SRR #68 | Antiochus IV and the Abomination of Desolation Part 1 (Eschatology And The Danielic Imperative Part 6)

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SRR 69 Antiochus IV and the Abomination of Desolation Part 2 (Eschatology And The Danielic Imperative Part 7)

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I do a podcast. I'm not interested in your podcast. The anathema of God was for those who denied justification by faith alone.
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When that is at stake, we need to be on the battlefield, exposing the air and combating the air.
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We are unabashedly, unashamedly Clarkian. And so, the next few statements that I'm going to make,
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I'm probably going to step on all of the Vantillian toes at the same time. And this is what we do at Simple Riff around the radio, you know.
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We are polemical and polarizing Jesus style. I would first say that to characterize what we do as bashing is itself bashing.
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It's not hate. It's history. It's not bashing. It's the Bible. Jesus said,
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Woe to you when men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.
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As opposed to, Blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness. It is on.
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We're taking the gloves off. It's time to battle. And they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength and shall take away the daily sacrifice.
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And they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate. Daniel chapter 11 verses 29 through 31.
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All right. I want to welcome you to the show. My name is Tim Shaughnessy and you are listening to Semper Reformata radio.
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So, as you could probably already tell from me reading from the book of Daniel, this is going to be an eschatology episode with Timothy Kaufman.
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This is number six in our series. I definitely would encourage everybody to go back and listen to the previous episodes.
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Kaufman is very thorough and it's such a blessing that we have him on our podcast. So, we're going to get into that.
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I'm going to ask him to give us an introduction and then we're going to read some questions from an email that we got.
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But first, I want to let everybody know about something. The Reformation at 500 book sale from the
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Trinity Foundation has been extended to the end of the year, December 31st. So, I would encourage everybody out there to go on to the
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Trinity Foundation and check out some of these books. I will highlight a couple of them.
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Some of them against the church, the Trinity Foundation Review, and against the world, the
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Trinity Foundation Review, have been marked down significantly. One of them has been marked down from $39 to $19.
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The other one has been marked down from $34 to $26. So, you can definitely save some money and get some great books.
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The Atonement has been marked down from about $9 to about $6.
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Let me see. Here's a really great one. Christian Philosophy of Education has been marked down from $12 to $6.
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Oh, look. Christian Philosophy of the Works of Gordon Clark, Volume 4.
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This is an excellent book. It has been marked down from $21 to $10. This is an excellent book.
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So, definitely go on there and check it out. We really appreciate Tom Giodatos and all that he does.
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And one of the reasons that we've been so busy is because I've been helping the
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Trinity Foundation. They are going to start a podcast.
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A gentleman by the name of Steve Matthews is going to head that up. He's going to be doing the podcast.
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And as a matter of fact, we were privileged to be part of the first episode. So, that should be coming real quickly.
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I did the intro music for them, and we did an interview with Steve, Timothy Kaufman, and I.
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And it had to do with our article on John Piper, which Tom Giodatos published on the
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Trinity Foundation. He took both of the articles that Tim and I wrote, and we published it on the
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Trinity Foundation. The review is called John Piper on Final Justification by Works, and you can find it there.
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So, it is pretty lengthy. Definitely encourage you to check that out. Also, be sure to check out what other people like Rachel Miller have written.
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But anyways, so we are going to hopefully interview Steve Matthews.
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He's got a great podcast. It's a Clarkian podcast. So, I want to bring him on to interview him.
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So, there are some really great things happening. But today, we are going to get into eschatology.
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So, I want to hand it over to Tim. And Tim, can you just give us an introduction into what we are going to be talking about today?
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Okay, thank you. It is great to be back. We are going to pick up where we left off from our previous episodes.
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This is now Episode 6 of Eschatology and the Danielic Imperative.
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By way of brief summary, we have spent a lot of time in our previous episodes establishing an
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Alexandrian frame of reference in which North, South, and East are used consistently to refer to the same geographic areas throughout
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Daniel Chapter 11. And further, that the boundary between North and South in Daniel's prophecies in Chapter 11 is actually the
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Taurus Mountains. And that leaves a small sliver of land on the southern coast of Asia Minor that actually technically in Daniel's prophecies is actually part of the
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Kingdom of the South. We've also showed that the Kingdom of the North in Daniel Chapter 11 refers to whomever occupies and rules
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Asia Minor and Thrace. And the title, King of the North, follows the geography, not the dynasty.
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That is why Daniel Chapter 11 verses 4 to 18 refers to the
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Seleucid line of kings as King of the North because during that period the
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Seleucids occupied and controlled Asia Minor within the Taurus Mountains. But after the events described in Daniel Chapter 11 verse 18, the
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Seleucids were forever kicked out of Asia Minor and Europe after the Battle of Magnesia in 190
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BC and the Treaty of Apamea in 188 BC. We're going to come back to that treaty in this episode, so I want people to be reminded of it.
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So in the following verses, that is from Daniel 11 verses 19 through 39, the
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Seleucid line of kings is still in view, but they are no longer called King of the
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North because they have been actually evicted from the northern territory. By the time we get to Daniel 11 .40,
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the Roman Republic, which is not yet an empire, was the King of the North because it occupied and ruled
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Asia Minor north of the Taurus Mountains plus Thrace. In fact, the Egyptian territories by then had long since been bequeathed to Rome anyway, and that left the pirates of Pamphylia, whose home port was the narrow crescent of land between the
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Taurus Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea south of the Taurus Mountains, as the last remaining southern autocracy in the
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Alexandrian frame of reference. When we say Alexandrian frame of reference, we're talking about the north -south -east -west division that was set up after Alexander's death.
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Now that made the Pamphylian pirates the King of the South. So Daniel 11 verses 40 to 45 is about the battle between the
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Roman Republic and the pirates of Pamphylia, and Rome's champion in that battle was the great general
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Pompey. We ended our last episode with Pompey's death after he, quote, planted the tabernacles of his palace between the seas and the glorious holy mountain.
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That's basically a quote from Daniel 11 .45. And then died the year after Julius Caesar crossed the
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Rubicon. That was an absolutely formative event in the rise of the Roman Republic to become the next empire.
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We have intentionally covered Daniel 11 verses 1 to 18 and Daniel 11 verses 40 to 45 to show that Daniel 11 is in fact a continuous narrative under the
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Greek period of Daniel's timeline. From the waning days of the Medo -Persian Empire to the rise and fall of Alexander, through the waning days of the
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Greek period when the remnants of Alexander's dominions would be divided four ways by his successors, the
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Diadochi, and would then be, quote, plucked up even for others besides these, Daniel 11 .4.
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We have now provided the bookends of the Greek period in Daniel chapter 11, and we have done so for a very specific purpose, to show the actual fulfillment of events in history.
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Daniel 11 verses 1 to 18 refers to actual events in recorded history, and Daniel 11 verses 40 to 45 also refers to actual events in recorded history.
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What that does for us is show us exactly when the intervening verses, that is
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Daniel 11 verses 19 to 39, actually took place. They must have occurred between the
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Treaty of Apamea in 188 B .C., when the Seleucids got kicked out of Asia Minor, and the beginning of the
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Pirate War in 68 B .C., when the pirates sacked Ostia, a suburb of Rome, at the mouth of the
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Tiber River, provoking General Pompey's sweeping response to that pirate threat.
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As we have noted previously, one of the artificial difficulties that have been introduced to the chapter is that it has been historically assumed that the frame of reference in Daniel changes to an eschatological frame of reference, dealing with the end times in the latter part of Daniel chapter 11.
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One of those reasons is that, broadly speaking, apart from what we showed in our preceding episode, the last six verses of Daniel 11 have for many centuries, even millennia, appeared to record events that are largely believed never to have actually taken place.
