Angels and End Times Part 4 (Daniel 11:28-35) | Adult Sunday School

Good morning, good morning,

I hate to break it up. So we have some more handouts for anyone who does not have one.

The same handouts, the tracking the kings through the verses, north and south,

Egypt and Syria, and the handout for the end times chronology. If you don't have one of those, just raise your hand.

Good morning, welcome to Kootenai Community Church, Adult Sunday School.

Maybe I don't have enough handouts. Do we need more, Rick? I've got a few more of the kings here.

Remember on the kings at 1125, verse 25, that's supposed to be 180 BC to 145

BC, not 18 BC, that would be reverse chronology. And I don't do time travel. The last one, yeah, it says

Ptolemy 6 Philometer, 18 to 145 BC, supposed to be 180 to 145

BC. My copy and paste didn't function properly.

The copy, most likely. Well, let's open in prayer.

Do we need more? I ran out. Okay, yeah, I have some more of these. You need the time handout.

Okay, well, I'll bring some more next week. We won't make it to that this week anyway. I was just trying to get it to y 'all early.

Let's open in prayer. Father, we look forward to Your Word this morning. It is full of everything that is needed for life and godliness in the

Lord Jesus Christ. It is actually full of Him, Himself, and we are grateful for that. This morning, we look to You for illumination, for understanding, for this difficult but exciting part of Scripture.

We thank You that You have given us Your Word. We thank You that You have made it, You have protected it for so many centuries so that we might have a clear picture of Your heart for us.

We thank You for that in Jesus' name, amen. So a couple of things, refine, reform, purge, refine, purge, reform, refine, purge, make pure.

One of those verses or words, that's what we're going to be thinking about as we go through this section because throughout your lifetime,

God is always working to refine, to refine you. Actually, let me put it in the proper order here.

I've got it written down here. It's in verse 35, to refine, to purge, and to make pure.

So God wants to refine your life, to purge the things that are unnecessary out of your life, and to make you pure for Him, as it talks about in Ephesians.

And He's doing that to the church too, but He does that to individuals, and by that happens, how that, and through that, the church is refined, purged, and made pure.

So we'll be thinking about that. That's going to be kind of in the back of our minds as we're going through this section of Daniel. We're going to be in chapter 11, verse 28 is where we'll start, but I'd like to read from verse 20 through verse 35.

I intend to make it to verse 35 today. If we don't, we don't, but we're going to give it our best shot. Daniel chapter 11, starting on page 1159, verse 20.

And if you look at your verse list, verse 20 speaks of Seleucus for Philopator from the north.

That's one of the kings here. Then in his place, one will arise who will ascend an oppressor through the jewel of his kingdom.

Yet within a few days, he will be shattered, though neither in anger nor in battle. And 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, and the overflowing forces will be flooded away before him and shattered, and also the prince of the covenant.

And 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.

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, booty, and possessions among them, and he will devise his schemes against strongholds, but only for a time.

And 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, and 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.

Then he will return to his land with much plunder, but his heart will be set against the holy covenant, and he will take action and then return to his own land.

At the appointed time...that's an important phrase. The time is at God's appointment, not at man's.

At the appointed time, he will return and come into the south, but this last time it will not turn out the way it did before, for ships of Chitim will come against him, therefore he will be disheartened and will return and become enraged at the holy covenant and take action, so he will come back and show regard for those who forsake the holy covenant.

And forces from him will arise, desecrate the sanctuary fortress, and do away with the regular sacrifice, and they will set up the abomination of desolation, and by smooth words he will turn to godlessness those who act wickedly toward the covenant, but the people who know their

God will display strength and take action, and those who have insight among the people will give understanding to the many, yet they will fall by sword and by flame, by captivity and by plunder for many days.

Now when they fall, they will be granted a little help, and many will join with them in hypocrisy, and some of those who have insight will fall in order to refine, purge, and make them pure until the end time, because it is still to come at the appointed time.

So last week we left off with the two kings sitting at the same table lying to one another, which never happens in this day and age, but their ends, they wanted their own ends, they wanted their own plans, and so they lied to each other, and they tried to make them come to pass.

But verse 27 ends with that phrase, for the end is still to come at the appointed time.

No matter the schemes of men, how intricate and incredibly well -planned they are, the appointed time is always going to be of God.

And so whether it was at the time of Antiochus Epiphanes during this period in the 160s

BC or in the end times, everything will come at the appointed time of God.

And remember this, at that time, the study of Scripture will yield to those who live in that time the insight necessary to understand what is coming.

