We do want to inform you of one alteration. When you're seated in place, if you're comfortable with your family in that proximity, we want you to take the freedom to remove your mask, that's your choice. But when we're up mixing in the building, we want to continue to be considered of one another. And it's just a reminder, if nothing else, that we don't want to take the risk of accidentally infecting anyone. This has been an incredibly challenging season to be a shepherd or a leader, trying to influence people because our culture's been ripped back and forth here and there with all kinds of beliefs and disbeliefs and disagreements. And I just thank God, that as a group of people, you've been considerate, and want to encourage you in that going forward.
All right. All right. Check, check, check, check. Mike on. Mic check. There he is. Sorry. Whenever I handed I said Mike your mic the other day, and it just really tickled me and I still can't get that out of my mind. The small things in life, you know, the small things. All right. Daniel, chapter eight, is where we are. Ben, it's so wonderful seeing you here this morning. I'm gonna have been at some point, Tim and Shawn, share a little bit about what we do. And over there in that tailor place one house, Matt recommended that, but this is one of the guys that has an office over there. So, huh. Stand up, man. Oh, look at that. We make a stand up. Yeah,
man.
disciplemaking craziness going in over there. He's over at North Boulevard. But they don't give an office we do. So I don't know why he's over there. Probably because they pay a salary we couldn't afford. Just getting mad to get myself in trouble this morning. Huh? Ah, I told him that I do crazy stuff. Never that morning when I ran into the side of the pillar over there, trying to teach people what charismatic folks do not hurt really bad. All right, Daniel, chapter eight. Alright, so last week, I'm just unloading the pockets here. So last week, we finished up Daniel chapter seven. Daniel chapter seven. Like in the peak of that, in the middle of that chapter, you have that beautiful picture of the Sun one like a son of man, you know, the one like the Son of Man presented before the Ancient of Days, the Ancient of Days is like, judging in favor of the Son of Man and against these beasts. And it's just this incredible picture I just made I could go back over that so many times looking at the Son of Man. And then after that, it has the interpretation and you know, Daniel's fixated on that fourth beast. These are crazy visions and dreams Daniels haven't like so many times it says he's scared he's terrified today is gonna say at the end that he laid sick for days. Like so part of me is like, Lord, I want some of these dreams get give me some of them dreams and visions, all I parties going. This was pretty serious stuff that Daniel was going through, like for real, for real. So we're going to end up with starting end up we're starting again with yet another vision that Daniel has. So Daniel chapter eight, verse one. In the third year of King Belshazzar, his reign of vision appeared to me. Daniel, after the one that had appeared to me earlier, so the first thing we know is this is still during Belshazzar is rain, right? Babylon is still ruling. Right? Daniel is high in Babylon because of God's grace and what's happened. And he gets yet another dream or vision. And I sit back and I think about this is a vision. Sorry, I sit back and think about this. And so many times we read through this real quick like, wow, Dale is getting dreams every night. Well, not really. This is like two years later, right? So this is like one and a half, two years, something like that. In the first year of Belshazzar. He got the dream vision. Now it's in the third year that he's getting another one. Okay. I saw the vision and what I'm going to do this morning is we're just gonna rip through the vision and it's going to give the interpretation so I've got some pictures and different things like that. That way we can kind of get a better idea of what this is when I don't go through the interpretation off the bat. Just know that it will go to the end. We'll save that for the end. Okay, I saw the vision. So this is great vision I saw as I watched I was in the fortress city of Susa in the province of Ilan. So this is Babylon. Right here. And then he was in. So if you've never been here, he's doing that for the people assume he's not taunting me. So this is I should have asked for Justin's big old, juicy laser pointer that's much better than this guy. All right. So he's over here, this is Babylon, but he finds himself here in Susa. All right, which is in the lie canal by the like canal, which is, for geography sake, modern day Iran. So he's in Iran, where Iran is now. Okay, I saw on the vision that I was beside the like canal. So he's beside this canal, he looks up, and there was a ramp standing beside the canal, he had to horns to the next slide. So he looks up and he sees this ram standing beside the canal. And the ram has a couple horns. There we are. Alright. And what's in this is an interesting RAM, because it says that the two horns were long. So we had these nice long horns, but one was longer than the other. And the longer one came up last, so interesting, right, so this horn here looks a little bit longer. This was longer the other one that also came up. Last, I won't get too much in the interpretation. But I do want you to remember the bear from Daniel chapter seven, who had three ribs in its mouth, and it was leaned up on one side, just do that. And now we see one side longer than the other here. Okay, I saw the ram charging west, north and south, no animal could stand against it. And there was no rescue from his power. He did whatever he wanted. And he became great. So go to the next slide. So we're not going to get too much in the interpretation right now. But you see, we at least know that this there is this ram coming from the west. And when it comes from the west, was it say, I saw the ram charging, excuse me to the west to the north into the south, okay, coming from the east coast to the west. Alright, so it comes from I pointed the right way and said the wrong words. But no animal get this, like no animal could stand against him like this is like this, anything that came up against this RAM, no good.
