Daniel 11:1-35

Good evening. Thank you for joining us for truth and love. Uh we get a truth and love from Ephesians chapter four verse fifteen.

Let's speak truth and love. 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 to dive into scripture and see Christ and 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.

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

Uh you've got um Ezekiel, you've got revelation, you got so many other books um and and Dan and I wanted to to start um in Daniel looking into prophecy, looking into eschatology and giving you um our understanding, our interpretation of what what we believe

God is telling us and what God has did and what God is doing. Uh we've been working our way of course through Daniel.

We've we've went through one through um ten and and I'm trying to think we may have skipped chapter one but we've we've finished with ten and now finally we're back and we're on to to chapter eleven.

Um Daniel it seems like works chronologically when he's describing um kingdoms.

Uh you know we we look at the the prophecy of the the statue and which each part of the statue is is a different um people group, a different kingdom and he goes on to explain who those different kingdoms are and and Daniel seems to be pretty consistent uh pretty chronological in his explanation of these these kingdoms and um

I I feel like when when looking at Daniel um I I don't see any reason of course we're gonna touch on this

I believe probably more next time. Tonight we're gonna look at Daniel eleven one through thirty -five um and and I think thirty -five and after is when

Dan and I was discussing how it becomes a little more controversial in the in the interpretation but but the way

I see the book of Daniel is is he's consistent in his chronology and um

I I see no reason why to veer from that consistency in in interpreting

Daniel what it looks like but I'm I'm going to step back and let Dan take us through walk us through verse by verse uh in Daniel chapter eleven verses one through five and and see what the book of Daniel has to tell us tonight uh concerning uh what

God was revealing through Daniel. So, Dan, I'm gonna turn it over to you. Alright, um what you got in Daniel eleven is a description of a bunch of wars and other different uh things that you political things that will happen in in the earth or or will at least from the perspective of Daniel happen in the earth.

There is a bunch of discrepancy um amongst interpreters, people, you know, reading the

Bible. Some think that this has to do with uh the end times of the whole chapter.

Some people think that that this uh had to do with the time of the the Persians and the

Greeks alone. Uh 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 uh a whole different group of characters are going to replay this same portion of history again in the future.

Um where we're going to come from it is that these things were were just as we have for the rest of the book of Daniel.

These things are uh things were predicted by Daniel uh through the power of the Holy Spirit um in order for us to know that what

God had given him in prophecy was true. Um so um what we see in Daniel eleven

I believe is a a uh a future to Daniel but past tense to us a prediction of what was going to happen in the the world history of that place where they were um you know from basically the time of Daniel and for uh so I mean let's get started and we'll see what well that part that you're uh describing right there um it's my understanding that that's the part that's not very controversial um until we get to verse thirty -five and and on um because Daniel's pretty you know 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 um it

I believe it's it's fairly clear and straightforward uh but when some folks read or hear uh

King of the North or King of the South um sometimes they'll they'll go ahead right here at the you know within the first few verses and they'll diverge you know instead of staying with with the the different Greek empires you know the the one from the north and the one from the south of of the

Greek uh when the Greek empire split into four sections they'll actually say that there is a another um uh some people go go as far as to say that that uh

Russia will get involved or different other northern kingdoms will will come down and make themselves known.

Some people leave it in that region and say uh Syria uh

I don't know if I put an A in there but Syria will um or Assyria will come down and uh and be a part of the the world scheme uh in the future.

Some people believe that that Egypt is gonna rise up again um and probably war against uh

Iraq or Iran um so uh yes and no because there's some some do some don't but uh yeah

I would say it's it's pretty straightforward until uh 35 um and even then um

I still think it's pretty straightforward but well well I do too and that's what I was referring to when

I was talking about the the consistency and his chronological description of things um when you when you start saying the 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 and there's a hermeneutical principle behind that that I think they they kind of turn on its head uh 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 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 uh some people will 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 uh I think this one's fairly clear and straightforward I don't think there's any reason to to do any gymnastics or jump through hoops or or anything he's talking about you know uh

Darius the Median verse one he names Greece in uh verse uh end of verse two 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 we would say that that there is there's enough clues uh in this chapter that it can be interpreted and standalone okay um some will disagree but we will go through it and uh it's a nice way of saying prove them wrong um either way we'll go through it and we'll show you uh 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 uh so if you start off in verse one it says in the first year of Darius the