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Historians and eschatologists could not put a finger on any historical events that match the prophecy. Thus, it has traditionally been assumed that the framework of Daniel's vision must have shifted to distant future events sometime before the end of the chapter.
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However, as we showed last week, those events really did occur in history between 68 BC and 48
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BC, ending with Pompey's death just when Caesar was about to become the first king of the
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Roman Empire. We believe we can correct the traditional assumption by showing that the last six verses of the chapter refer to those historical events, showing that Daniel truly had foreseen actual events that actually took place in history.
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The reason this matters to us is that the intervening passage, that is, from Daniel 11, 19 -39, refers to the reign of Antiochus IV, one of the kings of the
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Seleucid dynasty, and also refers to his abomination of desolation. That abomination is utterly crucial to any eschatology, since Jesus himself uses it as a reference point for the time immediately following his earthly ministry.
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He references that abomination in Matthew 24, 15 and Mark 13, 14.
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And what we're going to prove today is that those verses, Daniel 11, 19 -39, actually occurred in recorded history, and thus the abomination of desolation was truly a
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Greek phenomenon occurring under the Greek Empire during the Greek period of Daniel's visions.
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But the question we need to ask is, how is it possible that the abomination of desolation could take place under the
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Greek period of Daniel's visions, even though Jesus was born during the Roman period and taught plainly that the abomination was yet future?
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That's the question we're going to answer. And to answer it, we have to prove first that the abomination of desolation really occurred under Antiochus IV, one of the kings of the
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Seleucid line in Alexander's divided Greek Empire. Until we can establish that time frame and the identity of the abomination itself, we will not understand
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Jesus' appeal to a Danielic chronology in the Gospels. Okay, so that's what we're going to talk about today.
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But before we go much further, let's take some questions from our listeners regarding the previous episode.
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Okay, well, we got some emails. And let me go ahead and pull these up.
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Well, actually, we got an email from an individual asking a question that I couldn't answer.
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If you'd like to email us, our email address is semper .refermanda .radio at gmail .com.
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Let me go ahead and pull this email up. The email is from Phil Goodman. He says,
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Good day, Tim. Thank you so much for the studies in Daniel. I think he's referring to Tim Coffman here.
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They're just wonderful. I've listened to them several times now and can't wait for the next one.
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I do have a couple of questions for Tim Coffman, however. Okay, so he's referring to me in the first one.
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He says, So if you could pass them on or answer them yourself, that would be great. There's no way I'm going to answer these myself.
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He says, My first question is about the personal pronouns found in verse 40.
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This would be Daniel chapter 11, verse 40, referring to the king of the south who will collide with him.
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Who is the him? The grammar takes us back to verse 36, which is the king.
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I know Tim Coffman says that the king in verse 36 refers to Antiochus.
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So why has the pronoun changed from Antiochus to Pompeii in verse 40?
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Okay, thank you, Tim. Phil's question is about Daniel 11, verse 40. The grammatical reference to him, as in,
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Then shall the king of the south push at him. Who is the him in that verse?
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Daniel had just been talking about the king who shall do according to his will in verse 36, and shall not regard the
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God of his fathers nor the desire of women in verse 37, and will honor the God of forces in verse 38, and acknowledges a strange
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God in verse 39. The next thing Daniel writes is, And the king, at the time of the end, the king of the south shall push at him.
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Okay, so who is the him, or rather, who is the king of the south pushing against?
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In the English it sounds like the king of the south is pushing against the antagonist of the preceding verses, because the king of the south pushes against him.
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But as it turns out, this is an interpolation or a gloss in the English that does not actually exist in the
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Hebrew. The Cambridge Bible for schools and colleges explains, for example, that what we have in English as the king of the south shall push at him, is more correctly rendered, the king of the south shall show himself one that pushes, or literally, show himself one that butts, as in the way a goat butts against his enemy.
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What's missing in the original text is what gets rendered in the English as at him. That English rendering would have suggested that the king of the south was pushing at the him, or the he, of Daniel 11, verses 36 to 39.
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But as it turns out, in the literal rendering, the grammar does not take us back to verse 36 at all, because it doesn't say that he will butt or gore at him.
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What it says is that the king of the south shall prove himself to be a nuisance, such that the king of the north will be provoked to respond.
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What we know from the scriptures is that the Seleucids did not possess the northern territory of Thrace plus Asia Minor within the
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Taurus Mountains, but the Roman Republic did. That's why it is so important to determine Daniel's original frame of reference, north, south, east, and west, and then determine from that who was king of the north at Daniel 1140.
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As we established in our previous episodes, the title king of the north does not follow the dynasty of the
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Seleucids, but rather sticks with the territory of Asia Minor north of the
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Taurus Mountains, and whoever rules the territory is king of the north. At that time, the
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Roman Republic ruled it. The king of the south showed himself to be a nuisance, that is, the pirates of Pamphylia.
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They showed themselves to be a nuisance, or one who butts or gores, and the king of the north was provoked to respond.
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That's exactly what happened in the pirate wars when the Pamphylian pirates actually started to invade the
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Italian peninsula, and General Pompey was authorized by the Republic to respond with the full force and treasure of the
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Roman Republic. What Daniel does not say is that the king of the south pushes that the king identified in verse 36, and as we showed previously, the king of the
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Seleucids was not king of the north by that time anyway. So, that's why we needed to spend our time looking at who was actually king of the north when the title was used.
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So, that's the first question. I understand that Phil had a second question, so let's go on to Phil's second question.
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Okay, and the second question is, he says, Phil continues, he says,
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My second question is in regards to Daniel chapter 12 verse 1, That, to me, as I understand it, represents a time of resurrection at the end of the age, i .e.
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future. See Daniel chapter 12 verse 2. So, if Daniel chapter 12 verses 1 and 2 is future, why isn't
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Daniel 11, 45? When Daniel 12 verse 1 is quote, at that time, close quote.
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Once again, thank you for a great podcast. Regards and blessings, Phil. So, Phil, thank you very, very much for writing us, and Phil wrote this email back in October, and we are barely getting to it.
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So, Phil, thank you for your patience, and we appreciate Tim coming on today, and hopefully he can answer these questions.
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Okay, thanks, Tim. This question has to do with why, after the death of the king of the north in Daniel 11, 45,
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Daniel continues by talking about things that happen at the time of the end. The resurrection of the just, the time of trouble, the deliverance of the people of God, the resurrection of the damned.
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I'll include in that Archangel Michael's defensive posture on behalf of God's people, which is stated in Daniel 12, 1, which is also mentioned in Revelation 12 verses 7 to 10.
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Let's look at the passage going all the way back to Daniel 10, 1.
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So, Daniel 10, 1 through 11, 2 is a cursory and passing description of some of the events that are identifiably
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Medo -Persian, but without the details of the Medo -Persian empire that were presented in Daniel 8.
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Then the Greek empire happens, and there's a lot of detail in it in this chapter, from the rise of the
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Greek empire to a global power as it destroys the Medo -Persian empire, all the way through its last whimpering strains, just as the
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Roman Republic is about to rise and become the next global empire, which happened largely because of the stage that was set by General Pompey in his last campaign against the pirates of Pamphylia and against Tigranes of Armenia, who's in the east, and Mithridates of Pontus in the north, as depicted in the last six verses of Daniel 11.
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Daniel's very next words are about the Roman Empire, but without the detail that was present in Daniel chapter 7.
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He mentions Michael, a time of trouble for Jerusalem, the deliverance of the people of God, the preaching of the gospel, and two resurrections, which we discover later to be about a thousand years, well, to be a thousand years apart, and that's
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Revelation 20, verse 5. So, what do all these events have in common?