But then this interesting thing happens. In verse five. He says, as I was observing a male goat appeared coming from the west. So out of the West here, so this thing charges to the east and to the north, and to the west, and to the north and the south. And then from the west, comes another a goat that's going to charge right at this Ram. You can go the next slide if you want. As I was observing the male goat appearing, appeared coming from the west across the surface of the entire Earth. Without touching the ground. It was saying this thing was flying. The goat had a conspicuous horn between his eyes. He came toward the two horned Ram. I had seen standing beside the canal and rushed out and was savage fury. I saw him approaching the RAM and inferior inferior ated with him, he struck the ram breaking his two horns and the Ram was not strong enough to stand against it. So yeah, this other horn You see, it's got its horn its mouth like this. This go comes and bow pops the ram breaks its horns. And it looked like this Ram was like invincible. Like you could stop this Ram. This goat had no problem doing it. No problem doing it. He was the goat if you know what I mean. Kids they had I don't even know where I'm at right now. Hold up second. Thank you, john. By the way, the nrsv what I usually read was irritating me so I'm reading from the Christian standard. Is this a little bit smaller print right now for this section. So there we go first sight. Then the male goat acted even more arrogantly so this goat is acting like it's the goat like it's super arrogant. But when he became powerful, that large horn was broken. So this giant horn, this arrogant goat in the midst of its power, boom, it breaks off and go the next slide. I try to do my best for horns appear now. Pretty weird, huh? In this weird. Four conspicuous horns, horns came up in its place, pointing toward the four winds of heaven. Man, if I was Daniel, I'd be like, What is going on? It's crazy stuff. Yeah, it's the same goat in the horn breaks off and then the four more come out. If I hadn't heard it before, I'd be like, dude, I don't know what you're doing. But there's some. Anyways, alright, then it gets even crazier. All right, go to the next slide. So from one of these horns, yet another horn starts growing, then it's probably looking really freaky weird. Now verse nine. From one of them, a little horn emerged and grew extensively toward the south and the east and toward the beautiful land, which is probably Israel. It grew as high as the heavenly army made some of the army and some of the stars fall to the earth. It's interesting in trampled them, it acted arrogantly. So here we go, this horn is acting arrogantly as well. Even against the prince of the heavenly army, or the prince of princes, it revokes the regular sacrifice. So think about this. This is this word is going to Daniel, who I think this is really interesting, the set the sanctuary, the sacrifices aren't going on. Now remember what happened? Nebuchadnezzar ended it. So what's interesting is in the midst of a lot of negative here, there's a little bit of hope. Oh, the sanctuary is going again. Alright, he overthrew but then, of course, in the midst of that hope, this little horn overthrow sanctuary, alright, so excuse me, he overthrew the place of the sanctuary. in rebellion, the army was given up together with irregular sacrifice the horn through truth to the ground in was successful in what it did. So its horn does some pretty arrogant, pretty blatantly in your face against God stuff. And then in verse 13, is he says, Then I heard a holy one speaking, and, and another holy one said to the speaker, how long will these events have the vision lasts, it's almost like this outcry. Like in this midst of these horrible things, the the sacrifice is stopping truth being thrown to the ground, we're probably going to get there. But I believe that's the they're talking about the Torah. They're just trampling on the Jewish people and what they believed. And then you hear this cry out from this holy one, it's like, how long? How long will this take place? The regular sacrifice the rebellion, or abomination that makes desolate, that's really interesting, we'll get there. In the giving over of the sanctuary and the army to be trampled, how long will these horrible things happen? And it says, he said to me, for 2300 evenings and mornings than this, then the sanctuary will be restored. Alright, this is interesting, because this is where I've said over and over,
