Daniel 11:1-35

Thank you for joining us for truth and love.

We get a truth and love from Ephesians chapter 4 verse 15. We are to grow up in all aspects into Him. Who is the head? Even Christ. We want to exalt Christ and we want to dive into Scripture and see Christ and understand Him, understand what God is doing in His Word, what He's doing in the world, what it means, and what He says it means.

We have been going through the book of Daniel because we've been looking at eschatology, the study of last things. And the book of Daniel is one of the many places that people go when they're looking at last things in times.

You've got Ezekiel, you've got Revelation, you've got so many other books. And Dan and I wanted to start in Daniel looking into prophecy, looking into eschatology and giving you our understanding, our interpretation of what we believe God is telling us and what God has did and what God is doing.

We've been working our way, of course, through Daniel. We went through 1 through 10. And I'm trying to think, we may have skipped chapter 1, but we've finished with 10 and now finally we're back and we're on to chapter 11.

Daniel, it seems like, works chronologically when he's describing kingdoms. We looked at the prophecy of the statue in which each part of the statue is a different people group, a different kingdom, and he goes on to explain who those different kingdoms are.

And Daniel seems to be pretty consistent, pretty chronological in his explanation of these kingdoms. And I feel like when looking at Daniel, I don't see any reason. Of course, we're going to touch on this, I believe, probably more next time.

Tonight we're going to look at Daniel 11, 1 through 35. And I think 35 and after is when Dan and I was discussing how it becomes a little more controversial in the interpretation. But the way I see the book of Daniel is he's consistent in his chronology and I see no reason why to veer from that consistency in interpreting Daniel, what it looks like.

But I'm going to step back and let Dan take us through, walk us through verse by verse in Daniel 11, verses 1 through 5, and see what the book of Daniel has to tell us tonight concerning what God was revealing through Daniel.

So Dan, I'm going to turn it over to you.

Daniel 11 as Chronological Prophecy of Persian and Greek History

All right. What you got in Daniel 11 is a description of a bunch of wars and other different things, political things that will happen in the earth or will, at least from the perspective of Daniel, happen in the earth.

There is a bunch of discrepancy amongst interpreters, people reading the Bible. Some think that this has to do with the end times of the whole chapter. Some people think that this had to do with the time of the Persians and the Greeks alone.

Some people actually believe that this has to do with a foreshadowing of things that are going to happen with the Persians and the Greeks. And then those things are going to happen again from a whole different group of characters who are going to replay the same portion of history again in the future.

Where we're going to come from it is that these things were just as we have for the rest of the book of Daniel. These things were predicted by Daniel through the power of the Holy Spirit in order for us to know that what God had given him in prophecy was true.

So what we see in Daniel 11, I believe, is a future to Daniel, but past tense to us, a prediction of what was going to happen in the world history of that place where they were from basically the time of Daniel and forward.

So, I mean, let's get started and we'll see what you have.

Well, that part that you're describing right there, it's my understanding that that's the part that's not very controversial until we get to verse 35 and on, because Daniel's pretty explicit about who he's talking about.

And so there's little controversy. Is that right in this first part of Daniel? Yes and no.

I believe it's fairly clear and straightforward. But when some folks read or hear King of the North or King of the South, sometimes they'll go ahead right here within the first few verses and they'll diverge.

Instead of staying with the different Greek empires, the one from the north and the one from the south of the Greek, when the Greek empire split into four sections, they'll actually say that there is another...

Some people go as far as to say that Russia will get involved or different other northern kingdoms will come down and make themselves known. Some people leave it in that region and say Syria. I don't know if I put an A in there, but Syria will... or Assyria will come down and be a part of the world scheme in the future.

Some people believe that Egypt is going to rise up again and probably war against Iraq or Iran. So yes and no, because there's some do, some don't. But yeah, I would say it's pretty straightforward until 35.

And even then, I still think it's pretty straightforward.

Well, I do too. And that's what I was referring to when I was talking about the consistency in his chronological description of things. When you start saying the king of the north and the king of the south and those things mean this, to me, it seems like those who interpret that way are reading their eschatology into the scripture.

Right. Does that make sense? Instead of forming your eschatology from the scripture, you're trying to squeeze your eschatology into there.

Right. And there's a hermeneutical principle behind that that I think they kind of turn on its head. But what they're trying to say is that since this is an unclear passage, you would interpret it by something that's more clear.

