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Well, good morning. Would one of you gentlemen like to open us up with a word of prayer?
Any takers? All right. Brian Mack, would you open us up with a word of prayer? Daniel chapter.
8. I'm going to read the whole chapter. In the third year of the reign of Belshazzar the king, a vision appeared to me, Daniel, subsequent to the one which appeared to me previously. I looked in the vision, and while I was looking, I was in the citadel of Susa, which is in the province of Elam.
And I looked in the vision, and I myself was beside the Uli Canal. Then I lifted up my eyes and looked, and behold, a ram which had two horns was standing in front of the canal. Now the two horns were long, and one was longer than the other, with the longer one coming up last.
I saw the ram. It was budding westward, northward, and southward, but no other beast could stand before him, nor was there anyone to rescue from his power, but he did as he pleased and magnified himself.
And while I was observing, behold, a male goat was coming, and from the west, over the surface of the whole earth without touching it, and the goat had a conspicuous horn between his eyes. He came up to the ram that had the two horns, which I had seen standing in front of the canal, and rushed at him in his mighty wrath.
I saw him come beside the ram, and he was enraged at him. He struck the ram, shattered his two horns, and the ram had no strength to withstand him. So he hurled him to the ground, and he trampled on him.
There was no one to rescue the ram from his power. Then the male goat magnified himself exceedingly, but as soon as he was mighty, the large horn was broken, and in its place came up four conspicuous horns toward the four winds of heaven.
And out of them came forth a rather small horn, which grew exceedingly great toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the beautiful land. It grew up to the host of heaven, and caused some of the host and some of the stars to fall to the earth, and it trampled them down.
It even magnified itself equal to the commander of the host, and it removed the regular sacrifice from him, and the place of his sanctuary was thrown down. And on account of the transgression, the host will be given over to the horn along with the regular sacrifice, and it will fling truth to the ground, and it will perform its will and prosper.
Then I heard a holy one speaking, and another holy one said to the particular one who was speaking, How long will the vision about the regular sacrifice apply while the transgression causes horror, so as to allow both the holy place and the host to be trampled?
And he said to me, For twenty-three hundred evening and mornings. Then the holy place will be properly restored. When I, Daniel, had seen this vision, I sought to understand it, and behold, standing before me was one of the one who looked at me as a man.
And I heard the voice of a man between the banks of Uli, and called out, and he said, Gabriel, give this man an understanding of the vision. So he came near to where I was standing, and when I came, I was frightened, and I fell on my face.
But he said to me, Son of man, understand the vision pertains to the time of the end. Now while I was talking with him, I sank into a deep sleep with my face to the ground, but he touched me. He made me stand upright, and he said, Behold, I am going to let you know what will occur in the final period of the indignation, for it pertains to the appointed time of the end.
The ram which you saw with the two horns represents the media in Persia. The shaggy goat represents the kingdom of Greece. The large horn which is between his eyes is the first king. The broken horn and the four horns that arose in its plate replace the four kingdoms which will arise from his nation, although not with his power.
In the latter period of their rule, when the transgression has run their course, a king will arise, insolent, skilled in intrigue. His power will be mighty, but not by his own power. He will destroy with an extraordinary degree and prosper and perform his will, and he will destroy mighty men and the holy people.
And through his shrewdness, he will cause deceit and succeed by his influence, and he will magnify himself in his own heart, and he will destroy many while they are at ease. He will even oppose the prince of princes, and he will be broken without human agency.
The vision of the evening and mornings which has been told is true, but keep the vision secret, for it pertains to many days in the future. And then I, Daniel, was exhausted. I was sick for days. Then I got up again, carried out the king's business, but I was astounded at the vision, and there was none to explain it.
Well, it's been about two years or so since the last vision that he got in Daniel 7. You know, it ended with the end of Daniel 7 that he grew sick and pale, and he had to keep trying to keep the matter to himself.
Do you understand what happened in chapter 7? What made Daniel sick? Anybody remember? Did he eat something bad? Did he drink bad water? Was the wine too fermented? What was it? Yeah, it made him sick, the fact that, oh, here it is.
There's going to be this time of restoration. Remember, he had just seen this vision of the Son of Man that was going to give the kingdom to his people, but then he talked about that fourth beast, which a little horn was going to rise out of it, and it was going to persecute the people of God.
It was going to trample them down, and he was going to make war with them, and it made him sick to his stomach. Okay, that brings us to, it's almost like God says, okay, I'm going to let this guy gather his senses.