I want to go and share this stuff, but we can go super deep. And then some people are going like, Dude, what are you talking about? We could also go super high level, and then the people that want to go a little bit deeper than that, Come on, give me Give, give it let's give a little more. So this fine balance of talking through these things. The Hebrew word does say, by the way, doesn't have and it's 2300 evenings, mornings. I think it actually is probably 2300 days because of that. But anyways, the sanctuary be restored. Now we get the interpretation. But as we always know, when we receive these interpretations, sometimes it has us going Yes, and sometimes it goes but what does that mean? Can you interpret the interpretation? That'd be really nice. Because that's what we're trying to do. Some of it's really clear cut and sometimes you're like, Huh, okay, verse 15. I know we're just ripping through this, but we're gonna get into the, to the goods right now. While I Daniel was watching the vision and trying to understand it. So Daniel, yet again, this great man of God who understands visions and dreams, it doesn't just come immediately to him all the time, by any stretch. He's trying to figure out what does this mean? I'm trying to understand this. There stood before me, someone who appeared to be a man. So he sees this person that looks like this figure that looks like a man. And I heard a human voice calling from the middle of the lie. So in the middle of the lie river, he hears his voice. Gabriel, who's Gabriel? He has never Gabriel he has ever read about Gabriel. Hmm. That's right. That's right. Deborah, he he gave this the message to Mary. So you think about this, this being hundreds and hundreds of years before that? You see him delivering this message to Daniel Gabriel explained the vision to this man. So this Gabriel says, so he approached where I was standing. And when he came near, I was terrified and I fell facedown. So you look at Mary was terrified to she was pretty scared. This grown man, Daniel, older man at this point, was like, I'm not gonna lie. I was terrified. I fell facedown. When this Gabriel came to me scared me. Son of man, he said, understand that the vision refers to the time of the end. Interesting that he says Son of man here, but I want to really quickly point out there's a huge difference in him calling Daniel Son of man he is zekiel is called Son of Man a whole lot. In Hebrew. It's been a DOM, that just means son of Adam. All right. That's totally different than Daniel chapter seven when it was one like a son of man who presents himself before the Ancient of Days and all that good stuff about Jesus. Okay? No, he's not calling Daniel the Son of Man, the one like a son of man, he just saying been a DOM, son of Adam. So he says, The vision refers to the time of the end, okay. Then he says, while he was speaking to me, I fell into a deep sleep. Interesting. I can't go into too much I can go forever. If I go into all the details about this. I'm just gonna say isn't this interesting? He's speaking in Daniel fall asleep into a deep sleep. And I've read a lot of different thoughts about this. But again, I don't think we have time to go into this with my face to the ground. Then he touched me and made me stand up. So for whatever reason, he falls into a deep sleep and It's touching to get stood up. And he said, I am here to tell you what will happen at the conclusion of the time of wrath, because it refers to the appointed time of the end. Okay? Boom. Let me tell you, there's more than this interpretations of this. But let me tell you probably the three most prominent interpretations of Daniel chapter eight, okay? One is no matter what even though it says historical past, all this is future to Daniel, right, Dale, none of this day knows in Babylon, he knows nothing about meto, Persia and, and Greece and all these different things that we're going to talk about. So it was all but from our perspective, the one interpretation is that all of this is the historical past. And it is God telling Israelites, what's going to happen to them, like, hey, some bad stuffs gonna happen. Some empires are going to going to continue to lead you right now in your Babylon, you're not getting out quick, You read about some horrible things that will happen with this little horn. And I'm forewarning you, I'm telling you ahead of time, so that you know, so that you can be encouraged so that you can be strengthened. So for the so on, there are people that believe that this whole thing comes from the future, like this whole Daniel, chapter eight is all about the future, which I'll talk about that a little bit here in a second, I have a challenge. That's the hardest one for me to believe. But anyway, or then dual fulfillment, which is kind of where I land is that it is historical past. But I think that there are some signs that point to Well, this may be a type of something that's going to come as a temple was a type of a foreshadow of what's in heaven, so forth. We've talked about this before. That would be me, I think we have people from probably all three point of views that are in this room right now. So with that being said,