We may not see it clearly here today because we're not there, but those who are in that time, the

Scripture says, will have insight, and they will understand. And so when we try to understand and predict these things ahead of time, we get ourselves into trouble, don't we?

Stick with what the Scripture says, and you will do very well, you will do very well.

If we happen to live in those times, they will be exciting, God will give insight, and those who have insight, it says some of them are going to fall, they're going to fall.

Good people will be swept away in the tides that come with the destruction that Antichrist will bring.

And that's just the way of the world, but their reward is sure, their reward is sure.

Verse 27 says, As for both kings, their heart 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.

So these were Ptolemy VII and the one who was called

Ptolemy, Viscount, and Antiochus.

Antiochus lied to Ptolemy, Ptolemy lied to Antiochus, and both of them end up coming to their own end.

So in verse 28, we begin to see the starting of the tie -up of this section with Antiochus' epiphanies.

We're going to hear about him through verse 35, and then at verse 36, it changes.

The tenor of Daniel changes. The verbiage undergoes a little bit of a change, and we're talking about a future king.

And not that the first part hasn't been exciting, but that will be exciting too. Let's face it, and it's okay, there are sections of Scripture that you read through them, and maybe at the time you don't get much, but God has planted that word in your heart, and He will bring it to seed, bring it to fruition,

I should say, as necessary. But reading through the Chronicles sometimes is not as exciting as reading through the book of Acts, and it's okay to say that.

It's not blasphemous to say that. So the reason I'm saying that is because that's my daily reading has been through the book of Acts lately, and I forgot how exciting that book was.

But this section of Daniel where it turns and Antiochus is done away with, and we move into, again, in verses 36 through the end of the chapter, actually through the end of the book, speaking of the end times in Antiochus, or the

Antichrist. That becomes both sobering, exciting, and in some respects terrifying.

And it had to be terrifying for Daniel to know that his people were going to go through these difficult times.

This was not going to be a cakewalk for Israel, it was going to be very difficult, and he knew it.

And those were some of the reasons why he spent a lot of time on his knees and weak, and the angel had to strengthen him so many times.

His people were going to be refined, purged, and made pure, and that's always difficult.

So then in verse 28, then he will return to his land with much plunder, but his heart will be set against the holy covenant, and he will take action and then return to his own land, again, with incredible specificity.

Remember, naysayers don't believe this could have been a prophecy because it's so accurate.

Had to be a guy who wrote it after it happened, it's just too accurate. But it was a prophecy written hundreds of years before it happened.

So with remarkable divine specificity, the angel continues the predictions. Antiochus IV, or Antiochus Epiphanes, failed to take

Egypt, the south, but he did return to his homeland with much plunder. He took a lot of booty back with him.

On the way, he committed great atrocities against the holy land, against the Jews, whom he hated very much.

He hated them with a passion. As a result of this hatred, the scripture says his heart will be set against the holy covenant.

He read the books. He knew what the Jews believed. He hated what they believed, but he knew what they believed, and he knew how to make it the most difficult for them.

This is the same as what you read in the meaning in 1 Maccabees 115. Remember, Maccabees is a reasonably good history, but it is not scripture.

It's not the canon of scripture, but it's good history. In 1

Maccabees 115, which refers to all things religious and especially the religion of Yahweh, says this, and they made themselves uncircumcised and forsook the holy covenant and joined themselves to the heathen and were sold to do mischief.

These were those who forsook the holy covenant. These were Jews who thought they could help

God out by making certain prophecies come to pass. They forsook the holy covenant. They walked away from their heritage, and they joined these wicked heathen,

I guess you would call them, as what they would have called them back then, what the pious would have called them. So Antiochus IV at this point began some of his vicious depredations against Israel.

One of the first things he did was he invaded the secession of priests, the secession of the priesthood of the

Jews. Reynolds Showers in his commentary details this. He says this, although he had not conquered all of Egypt, Antiochus did take much wealth from it to carry home to Syria.

Before this Egyptian campaign, Antiochus had removed Jason as high priest of Israel and replaced him with Menelaus.

Menelaus had sought this position by offering Antiochus higher tribute money. This is in 2

Maccabees 4, 23 -27. While Antiochus was fighting in Egypt, Jason heard a false rumor to the effect that Antiochus was dead, that Antiochus Epiphanes had been killed.