His stomach's not hurting anymore, and then I'm going to give him another vision that's going to make him sick again, and that gives, he gives the vision here of the, in the third reign of Belshazzar, he gives him another vision.
Now, this chapter 8, chapter 11, and 12 are so detailed in its prophetic material that liberal scholars say that there is no way that this was written by Daniel himself, that this had to be written after the time they took place.
Now, if you believe in the inspiration of the, by the spirit of God, the scripture, and you believe in predictive prophecy, that's no problem for us, but egg-headed liberals, they say there's no way this could happen.
That's why a lot of people believe that Daniel, when I say people, academia, believe that Daniel was written in the second century, not the sixth century BC. Okay, what time? Some believe it was written in second century BC, meaning after all of this, after the time of this, this other little horn that raises itself up into third kingdom, and, but it's actually written in the sixth century.
Remember, we're working towards zero, okay? Towards Christ. Remember, if you're looking at the timeline, everybody follow me? BC this way? Yeah. Okay, fine. So, Daniel has this vision. It says he was looking.
This is in verse two. I looked in the vision. While I was looking, I was in the citadel of Susa in the providence of Elam. First of all, is Daniel in the citadel of Susa? Physically? Correct. No, he's not.
It's a vision. And what's the difference between a vision and a dream? One's awake, one's asleep. That's it. That's the easiest way to figure it out. One, you're awake, and one, you're not. He is in the citadel of Susa.
Now, if you were going to take the, I guess it would come up from here, this would be the Euphrates, and this would be the Tigris. It would be somewhere right here. This is actually where he says he's having his vision.
Now, over here, this would be about right here, would be the Ula Canal. He's not in the Persian empire. He is having a vision of being in the Persian empire, okay? He is actually still under the control of what empire at this time?
He's in Babylon, okay? He's in Babylon. So, he is having a vision of this second world power that's going to come about. It says he's in the providence of Elam. If you were to take it, it would be this.
The providence of Elam was about like that. That was part of the Persian empire. It would be sort of like a state, I guess you would say. Hey, little buddy, and he says he looked in the vision. He was beside the Ula Canal.
He said he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a ram which had two horns was standing in front of the canal. So, this is, you've got a ram, and this is not really what the ram looks like, but he's got a horn, okay?
I should get her to draw me a picture. She drew me some good pictures last time, and then he's got another horn. It kind of looks like hairs. I'm better at drawing maps. So, here, this will make it look more like a horn.
There we go. All right, so he's got a ram, and it says there were two horns, and one was longer than the other. Now, we're seeing what's called parallelism again. Do you remember when we saw the colossus of the giant statue back when Nebuchadnezzar had his dream?
What was media Persia? It was the arms and chest. Remember, two arms, okay? Then, when we get to the beasts, what was it? It was a bear. What was wrong with the bear? He was jacked up. Yeah, he was jacked up on one side, because meaning the media Persian.
Remember, the Medians come along. They're more ancient. The Persians come along later in history, but the Persians rise up to be much greater. They become much bigger, and their exploits become much greater.
Well, in this case, he's saying the same thing. It's just a parallel that one of those horns comes up. Now, I would say what causes this is in 550 BC. Cyrus then unifies to the Achaemenid Dynasty, and this will go on into Xerxes and everywhere, but he unified them.
He became one of the greatest rulers, and this guy's huge now in history. I am going to go ahead and say whom I think this is. We'll talk more about that next week, probably. He becomes the leader that takes the conquest to probably one of its furthest until you get to the time of Xerxes, but Xerxes begins to tax the mess out of his people for his war campaigns and all that.
Anyway, you have this guy unifies it, raise it up. He begins to make his campaign. It says, and I saw the ram. This is in verse 4. I saw the ram. It was budding westward, northward, and southward. Why would it be budding in those directions?
Let's just think about that for a second. If this is the capital of Persia, he's going to go what way? West. He's going to go this way. He's going to go this way. He's going to go this way. This is the furthest.
They didn't go this way. They didn't go towards the Indus River. They didn't try to go into India. He didn't try to go into those areas, but he did head towards the west. That was most of his campaign was headed to the west, and it says that he budded and went westward, northward, and southward.
There was no beast that could stand before him, and what did the beast represent? So far, what has beast represented? Kingdoms, world powers, empires, political, okay. They couldn't stand before him, and nor was there anyone there to rescue him from his power.
We could even say, and we'll get to this at some point, even when Cyrus the Great, Darius the Mede comes in. He takes over Babylon, and he takes it over. Could the kingdom, could the armies of Babylon withstand it?