let's go. And that phrase, the time of the end is a big debate. Right? So that's, that is that is that is one of the things so what does he mean by the time of the end? in context, the last time he mentioned a specific time, it's 2300. evenings and mornings. So a lot of people believe that he's saying that that's the end of that 2300 evening and mornings Some people say the end means the end of this vision that Daniel saying, some of them say think that it was the end when Jerusalem was destroyed. Some people say he's talking about the end of time. All right. That phrase, the end is nothing special. I'll say that I did do research on that pretty deep. And it's just basically like, same phrase. And he said, the end of the 40 days and 40 nights, okay? Like, I mean, that can be something big, but it's nothing like whoa. Okay, so people debate about that. All right. So now we are actually going to get some clarity here to what all this is about. It's interesting that Daniel focused, he was so focused on the fourth kingdom, and now it looks like God is just giving him a vision that's gonna talk about some of these other ones. So like, hey, let's give them let's give the reader some more. Some more details. I know you're focused on this fourth kingdom, Daniel, but here's, let's give some more interest. Some more details on these. Okay, verse 20, the two horned rammed that you saw represents the kings of media and Persia. So next slide. So without a doubt, unequivocally, medium Persia, all right. Now, if you're a pure futurist, what you say is that has to do with a geographic reason region of media Persia, so he's talking about Iran. Okay, that's what I say. So, look out for Iran, Iran's gonna come sweep through, and that's what they would say, All right. But I'm sticking with medium Persia, where he said, this is about medium Persian. Alright. The shaggy horn. I'll go to the next slide, actually. So let's talk about this real quick. This absolutely happened in history. Okay. Media Persia comes up. We know through the book of Daniel, what happens after Babylon, the beads come in, right? The Persians come in the reason that the one horn is longer and it comes up later is the Persians. Basically, overtime became the most powerful of the medieval Persian dynasty. If you go all the way back, some of y'all are like, dang, we're doing a history lesson. I get it, I get jacked about this here. Holy Spirit, help us to understand how to apply this to our lives today. Let us not just read through this, get a history lesson and go off and say, Wow, that was really good. Holy Spirit. Please show us how we can live this out. Okay. Seriously, let's ask be asking those questions in your head. What is this reveal about God and people and how can we live this thing out? As we go through this? Because there is some absolute practical application we can have. Okay, but this actually happened and think about this. Think about Daniel who's in the midst of Babylon and the Babylonian empires ruling and all these things into here. Hey, Daniel. Don't worry, maybe there's someone that's gonna come in, but I guess it's it's unforeseen, so he doesn't know what's gonna happen. There's another nation arising from this media media Persian Empire, and it's going to come West. It's gonna go north, and it's gonna go south, which is exactly what it did. Alright, they came from the east, they went west, they defeated Babylon. They defeated Egypt and all this stuff, right. Then he says in verse 21, the shaggy goat represents the king of Greece, or Hebrew what's the Yvonne because Greece wasn't really much of anything, whatever you gave us, which really meant this Grecian and over into Asia Minor, Turkish modern day Turkey and Greece. area from here from that area is going to come a king is what he says. And the large horn between his eyes represents the first king. So go to the next slide real quick. Yeah, go on shouldn't. Okay. So what I believe this is talking about and most everybody does is Alexander the Great. We've talked about Alexander the Great a lot. This has really got me into history even more y'all should read about this. This is so intriguing. Go and read, like, you know, get a little bit to the diet, okay. And the wars they had and all these crazy things. It's really interesting stuff after Alexander, but that's he, Alexander does it like he right? He's from the west and says, you're gonna come from the west. He comes from the area of Yvonne. And he comes and he goes, and he conquers all of this. And you know how it said earlier? Like, you speed it and touch the ground. We've said this before, he's 20 the dude when he's 33 dies. So when almost no time Can I mean, I was thinking, how are you going? Ethan? How would he even pay attention to me?