He then raised the Jewish force and attacked Jerusalem to overthrow Menelaus. Menelaus beat back the attack, but as Antiochus returned home through Israel, he determined to teach the rebel

Jews a lesson for even trying this, teach the rebel Jews a lesson. He slaughtered many

Jews, sold many into slavery, plundered the temple of its valued contents and carried the sacred things of God to Syria.

This is recorded in 1 Maccabees 1, 20 -28 and 2 Maccabees 5, 5 -21.

This showed his personal contempt for Israel's covenant relationship with God as portrayed here in chapter...in

verse 28. It says that he will take action and then return to his own land, but it said his heart will be set against the holy covenant.

His heart was set against what he knew the Jews wanted to do, what their desire to worship their

God entailed. And he did as much as he could to destroy it. So, at this point,

Antiochus having secured Menelaus as the high priest, he continued home. Verse 29, and then

I'll ask if there's any questions. At the appointed time...again, that phrase, at the appointed time. God is sovereign over everything and Daniel is reminded by the angel, at the appointed time,

Daniel, this is all coming at the hand of Yahweh. He will return and come into the south, but this last time it will not turn out the way it did before.

It won't go as well as it did the first time. It seems that Antiochus discovered this coalition between the brothers and invaded

Egypt yet again in 168 B .C., determined to break up the alliance of the two brothers. He had left

Ptolemy Philopator in charge at Memphis, not Tennessee. But it appeared from the way things worked out that the two brothers had betrayed him.

God had appointed this time for him to return to Egypt, but this campaign would be different than the campaign in 170

B .C. The first campaign was somewhat successful, but this one would not be successful at all.

It would not turn out the way it did before. And it says, and here it says, for, in verse 30, for ships of Chitim came against him.

Therefore, he will be disheartened, verse 30, and will return and become enraged at the

Holy Covenant and take action. So he will come back and show regard for those who forsake the

Holy Covenant. Those who believe and follow the Scripture will always enrage unbelievers.

It is a detestable thing to them in any age, whether it was 168

B .C. or 2023 A .D. Those who truly follow the

Scriptures, who believe they are true and take them to heart and obey God will always enrage unbelievers.

And there is nothing we can do about that except preach the Gospel. So maybe some of those unbelievers will become believers.

So when you accidentally bump a button, stuff happens. Rome sent a contingent of Roman soldiers from Cyprus with Popilius Lanus in trireme ships.

This is what they look like, the ships look like. To stop Antiochus. So Rome is getting involved now.

This is kind of in the fledgling early days of Rome's empire building. Antiochus was told to leave

Egypt. He stalled for a time. Lanus drew a circle around.

He stood him up in front of the contingent of soldiers there and he drew a circle around him in the sand.

And here's what he said. He said, you either decide to leave Egypt or fight

Rome before you leave that circle. And that had to be humiliating, standing in front of everybody.

Antiochus had to make that decision. So dejected and bitter, Antiochus left

Egypt and on the way home, showing regard for those who hated Israel, for those who forsook the

Holy Covenant, for those who hated Israel and lived in Israel. He vented some of his anger and hatred on Israel.

The idea is that he actually would have looked around for Jews who were called by the pious

Israelites forsakers, forsakers in quotes, if you say it. There were followers and forsakers and the forsakers were the ones who understood the

Scripture and forsook it in order to, well, we'll talk about that. These are

Jews who had already turned from God's law. He found a group of them led by Menelaus, as mentioned earlier, and they helped him desecrate the temple, helped him damage and ravage

Israel. The very own people of Israel helped Antiochus ravage

Israel. That's pretty hard to swallow. Any questions or comments about those three verses? Yes.

He, Antiochus, had to come from Syria. Could he go from Syria directly to Egypt, or did he purposefully?

Purposely went through, purposely went through. These rebel Jews needed to be taught a lesson.

And so I'll take time out of my travels and beat them up, is basically what happened.

Forces from him, verse 31 says, will arise, desecrate the sanctuary fortress, and do away with the regular sacrifice.

And they will set up the abomination of desolation. Now the abomination of desolation, I think we've talked about it before.

This is an abominable thing that is done in the temple, and we'll read about it here. So Antiochus IV was,

Antiochus Epiphanes was successful in combining with wicked Jews to desecrate the temple fortress, and to do away with the regular sacrifice, eventually setting up what the

Jews called the abomination of desolation. And this is detailed again in the non -canonical but historical book of 1

Maccabees, verses 41 through 50 of chapter 1. And here's what it says. Moreover, King Antiochus wrote to his whole kingdom that all should be one people, and everyone should leave his laws, so all the heathen agreed, according to the commandment of the king.