No, actually, they came in and overtook it with almost little to no bloodshed. It was some, but little to none, and it's interesting how he did that. When he came in, they dried up the Euphrates. He dug canals to reroute the Euphrates so that his armies could cross the river, and then they came into the gates under.
It's actually awesome. You got to read it in history how he did it. Absolute mastermind, and I do believe that does, when we get to Revelation, it talks about the drying up of Euphrates and the fall of Babylon and all that.
It's remembering how the fall of Babylon happened, and how did it happen? They dried up the Euphrates in the fall of great Babylon, or the whore of Babylon in Revelation. What does it talk about how that takes place?
The drying up of the Euphrates so that the armies could come in, signifying another great fall at the end of the age. So here it is. There's no one that could stop his power. He did as he pleased, and he magnifies himself.
So you had the Persian empire doing whatever they want. Note that they were unstoppable for 219, 221 years, depending on how you see that. You had everyone from Darius, you had Cyrus the Great, you had Darius the Mede, you had the Dariuses, you had then the Dardizerxes and Xerxes.
It would be when, as they continued their campaign this way, and I'm going to have to you would come to, this would be like Asia Minor, this right here would be Thrace. As they pushed this way, the Persian empire, at its full incursion, would have been under Darius the Third.
As he is moving this way, already conquered most of this, heading this way, he then goes into Asia Minor. He's going to go across there and he's going to go into Thrace and try to overtake Thrace. He's going to try to subdue Greece and Macedonia.
Okay, as he's doing that, he is subduing all those nations around, and as he's doing so, he is taking some of the Macedonians. He has taken some of their little villages. He has also now taken some of the Greeks and decided to say, hey, now that you've submitted to me, I'll save your life.
I will pay you to fight my wars for me. So you have Greek mercenaries. So it says here, that while I was observing, this is verse five, a male goat was coming from the west over the surface of the whole earth without touching the ground.
So now you've got this giant ram with these two great horns, right? Now you got a goat. Is a goat big compared to a ram? No. Hey, me and Luke were on the way home a few weeks ago. Remember that chick we see walking the goat down the road out here?
She was walking a buck down the road. I was like, look at that chick. I thought it was a big old dog. It was a big old goat. Oh, it was funny. So I thought, we thought it was a big dog. I'm like, that thing got horns.
So you got this ram who's does whatever he wants, and then all of a sudden in this vision, this male goat appears, and it is like floating across the earth. So just imagine, get in his brain. He's seeing this vision.
Here's the globe, and he sees this like supercharged floating goat, you know, going across the earth. If it's floating, not touching the earth, it means it's doing what? Flying. And it's moving fast. It's moving quick.
It says, and it was coming from the west over the surface of the whole earth. Nothing was touching it. So Macedonia, can y 'all see over here? This little goat that's coming up has realized he don't like what this this ram's been doing.
This goat says, I want to raise up an army, and I'm going to take it back. Now, he goes back. This raising up would have been around with Philip of Macedon, which would be Alexander the Great's dad, okay?
He goes back and says, hey, do you remember the battle of Thermopylae? Anybody remember that? We talked about this early on, the battle of Thermopylae, where the 300 movie was, okay? The Persians killed those men.
They killed Sparta. They subdued them, took over there, okay? They subdued Greece. They had as, and I think it was in 492, as Xerxes came into his first incursion into Greece, he tried to push back, to overtake it.
They actually did push them back the first time. The second time he comes in, they were unable to withstand it. Athens fell, obviously Thermopylae fell, and they were subdued. So, Macedon had not. Philip the Macedon, after that, that would have been a 490, 480, 490 would have been battle of Thermopylae.
Then along comes Philip of Macedon, and he begins to go back and say, you see what they have done to our people? They have enslaved them. They have taken our women to be their wives. They have taken our property, and they have paid our men to fight against us.
So, he says, you know what? We're going to start taking back our land, and what he did is he used that hatred to fuel the fury to go against the Persian empire. In the meantime, around 336, yeah, around 336, Philip of Macedon is murdered.
He is murdered by a guy named Posseas. Posseas was believed to be his homosexual lover, who got jealous of his new lover, and killed him. There's much speculation how all that came about, but they believe it was by the Persians to have this done, so that it would stop Philip of Macedon from coming in and taking over, starting to take this land back, okay?
When he dies, Alexander the Great was a young man. He was probably 18 to 20. Come on in. Hey, hey, that's all right. Hey, Miss Eleanor. Hey, good morning. So, he dies. Alexander the Great takes power.