He's 19 Okay, good. Sorry. I'm just gonna, you know, so basically barely over Ethan's age until Who? Who's Who's 33? Anybody? 34? Nathan? Just kidding. Anyways, whatever. 13 years. Right. But yeah, like so this young guy just comes in out of dead GM nowhere, flies through this and just crushing everybody. Young man, right? powerful, powerful. I mean, look at Ben, you're 25. I mean, so it means like, sit here like Ben's age right here. Just destroying people is incredible, incredible, which does show me this when we want to look to some, some ways to interpret and to think through this, no matter how strong your country or your empire or your kingdom is. Remember that that RAM, that thing was unstoppable. Nothing could touch it. And all it took was one person to come and blow that thing out of the water. And Alexander the Great does just that. So where do we put our trust? That's a it's a really great question. Do we put our trust in? We can love our country and care for it. But do we put our trust in the kingdom of God that we know is unstoppable? It's not it's going to last forever? Do we put our trust in the kingdoms of man because if we do, we might find ourselves in a really wacky place. If we see us crushed. Actually, media Persia was lasted a little over 200 years. So a little less than how old we are right now. He was super powerful. And boom, Alexander just crushed it. Okay. Do you want to ram that you saw him? Again? The shagging? Okay. The four horns that took place out of the broken horn represent four kingdoms that will rise from the nation, but without his powers. You know, the next slide? If you don't mind? Huh, okay. So what happens when Alexander he dies early? Right? I've said this, but let's just say it again, for anyone who doesn't know or who's new here. So Alexander died of a fever when he was 33 years old. When he died, his wife or girlfriend? I don't know if everyone's for sure. But she was pregnant. And so there's this huge like, battle, like what are we going to do with this kingdom? And they're like, if it's a male, it needs to go to the baby. It'd be like no way it needs to go to the generals and different things like this. So I would say that this thing we're four horns come up in is not as clean. Like if you read some people will just go through Oh yeah, four horns come up. It was cassander and, and Ptolemy, and all these and all these things. It was not that clean. It was a bunch of fighting. To be honest. Even like this. This is just one map that I pulled up. But if you see like, you see this cassander in the cinema kiss up here. The you have the Ptolemaic empire that ends up there, antagonists the one ad go look go read about him. Seriously, he was one bad dude. He was blind in one of his eyes, but he didn't mess around with a tinnitus. And that's the thing. That's a real cool name. In tinnitus. The one It sounds like john wayne or something sounds like some tough stuff. Okay. And this elucid dynasty over here, okay, and this is this thing was shifting all the time, pretty much. I mean, not like huge amounts, but it's shifting all the time. There's a bunch of different things. But in general, there were about four predominant families that battle this thing out, and it kind of shifted into that. Now, some will say several points of this ago, this isn't about Greece because of that, right? That there. There were there were 10 at certain times, divisions of this thing and whatever. They'll say, this has to be future. I'll just I'm gonna give credence to everything real quick. All right. Again, you all make your decisions for yourself. But the futurist would say something along the lines of this actually has to do with Iran and Turkey because of the avant. And in the end of time, someone from Iran is going to rise up someone from Turkey is going to come in and blow him away. And there's going to be four great kings that come out of it or whatever. Alright. So that's what they'll say anyways, okay. So the four horns broken the four kingdoms, but it is very much true that it says that they will rise from the nation but without its power. They did It was all divided up and they fought constantly. So Greece was never the same again after Alexander died just straight up, it wasn't there's a lot of fighting and all these kind of things, okay, then it says near the end of their kingdoms when the rebels had reached the full measure of their sins so it was basically in context and saying at the end of this, these Dido Chi wars and stuff, all these people that are that are that are fighting near the end of this when the rebels have reached a full measure of their sin, a ruthless King, skilled in intrigue will come to the throne. So even more ruthless, even more terrifying this, there's this king is gonna come and he's not even a mess around with folks. All right, he's gonna come to the throne. This is the other horn that grew up out of the horns.