Now, the more clear thing, which is a valid hermeneutical principle. I mean, if you're trying to interpret the Bible, there's something that you just don't get. Something that's more clear should absolutely inform how you read that unclear passage.

But some people will say that this is unclear, go to somewhere else, which they say is more clear. And then, of course, that other more clear passage is going to have what they believe is foolproof proof of their eschatological system that they'll then take and put into this text.

So I think they kind of turn the principle on their head. I don't think that the... I think this one's fairly clear and straightforward. I don't think there's any reason to do any gymnastics or jump through hoops or anything.

He's talking about Darius the Mede in verse 1. He names Greece in verse... end of verse 2. And then you just keep on going from there with that context, and it makes perfect sense as you run through the rest of the passage.

So we would look at it kind of the opposite of what you're talking about. We would see this as the clear and understand like an unclear passage somewhere else in light of Daniel 11.

Right, right. We would say that there's enough clues in this chapter that it can be interpreted and stand alone. Okay. Some will disagree, but we will go through it and it's a nice way of saying prove them wrong.

Either way, we'll go through it and we'll show you how we understand the passage and you can look at Scripture and determine whether or not I'm full of hot air. Right. Which is the better way of doing things.

So if you start off in verse 1, it says, In the first year of Darius the Mede, I arose to an encouragement and a protection for him. And now I will tell you the truth. Behold, three more kings are going to arise in Persia.

In other words, Darius the Mede was there. Three more kings were going to come after him and the fourth will gain far more riches than all of them. So the fourth one from Darius the Mede is going to gain a ton of riches.

That would be... His name was Xerxes I. It was a king, Xerxes I. He will arouse the whole empire against the realm of Greece. So what he does is he takes his power, his influence, he takes his might and his power and he talks some smack about the Greeks and says, you know, we need to take these guys on.

We need to do something about them. And so he does. He goes and attacks them. And a mighty king, this is verse 3, will arise and he will rule with great authority and do as he pleases. But as soon as he arises, his kingdom will be broken up and parceled out to the four points of the compass.

Now that's important because it tells us there's a king of the north, one of the points of the compass, king of the south, there's one of the points of the compass, the east and the west, the same thing.

So who is the one who was this big, bad, mighty king who came, who would rule, who would do everything that he wanted to and then his kingdom was taken and split between the four points of the compass.

Speaking of the Greek king, Alexander. Alexander the Great was a fantastic king and ruler. Militarily, he knew exactly what he was doing. He conquered the whole known world as far as, from my understanding, as far as India.

He got out to India and he was partying. He was excited. He was, I think, 30 or 31 years old. He conquered the world. I mean, he was on top of his game. Can you imagine being a 31-year-old and being leader of everything?

Like everywhere you go in the whole world that you know of, the whole world that you know of, you are in charge. You know what's going on. Man, it would be the pleasure that would come to you from knowing that you were a great success would be enough to ruin someone.

It'd be enough to, I mean, you'd say, well, I'm invincible, I'm bulletproof. I can do whatever I want to. That's kind of what he did. He ended up partying too hard with some of the folks out there. He contracted syphilis and he died.

When he died, his four generals split up and they split up basically into the four points of the compass. There was one in the north, one in the south, one in the east, one in the west. The lines crossed and did this, you know, political stuff.

Nobody draws borders exactly like the points of a compass, but generally speaking, they were north, south, east, and west. So the kingdom of the north was the Seleucid kingdom. Kingdom of the south was the Ptolemies.

The Ptolemies went all the way down into Egypt, took over lots of stuff down there. Egypt had been, for whatever reason, losing power for a long time at that point. They were not, by any stretch of the imagination, easy to take over, but they were conquered by Alexander the Great.

So the Ptolemies were down in the south, the Seleucids were up in the north, and there's two other ones that they, let's be honest, they didn't, they got some power and some land, but they didn't do much with it.

They weren't worth mentioning very much. If you go on from there into verse, well, second half of verse four, though not to his own descendants, nor according to his authority which he wielded, for his sovereignty will be uprooted and given to others besides them.

So he was, it was taken, and it was given away to other people. It was no longer a cohesive whole. It was a splintered kingdom. There was no power of Alexander anymore. There was no Greek empire to speak of as a united front.

There was four separate kingdoms that popped up basically in a power vacuum of Alexander being gone. So you see so far, what you have is Daniel setting the tone. There's a people here, the people, the Persians and four kingdoms, puts you in a timeline.