He is told he's the king. He goes back. He is not only the general, he's the king of Macedon, and he then says, okay, I'm going to finish what my dad started, and not only that, I'm going to do it better.
Aristotle was the tutor and teacher of Alexander the Great, okay? Alexander the Great, this is what is said. He told Aristotle, a 13, 14-year-old boy, he said, once my dad takes over Greece and Thrace, there'll be nothing for me to take, and he pulled out a map of the world, Aristotle did, and he said, you take all that.
Interesting, when you think about what was put into the brain of Alexander the Great by his tutor and teacher, and not only that, he was reading Homer's Iliad, and if you know anything about Alexander the Great, his life was basically trying to relive that story.
He thought he was Achilles, and he began, when he was found on his campaigns, he had Homer's Iliad with him, and that's basically, even one of his friends says, hey, this is who I am. This is who you are.
We're going to take over the world. That was Alexander the Great's desire, was to rule the whole world, and he used it with hatred and fury towards the Persian empire for what they did to their people, and he did it very swiftly.
So, his dad dies in 336. You got to see how fast this is in time, because when you see on a map where he's got to go, it's crazy. His dad dies in 336 BC. He's got to go back to, he goes back to Pella, which is the Macedonian capital, basically receives the, he's got to take care of a couple of issues in Thebes.
I don't know if y 'all remember that. They didn't want him to be king. He wiped out some 6 ,000 people, burned the place to the ground, left one of his favorite poets, left his house intact. That's it.
I mean, just laid waste to it, enslaved those that he didn't kill, and took them off. He basically made Thebes, this is what I'm going to do to anybody that doesn't fall up under what I'm saying to do.
That's basically what he did. He made an example. In 3, this is Alexander takes the crown. It will be in 334. He will go to Granicus, and I don't have no room to do that over there. The Battle of the Granicus River.
He then, it is heard that Alexander has taken over areas of Macedonia and starting to take back stuff in Greece. Darius III dispatches people and mercenaries, Greek mercenaries, go stop whatever Alex is doing.
Slow him down. They come over as they're fixing to cross the Granicus River with 37 ,000 troops, okay, and they're fixing to take on 100 ,000 infantry and 10 ,000 cavalry, and they lay waste to them. He pushes them back.
Alexander wins. Just so you know, Alexander didn't lose anything but his life at the end. He didn't lose anything. He lost, I want to say battles. He didn't lose anything. He was, he had, when you look at wins and losses, he had this, he had none there.
He was a winner. All he did was win, win, win. So, Granicus River, they win. Then, 333, the Battle of Isis, Darius says, okay, I lost here. I'm going to send reinforcements. I'm going to send the real deal.
This time, remember, he sent Grecian mercenaries to help take care of his own. Those he didn't kill, Alexander enslaved, sent them back. Now, remember, when he sent them back, he had already told his people the reason why we're going to fight the Persians is because we're liberating them from the Persians.
What did Alexander the Great do with Grecian people here, though? He enslaved them. He enslaved those mercenaries, although he saw them as traitors. That did cause some friction at that point. This here caused some friction back at home.
He will win that back here. He is draining money to fight this battle here. He is now, as he's making his, the Isis is over here. As he's traveling this way, he is getting temples. He's pillaging everything to help his campaign to pay his 37 ,000 cavalry and send money back home for his, for Antipater and his mama who were keeping it, holding the fort down while he's gone.
So, Battle of Isis comes. Darius says, I'm gonna fix him. He sends the real deal. He sends the immortals and all that from the, you all know about the immortals, okay? Sends all of those guys there. Alexander smashes them again.
Not only does he smash him, that coward Darius leaves his wife and his daughter behind. Guess who catches them? Alexander the Great. So, they recruit. Darius III says, I'll get them this time. Battle of Guagamela.
Darius III tries it again. He gets wasted. He gets on as he has to run. He has now lost his kingdom and it is at 331 that the Persian Empire falls to Alexander the Great, fueled with fury. What does the text say here?
The text said it was, that goat was fueled with fury, hatred towards what the Persian people had done to the empire as they went into the Greeks and Thrace and into Macedonia. Alexander the Great then conquers them at Guagamela.
Darius the Great, it runs. He loses his kingdom. The Persian Empire is no more and in 331, the Persian Empire is now run by what he wanted to be called the King of Kings, Alexander the Great. Just to let you know, the Great did not come from Alexander.