His power will be great. But it will not be his own, he will cause outrageous destruction, and succeed in whatever he does, he will destroy the powerful along with the holy people. So this is this is pretty terrifying, actually pretty scary. He's going to destroy the powerful one with the holy people, he will cause deceit to prosper through his cunning and by his influence, and in his own mind, he will exalt Him self. I'll pause here and let's go the next slide. is about this horn. go the next slide. So what most people would say this is anti anti arcus. After so many different pronunciations, I'm gonna go with Antiochus epiphanies. is anti Agus. Okay. Now we'll get here in just a second. But I wanted to pause here because it says he will. In his own mind, he will exalt himself. Do you know what epiphanies means? call himself Antioch epiphanies God manifest. The really crazy play on words was that the people under him called him Antioch is the madman. So there, they thought he was a little while. That's why he says he's ruthless and cunning. Just just crazy guy. All right. All right. He will destroy where am I at here? I use like mother Bible where the words are a little bigger, you know? Time place, you will even stand 24 hours way down. Yeah, okay, he will cause the seed to prosper through his counting and by his influence, and in his own mind, he will exalt himself, he will destroy many in a time of peace. He will even stand against the prince of princes, which is really interesting. Some people believe that's a that's a reference to Christ. Like he's gonna stand against Christ's kingdom, though Jesus not been revealed at that point. Or it means that he's gonna come up against heavenly armies, a lot of different things you can talk about, but yet he will be broken not by human hands, the vision of the evenings and mornings that has been told is true. Now you to seal up the vision. So what vision does he tell him to seal up specifically the one about the evening and mornings, okay? Because it refers to many days in the future. So we we can know that like some of this stuff that we've been reading about middle Persian stuff, that's gonna happen pretty quick, like, but this specific part, he's being told, listen, that 2300, which if you go to antique is a Tiffany's Antioch is I'll probably call them both different ones. This was around like 170. So this is hundreds of years after Daniel receives this vision. He says, seal it up, preserve it, this is this is for some time down the road. Then it says I Daniel was overcome and lay sick for days in that crazy, like Dania, we see this guy like third in the kingdom and doing all these great and powerful things. And we see like, these visions are like making this guy sick, like he's sick. And imagine like, he is so well known in the kingdom, I think the last thing he wants to do is take a sick day. So this must have wrecked Daniel, right? He lay sick. Then I got up and went about the Kings business. I was greatly disturbed by the vision. And I could not understand it. Look at that. He hasn't. He's just like us. I got the thanks for Give me the interpretation. I don't understand it. But for us, it's even easier, because we can look at history. He didn't even have none of that. Right. He might even know who the people in Greece are. And all these things that he's taught with Avon. Well, I mean, there's a lot of people that could be And who's this media, Persian? What are they going to do? And I mean, he's just all messed up over this thing. Right? So messed up that he's sick, I can't believe that. So I'm going to read again, really quickly, that description of the little horn, and then we'll be then we'll be done. And again, I want us to think, again, continue to think through how does this How does this apply? What can we get out of this for today? Because this is really, really interesting. I will say again, that futures many believe that this is all about an antichrist figure that's gonna come in the future. Most historical people will say that it's about antiochos epiphanies, Antiochus epiphanies, though there are some differences. I will say that I believe that he's a type of something that's going to happen in the future because there's a few things that don't that are really interesting, but I absolutely believe it's historical and about him, but he was a bad dude. So I'm gonna show you how bad this dude was, as I read through this, okay.
It says I'm gonna read it really quick. From one of them, a little horn emerged and it grew extensively towards South in the east and toward the beautiful land, and he did do a lot of that he went down and he caught he went into Egypt, where the Ptolemaic Empire was, and all the stuff grew as high as the heavenly army and made some of the army and some of the stars fall to the earth and trampled. And this is where commentators have all kinds of disagreement. What does this mean by the stars, and he goes up to heaven, and he throws them down, right, and he tramples on them. That's why many people believe that this is like, goes in with revelation 12. If I'm not wrong about the beast going and casting down these things from heaven, I actually try to look at the context as much as I can. When I interpret in Daniel chapter 12, it actually talks about stars, that those who are righteous shine like the stars in heaven. And that's what I leaned towards saying that he's gonna but it's really scary because it means he's gonna take these righteous people and just crush him, like in Antioch is absolutely did that. So here's what's interesting about history. After the Babylonian power, all these different empires and stuff are pretty nice to the Jewish people like they're there. They allow them to this temple, the temple gets rebuilt. Remember when we studied about the temple being rebuilt, the temple gets rebuilt, they're doing sacrifices, they're doing all these things. And you know, though, they rule over them, and they take money from them and stuff, but they're not. They're letting