That guy is going to raise people up against the Greeks. The Greeks are going to turn around and they're going to mess them up. The Greeks are then going to conquer the world. The leader of the Greeks is going to disappear.

His kingdom is going to be taken away. His power and everything is going to be ripped from him and in its place, four separate kingdoms are going to pop up, one to each of the corners of the earth. It seems fairly straightforward.

He's talking about the history at the end of the Medo-Persian empire, beginning of the Greek empire. So then what happens? Do you have any questions before I move on to verse five? No, no.

Well, I was just thinking about how, you know, somebody could be watching, maybe watch now and watch later, you know, and be thinking, why are they doing a history lesson? Why are they just going over, you know, facts and history and all that stuff?

But I think the reason why it's so important is because of exactly what we were talking about earlier. The reason why these details are so important is because it shows you what Daniel was talking about.

If you didn't know the history and how this was fulfilled, then you would be like those who would say, oh, I can make the king of the north whoever I wanted to be. I can make the king of the south whoever I wanted to be.

I can make it fit this verse or that verse. But it's more than just a boring history lesson. Right. It's showing the fulfillment that God spoke through Daniel and what he said come to pass. And it talks about the consistency of the chronology that he goes through.

And that's why I think it's so important. And you can't make it say whatever you want it to say. There's fulfillment in this prophecy and what Daniel's talking about.

Right. And it's even so straightforward that your liberal theologians will try to date this closer to the time of Jesus, saying that Daniel was either a historical figure that didn't actually write this or he was an ahistorical figure.

But what they'll try to say is that Daniel couldn't have known because these details are so in line with the history that came afterwards that clearly this was written at a later time and then put back into the time of the Babylonians and the Persians in Daniel.

And we just don't believe that because we believe that God has written his word, he's written it honestly, and that Daniel came out of Jerusalem and was put into exile. So, therefore, that's the time period in which he wrote.

Yeah. But it's amazing that these details are so straightforward that even unbelievers and liberal theologians will try to change the date because it matches up so well. You're either left with, this was an amazing prophecy of God in incredible detail, or you're left with, well, clearly he, well, not clearly, but they would say clearly, this has been written after the fact.

This was kind of like you pick up a history book of the events of 9 -11. If somebody had written it in, say, 1984, that's impressive. Somebody wrote it in 2003, less impressive. I mean, still impressive that they wrote it down, but less impressive because they wouldn't have had however many years, 18 or whatever years, 16, 17.

I'm trying to think of how old I was. I picked my birth year, whenever that would have taken place. But that's exactly what you have here. Gotcha. All right, moving on. Moving on. So, then the king of the south, the Ptolemies, Ptolemy specifically will grow strong along with one of his princes who will gain ascendancy over him and obtain dominion.

His dominion will be great indeed. That is how it shook out. Look at the history behind it. That's how it shook out. The Ptolemies, the king of the south, along with one of his princes, him and his boy, basically, not his son, but him and his guy, took over.

They had great dominion. They dominated. Basically, they took over the old Egyptian empire. I mean, anytime you can sit in the seat of pharaohs, you've done something. Verse six, after some years, they will form an alliance and the daughter of the king of the south will come to the king of the north, the Seleucids.

The king of the north, to carry out a peaceful arrangement. But she will not retain her position of power, nor will he remain with his power, but she will be given up along with those who brought her in and the one who sired her as well as who supported her in those times.

They made an alliance between the king of the north and the king of the south. They thought that it was going to, they did it to be peaceful. It was good intentions, but it didn't work out the way that it was supposed to.

He goes on to explain, but one of the descendants of her line will arise in his place. Who is the his? If you back up, the king of the north, or yeah, the king of the south will send his daughter to the king of the north.

She will be given up along with those. The one who was talking about is the king of the north. I may be saying that backwards. My brain got all sorts of turned around when I was talking. A marriage alliance got formed between them.

Ptolemy, Ptolemy's stepson, actually succeeded him. So when he's talking about, so I guess that would be the king of the south. So yeah, I got flipped around. That's why I knew something wasn't sounding right.

I was like, I'm saying something backwards here. Yeah, that makes more sense. And he will come against their army and enter the fortress of the king of the north. He will deal with them and display great strength.

He went and he attacked the king of the north. Look in the verse eight and nine. Also their gods with their metal images and their precious vessels of silver and gold, he will take into captivity to Egypt.