That didn't come until the Romans came along and they called him the Great. He preferred to be called King of Kings. He continues his campaign, overtaking all the way to the Indus River. And if I had this mic show it here.
No, it doesn't. The Indus River, they take it all the way over to India. They sail the Indus River, taking over villages, expanding his empire. They thought the Indus River was the place to go and it was not, but they thought that was the furthest reaches.
They got some of them. When they got there, his men said, hey, we're done. We can't continue to do this. He said, well, then if this is it, if this is where the furthest reaches, then he put them, some of them on a boat, let them sail down the Indus River into the ocean, let them see what they had conquered.
He said, I'll go back. We'll regroup, start making reforms. This was around 326. He makes his way to Babylon. Remember, over here's the Indus River. He makes his way back to Babylon. He's regrouping for another campaign because he is a conqueror.
If he's not warring, he ain't happy. So, he's making a campaign to go down into Arabia and as he is planning to do that, they have some drinking parties. He gets drunk. He either gets, there's multiple different sources say that he got drunk, got fever.
Some say he was poisoned. Ultimately, we don't know, but we know this. When he did die, he died in Babylon and he did, he had one heir to the throne through his wife, one of his wives, Roxanne, and that child was soon killed along with Roxanne and any other heir that was going to be.
So, therefore, that left his four generals, Cassander, Bisemachus, Ptolemy, and Seleucus. Now, this is what wind up being. He had some other generals, but it says here, remember, we saw the leopard had what, four heads, you remember?
So, these are the four and this even says here that four horns. So, that one, the large horn that grew up out of that goat's head, what was it? Who was it? Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great, when he magnified himself, he dies, it breaks off.
These four horns arise. Four horns mean powers, political authority, or armies. His empire splits into these three, I mean these four. He takes Greece, Macedonia, Bisemachus gets Thrace, and Asia. Ptolemy takes Egypt, Palestine, he gets Syria.
That's where the four horns come up. Now, and we're running out of time. It said, back in verse eight, it said the male goat magnified himself exceedingly. It grew a large horn. It broke out and went over the four winds.
Then, verse nine, out of one of them came forth a rather small horn which grew exceedingly great toward the south, toward the east, and toward the beautiful land. Now, out of those four, it says one, and it grows to the south.
These go away. These two begin to fight, and they fight a lot. Political alliances are made between the two to try to keep it from going on. Matter of fact, I think I said this early on, whoever thought Cleopatra was an Ethiopian-Egyptian, she was not.
She was Greek. Matter of fact, Philippa Macedon's wife, first wife, her name was Cleopatra. They were Greeks, Macedonians. There is a couple of Cleopatras that come out of the Ptolemy empire, but the one that will rise up out of those four will be the Seleucids, and you will have Antiochus' one Seleucid ones, Antiochus' twos, and Seleucid twos, Antiochus' threes, and Seleucid threes, and then you will have Antiochus' the fourth, and that is who the little horn that raises itself and moves itself towards the beautiful land, and it says, it grew up to the host of heaven, causing some of the host and some of the stars to fall to the earth.
It trampled them down. It even magnifies itself equal with the commander of the host, and it removed the regular sacrifice from him, and placed his sanctuary, I'm sorry, and the place of his sanctuary was thrown down.
It's saying, let me, Antiochus' the fourth is the man's name. He raises himself up to be a man that hates Jewish culture. He hates the Jewish people. He begins to make incursions into Palestine. He's actually on his way to Egypt to fight with Ptolemy again, and on his way there, he is stopped by the Romans, and we have a number of cliches that come out of the book of Daniel.
We have the writing on the wall, but we also have one that comes out of there called the line in the sand, and Antiochus' on his way there is cut off by the ships of Katim, and we'll talk, hey, some of this gets even more explained towards the end of the book.
He is on his way there. He is going to fight, take Egypt. He stops the ships of Katim from there. The guy, the general for the Roman fleet comes up to him. He takes a stick, put the circle around him, put the line in the sand.
He said, you ain't coming out of there until you tell me if you want to make peace or you want to make war. He said, you step out of there without making peace. The Roman fleets are coming, and knowing he was overmatched, Antiochus Epiphany left with his tail tucked between his legs.
He left being humiliated in front of all of his people, and on his way back, he's going to stop by the beautiful land. He's going to stop by the land of Israel, and where he had large amounts of money needed to continue his campaign, he was going to rape and pillage and take the temple gold and strip it, and he had a desire to Hellenize.
I would say he even had a desire to make Greek culture worse than Alexander. Alexander, once he had conquered all of the Persian empire, he began to have Persian tendencies. Some of those men didn't like that.