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Well, they are things that occur in what is depicted as a Roman period, according to Daniel's visions and in Revelation.
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The significance here is that we have just gone through the entire Greek period, and then the very next thing that happens is
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Roman. If we look at the Roman period as depicted in the statue of Daniel chapter 2 and the four beasts of Daniel 7, it starts with iron legs.
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That is, after the golden Babylonian era, the silver Medo -Persian era, and the bronze
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Greek era, we have iron legs depicting the Roman period. Those iron legs transition to iron and clay feet and finally to iron and clay toes.
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As Daniel says, it is during the period of those feet, in the days of those kings, when the
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God of heaven shall set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed. That's a quote from Daniel 2, verse 44. This, of course, is the reference to the heavenly kingdom
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Jesus came announcing during the period of the fourth empire, which, of course, is Roman.
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According to Daniel 7, the Babylonian lion gives way to the Medo -Persian bear, which gives way to the
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Greek leopard, and which in turn is trampled underfoot by the last beast with ten horns, which, for reference, we will equate to the toes of the statue of Daniel chapter 2.
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That's the fragmented period of the Roman empire. From among those horns, and therefore from among the toes of the feet, comes the little horn of Daniel 7, which has an earthly empire that oppresses the saints of God.
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Again, the events are characteristically Roman in nature. Now, as depicted in Daniel 7, the saints of God do not possess an earthly kingdom under heaven until after that little horn is finally destroyed in Daniel 7, 27.
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What is important to us here is that Daniel depicts in chapter 2 a heavenly kingdom of God's people during the fourth empire in the period of the feet prior to the fragmentation of Rome, but in chapter 7 depicts another kingdom, an earthly kingdom, the kingdom of Antichrist, emerging from among the horns of the fourth empire after that fragmentation.
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In a future episode, we're going to address the significance of those two kingdoms, but let it suffice to say for now that it is very important to distinguish between those two kingdoms, one of which is heavenly and one of which is earthly.
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Many people have stumbled into the arms of Antichrist, thinking that they had found the former kingdom, which is the heavenly one, but in reality had embraced the latter, which is the earthly one.
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One of the most important things we would emphasize in this series is that the saints of God should be trained to recognize the difference, and we'll come back to that in a future episode.
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But there's another point we've been making from the first episode, and that is the number of horns of the fourth beast of Daniel 7 that still remain when
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Christ returns. There are still 10 horns at the very end, even in Revelation 20, verse 10, at the time of Christ's return.
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In other words, after the Greek period of Daniel's visions, everything after that point is pretty much
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Roman in nature. All the way until Christ himself establishes an actual earthly kingdom after destroying that little horn which came up from the fragments of Rome.
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That Roman period is simply overflowing with eschatological significance and events, and that is the period immediately following the
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Greek period. So, to answer Phil's question, which was, if chapter 12, verses 1 and 2 is future, why isn't
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Daniel 11, 45 also future, when Daniel 12 is at that time? My answer is that from Daniel's perspective,
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Daniel 12 is not so much future as it is next after the Greek period.
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That's the only point he's making. It is future, but it's future because it's next after the
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Greek period. Daniel has simply concluded the record of the Greek period, and he is saying what follows immediately upon the end of the
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Greek period, which is to say, the Roman period. At that time, the angel
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Michael will stand up. Note that Michael was also involved in the transition from the Medo -Persian to the
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Greek period back in Daniel 10, 21. And there shall be a time of trouble, that is, when
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Jesus comes and is rejected by his people, and your people shall be delivered, referring to Christ's death and resurrection, that is, to preach deliverance to the captives, which is what
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Jesus says in Luke 4, 18. In other words, at that time, that is, at the time of the final end of what we'd call the
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Greek period, the Roman period will begin, and a lot of interesting things happen in the
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Roman period. In fact, the most interesting things happen in Daniel's prophecies in the Roman period.
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All Daniel has recorded is that after the terrible things that will happen under the Greek period, even worse things will happen under what we'd call the
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Roman period. It is a continuous narrative that started with the Medo -Persian empire, walked all the way through the minute details of the
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Greek empire, and concludes with the very beginning of the Roman empire.
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And Daniel has simply recorded what has been revealed to him, which is what happens under the next empire.
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He doesn't get into all the details here as he does in Daniel chapter 7, but it is a continuous narrative.
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And when he says in 12 .1, at that time, he's saying when the
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Roman empire arises, this is what's going to happen within that Roman empire. Now, before we leave
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Phil's questions, I want to highlight something that occurs in Daniel 11 and 12 that is worth further discussion.
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And that is the meaning of the word that is translated as the end. It occurs repeatedly in Daniel, and especially in the narrative of Daniel 11 and 12.
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But also in Daniel chapter 8. It is important to acknowledge that the end is determined by its context and does not always refer to the end of time.
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I want to review the occurrences of the end, or the transliteration would be kets, because it will matter to us greatly in the coming episodes.
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So let's review some of the uses of the word the end, because we are going to come back to this and we'll contextualize each use of the end.
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In Daniel 11 .6, at the beginning of the passage, it says that the kings of the north and south shall form an alliance in the end of years.
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And here, the end just means after a passage of time, but still well within the Greek period.
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In fact, toward the beginning of the Greek period, but after the division of Alexander's empire. In Daniel 11 .35,
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it says, And some of them of understanding shall fall, to try them and to purge and to make them white, even to the time of the end.
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Now in context here, the end refers to the end of the indignation, referring to the indignation that had yet to be accomplished.
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And in fact, in the next verse, it explains that the time of the end is the time when, quote, the indignation shall be accomplished.
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That's Daniel 11 .36. We have a similar confirmation in Daniel 8 verses 17 to 19 that shows us that, quote, the end of the indignation, unquote, has that very precise meaning.
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It says, Understand, O son of man, for at the time of the end shall be the vision. And he said,
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Behold, I will make thee know what shall be in the last end of the indignation.
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For at the time appointed, the end shall be. So here, end of the indignation is not the end of time.
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It's just simply the end of an indignation that we're actually going to spend a good amount of time studying in a coming episode.
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But for now, we're just going to point out that the end here refers to the end of the indignation, and the end of the indignation actually takes place under the
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Seleucid dynasty during the Greek period after the fall of Alexander. Now Daniel 11 .40
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says, And at the time of the end, again, it's the same word, at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him.
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Here, the end refers to the final demise of the period under discussion, the final end of the
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Greek period, because what's about to be recounted in Daniel 11 .40 to 45 is simply the last dying gasps of what can be construed as a
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Greek period as the Roman Republic begins to take over. Then Daniel 12 .4
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says, But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book even to the time of the end, which is clearly a reference to the end of the series of empires and has its own unique meaning there in that context.
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Daniel 12 .6 says, And one said to the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river,
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How long shall it be to the end of these wonders? From the context of the angel's response, we have pretty good evidence that we're still talking about things that are taking place under the
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Greek period, and we'll come back to that a little bit later when we discuss this in another episode.
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Daniel 12 .9 says, And he said, Go thy way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed to the end of time.
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And Daniel 12 .13 says, Go thou thy way till the end, for thou shalt rest and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.
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So that's obviously talking to the very, very, very end of time. So we're looking at all these different uses of the word end in this chapter.
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And the point is that the term the end really just means distant or after or later or afterward.
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It does not always refer to what we would call the end times, but sometimes it does. Context has to be our guide here because there are things that happen at the beginning of the
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Greek Empire that are described as happening at the end of years, and then things that happen in the middle of the
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Greek Empire that are described as at the end of the indignation. And then at the end of the Greek Empire is at the time of the end.
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And then things that happen during the Roman Empire are called things that happen at the time of the end. So context has to be our guide on this, and we'll start our exploration of that concept a little bit in this episode.