them be Jewish. They're letting them do their thing. They're doing their sacrifices until this guy was not until this guy, this guy was pretty cool to them at the beginning, but he had some issues with the Romans. And then he ended up just flipping a switch. And he absolutely went against all everything that the Jewish people that Israel was doing it at that point in time. And so he absolutely trampled and fell on the he killed 1000s of Israel's Israelites, okay. It acted arrogantly even against the prince of the heavenly army, and it revoked the regular sacrifice. He was very arrogant. I mean, his name was God manifest Not only did it do that, but he stopped the regular sacrifice antiochos did it he said no more you're not doing the sacrifice, which puts yourself there with it. Put yourself as Daniel puts yourself as an Israel I put yourself as like sitting back and thinking wow, like the heartbeat of a faith in God is God's presence, the temple him being with us sacrificing atoning for sin, right, we we know how bad we need a template for sin, right? Yeah, we just I mean, it was beautiful. Like, we have to have this and so these these folks are hearing that there's going to be this crew ruler that's going to come and trample people and is going to stop the sacrifices from happening. He did. By the way, it this is about which I believe Antioch is this is also about Hanukkah, which I hit here in a second. All right, he trampled so. So if you want to know the story of Hanukkah, we'll touch it just really quick. He revoked the regular sacrifice he overthrew the place of the sanctuary. In the rebellion the army was given up together with the regular sacrifice. The horn threw truth to the ground and was successful in what it did. And again I think horn means the tour. I mean, the truth means the tour I think he just trampled on the Jewish people. He trampled on their sacrificial system he trampled on their beliefs and he did Antioch epiphany said no more. If you want to practice your Jewish beliefs, you will die. Like is how absolutely anti he was. He was horrific. It would people. The Jewish people did not like this guy. Could you imagine that happening to us? Right? That's something we should we should consider. Am I talking about this as an end? But I mean, coming in saying you cannot practice what you're going to do. Or you will die, right? Pretty crazy stuff. This is you guys heard of the maccabean revolts like the Maccabees. Okay, so, Judah maccabiah maccabiah. I got so screwed up, didn't lose his laugh. And we were watching this video yesterday, this guy was mispronouncing the Maccabees left and right. I was like, gosh, come on. This guy needs to pronounce it right. Anyways, that's why she's laughing. But the Maccabees came in, they revolted against this guy. They said No way. You're not going to do this. You're not going to take away sacrifice. And this really interesting revolt came against and they won. They won. And though and that's why it says here, it says is it said towards the end of at the end of it, it said yet he will be broken up by human hands. And it was really crazy how they won. I mean, it was really powerful that they came in and did that. That's what people celebrate Hanukkah. That's what the celebration of Hanukkah is, is the winning against this Antiochus epiphanies and the Jewish people being preserved. You know, once again, what did Shawn say? every holiday is? Every every holiday for Israel is they tried to kill us. We won Let's eat. It's true. It's pretty true. So this so these things happen in in the 2300 evenings and mornings there's a lot of different thought about that. Some people divide that into two evenings and mornings. I don't really have time to go through all the details about that. You go study that go look at what's the 2300 evenings and mornings. Here's something that's interesting, though, and this is why and this is just me personally, I may be totally wrong. This is why I think that it hints towards some things in the future.
But this absolutely happened. One is this the regular sacrifice the rebellion that makes desolate or the public of desolation that's talked about in Daniel chapter nine as well. Y'all Jesus refers to the abomination of desolation, okay? Meaning Jesus was talking 200 years almost after Antioch is died. And Jesus is saying it's yet there's still a future part to that, you guys, if you read in Matthew chapter 24, it's about the destruction of the temple and all these different things. He says, Look out for the abomination that causes desolation, let the reader understand. It's about Daniel. So while I personally believe this is absolutely about Antioch, I also believe there's a that hits towards there's also another fulfillment to that or there was, if you could go and say, the temple being destroyed, or whatever you want to say, I would say that there's a an in times, but that's just me personally. Because it also says this, um, that it couldn't just be if it can't also just be, well, this is someone in Rome when the temple was destroyed, or whatever. Because this says at the end of verse 2414, for 2300s, evenings and mornings, then the sanctuary will be restored. The sanctuary wasn't restored, right? Unless you're unless we're going to talk then about a third temple. And we can get all into that. But you know what, I feel like I'm getting too deep. So let's just let's just stop here, right there. But let's ask ourselves, as we end here this morning, on this really hit me, because I recognized as I read through this, and I recognize a couple of things. The first thing is when I stopped and I said, Man, you know what, the kingdoms of this world, God does rule over. And no matter how much we put our state, our power, strength, or our trust in our kingdom, even here at the US and how powerful it appears to be in a second, this thing can be wiped out, right? So where is my allegiance, right now that we can't be? We can't have allegiance to the US? Of course, of course we do. But it's our primary