And he on his part will refrain from attacking the king of the north for some years. Then the latter will enter the realm of the king of the south, but will return to his own land. Ptolemy the third actually invades Syria and conquered Antioch during that time.

That's what all of that is talking about. There's a paragraph break. You have any questions? I know I do. I confused myself a little bit. Go ahead and iron it out a little bit.

If you just see me looking over, I'm following some notes as you're discussing. I'm following notes with the verses. And some of you who may watch that are in some of our groups on Facebook, it's the notes given by, I think his name is Jay Rogers.

Okay. Wrote the book in the days of these kings. I think that's the name of his book. Yeah. It's a pretty good, it's basically articles. And he just has some quick notes going verse by verse to the book of Daniel.

And I'm just following along as you're discussing each verse. And I'm watching it line up. Okay. Yeah. So if you see me looking over, that's all I'm doing. I'm just looking at the notes. He gives the daughter of the south, he says that's Bernice.

And to me again, not really any questions, but it's just amazing how specific we can get with this. Historical details. That's the amazing part of it is how specific we can get. Daniel says this is going to happen.

And he may not have all the names, but we can fill in the names because the king of the south did this. It's just exactly how Daniel described. And there was this marriage that was forged with the king of the south and the king of the north.

Finding the details are just amazing how accurate Daniel is. And it should encourage us as we continue to look through it and look through the details and see how it's fulfilled and how we can trust it then when we get to the more controversial passages.

And to me, I guess I'll keep reiterating it and just beating this with the same horse. If we... Part of interpreting the unclear in light of the clear to me is what's clear is how consistent Daniel is in going over chronological history.

Why not continue it? If you have a question on where to go, when you get past verse 35 and you start looking for this ruler to come, should I be looking for one that's coming thousands and thousands and thousands a year later?

Well, I'm gonna interpret the unclear in light of clear. What does clear say? The clear says Daniel is consistent in his chronological history. And so I want to continue in how Daniel writes. I don't want to change.

Basically, I'm changing Daniel if I change how he writes. Right. So I'm good to continue. Cool. All right. Verse 10 it is.

His sons will mobilize and assemble a multitude of great forces and one of them will keep on coming and overflow and pass through. And he may again wage war up to this very fortress. The King of the South will be enraged and will go and fight with the King of the North.

Then the latter will raise a great multitude but that multitude will be given into the hand of the former. When the multitude is carried away, his heart will be lifted up and he will cause tens of thousands to fall yet he will not prevail.

For the King of the North will rise, will again raise a greater multitude than the former and after an interval of some years he will press on with a great army and much equipment. He is going to... He being the...

Man, my brain is turned off already. The King of the South is going to get ticked off and he's going to go fight against the King of the North. He's going to do well. Very well. But it does say, for the King of the North will raise a greater multitude than the former and after an interval of some years he will press on with a great army and much equipment.

So the King of the South is going to be winning for a while and even look to win for a while. And then what ends up happening is the King of the North actually comes out stronger in the end of it. So if you would imagine, say, Canada getting in a war with America and America goes and fights Canada for a while and we end up whipping up on them and then we leave them alone to hang out with their hockey pucks and mooses and maple syrup and whatnot and then they make us think that you're just being friendly Canadians now that we don't have to worry about them and all of a sudden they come up years later and they're upset and their Royal Canadian Mounted Police decide to come down and put maple syrup in our gas tank and slap hockey pucks at us and stuff.

It's like that only in the Middle East. No hockey pucks or mooses or maple syrup. But you have basically the King of the South getting a little big for his britches and the King of the North ending up for whatever reason becoming stronger because of it.

Any questions? All right, verse 14. Now in those times, so still those times, same time period. Key word there. Yep. Many will rise up against the King of the South. The violent ones among your people will also lift themselves up in order to fulfill the vision but they will fall down.

The Southern Kingdom, the Ptolemaic Kingdom had control of the area of Palestine, of Israel and there were Jews living in that area at the time. Now when he's talking and he says your people, he's talking to Daniel.

It's Daniel's people. So the violent ones among your people will lift themselves up in order to fulfill the vision. And what vision is that? Remember the vision where the, we've got several of them, but the vision where the Greek Empire falls to the Romans, where there was a Greek Empire and then they fall down and then there's another one that comes and takes its place.

They're going to think that they're doing God's work. No, we are fulfilling prophecy. That's what we're doing. But they're doing it in a violent way. No, that would be a stone made with human hands, not a stone not made with human hands.