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So thanks to Phil for the great questions, and thanks for listening. If there are more questions, we'll gladly entertain them and just send them on in as you listen to the episodes.
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And again, we appreciate everybody listening. So Tim, let's complete our analysis of Daniel chapter 11.
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And that is to say, let us evaluate what is between the bookends that we have addressed in episodes 4 and 5.
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Daniel 11 starts with the rise of Alexander the Great and the period of Greek dominance of Daniel's visions.
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And it ends with the last whimpering strains of post -Alexandrian
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Hellenism as Pompey sets the stage for the Roman Republic to become the Roman Empire. Julius Caesar crossed the
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Rubicon the year before Pompey died and then took the purple, which is to say, became the first emperor of Rome just four years after Pompey died.
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Daniel 11 simply walks us all the way up to the point when Rome was about to become an empire in its own right.
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And between those two bookends stands the intrigue and exploits of Antiochus IV, who reigned in Syria and therefore over Jerusalem from 175
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BC until his death in 164 BC. So to set the stage, let's start with a short biography of the
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Seleucid line, and in particular the childhood of Antiochus IV, because it factors heavily into Daniel's description of the events in Daniel 11.
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I should say it factors heavily into our understanding of what Daniel had foreseen. Of the four nations that came up toward the four winds of heaven, and that's described for us in Daniel 8 .8
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and 11 .4, Seleucus I formed the
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Eastern Kingdom, reigning over the eastern territories from Syria to India. Seleucus I was succeeded in 281
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BC by his son Antiochus I, surnamed Soter or Savior.
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Antiochus I was succeeded in 261 BC by his son Antiochus II Theos, which means
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God. Antiochus II was succeeded in 246 BC by his son
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Seleucus II, or Callinicus, which means gloriously triumphant. Seleucus II was succeeded in 225
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BC by his son Seleucus III, or Keranos, which means thunderbolt.
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Seleucus III was succeeded in 222 BC by his son Antiochus III, Magnus or the
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Great. And we recall that until his historic defeat at the hands of the
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Romans at Magnesia in 190 BC, Antiochus III was safely in control of Asia Minor within the
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Taurus Mountains, plus the Thracian Peninsula in Europe. At the
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Treaty of Apamea in 188 BC, Antiochus III gave in to Roman demands for his surrender, and the terms of surrender included his eviction from Asia Minor in Europe and an extremely burdensome annual tribute that had to be paid to Rome to cover the costs of the war, as well as the downsizing of his navy and the destruction of his war elephants.
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Additionally, in order to guarantee his ongoing cooperation, Antiochus III had to send his younger son
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Antiochus IV to Rome as a hostage. Now, before we continue with the family line of the
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Seleucids, this context is crucial to our understanding of the chapter for at least three reasons.
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First, Antiochus IV's father, Antiochus III, died in the east trying to raid temples to raise money for the war tribute, as depicted in Daniel 11 .18.
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And then the following verses of Daniel 11 speak of sending a tax collector into the provinces.
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That tax collector was necessary to raise the funds for the annual war tribute, and knowledge of the terms of the
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Treaty of Apamea helps us understand the context of the need for a tax collector. Second, the
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Syrian kingdom, and particularly its military activity, was now under the scrutiny of the
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Roman Republic, which is why we find portrayed for us in this narrative a Roman intervention after Antiochus IV gets too belligerent in the region.
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Third, Antiochus IV, a Greek by ethnicity, has been raised in Rome in the shadow of Jupiter Capitalinus, the god of the capital of the
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Roman Republic. This, too, is important to our context because a significant portion of the narrative in chapter 11 is about Antiochus IV giving up his native gods for a foreign god, which is understandable since he was raised under a
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Roman pantheon rather than a Greek one. We'll keep those matters in mind as we proceed through the chapter.
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Now, with Antiochus IV as a hostage in Rome, Antiochus III was succeeded in 187
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BC by his son, Seleucus IV, Philopator, which means one who loves his father.
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And as king, Seleucus IV produced an heir, Demetrius I, surnamed
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Soter, which means savior. At that point, in compliance with the terms of the 188
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BC Treaty of Apamea, Demetrius I was sent to Rome as the new hostage to replace
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Antiochus IV, and Antiochus IV was released to return to Syria. So this sets the stage for the rise of Antiochus IV to become, as it turns out, the illegitimate king of the
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Syrian kingdom. So Seleucus IV was then assassinated in 175
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BC by Heliodorus, his own courtier, who in fact had been the very tax collector he'd sent into the provinces to raise money for the war tribute.
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Heliodorus' coup did not last long, and Eumenes, the king of Pergamon, removed him and installed
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Antiochus IV in his place. This is recorded for us in Appian's History of Rome. It says,
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Thus Antiochus, the son of Antiochus the Great, ascended the throne of Syria. That's Appian's History of Rome, the
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Syrian Wars, paragraph 45. With that knowledge of the background of how we ended up to the point where Antiochus IV is even a player on this stage, let's proceed with chapter 11, starting at 1119.
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What we want to do is go from 1119 -39 and show that the whole section deals with the rise of Antiochus IV to power in his persecution of the
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Jews, and also, in particular, his desecration of the temple with the abomination of desolation.
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So, starting at Daniel 1119, immediately after the death of Antiochus III, who died in the east raiding temples, attempting to raise funds for the war tribute for Rome.
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Keep in mind, from our previous discussions, that the Seleucids have been kicked out of the north, and from this point forward in the text, they are still in view, but they are simply no longer referred to as king of the north.
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So, Daniel 1119. Then shall stand up in his estate a raiser of taxes in the glory of the kingdom, but within few days he shall be destroyed, neither in anger nor in battle.
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That's the King James Version. Now, what's interesting here is that the other translations and Young's literal translation takes it to mean, and stood up on his station, hath one causing an exactor to pass over the honor of the kingdom, and in a few days he is destroyed, not in anger nor in battle.
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Now, what's interesting here is that there are several schools of thought on the passage. The King James appears to say that the successor to Antiochus III is, in fact, the raiser of taxes.
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Young's literal translation takes it to mean that Antiochus III's successor causes a tax collector to go into the kingdom, which is,
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I think, more consistent reading of what we would expect a king to do. The king actually has tax collectors that do his work for him.
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So, the other question is, what does it mean that within a few days he shall be destroyed?
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Seleucus IV reigned for 12 years after Antiochus III, so it's difficult to understand how a 12 -year reign could be understood as just within a few days.
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Several of his predecessors reigned even less time than that. However, if we understand the passage to be speaking of the tax collector that Seleucus IV sent, it is the tax collector that is in view when it says, but within a few days he shall be destroyed.
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As it turns out, Seleucus IV sent Heliodorus as his charged affairs to Jerusalem to collect taxes, and it was only shortly after that that Antiochus IV removed
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Heliodorus and took charge of the kingdom for himself. After Heliodorus usurped Seleucus IV.
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So, here we have a transition from Antiochus III, whose son Seleucus IV takes over.
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He sends Heliodorus into the kingdom to collect taxes. Heliodorus assassinates Seleucus IV and takes over.
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And then we have Antiochus IV take over after Heliodorus with the assistance of Eumenes, the king of Pergamum.
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So, that's the background, and let's go on with the next verse. It's Daniel 11, verse 21. And in his estate shall stand up a vile person to whom they shall not give the honor of the kingdom, but he shall come in peaceably and obtain the kingdom by flatteries.
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So, again, Appian in the Syrian Wars, paragraph 42, says, When Heliodorus sought to possess himself of the government, he was driven out by Eumenes and Attalus, who installed
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Antiochus IV therein in order to secure his goodwill. So, when it says he shall obtain the kingdom by flatteries, it literally means obtain the kingdom by hypocrisy or intrigue or by slippery paths or some such thing.