Mede I arose to an uh 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 uh will gain uh four more riches riches than all of them so fourth one from Darius the

Mede is going to gain a ton of riches um that would be um his his name was

Xerxes the first was a king Xerxes the first um uh he will uh he will arouse the whole empire against the realm of Greece so what he does is he takes uh his power his influence he takes his might and his power and he you know talks some smack about the

Greeks and says you know we need to take these guys on we need to do something about them um and so he does he he goes and attacks them um and a mighty king uh this is verse three 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 you know 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 you know this big bad mighty king who came who would rule who would do everything that he wanted to then his kingdom was taken and split between the four points of the compass uh the speaking of the greek king alexander alexander the great was a fantastic king and ruler militarily he knew exactly what he was doing uh he conquered the whole known world um as far as uh from my understanding as far as india and uh he got out to india and uh he was he was partying uh he was excited he was i think 30 or 31 years old he conquered the world i mean he was he was on top of his game can you imagine being a 30 31 year old and being a leader of everything like everywhere you go in the whole world that you know of the whole world as you know of you are in charge you know what's going on man it would it would be the the pleasure that would 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 you know 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 with uh some of the the folks out there 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 you know exactly like the points of a compass but generally speaking they were north south east and west so the the kingdom of the north was the uh was a

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 uh told the

Ptolemies were down in the south Seleucids were up in the north and there's two other ones that they let's be honest they didn't uh they they got some some power and some land but they they didn't do much with it uh they weren't met they weren't worth mentioning very much um you go on from there into verse uh well second half of verse four uh they're not uh 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 um it was taken and was given away to other people he it was no longer cohesive whole it was a splintered kingdom there was no uh power of alexander anymore there was no uh greek empire to speak of as a united front there was four separate uh kingdoms that popped up in basically in a power vacuum of alexander being being gone um so you see so far what you have is daniel setting the the tone there's a people here um the people the the persians and four kingdoms tonight puts you in a timeline uh 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's going to be taken away his power and everything's 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 um at the end of the medo -persian empire beginning of the greek empire so then what happens uh verse five do you have any questions for me on verse five it was a no no just a break well i was just thinking about how um you know it's somebody somebody could be watching though what maybe what's now what's later you know and and be thinking this is why are they doing a history lesson what you know why are they just going over you know facts and history and and all that stuff but the but i think the reason why it's so important is because exactly what we're talking about earlier uh the reason why these 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 this was fulfilled then you would be like those who would say oh i can 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 um i can make it fit this verse or that verse but the it's more than just a a boring history lesson right it's showing the fulfillment that god spoke through daniel and and what he said come to pass and and it talks about the consistency of the chronology that that he goes through and that's why i think it's so important and you can't make you can't make it say uh whatever you want it to say there's there's fulfillment in this prophecy and and what daniel's talking about right and it's even so straightforward that uh your your liberal theologians will try to date this uh closer to the time of jesus uh saying that daniel was a uh an either a historical figure that didn't actually write this or he was an ahistorical figure um but what 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 um 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 you know he came out of out of jerusalem and put into exile so therefore that's the time period in which he wrote right um yeah so but it's amazing that these details are so straightforward that even uh unbelievers and uh and uh liberal theologians will try to change the date because it matches up so well you know you're either left with you know this was an amazing prophecy of god in incredible detail or you're left with well clearly he uh well not clearly but they would say clearly uh this has been uh written after the fact you know this was you know kind of like uh you pick up a history book of of the events of 9 11 um if somebody had written it in say 1984 you know that's impressive somebody wrote it in 2003 less impressive i mean you know still impressive that they wrote it down but less impressive because they wouldn't have had you know however many years uh 18 or whatever years 16 17 i'm trying to think of how old i was i picked my birth year uh whenever that would have would have taken place but that's that's exactly what you have here gotcha all right moving on moving on so then the king of the south the ptolemies uh 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 um that is how it shook out you know look at the history behind it that's how it shook out uh the ptolemies uh the king of the south along with one of his princes um he he him him and his boy basically not a son but him and him and his guy uh took over they had great dominion uh they they dominated they basically they took over the old egyptian empire um i