Of course they would. Yea, many also of the Israelites consented to his religion, which was of the

Greeks. He had become enamored of the Greek religion. Consented to his religion, and sacrificed unto idols, and profaned the

Sabbath. For the king had sent letters by messengers to Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, that they should follow the strange laws of the land, and forbid burn offerings, and sacrifice, and drink offerings in the temple, and that they should profane the

Sabbaths and festival days. So the object, let me stop there, the object was to profane every celebration the

Jews had. He was going to comprehensively defile their religion, so that they knew he was in charge.

And his hatred for them would be very evident. And pollute the sanctuary and holy people, set up altars and groves and chapels of idols, and sacrifice swine's flesh and unclean beasts, that they should also leave their children uncircumcised and make their souls abominable with all manner of uncleanness and profanation, profanity, profaning.

To the end that they might forget the law, and change all the ordinances, and whosoever would not do according to the commandment of the king, he said, should die, he should die.

And what is it about it when we begin to, when those in the church begin to follow the ways of the world?

There's only two directions to go, continue down, or back up if the Lord should get a hold of your heart and change you.

And so it becomes worse and worse in any age, until those who were in the church are the greatest enemies of those who are still in the church.

There was a famous quote ascribed to Marcus Tullus, and I can't remember exactly how it goes.

I was going to look that up this morning, and you know how that works out. And it goes something like this.

A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious, but it cannot survive treason from within.

An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.

For the traitor appears not a traitor, he speaks in accents familiar to his victims. He knows the scripture, and he wears their face and their argument.

He appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation. He works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city.

He infects the body politics so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.

That traitor is the plague. And that is true in the church as well. It's those who claim to follow the scripture but do not, but harbor hate in their heart for God that are the most difficult, the most horrendous and the most hard on those who stay.

They tear your heart out when you see it happen. It just rips you apart when you see that kind of thing happen. And again, that's a quote that's supposedly ascribed to Marcus Tullius Cicero.

There's not clear indication that it was, but you know, it only happened several thousand years ago, so how can we be sure?

So, Antiochus had spent time in Athens and had become familiar with and dazzled by Grecian customs.

He was intent on forcing those customs on the Jewish population. He declared the regular ceremonies of Mosaic law illegal.

People who tried to follow them were given the death penalty. That's what it comes to, by the way.

Once you can't, when a rebel group, when I say rebel using that term loosely, when people who are intent on following the scripture will not do it, well, there's only one recourse in order to make the others follow, and that's to kill the ones that set the example.

So, he made the death penalty, that for which you would suffer if you followed

Yahweh's customs. Many died. Antiochus erected an altar and or a statue of Zeus, Zeus Olympius, in the temple itself.

It was put in the place of the brazen altar so that the

Jews would be forced to worship this Greek God rather than the God of their fathers. The desolation of the temple was both the horrifying desecration itself and the fact that now no one would come to worship there because of the destruction, the chill that would be put on those who wished to truly worship.

They would have been forced to do something else. They couldn't come to the temple anymore. One commentator describes it this way,

Antiochus ordered his general Apollonius and a contingent of 22 ,000 soldiers into Jerusalem on what he claimed was a peaceful mission, a mostly peaceful mission.

However, when they were inside the city, they attacked the Jews on a Sabbath when the Jews were reluctant to exert themselves.

Apollonius killed many Jews, took many Jewish women and children captive as slaves, plundered the temple, and burned the city.

Antiochus' objective was to exterminate Judaism. Make no mistake, that's what those kinds do.

They want to exterminate what they detest, to exterminate Judaism and to Hellenize Palestine.

Consequently, he forbade the Jews to follow the Mosaic law and he did away with the Jewish sacrifices, festivals, and circumcision.

This is detailed in the non -canonical book of 1 Maccabees 1 in 44 -54.

He even burned copies of their law. He burned their Bible, burned the Torah. As a culminating measure, he installed an image of Zeus, his

Greek god, in the temple and he erected an altar to Zeus on the altar of burnt offerings. That comes from 2

Maccabees 6 -2. This was not the first time such sacrilege had been committed. King Ahaz had set up an adulterous altar in 2

Kings 10 -16 and King Manasseh had installed images of pagan gods in 2

Kings 21 -3 -5 in the first temple. Then Antiochus sacrificed a pig, an unclean animal, to the

Jews on the altar. This happened on December 16, 168 B .C. The Jews referred to this act as, quote, the abomination that caused desolation.