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So, the way Antiochus IV rose to power was by being installed by Eumenes of Pergamum, who in fact was answerable to Rome.
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Here we have Eumenes of Pergamum who has helped Antiochus IV come to power by taking
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Heliodorus out of the picture. So, if a foreign king who himself is answerable to Rome for peace in the region installs as king of Syria someone who is not entitled to the throne, but actually does so in order to secure his goodwill, well, flatteries are strongly implied.
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In fact, in the record, what we have from 1 Maccabees, it's a book that Roman Catholics have in their
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Bible. I consider it a viable historical record, but not an inspired book, but it did record the events of this time frame.
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It records how Antiochus IV came to power. It says in 1 Maccabees 1, verse 30,
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Deceitfully he spoke peaceable words to them, and they believed him. But he suddenly fell upon the city, and dealt a severe blow, and destroyed many people of Israel.
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So, here we have Antiochus IV coming to power by flatteries after Heliodorus is removed from the picture.
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So, let's proceed with the next verse. It's Daniel 11 .22 And with the arms of a flood shall they be overflown from before him, and shall be broken, yea, also the prince of the covenant.
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Now, Antiochus' rise to regional military power is already recorded for us in the history books, and there's no need to recount it here.
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As we'll see in a few verses, he's going to get the attention of the Roman Republic because it's a violation of the
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Treaty of Apamea, as we'll see. But there's been some disagreement about the meaning of the prince of the covenant in this verse.
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Now, Antiochus IV gutted the treasury and the temple, and in the end, the high priest, Onias III, was murdered because he objected to this approach.
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That's recorded for us in 2 Maccabees 4, verses 33 to 34. The high priests are called princes or rulers.
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It's the same word in 1 Chronicles 9, verses 11 and 20. And the sons of Levi were the guardians and custodians of the covenant, according to Malachi 2, verses 1 to 8.
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So, it's hardly a stretch to see the high priest as the prince of the covenant when Daniel is speaking in terms of a vision that he has understood.
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So, in Daniel 11 .22, Daniel has simply recounted for us the devastation wreaked by Antiochus IV as he came to power, including the resulting murder of the high priest,
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Onias III, the governor or ruler of the administrations of the old covenant. So, let's proceed with the next verse,
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Daniel 11 .23. And after the league made with him, he shall work deceitfully, for he shall come up and shall become strong with the small people.
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That's King James. Young's literal translation says, And after they joined themselves unto him, he worketh deceit, and hath increased, and hath been strong by a few of the nation.
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So, some historical context here. This is a reference to the fact that the people of Israel, the majority of them anyway, agreed with Antiochus IV to forsake the ways of the
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Lord and follow a Greek Hellenistic lifestyle. It started when Antiochus IV first came to power, and Onias III, his brother
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Jason, purchased the high priesthood from the king for 32 ,000 pounds of silver.
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That's 2 Maccabees 4, verses 7 to 8. There was some opposition from God's faithful people, but the smaller, influential
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Tobiad party prevailed and agreed on a policy of overt Hellenization. We're going to come back to that agreement a little bit later today, and a little bit more in a future episode, but this is a case where a small party convinces people to agree to this policy of Hellenization, which is basically for the
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Jews to abandon their covenant agreement with God to be faithful Jews.
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So, let's look at the next verse. It says, Daniel 11, 24, He shall enter peaceably even upon the fattest places of the province, and to do that which his fathers have not done, nor his father's fathers, he shall scatter among them the prey, the spoil, the riches, yea, and he shall forecast his devices against the strongholds even for a time.
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So, we're going to briefly look at Daniel chapter 8, and I mean very briefly.
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The little horn of Daniel chapter 8, it says, waxed exceeding great toward the south, toward the east, and toward the pleasant land.
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That's Daniel 8, 9. So, in Daniel 11, 24, Daniel has identified basically the three objects of Antiochus' exploration and military aggression.
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Some of it is military, and some of it is simply geographic exploration.
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So, sometimes it has to do with military conquest and strongholds, and sometimes it has to do with peaceably entering the various places of the province.
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So, the three objects of Antiochus' military and exploration objectives were
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Egypt to the south, and that's recorded for us in 1 Maccabees 1, 16, to the east beyond the
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Euphrates to Babylon is recorded for us in 1 Maccabees 3, 37, as well as to the
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Arabian side of the Persian Gulf, the exploration of which Pliny the Elder credits to him. That's from his
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Natural History, book 6 .32. And it's important to note that because he was exploring territory that his fathers had not actually reached, that is, in the previous division of the
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Greek Empire. They had not explored the Arabian side of the Persian Gulf, and Pliny the
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Elder actually credits him with that. And he also has his focus and his attention on Judea, according to 1
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Maccabees 1, 20, the pleasant land as described in Psalms 106, 24, Jeremiah 3, 19, and Zechariah 7, 14.
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So all we see here is that Daniel 11, 24 says these are the kinds of things that Antiochus IV is going to do.
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Sometimes it will be military in nature, sometimes it will be peaceable in nature, but it's going to be vast and it will be expansive as he expands or seeks to expand his territories.
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So the next section of Daniel chapter 11 simply describes the many battles between Antiochus, king of Syria, and Ptolemy, the king of Egypt, which are just a part of the broader historical phenomena known as the
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Syrian Wars. So I'm going to read Daniel 11, 25 to 28 here, and this just recounts what we know already about what
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Antiochus did as he invaded Egypt and also continued to persecute the
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Jews. It says, And he shall stir up his power and his courage against the king of the south with a great army.
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And the king of the south shall be stirred up to battle with a very great and mighty army. But he shall not stand, for they shall forecast devices against him.
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Yea, they that feed of the portion of his meat shall destroy him, and his army shall overflow, and many shall fall down slain.
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And both these kings' hearts shall be to do mischief, and they shall speak lies at one table, but it shall not prosper, for yet the end shall be at the appointed time.
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Then shall he return to his land with great riches, and his heart shall be against the holy covenant, and he shall do exploits and return to his own land.
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So the historical record indeed shows that after his first invasion of Egypt in 170
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B .C., Antiochus returned to Israel on his way back to Syria and stripped the temple and persecuted the
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Jews. This is recorded for us in 1 Maccabees, verses 20 -24, so folks can look that up if they like.
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It says that after subduing Egypt, Antiochus returned, and he went up against Israel and came to Jerusalem with a strong force, and he arrogantly entered the sanctuary, took the golden altar, the lampstand, and all its utensils, etc.,
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etc. So, again, this is his first invasion of Egypt, and it's historically verifiable, and afterward he returned to Israel and did some things.
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Now, it's his second attempt to invade Egypt that is so important to us here, and this is in 168
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B .C., and it's very significant because, again, we have verifiable historical evidence of the events surrounding his attempt and the immediate consequences of his attempt.
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His ancestors had enjoyed great success against the king of the south in times past, just as Antiochus had only two years earlier enjoyed success against him, but this time it would be different.
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His aspirations against the king of Egypt would be frustrated, and he would take out his frustrations against the city of Jerusalem and the temple there.
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So, this is what it says in Daniel 11, 29 -31. At the time appointed, he shall return and come toward the south, but it shall not be as the former, by which
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I take to mean his ancestors and their invasions of Egypt, or as the latter, which
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I take to mean his most recent invasion of Egypt, which was very successful. Now, continue with the verse.
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For the ships of Chittim shall come against him, therefore he shall be grieved and return and have indignation against the
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Holy Covenant. So shall he do. He shall even return and have intelligence with them that forsake the
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Holy Covenant, and arms shall stand on his part, and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate.