allegiance to the kingdom of God? That's a really good question. It's a really good question. And then also, as I read through this, I recognize this was a warning. This was a God being so generous to Israel Israelite people to say, I'm going to tell you what's going to happen so that you know what to do, right, so that you can be prepared. Will we take this and we recognize that even after all of this stuff happens that some pretty horrible things have happened throughout history, to the church? Is that right? I mean, we can go we can go read through church history. And I'll say that, as believers, oftentimes we have a really, at least Western believers, a weak doctrine of suffering, and what that looks like, right? Like, we're told Jesus is gonna come into your life, and everything's gonna be fantastic, and you're never gonna have any problems and all these things. But when you read through here, we see that the people of God here and throughout history, like go read the New Testament, what is Peter saying, All these things are going to endure suffering, sufferings and challenges are going to come? Right? Like, if we're wiped out, because of things that have happened recently, this last year, then we have, we have weak footing. And so to me, it's like almost like, you know, whenever you were in school, and you did the tornado drills, or the fire drills, like you don't know if it's ever gonna come. But you better be prepared so that if it does come, then you're ready for it. Right? Like, I don't know, if the church we need some more tornado drills. And we'd actually sit back and think about what happens if right doesn't mean that we dwell in this place, that we're constantly going, well, it's going to happen to us is going to turn against us or someone's going to conquer our country. And then we're going to not be but not not that we live in a place of that. But what happens if, right, what if another country comes in and takes us down? What if you're told that you're not allowed to to practice following Jesus? You know, what if you're, what if, if you have a Bible, you're killed, like in plus, that's happening all over the world? Right? What do you what do you do? Right? Do I because if we wait until we get in it to answer those questions, we're probably going to be weaksauce, y'all. You know, like, what happens when we're told that we can't gather anymore, right? Because we're because we're not allowing religious gatherings? What do we do? Do we say, okay, fine, I'll just go kind of do my own thing. In the midst of all that, I look at the early church, and I see how they're advancing the kingdom despite persecution and stuff. So it was not like, this is not just about self preservation. This is the church, we should ask ourselves very soon. How can we continue to grow God's kingdom? Even if these things come against us? How can we continue to share and to love our neighbors, and to share the kingdom of God and to make disciples as Jesus called us, even if these things take place? So even more than just how can we preserve what we have? How can we preserve and advance and grow the kingdom? If any of these types of things take place? Right. And I think that's a really good questions that we need to ask ourselves and ask ourselves as a community as a whole, how can we do this? ask ourselves what happens if these things take place? What am I going to do personally, what are our family going to do? And how can we continue to be strong in the Lord, right? Where we look at ourselves and go, Well, I don't know. Maybe we're not really doing much Kingdom advancing right now. So I'm guessing that I might not be doing too much if we get heavy persecution,
right. There's some things that I thought about, let's pray, oh, Lord, we continue to honor you. And we continue to worship you as the god over all of history. Lord, we continue to glorify your name and Lord, I pray right now that everyone in this room that Lord that we, we make the determination because of our passionate love for you. Lord, we sing that song, what do we sing? I've decided to follow Jesus. Well, that song is can sound cutesy but that's real. That is a real song. If none go with me, I will follow. Lord, I pray that we don't just sing that as a as a song as a nice little cute Christian song. But Lord, that we actually make that that determination in our hearts this morning, Father, and that we walk it out, Lord, I just pray right now that you would bless us with such a love for you, Jesus, that everything else just pales in comparison to that love for you. That we absolutely say if none go with me, I don't care. I have my beloved in his mind, and I will follow him. And I will follow him wherever he goes. And I will do whatever he tells me to do. No matter what comes against me, no matter what hardships come against our family, no matter what comes against our country, no matter what. I will follow Jesus, I will go and I will the world behind me the cross before me I will pursue and I will run after him. And I'll walk in loving obedience to everything that he calls us to do. Lord, I pray that if there's any areas, Lord, we're not doing that right now. There would be holy spirit revelation right now, right now that you just give us revelation. And I glorify your name and Jesus name, amen. Y'all. We're gonna take as I, as we've been doing, I'll just take a few moments of just being still for the Lord. Just to listen to God's voice to ask him to highlight maybe something that we've read this morning, or to speak, because we all want us to continue to grow as listening to God as a community. That is not First Corinthians 14 talks about a church and many people getting up and speaking and that's listening together as a community, not just one guy up here, just saying everything. So let's just listen. So you would just be still and just Holy Spirit, we just ask that you would just bring revelation right now that you would speak to our hearts and that you would teach us all individually and as a community.