Close quote. It's important that the words are read that way. It caused the desolation of the temple, it caused the desolation of worship, and it caused the desolation of the keepers of the covenant.

It was desolating. Since it polluted their altar and made sacrifices to Yahweh on it impossible,

Antiochus further ordered his Jewish subjects to celebrate his subsequent birthdays by offering a pig to Zeus on this altar.

And another commentator said this, Jesus Christ indicated that another similar atrocity would befall the

Jews in the future. Matthew 24 -15 and Mark 13 -14. By the way, this is

John Walvoord speaking, this is not me quoting, this is not me interjecting. By the way, he says, Jesus Christ's explicit reference to the prophet

Daniel being the writer of this prophecy in these verses should be proof enough that Daniel rather than a 2nd century writer wrote this book.

Let me stop there. Jesus sanctioned this as a prophecy of Daniel.

We need no other, well actually we don't even need that, we just read the Old Testament which was written by God.

That's true. But Jesus said, this is what Daniel said, this is what Daniel did. There's one other thing that Jesus sanctioned when he talked about marriage.

Actually there's more than one other thing. But for our purposes this morning, marriage is between a man and a woman.

Also he authoritatively sanctioned the concept of creation, the sixth day creation.

But back to this commentary. By the way, John Walvoord says, Jesus Christ's explicit reference to the prophet

Daniel being the writer of this prophecy in these verses should be proof enough that Daniel rather than a 2nd century writer wrote the book.

Jesus referred to the coming atrocity literally as, again, quote, the abomination that causes desolation, unquote.

The exact words used in the Septuagint version of this verse in Daniel. Thus, Antiochus' actions were a preview of similar atrocities that are yet to befall the

Jews. And we'll read about those later. The destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 by the Roman general

Titus has seemed to some interpreters to fulfill Jesus' prediction. However, Titus did not treat the

Jews as Antiochus did and as the Antichrist will. Furthermore, the book of Revelation, which dates after the destruction of Jerusalem, predicts the coming of a beast who will behave as Antiochus did only on a larger scale.

Revelation chapter 13. I've been reading this week in numerous places and last week, but one writer said that in order to truly understand the book of Revelation, you need to have an understanding of the book of Daniel.

Now, I'm of the opinion that if you lived on an island that just had a copy of the book of Revelation, God, that's enough.

But if you really want to be able to put the pieces together of end times prophecy, especially from Revelation and Matthew and the various other places, it's really handy to have an understanding of the book of Daniel.

Let's leave it at at least that. And finally, as John Wolvert says in his commentary, he says, Antiochus thus became a type of the future man of sin.

Second Thessalonians two, three and four. And his activities foreshadow the final blasphemous persecution of Israel and desecration of the temple, which will occur subsequent to now, sometime after now.

And it's coming. That time is coming. But imagine being a

Jew in 168 B .C. And this man comes into your country. He sells your friends into slavery.

He kills people. He ties babies around their mother's necks as he kills them. I'm going to leave it at that.

It's just it's really gruesome what this man did. Any questions with that as a thrown out?

Verse 28, excuse me, verse 32. By smooth words, he will turn to godlessness those who act wickedly toward the covenant.

But the people who know their God will display strength and take action. Who do you think those who act wickedly toward the covenant are?

It's not Persians. It's Jews.

It's, for our purposes, I don't want to get too metaphorical here, but it would be the people in the church that we thought were believers.

Now, there were suspicions. There probably would be some suspicions with some of them. But these, by smooth words,

Antiochus turned them to evil. As one walks in the church but away from his

God, his walk coarsens and becomes more and more wicked, more and more worldly, secretly at first and then outwardly.

And that's what happened probably here. Now, that's just my observation of it from what I've seen.

People who walk away from the church, you don't see it at first. They may live for many years in seeming conformity, but a root of bitterness in their hearts has taken hold of their hearts and it upends everything.

And at some point in time, they make a decision to walk away. This would have been the forsakers that the

Jewish people had to deal with who helped Antiochus destroy Jerusalem, who helped

Antiochus set up the abomination of desolation. Imagine that. People who you thought, who you were neighbors, who went to synagogue with you, and they helped this heathen,

Greek -loving king destroy Jerusalem, destroy the beautiful land.

The sense here is that Antiochus would use slippery, quote -unquote, that's the word that is translated, smooth, slippery ideas and words to turn people who were already forsaking the covenant inwardly into even worse atrocities against God outwardly.