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So, Antiochus IV is known to have conducted two expeditions into Egypt, one in 170 BC and one in 168.
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This, of course, is his second. The Senate of Rome, as we noted earlier, had become alarmed at his expansionist policy and sent
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Gaius Popilius Laenus as an envoy to put an end to his military mobilization.
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This interference by Rome and Antiochus' plans has been preserved in the vernacular of the
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West by the term, line in the sand. That's probably a term that many of our listeners have heard before, and this is the basis for it.
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When Gaius Popilius Laenus confronted Antiochus IV and demanded that he obey the decree of the
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Roman Senate to cease his hostilities toward Egypt, Antiochus responded that he must first consult with his advisers and determine what to do.
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That is when Popilius drew a circle around him in the sand and insisted that Antiochus inform him of his decision before stepping out of it.
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To do anything but capitulate would have been an act of war against Rome, something Antiochus was not prepared to do.
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Therefore, he gave in to Rome's demands. That is, he honored that line in the sand. That's recorded for us in Livius, the
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History of Rome, Book 45, Chapter 12, and Polybius, the Histories, fragments of Book 29,
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Chapter 1 .2. The confrontation between Antiochus and Popilius is dated in July 168
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BC. Our point here is that we are at Daniel 1130, and we are still talking about Antiochus IV, the usurper of the
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Seleucid throne, in the line of the Seleucid kings, but not the legitimate ruler of the kingdom of Syria, at least not by genetic descendancy, because he was not the first in line to the throne when the previous king died.
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He is the little horn of Daniel 8 and is a known historical entity. We're emphasizing this specific point here because of the sheer volume of commentaries and interpretations that assume at some point in Daniel 11 that Daniel has stopped talking about events in the
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Greek period and has started talking about the future. But here we are at Daniel 11, verse 30, and we're still talking about Antiochus IV.
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And most commentaries would allow Antiochus IV as the subject of the narrative at least this far.
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The historical record bears this out. But then Daniel 1131 depicts the pollution of the sanctuary, the end of sacrifices, and the placement of the abomination of desolation in the temple.
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There's nothing in the text of Daniel 11 to suggest that the chapter undergoes a chronological discontinuity at 1131.
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There's nothing to suggest that Daniel has suddenly stopped talking about Antiochus IV. In fact, the historical record shows that Antiochus IV indeed not only sacked
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Jerusalem after being frustrated by the intervention of Rome, but also seized all sacrifices or caused them to be stopped and then placed a statue of Jupiter in the temple of Jerusalem.
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So I'm going to read from 1 Maccabees 1, verses 41 to 46, at least a part of it.
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It says, The king wrote to his whole kingdom that all should be one people and that each should give up his customs.
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And the king sent letters by messengers to Jerusalem and the cities of Judah. He directed them to follow customs strange to the land, to forbid burnt offerings and sacrifices and drink offerings in the sanctuary, to profane
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Sabbaths and feasts and to defile the sanctuary of the priests. Now in 1
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Maccabees 1, verse 54, it says, Now in the fifteenth day of Kislev, in the 145th year, and that's 145th year of the
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Greeks, they erected a desolating sacrilege upon the altar of burnt offering. So that desolating sacrilege upon the altar of burnt offering is what we have in mind here.
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What is it that Antiochus IV placed in the sanctuary that got people so upset? The specific identity of the desolating sacrilege may be known by the response of the
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Samaritans to the sack of Jerusalem and the subsequent profanation of the temple.
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Lest they too come under the wrath of Antiochus, the Samaritans appealed to him that their temple also be dedicated to Jupiter.
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Their epistle to Antiochus and his written response is recorded for us in Josephus, Antiquities of the
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Jews, Book 12, Chapter 5, Paragraph 5. And in that case, the
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Samaritans said, Will you please dedicate our temple to Jupiter Hellenes, which is to say,
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Jupiter, the Roman god, but by a Greek antagonist, Jupiter Hellenes, referring to the
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Hellenistic period. So it's a god of the Romans that's being erected in the temple in Samaria precisely because they wanted to be like the
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Jews whose temple had been likewise desecrated in Jerusalem. So here we are at Daniel 1131 and it is clear that we're still talking about Antiochus IV in a continuous narrative during the
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Greek period of Daniel's visions. Now, in fact, the next four verses, Daniel 11, verses 32 to 35, we see a description of the
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Maccabean revolt when faithful Jews rejected the changes being made by Antiochus IV and made war against Antiochus IV and the
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Jewish traitors. Antiochus IV had corrupted some of the Jews, but not all of them, and there, in fact, was a loyal resistance as described in the next four verses.
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This is Daniel 11, 32 to 35. And such as do wickedly against the covenant shall he corrupt by flatteries, but the people that do know their
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God shall be strong and do exploits. And they that understand among the people shall instruct many, yet they shall fall by the sword and by flame, by captivity and by spoil many days.
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Now when they shall fall, they shall be hulping with little help, but many shall cleave to them with flatteries, and some of them of understanding shall fall to try them and to purge and to make them white, even to the time of the end, because it is yet for the time appointed.
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Daniel 11, 32 to 35. We will make only a passing comment now about even to the time of the end, and we promise to come back to the end of the indignation because that's a specific point in time according to Daniel 11,
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Daniel 8, Daniel 9. But for now, these four verses adequately depict the
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Jewish revolt against the oppressions and persecutions of Antiochus IV. That gets us to Daniel 11, 32 to 34, and we're still talking about Antiochus IV as the antagonist in this chapter.
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So now let's look at the last four verses that deal with the Seleucid line, this Daniel 11, 36 to 39.
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This passage discusses the worship practices of this Greek antagonist. And this is,
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I'm going to read from Daniel 11, 36 to 39. It says, I will point out first that the
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King James Version says, God of gods, God of his fathers, and God of forces. It has them all capitalized because the translators assume that Yahweh, the
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God of Israel, is in mind here. But there's no basis for that assertion. since Daniel is still describing a
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Greek pagan antagonist. Yahweh is not the God of Antiochus's fathers. And as we examine the passage, we find that none of this is talking about the true
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God at all. It is simply talking about Antiochus IV rejecting his Greek pantheon and adopting a
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Roman one. Daniel 11, verses 36 to 39 deals almost entirely with the self -aggrandizement and personal theology of the antagonist.
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And so we'll now turn to Antiochus IV and his inconsistent pantheism. Daniel 11, verses 36 to 37b states that the king shall do according to his will and he shall exalt himself and magnify himself above every god for he shall magnify himself above all.
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The passage is a suitable description of Antiochus IV. His unique distinction in the
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Seleucid line was that he was the first one to proclaim himself to be a god while he was still living.
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All of the epithets that were given to all the other kings about being gods all came after they died.
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But Antiochus IV was the first one to proclaim himself to be a god while he was still alive.
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That's from Edwin Robert Vivant's The House of Seleucus, Volume 2, pages 154 to 155.
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As can be seen in the reverse of one of Antiochus's coins, he uses an image of Zeus in order to portray himself as king
01:00:06
Antiochus, manifestation of God. In other coins, he does the same with Apollo. These are
01:00:12
Greek gods. Thus does Antiochus IV exalt and magnify himself even above or against Zeus and Apollo.
01:00:20
As we progress through this section of the narrative, we notice that Daniel places a tremendous amount of emphasis on the ethnic inconsistency of the antagonist's worship.
01:00:30
There is an inconsistency in his pantheism in the sense that his ancestors worshipped one pantheon and he disregards it or does not sufficiently honor it and instead pays regard to another.
01:00:42
This is Daniel 11, quoting from sections of Daniel 11, 37, 38, 39.
01:00:58
It says, What are we to do with such an inconsistent pattern of worship?