mean anytime you can you know sit in the seat of pharaohs you know you've you've done something right uh 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 solucents uh and where was i the king of 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 uh who supported her in those times um they made an alliance uh between the king of the north and the king of the south uh they thought that it was going to they know they did it to be peaceful now it was good intentions but it didn't it didn't uh work out the way that it was supposed to um in uh he goes on to explain uh but one of the descendants of her line will arise in his place and who is the his if you back up um the king of the uh north or yeah the king of the south will send his daughter to the king of the north uh she will be given up along with those um so the one who was talking about is the king of the north uh i may be saying that backwards my brain got all sorts of turned around when i was talking um a marriage alliance got formed between him a tolome right only a stepson um actually uh succeeded him so when he's talking about so i guess that would be the the king of the south so yeah i got i got flipped around that's why i knew something wasn't sounding right i was like i'm saying something something backwards here uh 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 uh 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 he but will return to his own land um told me the third actually invades uh syria and conquered antioch during that time that's what all of that is is talking about uh there's a paragraph break you any questions i know i do i confuse myself a little bit go ahead and iron it out a little bit um if you just see me looking over um i'm following some notes as as you're discussing i'm following notes um with with the verses and um some of you who are who may watch that are in some of our groups on on facebook um it's the notes given by i think his name is jay rogers okay wrote the book um in the in the days of these kings i think that's the name of his book yeah and uh it's it's a pretty good it's basically articles and he just has some quick notes uh going verse by verse to the book of daniel and i'm just i'm just following along as you're uh as you're discussing each verse and uh yeah 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 um he gives the uh the daughter of the south he he says that's bernice and to me again you know not really any questions but it's just amazing how specific we can get with this historical details i mean that's the amazing part of it is um is how specific we can get daniel says uh this is going to happen and um you know he may not have all the names but we could fill in the names because you know the king king of the south did this it's just exactly how daniel described um and there was a this marriage that was forged with the king of the south and the king of the north and um you know the finding the details are just amazing how accurate daniel is and it should encourage us as we continue to look through it and and look through the details and see how it's fulfilled and how we can trust it then when we get to the the more controversial passages um and to me you know i guess i'll keep reiterating it and just beating this same horse you know if we um part of interpreting the 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 you know if you have a question on where to go do you um when you get past verse 35 and you start looking for this this ruler to come um should i be looking for one that's coming thousands and thousands and thousands a year later well i'm going to interpret the unclear in light of clear what does clear say the clear says daniel is consistent in his chronological history 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 versed in it is uh 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 rise raise a great greater multitude than the former and after an interval interval of some years he will press on with a great army and much equipment he is going to uh he being the uh man my brain is turned off already the uh the king of the south is going to get uh ticked off and he's going to go fight against the king of the north um he's going to do um well uh very well but it does say uh for the king of the north will raise a greater multitude than the former and after a interval of some years he will press on with a great army and much equipment so the king of the south is going to to be winning for a while and even look to uh to to win for a while um and then uh what ends up happening is that the king of the north actually comes out stronger in the end of it um so if you'd imagine uh say uh canada getting in a war with america and america um goes and fights canada for a while and we end up you know whipping up on them uh and then we leave them alone you know to hang out with their hockey pucks and mooses and maple syrup and whatnot and then they uh they make us think that you're just just being friendly canadians now they don't have to worry about them and all of a sudden they come up years later um they're they're upset and their royal uh canadian mounted police decide to come down and you know put maple syrup in our gas tank and you know slap hockey pucks at us and stuff um it's like that only um in the middle east you know no hockey pucks or mooses or maple syrup uh but you do have you have basically the king of the south getting a little big for his britches and the king of the north ending up uh for whatever reason becoming stronger because of it um any questions all right verse 14 now in those times so still those times same time period you were there yep uh many will rise up against the king of the south uh the violent ones among your people will also lift themselves up in order to fulfill the vision but they will fall down uh the uh southern kingdom the the uh ptolemaic kingdom uh had control of uh the area of palestine of israel and there were jews living in that area at the time um now when he's talking he says uh your people he's talking to um 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 uh the the uh was that 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 um they're going to think that they're doing god's work now we are fulfilling prophecy that's what