And as might be expected with biblical prophecy, this is exactly what happened. He flattered and perverted many who wanted to keep their positions of power and influence, especially into doing things that were unspeakable in the pious

Jewish mind. And what it sometimes starts with is, well, I'm in this position of influence and power and I really need to stay here.

I can be used by God here. So that translates into doing whatever is necessary to stay in power in many cases.

And it is evil. Period. On the other hand, those who were devoted to Yahweh would stand firm not only resisting

Antiochus' enticing words, but taking action against him. This series of despicable acts by Antiochus firmed up the resolve of the

Maccabees to resist him. Some of this is chronicled in the non -canonical book of 1 Maccabees 1, 41 through 62.

I'm going to read those to you. It's a good history. Then, verse 41, the king wrote to his whole kingdom that all should be one people and that all should give up their particular customs.

It's for the good of all. All the nations accepted the command of the king.

Many even from Israel gladly adopted his religion. They sacrificed to idols and profaned the Sabbath. And the king sent letters by messengers to Jerusalem and the towns of Judah.

He directed them to follow customs strange to Israel. Strange to the land,

I should say. To forbid burnt offerings and sacrifices and drink offerings in the sanctuary, to profane

Sabbaths and festivals, to defile the sanctuary and the holy ones, to build altars and sacred precincts and shrines for idols, to sacrifice pigs and other unclean animals, and to leave their sons uncircumcised.

They were to make themselves abominable by everything unclean and profane so that they would forget the law and change all the ordinances.

Forget the scripture and introduce their own ideas.

And whoever does not obey the command of the king shall die. In such words he wrote to his whole kingdom.

He appointed inspectors over all the people, probably 87 ,000 of them, and commanded the towns of Judah to offer sacrifice town by town.

This would have occurred little by little. This didn't happen overnight. There wasn't a devoted, dedicated synagogue in each town one day and the next day everybody had turned.

This was stuff that was fomenting for years. People who were already kicking against what scripture would have commanded them to do, encouraged them to do, and commanded them to do.

Already bitter against God. Back to Maccabees. Many of the people, everyone who forsook the law, joined them and they did evil in the land.

They drove Israel into hiding in every place of refuge they had. Now on the 15th day of Shislev in the 145th year they erected a desolating sacrifice on the altar of burnt offering.

They also built altars in the surrounding towns of Judah and offered incense at the doors of the houses and in the streets. The books of the law that they found, they tore to pieces.

These are Jews. They tore up their own books of the law and burned them with fire.

Anyone found possessing the book of the covenant or anyone who adhered to the law was condemned to death by decree of the king.

They kept using violence against Israel against those who were found month after month in the towns. On the 25th day of the month they offered a sacrifice on the altar that was on top of the altar of burnt offering.

According to the decree they put to death the women who had their children circumcised and their families and those who circumcised them and they hung the infants from their mothers' necks.

But many in Israel stood firm and were resolved in their hearts not to eat unclean food. They chose rather to die than to be defiled by food or to profane the holy covenant and they did die.

Very great wrath came upon Israel. Israel had been forsaken their

God and God was doing what He needed to do at each appointed time to turn them back to Him for the final turning in the end times to their

Messiah. That's what it takes. False Christians endangered the true church far more than the world does.

False Jews endangered the synagogue far more than Antiochus did.

A great many Israelites were fooled and perverted into Hellenized worship. Many did it out of a fear and from a desire to survive.

But it is understood that many others wanted to do this and did it to appear more intellectual and forward thinking than their rube peers.

They considered themselves progressive. This word was used. And some commentators insist that they were more of a danger to the survival of Israel as a nation than were the depredations of Antiochus.

It's true in any age. Indeed, it was these very kinds of actions by these wicked Hellenized Jews that precipitated the destruction of Jerusalem and the

Babylonian captivities hundreds of years before. And they were ironically, now old, this old man writing this book was taken, when this old man writing this book was taken captive, he saw this happen.

He saw the perversion and the captivity. Jeremiah wrote about it. And so by smooth words he turned those in the church, excuse me,

I've got to quit doing that because I sound like I don't believe eschatology, I believe. He perverted those in the synagogues to turn from God and to help destroy

Jerusalem and their compatriots. But then verse 33 says, those who have insight among the people will give understanding to the many, yet they will fall by sword and by flame, by captivity and by plunder for many days.

It's now, it's these people who, these great followers, not forsakers, who understood and they tried to turn the hearts of many.

They kept reciting and giving what would have been the gospel of Israel at the time and letting people know the truth.

Many of them died, but they did it anyway. Many in Israel were faithful in studying God's word and it is those who are wise and who were able to persuade many to see the duplicity and evil of the machination of Antiochus.