So what they're doing is they're thinking that they're going to be somebody, thinking that they're going to take over as God has commanded, but they will fall. The Jews tried and they did, they tried to revolt at that time and it didn't work out so well.

Then the King of the North will come and cast up a siege ramp and capture a well-fortified city. Then the forces of the South will not stand their ground, not even their choicest troops, for there will be no strength to make a stand.

Who is it? Where am I? Man, I got tired tonight. The King of the North takes, he defeats a general, Scopus, at a well-fortified city, Panium. So what happens is the King of the North, he came down, he put up a ramp, he took this well-fortified city and we see this happening when it was Antiochus III, he defeated Scopus at Panium.

Antiochus III then moves on, he continues, if we look into the next verse, but he who comes up against him will do as he pleases and no one will be able to withstand him. He will also stay for a time in the beautiful land with destruction in his hand.

He also came and took over Palestine, he took over the area where the Jews were living. Then we look into verse 17, he will set his face to come with the power of his whole kingdom, bringing with him a proposal of peace, which he will put into effect.

He will also give him the daughter of a woman to ruin it, but she will not take a stand for him or be on his side. Egypt was actually forced into an alliance at that time with the Syrians. That's what all that language is, there's a proposal of peace he will put into effect, he will also give him the daughter of women to ruin it, but she will not take a stand for him or be on his side.

There was a force alliance, but as we see, it was weak, it wasn't going to actually come of anything. In 18, then he will turn his face to the coastlands and capture many. But a commander will put a stop to his scorn against him, moreover, he will repay him for his scorn.

That is Antiochus III, he has some initial success, like he goes out and conquers coastlands, he conquers other things in the area. Then look at verse 19, last half of verse 18, a commander comes and puts a stop to him, so he has some initial success, but he's defeated.

So he will turn his face towards the fortresses of his own land, but he will stumble and fall and be found no more. Basically, he is killed in Syria. He ends up signing a treaty with Rome. So what we see is the Jews back in verse, was it 14, 16?

14. Thought that they were doing God's work by putting the Greeks to an end, but they weren't. The Roman Empire actually came and did their own thing through God's working in the political schemes of the day of causing people to have alliances and go out and take over coastlands and then having success and then not having success and actually being captured by, or not captured by, but he signed a treaty with Rome.

There's a lot there.

Questions? Comment? We're now introducing Jews. Sure. And Rome has been mentioned. So it seems like we're heading in that direction of that empire at the bottom of the statue. We're heading in that direction?

Mm-hmm. We're getting there. Okay.

It's weird. Here's why I say that. The way that the Roman Empire kind of took over the world was different than the way that other nations had taken over. Think of, in more recent years, the Soviet Union.

Soviet Union had Ukraine, Belarus, a whole bunch of them. There was a whole bunch of them, all a part of the United Socialist Soviet Republic, USSR. There was a bunch of different countries that all got to maintain or retain their cultural identity, but they were all lumped together as one nation.

Now, it's not the exact same thing, but that'd be something that we could wrap our minds around. When Rome went and took over places, the places that were more rebellious were squashed altogether. But the places that were less rebellious, they would sign treaties or they would give up or they would fight for a little bit, and then they would have a peace treaty.

They would end up being able to retain their cultural identity. The Jews were able to be Jews in Palestine, but they had to give homage and pay tribute and stuff to Rome. They had to live under Roman law, even though they were able to be Jews.

They were able to have their temple. They were able to have the Sanhedrin and the elders in the cities know as long as they also live according to the Roman rule. When I say that we're moving in that direction, you may be saying, okay, well, here's Rome, so now we're in the Roman Empire.

But we can't think of it like that because it's messier than that because you still have Greeks acting as Greeks. You have Romans acting as Romans. You still have Syrians that were up there by the Medes and the Persians who, while their empire is gone, are still a people.

They're still acting. They still have armies. They still have all sorts of stuff. It's a little messy, but we're trending that we're coming out of silver and into iron. No, bronze. Coming out of bronze and into iron, generally speaking.

We'll get there. We still got some messed up Greek stuff to go, so don't think that the Greeks are out of the picture completely already. Gotcha. Where were we? 20? Yeah, I think so. All right. Then in his place, one will arise and will send an oppressor through the jewel of his kingdom.