we're doing but they're doing it in a violent way um 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 you know as god has commanded but they will fall the jew the jews tried and they did they tried to revolt at that time and it didn't work out so well uh then the king of the north uh 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 choices troops for there will be no strength to make a stand um the uh who is it where am i man i got tired tonight uh king of the the north takes um uh he did he defeats a a general uh or uh scopus at a uh a well -fortified city uh panium so what happens is um the king of the north he came down he put up a ramp he took this well -fortified city and we see this happening um when uh it was antiochus the third he defeated scopus at panium um uh antiochus the third then moves on he continues uh if we look into the next verse uh 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 um 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 women to ruin it but she will not take a stand for him or be on his side um egypt was actually forced into an alliance at that time with with uh syria with the syrians um that that's what all that language is of there's a proposal of peace he will put into effect he will also give him uh will give him the daughter of women uh to ruin it uh but she will not take a stand for him or be on his side there was a um a force alliance but as we see it was it was weak it wasn't going to actually come of anything um in uh 18 uh 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 uh that is um antiochus the third he how he does he has some initial success so he goes out he conquers coastlands he conquers um other other things in in the area uh then then look at verse 19 uh uh last half of verse 18 uh somebody a commander comes and puts a stop to him so he has some initial success but he's defeated uh so he will turn his face towards the fortresses of his own land but he will stumble and fall and be found no more um basically he he is killed in syria he ends up signing a treaty with rome um so what we see is the the jews back in verse was it 14 16 14 uh thought that they were doing god's work by putting the greeks to an end but they weren't uh the roman empire actually came and did their own thing you know through god's uh 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 um but he signed a treaty with with rome uh there's a lot there questions well we're now we're now introducing um jews sure and rome has been mentioned so it seems like we're we're heading in that direction of of that that empire um at the bottom of the statue we hit in that direction we're getting there okay um it's it's it's it's weird um here's why i say that uh there's the the way that the roman empire kind of took over the world was different than the way that other nations had taken over um think of uh in more recent years the soviet union soviet union had uh ukraine belarus um a whole bunch of them there was a whole bunch of them all a part of the united socialist soviet republic uh ussr um there's 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 you know wrap our minds around um when rome went and took over places uh 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 you know have a peace treaty they would end up being able to to retain their cultural identity you know they the jews were able to be jews in palestine but they had to give no homage and pay tribute and stuff to rome they had to live under roman law even though they're 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 roman rule right um so this when i say that we're moving in that direction uh 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 there are still um it's 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 no no the the uh up there by the medes and the persians who while their empire is gone are still the people they're still acting they still have armies they still have all sorts of stuff so it's it's it's a little messy but yeah we're trending that we're coming out of silver and into iron no bronze coming out of bronze and into uh iron generally speaking we'll get there we still got some uh some messed up uh messed up greek stuff to go so don't think that the greeks are are out of the picture completely are already gotcha uh where were we 20 yeah i think so all right then in his place one will arise and will send an oppressor uh through the jewel of his kingdom yet with a few days he will be shattered uh though not in anger nor in battle uh this is talking about uh seleucus the fourth um he went to he went and he wrote ray raised raises rose razzed i don't know whatever word i just made up a bush word there uh he he uh built up tribute for uh for rome at that particular point uh verse 21 in his uh 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 um this was there was some weird events um that happened but what you end up happening what you end up having is antiochus epiphanies um ends up coming to power kind of uh he's he's in charge but he wasn't the rightful heir um he was there and he was he was running stuff he had real power but his power was sort of illegitimate um not to say that he wasn't actually running things or wasn't actually doing things but he wasn't it didn't come about in the normal way you know somebody rigged the election and he became uh my political joke there that doesn't happen yes yeah it doesn't happen somebody rigged the election and uh and he he was he was in control um he he was he wasn't the rightful heir he he came out and he kind of took over uh he becomes very important um to to the to the jews um in a little bit he's he's kind of a jerk and they don't like him and i don't blame them um uh verse 22 the overflowing forces uh will be flooded away before him and shattered and also the prince of the covenant uh he defeated the egyptians um think of uh there was that proposal of peace that covenant made earlier the really weak one destroyed um where 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 um

Ptolemy the fourth makes a covenant um against um or or with uh

Antiochus Epiphanes and then he rebels against it he says no i'm not i'm not doing that anymore and so he rebels uh 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 oh this is the