And yet even with their influence, the Jews were still plundered. They were plundered, murdered, captured and perverted for many days, quote unquote, which refers, which means many years, a few years actually, a few years.

One of these Jews is the famous one who started the Maccabean Revolt. So gotquestions .org

details this pretty good, summarizes the Maccabean Revolt pretty well. I'm going to read that to you. But you can just plug it in, there's a website that's gotquestions .org,

it's pretty solid. And just plug Maccabean Revolt into it and it will give you this information.

In 175 B .C., Antiochus Epiphanes came to power. He chose for himself the name Antiochus Epiphanes, which means

God manifest. He began to persecute the Jews in earnest. He outlawed Jewish religious practices, including the observance of kosher food laws, and he ordered the worship of the

Greek god Zeus. His ultimate act of desecration, precipitating the Maccabean Revolt, was to sacrifice a pig to Zeus in the

Temple of Jerusalem in 167 B .C. Faithful Jewish opposition had been an undercurrent all along, but Antiochus' overt act of desecration brought it to the surface, and the result was the

Maccabean Revolt. Mattathias, a Jewish high priest, a Jewish priest, led the organized resistance along with his five sons,

John Gadi, Simon Thassi, Eleazar Averin, Jonathan Aphus, and Judas Maccabeus.

Maccabeus comes from the Greek word, excuse me, from the Hebrew word for hammer. Mattathias, the father, started the rebellion by preventing a

Jew from sacrificing to a pagan and killing an officer of the king. Mattathias escaped with his family to the hills where he was joined by many other faithful Jews, the followers.

From there, they conducted guerrilla warfare against the Seleucids, but much of their wrath was also directed against fellow

Jews who had embraced Greek culture, the Hellenized Jews. The rebels tore down pagan altars, circumcised boys, and forced

Hellenized Jews to become outlaws with no rights or legal protections. Upon Mattathias' death in 166

B .C., his son Judas Maccabeus took command of the rebellion. Now, Judas saw himself as a leader like Moses, Joshua, and Gideon.

Don't elevate yourself like that, but nevertheless, back to the history here. Under the leadership of Judas Maccabeus, the rebellion continued successfully, and the

Maccabees, as they were called, were able to capture Jerusalem and rededicate the temple in 164 B .C.

It is from this time that the festival Hanukkah comes. From there, Maccabeus took the war to Galilee in an effort to reclaim all

Jewish territory. In 164 B .C., Antiochus Epiphanes died, and his son and successor,

Antiochus Eupator, agreed to peace, allowing the resumption of Jewish practices.

However, the war resumed shortly after that, and Judas sought and received help from the fledgling power of Rome to finally throw off Seleucid control.

Judas died in about 161 B .C., and was succeeded by his brother

Jonathan. Finally, under Jonathan's leadership, peace was made with Alexander Baelus, the Seleucid king, in about 153

B .C. After Jonathan, his brother Simon ruled over a semi -independent Jewish nation.

With the collapse of the Seleucid empire in 116 B .C., the nation of Israel enjoyed full independence until about 63

B .C., when Rome installed the puppet king in Jerusalem. In spite of the fact that Judas Maccabeus neither started the rebellion nor saw it to its completion, he is considered the central figure in it.

Mattathias and his family are sometimes called the Hasmoneans. They are also referred to as the Maccabees after Judas, and the revolt they led is referred to as the

Maccabean Revolt. The history of the rebellion is recorded in Josephus' Jewish Wars and the non -canonical books of 1 and 2

Maccabees. It's an upheaving, a horribly upheaved, upheavled?

Bad time. Try to make an adverb out of some of these and it just doesn't work.

A bad time in Jewish history. A lot of death, a lot of destruction, but a lot of purging, a lot of refining, and a lot of bringing people back to their

God, and a lot of showing who was real and who wasn't real. I think some of them went out from them so that it would be known they were not of them.

I think that applies. In all of this, Antiochus attempted to obliterate the faithful remnant of Yahweh and only succeeded in galvanizing them into action and purifying the group so that those who were part of the forsaker faction were weeded out from among the faithful.

Now when they fall, verse 34 says, they will be granted a little help and many will join with them in hypocrisy.

So in hypocrisy, it never ceases to amaze me.