01:01:14
How are we to understand a man who on the one hand does not regard any god or the god of his father, but on the other hand freely acknowledges and increases with glory foreign gods and strange gods?
01:01:26
The attributes of this man are so discordant that many a commentary has invoked an eschatological frame to resolve the problem.
01:01:34
That is, they simply assume that Daniel has stopped talking about Antiochus IV. Charles Ellicott immediately invokes the eschatological frame at this point because he can't imagine anything else than that two different antagonists are in view.
01:01:51
He believes that, of course, Antiochus was no atheist and therefore the features of Antiochus are gradually fading away from the portrait and giving way to Antichrist.
01:02:00
That's from Ellicott's commentary for English readers on Daniel 11, 36. So notice that here you have
01:02:08
Daniel saying, well, he won't regard any god but magnifies himself above them all. And so Charles Ellicott says, well, he's an atheist.
01:02:17
And then in the next verse it says that he's going to honor a strange god. And so Ellicott says, well, we must be at that transition point where we're no longer talking about Antiochus but we must be talking about the future
01:02:30
Antichrist. Now, that's one way to solve the apparent inconsistency as Ellicott showed, and that is to presume that there must be two different antagonists in view, which necessitates that we assume that Daniel has started talking about a different antagonist in the distant future.
01:02:46
But the simplest answer is that two different pantheons are in view, a Greek pantheon and a
01:02:52
Roman pantheon. And the passage explicitly depicts the antagonist's shift from one pantheon to another.
01:02:58
The emphasis in the passage is that of an antagonist who exalts himself above his native pantheon of gods and while disregarding them, elects instead to heap praises and honor on a foreign pantheon.
01:03:09
It is a description of a self -willed, self -exalting pagan who does not worship in accordance with the traditions of his ancestors but is exuberant in his affection for foreign gods.
01:03:20
That concept of abandoning one pantheon for another is recited three times in these three verses. So given the fact that the setting of Daniel 11 is the period of Greek rule and the antagonist is himself
01:03:33
Greek, what we expect is a Greek antagonist who abandons or pays deficient honors to his
01:03:40
Greek ancestors' pantheon exchanging it for a new one to which he pays higher honors.
01:03:46
Upon examination, what we have listed for us in Daniel 11, verses 36 -37 is actually a
01:03:53
Greek pantheon and what we have listed for us in Daniel 11, 38 -39 is a foreign one.
01:04:00
And what we have in Antiochus IV is just such a man who does not appropriately honor the
01:04:05
Greek gods, but instead he praises upon the Roman god, Jupiter, capital
01:04:10
Linus. We understand that in the traditional application of the eschatological frame of reference,
01:04:17
Daniel 11, 36 tends to be interpreted in a post -Hellenic sense in which the offender is
01:04:24
Antichrist and therefore God of gods must refer to Yahweh and God of forces must refer to Yahweh and the one in whom women delight must refer to Jesus or something like that.
01:04:34
In that interpretation, the antagonist is presumed to magnify himself above Yahweh. For this reason, in the commentaries,
01:04:41
Daniel 11, 36 is usually linked to Daniel 7, 25 which says, and he shall speak great words against the
01:04:47
Most High and Revelation 13, 5 -6 which says that speaking great things and blasphemies and he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God to blaspheme his name.
01:04:58
In both verses, that is Daniel 7, 25 and Revelation 13, verses 5 -6 the
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Antichrist is plainly in view and his blasphemies are clearly directed against the Most High God himself,
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Yahweh, the God of Israel. But in the context of 11, 36 we have a self -willed
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Greek antagonist who magnifies himself above every god of his ancestor's pantheon, even above the
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God of gods. The term used here in 11, 36 are El and Elim. These often refer to the true
01:05:29
God but are also used many times to refer to pagan gods and goddesses as in Isaiah 44, 10 and 1
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Kings 11, 33. They are not used exclusively of Yahweh the way
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Most High is used of Yahweh. When other passages use the term God of gods Yahweh is identified by name or person in the same context as in Deuteronomy 10, 17
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Joshua 22, 22 Psalms 136, verses 1 -2 and Daniel 2, 47 but not here in Daniel 11, 36.
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This is significant to us because in the Greek pantheon Zeus is the ruler of the
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Olympian gods. Put another way, to a Greek antagonist Zeus would be the
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God of gods the God of Greek gods at least. Daniel 11, 36 has the antagonist magnifying himself above the whole
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Greek pantheon even above Zeus himself the God of Greek gods. By striking coins bearing his own image under the title
01:06:29
Theos or God pictured with divine rays emanating from his crown Antiochus certainly did magnify himself above every god of the
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Greek pantheon and did speak marvelous things against the God of gods. In the
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Greek pantheon Antiochus IV can truly be said to have exalted himself above all gods even the
01:06:49
God of gods. That Antiochus' disregard for the Greek pantheon is in view here is plainly evident from the next verse because Daniel keeps on describing other
01:06:58
Greek gods. In 11, 37 the antagonist is said to pay insufficient regard both to the
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God of his fathers which we would say is Apollo one of Zeus' offspring but also to the one in whom women delight.
01:07:13
Again, with the eschatological frame and view interpretations on this actually vary very widely. Calvin saw
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Muhammad's approval of polygamy as a disregard for the natural and conjugal affection of women and therefore a fulfillment of the one in whom women delight.
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That's Calvin's commentary on Daniel 11, 37. Eliot has this desire for women referring to the
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Messiah that is from his Horae Apocalypticae, volume 4 page 152 in the footnotes.
01:07:43
Still others would have desire of women referred to marriage or children. But since the context here is of the failure of the antagonist to honor his ancestral gods we therefore see this as a reference to Apollo, the god of his fathers and the
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Greek son of Zeus, Dionysus who was quite notoriously the desire of women under a
01:08:03
Greek pantheon. From Plutarch we have a very detailed description of the rituals of the women who delighted in the worship of Dionysus.
01:08:11
Most notably, the one who excelled above all others in this form of devotion was no less than Alexander's mother
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Olympias. This is quoting from Plutarch, The Life of Alexander, part 1, chapter 2, paragraphs 7 to 9.
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All the women of these parts were addicted to the Orphic rites and the orgies of Dionysus from very ancient times and imitated in many ways the practices of the
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Edonian women and the Thracian women about Mount Hamas from whom, as it would seem, the word threskuin came to be applied to the celebration of extravagant and superstitious ceremonies.
01:08:52
Olympias, who affected these divine possessions more zealously than other women and carried out these divine inspirations in wilder fashion, used to provide the reveling companies with great tame serpents which would often lift their heads from out of the ivy in the mystic winnowing baskets or coil themselves about the wands and garlands of the women, thus terrifying the men.
01:09:15
So, that's a description from Plutarch, The Life of Alexander, explaining about the authentically and ethnically
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Greek devotion to Dionysus which is very clearly a
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Greek god, a son of Zeus, and obviously the one in whom women delight.
01:09:38
The point here is that when Daniel refers to God of gods and the
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God of his fathers and the one in whom women delight, he's referring to Zeus, Apollo, and Dionysus, the desire of Greek women.
01:09:55
So, in brief, the antagonist of Daniel 11, verses 36 -37, rejects the gods of his upbringings.
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He magnifies himself above them, and beyond that, adopts a foreign pantheon as well. It is plainly a description of the rejection of the antagonist's ancestral
01:10:12
Greek gods, or the whole Greek pantheon. That is exactly what Antiochus IV did, and it should not surprise us that this is what
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Daniel has foreseen, because he was foreseeing something that occurs under the
01:10:27
Greek period. So, to which pantheon does Antiochus then resort, having insufficiently honored the
01:10:34
Greek pantheon? Well, the answer is a Roman pantheon. Remember, in accordance with the
01:10:39
Treaty of Epimea in 188 BC, Antiochus IV was sent to Rome as a hostage.