Hey man, look, we were getting rid of the Persians because we hated them. Now we have Persian influence coming in on our king, so when he died, you had these other men raise up who, hey, you know what?
We don't want anything but Hellenistic culture throughout the world, and Antiochus Epiphanies was going to do Hellenistic culture throughout the known world or in his region by the sword, and we got two minutes, so I'll stop right here, so we can take some questions because next week, we'll finish next week this chapter, but we're getting into a man that is known in history, no debate.
There is no debate in this book as to who this man is in history. No debate at all. He hated the Jewish people. He persecuted the Jewish people. His desire was to kill all the Jewish people that didn't Hellenize themselves.
Any questions, disagreements, clarifications? Have I fully confused everybody? Have I? Yes, ma 'am. I am coming from Daniel chapter 8, and what's good about Daniel 8 is when Daniel asked him the question, hey, can somebody help me understand this?
There's no room for error. The next, the ram that you saw was who? Persia. The goat that you saw is Greece, so Daniel knew, hey, the ones that are coming to overtake the Babylonians was going to be the empire.
Good. Do you think that's something? Well, you know, Alexander, secular history, not Alexander, Antiochus. Yeah, he, yes, and I was going to get to that next week. There is, he, as he raises himself up to be, quote, the man of the Seleucid empire, he claims himself to be God, and he renames himself Theos Antiochus Epiphanes, which means Antiochus God Manifest.
Now, because of his ruthless and hateful treatment towards people, his, his subjects called him Antiochus Epiphanes. Epiphanes means madman, so that's how, that's how his subjects saw him. I don't think anybody was running up to him saying, hey, Antiochus Epiphanes, because he would very quickly, but that's how his subjects, and he was a bloodthirsty madman.
I even will say, and I can at least show you from the text that his hatred that was fueled towards the Jewish people at this time, I believe was a demonic power, because it says what he does, go back, if you want to read this for next week, we'll get into it.
It says that he doesn't do it with his own power. He doesn't do what he does with his own power, and even as we go further into the book, you're going to see the Prince of Persia is a demonic power, and he even, even when Michael says, hey, I've got to, I've got to leave and quit fighting the Prince of Persia.
I got to go protect, I got to go protect the next one, because of the other powers that are coming. It's showing the, the demonic and spiritual forces that are in the unseen world. We're actually going to get to a part in the book where there is like this angelic fight in the sky.
Where that takes place, I don't know, somewhere up there, but we're going to see that these powers, although ordained by God, raised up by God, who raises up Alexander the Great? Who throws down Alexander the Great?
Who raises up the Antiochus Epiphanes? God does. Who's going to throw him down? God's going to. Yes, sir. Yes. Actually, I would say even at the time of Alexander, the Hellenistic, the culture had already begun to start to infect the Jews.
There is even, you can read in Josephus, I think it's Antiquities, book 6, chapter 11. I think it's around section 300, 400, something like that. You can go and see there is an interaction where he has taken over Tyre, which took about a year.
He has come down to Gaza, and as Alexander the Great's making his campaign towards Alexandria, which he wasn't in Alexandria yet, he was going to conquer Alexandria and make that the capital in Egypt.
He comes through and is going to conquer Jerusalem. And as he comes through there, these guys aren't Hellenized. They closed the gates. Don't let him in. He's humiliated. He's going to get up the next day.
We're going to wipe him out. We're going to go in there. I ain't giving them an option. They closed the gates on me. Supposedly that was on the Sabbath. That's why the gates were closed. And the next day they show up.
Jadus, the high priest at the time, said, hey, I had a vision from God. He told me to all dress up in white, meet him out there. They meet Alexander the Great, and he says, the Bible talks about you, dude.
Seriously, that's what he does. He says, God, Daniel predicted your rise. Notice he didn't say your fall. He said your rise. And he said, I'm going to save the city. God has ordained me where I'm at. Now, he didn't know.
He didn't understand it the way we would. But he did understand that, hey, the God of all creation had ordained me to where I'm supposed to be. This man is recognizing that there is a God over all things that has put me in my position.
And he stayed the city. He stayed the city. And he went on to do his other stuff and take in Alexandria and all that. But you can read that in Josephus Antiquities if you want. And then next week we'll pick up in verse 9 so that we can get some of the context.
We'll talk about the 2 ,300 evening and mornings, and then we'll get to the end. We'll get to the end. Mike, will you pray this?
Our brother as he's prepared and brought it to us today to worship in our faith. Amen.