Though the Maccabeans had initial success and were able to put down the wickedness of Antiochus in Jerusalem and its surrounding areas, eventually

Rome came in 63 A .D. and subdued the Israelite. But meanwhile, during this time of history and in the ensuing guerrilla warfare, this verse refers to the help that the

Maccabeans received. This is what verse 34 is talking about. Some of it came from the people at large or even small groups of resistors who joined the

Maccabeans. Some of them joined insincerely using flattery and intrigue as this verse describes as hypocrisy.

As is the tendency of human nature, when the Maccabean protests grew and began to have victories, people joined because of that.

It became popular to join and also some did it out of fear because the Maccabees sought reprisals out of any of those who aided

Antiochus. So back and forth, back and forth. Remember, Palestine is caught in the middle.

Now they're caught in the middle of an uprising of their own people. Who would have...and unfortunately as war works out, there would have been bad things done by both sides in this war, even the

Maccabeans. I'm not going to go into a great bunch of detail, but just understand that those kinds of things happened.

We're going to finish verse 35 and then I'll ask if there's any questions.

Some of those who have insight will fall in order to refine, purge, and make them pure until the end time because it is still to come at the appointed time.

I don't know about you, but those words are so comforting. God says it's going to come at the appointed time.

That's when it will happen. Refine comes from the word to smelt, to refine, to test.

It takes the concept of a refiner or a smelter who takes gold or silver and removes all the impurities so that it is pure.

That's the idea here. Purge means to select and to sharpen. And then pure is to become white.

White was the standard back then, free of impurities. As is the case in any war, good people died as well.

God used this, as the verse stipulates, to refine, purge, and make them pure.

In all of history, God continually has to use such situations to refine His people. He uses affliction, for the most part, to winnow out false converts, which is one of the reasons why this section of Hebrews has been such a blessing, such an encouragement to remember that God is at work in these kinds of things in the life of the believer.

And we need to be grateful for it. He uses it to winnow out false converts, unbelievers, infiltrators, and infidels.

The last phrase of this verse, because it is still to come at the appointed time, is significant and has been understood differently by different commentators throughout time.

No specific period ended with Antiochus' death, so this cannot refer to that. Rather, further, the end time referenced here commonly refers to the final end times as seen in verse 40 and in chapter 12, verses 4 and verse 9.

So there is a double reference here. First, to the purging that occurred during the time of Antiochus and its end, and then secondly, and more importantly, continuing purging that God will use on His people to refine, purge, and make them pure until it's, as it says, the end time.

With this, throughout time, commentators have observed a break here with verses 36 through the end of the chapter no longer referring to Antiochus, but rather to the end and the king of that time, which is the

Antichrist. Remember the rule, by the way, for double reference. This is not a double fulfillment. It's a double reference, and you can see that in Zechariah 9, 9 and 10.

Some have attempted to relate this king to Constantine the Great. Rashi, a well -respected 11th century

French rabbi, and Calvin believe this referred to the Roman Empire as a whole. Jerome, a theologian of the 5th century, and Luther, among many others, identify this king as the coming

Antichrist of the end times. The Jews themselves, in the time of Jerome, believe that this passage referred to the

Antichrist. And I'll end with this quote from Jerome. The Jews believe that this passage has reference to the

Antichrist, alleging that after the small help of Julian, a king is going to rise up who shall do according to his own will and shall lift himself up against all that is called

God and shall speak arrogant words against the God of gods. He shall act in such a way as to sit in the temple of God and shall make himself out to be

God. And his will shall be prospered until the wrath of God is fulfilled. For in him the consummation will take place.

We too, Jerome says, understand this to refer to the Antichrist. When we look at 36 and on, we'll be looking at the end times, 36 through the end of Daniel.

We'll be looking at what is to come, not what has happened. Remember that so many had so much difficulty believing that this was a book of prophecy because it is so accurate.

Those of us who understand Yahweh know, why wouldn't it be accurate? He is

God. And the rest will be accurate for the same reason.

Everything he has said came to pass and everything he has said to come to pass will come to pass.

And in that three -word phrase, forward, at the appointed time. At the appointed time.

It will come exactly as God has said, exactly at the time, and as Jim has said numerous times, the world is falling apart exactly on schedule.

Any questions or comments before we pray? Be comforted, brothers and sisters.

God's word is true. It is trustworthy. It is exact. It is precise.

It is wonderful. And we can read it and be comforted. Let's pray.

Lord, you have given us your word and protected it through all onslaughts so that we might know that your heart is to send

Christ to the world. Let us be about the business of doing that through our lives, but more importantly, let us preach the gospel.

Thank you for your word. Thank you for its truth. And thank you for those four words that everything will come to pass in its appointed time.