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That is where Antiochus learned to worship Jupiter Capitulinus, the Roman god of forces.
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And that is why he dedicated the temple in Jerusalem to Jupiter Capitulinus. Antiochus dedicated other temples to Jupiter Capitulinus as well, in fulfillment of this prophecy, in Athens and in Antioch.
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As Livius records for us in Perioche, Book 41, Chapters 5 -6, and just as Josephus reports from the
01:11:13
Antiquities of the Jews, once the Samaritans saw the temple in Jerusalem dedicated to Jupiter Capitulinus, they requested, and Antiochus agreed that their temple should be dedicated to Jupiter Hellenius.
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As Daniel prophesied, in his estate he shall honor the god of forces, and a god whom his fathers knew not shall he honor with gold and silver and with precious stones and pleasant things.
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Thus he shall do in the most strongholds with a strange god, whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory.
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Again, quoting Daniel 11 38 -39. In view of this, we invite the listener to revisit
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Daniel 11 36 -39, and notice how it depicts the antagonist's shift from one pantheon to another.
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He shall exalt himself and magnify himself above every god, in the Greek pantheon that is, and shall speak marvelous things against the god of gods, which would be
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Zeus. Neither shall he regard the god of his fathers, which is Apollo, nor the desire of women, which is
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Dionysius, nor regard any god that is in the Greek pantheon, for he shall magnify himself above all.
01:12:18
But in his estate shall he honor the god of forces, which is the Roman Jupiter Capitulinus, and a god that is
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Jupiter, whom his fathers knew not, shall he honor with gold and silver. Which, as we mentioned, he did that in various temples, not just in Jerusalem and Samaria.
01:12:36
With gold and silver, and with precious stones and pleasant things. Thus shall he do in the most strongholds with a strange god, that is
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Jupiter, whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory, and he shall cause them to rule over many. So, the point we want to make here, and that gets all the way through the first half of Daniel 11 -39, and we're still talking about Antiochus IV and his rejection of the
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Greek pantheon in favor of a Roman god, Jupiter Capitulinus, the god of fortresses. So, let's wrap this up by addressing the last half of Daniel 11 -39.
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It says, he shall divide the land for gain. So, again, it's so difficult for eschatologists to resist the temptation to run to an eschatological frame and assume that Daniel has shifted his focus to some distant future, and Luther does this.
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He immediately turns to what I call the eschatological frame, and identifies papal Rome as the antagonist of Daniel 11 -39.
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For, he says, Antichrist must seize the treasures of the earth as it is prophesied. That's Martin Luther, to the
01:13:41
Christian nobility of the German nation. But, even this was fulfilled in Antiochus.
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It's not something that we necessarily need to find in some future Antichrist, because Antiochus still owed the tribute to Rome, and his designs on partitioning the land for gain are depicted for us in 1
01:13:58
Maccabees 1 -29 -51. It says, the king sent to the cities of Judah a chief collector of tribute, and he appointed inspectors over all the people.
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He basically divided the territories and had tax collectors over the different sections. So, Antiochus IV's successor,
01:14:14
Demetrius, actually reversed this policy as reported in 1 Maccabees 10 -29 -33.
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So, basically, Demetrius said, I release from this day forward, he's not going to collect taxes from the people of Judah anymore, is what he said.
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He said, let all officials cancel also the taxes on their cattle. So, this concludes the section of Daniel chapter 11 that addresses the
01:14:41
Seleucids during their Eastern period. For the entire 21 verses, from 11 -19 -39, the
01:14:49
Seleucids are in view, and by way of reminder, at no point does the narrator ever refer to them as king of the north.
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That's because they no longer occupy the northern territory, but they're still in view because they are persecutors of God's people.
01:15:05
So, what is our point? Our point is that we can show from the historical record that Daniel 11 -4 -45 is a continuous narrative of the
01:15:15
Greek period. Daniel 11 -4 -18 depicts the four -way division of Alexander's empire, when the
01:15:22
Seleucids were truly king of the north. And Daniel 11 -19 -39 depicts the rise of Antiochus IV, the worst persecutor of the
01:15:30
Jews during the Greek period, and also the one who caused sacrifices to end and erected the abomination of desolation of the temple.
01:15:40
And Daniel 11 -40 -45 depicts the period when the Roman Republic controlled Asia Minor north of the
01:15:45
Taurus Mountains, and the Pamphilian pirates to the south, all the way up until Julius Caesar crossed the
01:15:51
Rubicon, and General Pompey died, leading up to the rise of the Roman Empire, which we'd call the
01:15:56
Roman Period, which is what happens next. And the reason we wanted to do this is because so much of what
01:16:03
Antiochus IV did has been assumed by so many eschatologists to refer to the activities of the Antichrist, and Luther was just one example of that.
01:16:11
And that assumption is because historians and eschatologists could not find the historical evidence that Daniel's prophecies of chapter 11 had been completely fulfilled in ancient history.
01:16:22
And yet, it can actually be shown from the historical record that they have been fulfilled, and thus we do not need to look for some future
01:16:29
Antichrist to do what is depicted in Daniel 11, because Daniel 11 does not prophesy the activities of Antichrist at all.
01:16:36
But as long as we look for Antichrist to fulfill parts of Daniel 11, the actual Antichrist of prophecy, which is the
01:16:43
Roman Catholic religion, exists right under our noses without being noticed. Once we understand that Antichrist was not prophesied to do the things in Daniel 11, we are better equipped to identify
01:16:54
Antichrist for who he is. That said, we want to continue this discussion in our next episode and analyze
01:17:02
Daniel chapter 8, because that chapter also deals with the abomination of desolation. And again, it is depicted in the
01:17:09
Greek Period. We need to show definitively that the abomination of desolation was erected by Antiochus IV under the period of Greek rule.
01:17:19
Once we've shown that, we can turn to Matthew 24 and Mark 13 to show what
01:17:24
Jesus was talking about when he said that the abomination would return. For now, we'll conclude with a simple statement that from the
01:17:32
Scriptures and the historical record, we can identify the abomination of desolation in Scripture as the statue of Jupiter, identified for us by Daniel.
01:17:42
And within 10 years of Jesus' death and resurrection, the statue of Jupiter was back on holy ground.
01:17:49
And we have missed it because we had not read Daniel closely enough. After all, when Jesus spoke of the abomination of desolation, he implored us to read and understand
01:17:58
Daniel. He said, Whoso readeth, let him understand. That's Matthew 24, 15.
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And let him that readeth understand. That's Mark 13, 14. What he was conveying was the
01:18:09
Danielic imperative. Daniel contains the eschatological timeline necessary to understand what
01:18:15
Jesus was saying, which is why we're spending so much time in Daniel. So we'll continue the series next week with an analysis of Daniel chapter 8.
01:18:24
I promise we're going to get to Matthew 24 and Mark 13 to discuss that.
01:18:32
Specifically, Jesus' references to the abomination of desolation. But what we wanted to do is show from the scriptures that the abomination of desolation occurred identifiably under the
01:18:44
Greek period. And we discover this in a close reading of Daniel chapters 8, 9, and 11, and 12.
01:18:53
And we'll come back to all those chapters later, but we will not understand what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 24 and Mark 13 unless we attend to what was written and discover the identity of that abomination of desolation.
01:19:09
Once we do, we'll have a better understanding of what was happening in Matthew 24 and Mark 13.
01:19:15
We'll pick this up next time. I know this is an awful lot of information and I know that people waited for almost two months for us to get back to this, but we're glad to do it, glad to be picking back up, and we're going to try to keep this to one episode on AskItalian to you a week for as long as we can keep people listening.