Yet with a few days, he will be shattered, though not in anger nor in battle. This is talking about Seleucus IV. He went and he raised, raised, rosed, razzed? I don't know. Whatever word. I just made up a bush word there.

He built up tribute for Rome at that particular point. Verse 21, in his place, a despicable person will arise on whom the honor of kingship has not been conferred, but he will come in a time of tranquility and seize the kingdom by intrigue.

There was some weird events that happened, but what you end up having is Antiochus Epiphanes ends up coming to power, kind of. He's in charge, but he wasn't the rightful heir. He was there and he was running stuff.

He had real power, but his power was sort of illegitimate. Not to say that he wasn't actually running things or wasn't actually doing things, but it didn't come about in the normal way. Somebody rigged the election and he became, caught my political joke there.

That doesn't happen. Yes, it doesn't happen. Somebody rigged the election and he was in control. He wasn't the rightful heir. He came out and he kind of took over. He becomes very important to the Jews.

He's kind of a jerk and they don't like him. I don't blame them. Verse 22, the overflowing forces will be flooded away before him and shattered and also the prince of the covenant. He defeated the Egyptians.

Think of, there was that proposal of peace that covenant made earlier. The really weak one destroyed. Where are we at? 23. After an alliance is made with him, he will practice deception and he will go up and gain power with a small force of people.

Ptolemy the fourth makes a covenant against or with Antiochus Epiphanes and then he rebels against it. He says, no, I'm not doing that anymore. He rebels. Verse 24, in a time of tranquility, he will enter the richest parts of the realm and he will accomplish what his fathers never did nor his ancestors.

He will distribute plunder and booty and possessions among them and he will devise his schemes against strongholds but only for a time. This is Antiochus Epiphanes. He re-invades Egypt. He does so and his victory is short-lived.

We'll put it that way. Look down at 25 and 27. It kind of describes, or 25 through 27, describes a little bit more. He will stir up his strength and courage against the king of the south with a large army.

So the king of the south will mobilize an extremely large and mighty army for war but he will not stand for schemes will be devised against him. Those who eat his choice food will destroy him and his army will overflow but many will fall down slain.

As for both kings, their hearts will be intent on evil and they will speak lies to each other at the same table but it will not succeed for the end is still to come at the appointed time. Did we cut out?

No, we're good. Oh, okay. Yeah, we're good. I saw a whole bunch of circles and black screens for a second.

Oh, I don't know. I was looking down, looking at scripture. I didn't... All right, as long as you still heard me, I guess we're all right. Oh, yeah, yeah.

We're tracking. 25 through 27. It just describes the war with Egypt. Everything that had taken place in the verse prior. It describes it again. Both of them were evil. The king of the South gets betrayed by the people who are his trusted advisors.

They turn their backs on him. Oh, there's a reason why Joseph had a job working or why the cupbearer in Egypt had a job because people would try to kill people. They would try to assassinate folks. And if not assassinate, they would try to destroy someone else's kingdom.

They'd say, okay, well, I'm going to help this other king who I think has more potential. I'm going to help him, and then I'm going to take a place in his kingdom. Right. People do it politically all the time.

Hey, I'm going to help Nixon get elected. Then maybe he'll put me on his cabinet. I'm running in the primary against Barack Obama, but I like him. So I'm going to drop out of the race and throw all my supporters to him.

And now I'll be secretary of state or something. I don't know. I'm just throwing names out there. Don't look at the history behind those things. I have no idea if they matter or not.

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's really not all that relevant to the conversation, but I mean, you see that strategy was ruthless. Oh, yeah. Especially in this day and age, stepmothers would... I mean, you read about kings and transitions.

You have wives who their stepsons to the king would kill the rightful heir or uncles or brothers or... I mean, family members would do this to one another so that they could have their person become king.

I mean, it was ruthless. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was terrible. Ugly. I did have one question before we go on, if we've got a breaking point here. I'm seeing some familiar language, like we were talking about Jews and Romans, and here we stumbled upon some more familiar language.

And I was just curious, from your perspective and the other eschatologies, if you look in verse 22, we have this familiar language. We've seen this type of language going back to chapter nine, the prince and covenants being made.

Do you have folks from other eschatological viewpoints trying to insert anti-Christ stuff here, the covenant with the many here, or are they still tracking along history here?

All right, I'll put it this way. There's a 100 chance of someone somewhere throwing something eschatological in here. I don't know enough to say, no, all right, everybody in this camp believes this.