward. No beast could stand before him, and there was no one who could rescue from his power. He did as he pleased and became great.

What this represents is the Kingdom of the Medes and the Persians, which is why it has two horns, because you have two different peoples represented. Now the one that is prominent are the Persians. The Persians have a larger status within this Kingdom. This Kingdom really came to the foreground under the reign of Cyrus the Great. Cyrus The Great is the one that toppled Babylon and other kingdoms in the area at the time. This represents the ram with the two horns and the description of Daniel is no one can stand against the Persian Empire. Now verses three and four represent about 200 years of history because the Persian Empire was in ascendancy for quite a long time. During this time, the Kingdom of Judah and the Jerusalem area around it, was treated with a pretty light touch. They rebuilt the temple. They rebuilt the wall; they had governors and they had to pay tribute to satraps, but they were left to themselves, and they could worship gods as they wanted.

·        Beginning in verse 5 there's a shift.

Daniel 8:5 - ⁵As I was considering, behold, a male goat came from the west across the face of the whole earth, without touching the ground. And the goat had a conspicuous horn between his eyes.

This beast represents a Kingdom coming out of the West, which moves so fast its feet do not touch the ground.

Daniel 8:6-7 - ⁶He came to the ram with the two horns, which I had seen standing on the bank of the canal, and he ran at him in his powerful wrath. ⁷I saw him come close to the ram, and he was enraged against him, struck the ram, and broke his two horns. And the ram had no power to stand before him, but he cast him down to the ground and trampled on him. And there was no one who could rescue the ram from his power.

This represents a power in the 4th century that comes out of the West, out of the north of Greece in an area known as Macedonia. There is a Macedonian king who conquers the known world in the 4th century, his name is Alexander, and he's the first person in history that has the epitaph of the Great, Alexander the Great. He comes out of the West. He inherits the king of a Macedon when his father Philip dies. He is 18, and his teacher was Aristotle. He leaves Macedon with his Macedonian army when he is 22 and within eleven years he conquers the known world. Within about a decade, decimates the Persian Empire. He is one of the most amazing figures, one of the most amazing generals, the most amazing politician in world history, and here he is in the book of Daniel.

·        Now Alexander dies from a fever before he turns 33, and when he dies his Kingdom is split into four, and that's described in Daniel hundreds of years beforehand.

Daniel 8:8 - ⁸Then the goat became exceedingly great, but when he was strong, the great horn was broken, and instead of it there came up four conspicuous horns toward the four winds of heaven.

The four winds of heaven are the compass points: North, South, East, and West. These four horns represent what happens when Alexander dies. When he dies, his Kingdom which was the extension of the Persian Kingdom, was broken up into four according to his four generals.

·        There are two of the four kingdoms broken up that matter to us. The first one is in the South. This is the Ptolemies, and the other one is in the north, these are the Seleucids. The boundary between them is a little strip of land along the Mediterranean known as the Kingdom of Judah. Judah and its capital, Jerusalem, is right in between these two kingdoms. They would be a pawn in between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids, depending on who was in control and who originally was the Ptolemies. Then later on, the Seleucids begin to exercise control over the area of Judah and Jerusalem. The text talks about that, it says that out of one of these kingdoms comes a little horn and we will see this is the Seleucids.

Daniel 8:9 - ⁹Out of one of them came a little horn, which grew exceedingly great toward the south, toward the east, and toward the glorious land.

To grow great towards the south, is the Ptolemaic territory, to grow towards the east is Asia, and towards the glorious land would be Judah. This is Jerusalem. Now this little horn refers to another person from history. He is a Seleucid king, and his name is Antiochus the 4th. Antiochus the 4th had a name that is Epiphanies, which was a title that was attributed to him. Epiphanies means God manifest. He was not really beloved, and we will see why so many people, who knew him and loved him, called him Antiochus Epimanes which means madman.

·        Antiochus Epiphanies is a Seleucid king in the second century, and he begins to flex his muscle as a Seleucid king to expand the Seleucid empire. At that time Judah had no king. They could not have a king because they were under the control of some kind of Greek power, and because they are under the control of the Greek power, more Greek culture and Greek influence began to increasingly grow. If you wanted to gain social ascendancy within the Greek world, you had to take on Greek culture. They called it Hellenization. Antiochus Epiphanes was a corrupt man, and the person who exerted political control in Judah and Jerusalem within the people was the high priest. The high priest had the most political power in that area which was not directly Greek. There was a person who came from the family of the high priests who went to Antiochus Epiphanies and said make me high priest, and if you do, I will pay you a lot of money. He bribes him and Antiochus Epiphanies is more than happy to take the money, and he makes Jason high priest, as long as he continues to pay the money. Jason begins to increase the rate of Hellenization. One year, he sent one of his assistants, his name is Menelaus, to pay his tribute to Antiochus Epiphanies, to remain high priest. He brings this tribute and then Menelaus tells Antiochus Epiphanies, if you make me high priest I will pay you even more money. Antiochus Epiphanies says all right. Now this was a problem. Menelaus was not a Levite, he was a Benjamite. He came from the wrong clan, and everybody knew that he was bribing Antiochus to be high priest. Menelaus comes back, he kicks Jason out and he begins an even more accelerated program to Hellenize and make Greek culture the prominent influence in Judah and Jerusalem.

·        In the year 167 B.C., Antiochus Epiphanies decided to go to war with the Ptolemies. He goes down into Egypt, into the Kingdom of the Ptolemies in order to expand the Seleucid Empire, and it seems like he is going to be successful until the Ptolemies ask for help from a new upstart empire who intervenes from Italy which the empire known as the Romans. This is where the Romans begin to come onto the scene. The Romans intervened in order to assist the Ptolemies and because of the intervention of Rome, Antiochus Epiphanies was defeated and humiliated.

·        At the very same time, in that very same year, Jason the high priest who was kicked out by Menelaus, decides to lead a revolt in Jerusalem, in order to kick out Menelaus and become high priests again. When Antiochus Epiphanes comes back up from Egypt humiliated, he is in the mood for blood because he has just been defeated by the Ptolemies. He sees this uprising as a problem and decides to act. He goes on a killing campaign and kills thousands of people. He wants to eliminate the Jewish faith, in order to completely replace it with Greek religion. This is what he does...

Antiochus ordered the Sabbath to no longer be observed, brought an end to sacrifice at the temple in Jerusalem in 167 B.C., and then deliberately defiled it by burning pig’s flesh on the alter and placing an object sacred to Zeus in the Holy of Holies. – Iain Duguid Daniel

This is the Abomination of Desolation. Antiochus Epiphanies is the model that is then used in the New Testament for the Antichrist and at the time in 167 A.D. in Jerusalem, there were many Jews who went along with it.

·        Daniel says this coming storm, this coming persecution, this coming reality is not simply human. There is a vibrant spiritual world and Daniel is telling him that Antiochus Epiphanies, this little horn is going to boast greatness. It is also one who will be great not only here, but there will be this sense of a spiritual reality.

Daniel 8:9-11 – ⁹The little horn grew great, ¹⁰even to the host of heaven. And some of the host and some of the stars it threw down to the ground and trampled on them. ¹¹It became great, even as great as the Prince of the host.

There is something going on in the spiritual realm, behind what Antiochus epiphanies is doing here in the earthly realm.

·        As it says in Daniel 8 verse 24, that Antiochus will be great, but not by his own power.

Daniel 8:24 - ²⁴His power shall be great—but not by his own power; and he shall cause fearful destruction and shall succeed in what he does and destroy mighty men and the people who are the saints.

There is an evil, spiritually, that exists alongside and behind what he is doing. Even in the New Testament, when the apostle Paul wants to describe the coming of the Antichrist, the coming of the lawless one as he describes him, he says...

2Thessalonians 2:9-10 – ⁹The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, ¹⁰and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.

When he comes, he will deceive, very much on the model of Antiochus Epiphanes. God is the God of history who says look my people, a storm is coming.

Your Father Who Loves You

Why is God revealing all of these, hundreds of years earlier during the reign of the Babylonian Kingdom? As was mentioned earlier in Chapter 8, verse 26, he says...

Daniel 8:26 – ²⁶The vision of the evenings and the mornings that has been told is true, but seal up the vision, for it refers to many days from now.

A day is coming when this will become applicable. God wants to prepare his people.

·        It is like when a child is going off to college. A parent will take that child, sit them down and say look, you are about to go into a challenging environment. You are about to go into a place where you are going to be tempted in ways you have never experienced before. You are going into a place where you are going to be presented with world views and ideologies as you have never heard and you are going to be tempted to say yes, to follow along, to do what you need to do to be accepted. Let us talk about it now, so when those challenges arise, you will be aware.

·        This is what Jesus did in what is called the upper room discourse. When he is with his disciples during the Last Supper, he says in John 15 that if they persecuted me, they are going to persecute you and he says in the opening of John 16, just a few verses after that...

John 16:1-4 - ¹“I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. ²They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. ³And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me. ⁴But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told them to you.

The Bible tells us that if they persecuted Jesus, if they hated Jesus, they are going to hate us. The Bible tells us to expect persecution and hardship. The Bible is very realistic in that way. The Lord is the God of history, and he wants us to be ready. People were reading this vision of Daniel and the Persian Empire. It was not for them; it was to come. We do not know what is to come, but let us decide to be ready for it. There may be a time where we might be tempted to be deceived and fall away. Let us be ready for that. Let us be ready to be faithful no matter what. There may be things presented to us that we are told to believe. Let us be ready to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and to believe in the truth of Scripture. Let us be ready to say yes to Jesus, and that means we have to say no to a lot of other things. What God wants to say to all of us is I am the God of history, trust me, I am your father and I love you. Be ready for whatever comes.

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