SRR #60 | Pompey and the Pamphylian Pirates (Eschatology And The Danielic Imperative Part 5)

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

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I do a podcast. I'm not interested in your podcast. Folks, these are wolves.
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Truth be told, I oftentimes lay awake at night trying to figure out how I can get rid of wolves in the church.
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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 fashion is itself fashion.
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It's not hate. It's history. It's not fashion. 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, as opposed to blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness.
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It is on. We're taking the gloves off. It's time to battle. At the time of the end, the king of the south shall attack him.
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But the king of the north shall rush upon him like a whirlwind with chariots and horsemen and many ships.
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And he shall come into countries and shall overflow and pass through. He shall come into the glorious land and tens of thousands shall fall.
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But these shall be delivered out of his hand, Edom and Moab and the main part of the
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Ammonites. He shall stretch out his hand against the countries and the land of Egypt shall not escape.
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He shall become a ruler of treasuries and of gold and of silver and all the precious things of Egypt.
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And the Libyans and the Kushites shall follow in his train. But news from the east and of the north shall alarm him.
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And he shall go out with great fury to destroy and devote many to destruction.
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And he shall pitch his palatial tents between the sea and the glorious holy mountain.
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Yet he shall come to his end with none to help him. Daniel chapter 11 verses 40 through 45.
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This podcast is a member of the Bible Thumping Wingnut Network. All right, welcome everybody to another podcast episode with Semper Reformanda Radio.
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This is Semper Reformanda Radio and my name is Tim Shaughnessy. Today we're going to be continuing with our series on the book of Daniel.
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We're going to be looking at Daniel chapter 11 and I believe in the intro I read verses 40 through 45.
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So bust out your Bibles, meditate on that because Timothy Kaufman is about to bring it.
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He's been bringing it every week for the last five weeks. I believe that this is the fifth installment.
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So Tim, I'm just going to give you the floor. I've got nothing to add. This is such a great series.
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I hope that people are taking their time and going through this stuff and really enjoying it as much as I am.
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But I believe that this is the fifth episode. So Tim, just take it away.
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That's right, Tim. We are back for episode five of our series on eschatology called
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Eschatology and the Danielic Imperative. When we talk about the Danielic Imperative, we're talking about the need, the necessity, the precondition of an established
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Danielic timeline as the key to understanding eschatology.
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Because Jesus and John, who give us most of our New Testament eschatology, rely very heavily on an understanding of Daniel's timeline as it is depicted in the book of Daniel.
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So we're spending our time in this series establishing a Danielic timeline.
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And as we talked about last week, this is the episode when we're going to talk about the fulfillment of Daniel 11 verses 40 to 45.
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Probably the most mysterious verses in the
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Old Testament, especially in the field of eschatology. Because those verses have baffled historians and eschatologists for generations, for millennia
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I would say. And we've been basically laying the foundation in the last four episodes to understand a correct framework for viewing
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Daniel chapter 11 through an Alexandrian frame of reference. And then we're going to take that framework and use it to understand
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Daniel 11 verses 40 to 45. I do want people to know that we are indeed deliberately skipping past Daniel 11, 19 to 39.
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And we will return to those, we promise. There are some very important passages, important verses in that section, and we want to address them.
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But there is a reason for skipping forward to 11, 40 to 45. And the reason is we need to first establish that Daniel 11, 40 to 45 happened in history as prophesied by Daniel.
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And that will provide the bookends we need in order to understand the whole chapter. Because we know where the chapter starts.
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It starts with the description of the transition from the Medes to the Persians to the Greek Empire. And it ends in the last few years of the
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Greek period, just before the rise of Rome as an empire. If we can establish those two time frames at the beginning and the end of the chapter, we basically have sandwiched
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Daniel 11, 19 to 39 between those two. And that will help us understand when those events happened as well.
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And we'll talk more at the end of the episode about why it's so important to establish those prophecies from 11, 19 to 39 occurred during the
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Greek Empire. As the text of the chapter would suggest on a plain reading of it.
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So we want to talk about the significance of the
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Danielic prophecies regarding the Greek Empire. Especially in light of the discussion we had on the
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Danielic prophecies about the division of the Roman Empire. And as we've emphasized in previous episodes,
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Danielic eschatology is wrapped up in the division of both of these empires, as depicted in Daniel chapter 8, in which the
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Greek Empire is divided four ways. And in Daniel chapter 7, as we've discussed in several episodes, that the
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Roman Empire is divided 13 ways. So as we mentioned last week, actually in the last couple episodes, one of the most critical documents available to us from the
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Roman period is the Notitia Dignitatum that shows the Roman Empire being divided into 13 dioceses in the latter part of the 4th century.
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That document actually did not come to light to be published and analyzed until the middle of the 16th century.
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And that means the bulk of eschatology from the early church and from the
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Reformation era was conducted without information about the division of the Roman Empire.
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And likewise, although the division of the Greek Empire four ways was largely available to the early church and the reformers, the boundary between the
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North and South in the four -way division was obscure and unknown with certainty until only about 50 years ago, with the discovery of epigraphic evidence showing that the
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Southern Kingdom, that is the Ptolemaic Dynasty, possessed the whole southern coast of Asia Minor when
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Alexander's territories were divided. The importance of that, as we discussed last week, is that we can't really understand the prophecies about the
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Kingdom of the North invading the territory of the South, or the Kingdom of the South invading the territory of the
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North, unless we understand their boundaries. And for generations, and I would say for millennia, the boundaries between the
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North and South were assumed to be the Mediterranean Sea, when in fact the boundaries were the
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Taurus Mountains, because the Southern Kingdom possessed the entire southern coastline of Asia Minor, and the
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Northern Kingdom possessed Asia Minor north of the Taurus Mountains. So, what makes matters worse, as far as understanding the prophecies and trying to understand these very, very dark periods in the history of Western civilization, is the fact that the prophetic narrative of Daniel 11 appears to diverge from known history almost immediately.
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A prophecy of wars between the Kings of the North and the Kings of the South appears to have been fulfilled between the
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Kings of the East and the Kings of the South, which is why eschatologists for millennia have imposed a new frame of reference on Daniel 11 at verse 5, immediately after Daniel had already established an
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Alexandrian frame of reference in verse 4. Well, with the lack of historiographical information, with the
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Notitia Dignitatum being hidden in obscurity for 1200 years, with the information about the possessions of the
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Southern Kingdom only coming to light within the last 50 years, and with the frame of reference that has been imposed from outside the text, even after Daniel had already established an
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Alexandrian frame of reference in verse 4, has really caused a lot of confusion. It's no wonder that Daniel's actual fulfillment has escaped us for so long.
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We have brought many invalid and incorrect assumptions to the text. In some ways, we've hidden the plain meaning of the text from ourselves.
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And I want to make sure that our listeners know, by we, I really mean we, because I've been part of the problem.
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I was just as eager to find a fulfillment between the Syrians and the Egyptians, as if Syria was the
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Northern Kingdom and Egypt was the Southern Kingdom, or to find some fulfillment by a future Antichrist figure for the last six verses of the chapter, just as anybody else was.
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But what we have attempted to do in the last few episodes is establish several important ground rules for Daniel 11 to get our orientation back to a
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Danielic frame of reference. First, Daniel established an Alexandrian frame of reference at verse 4 in chapter 11, and from that point forward does not appear to waver from it.
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That's our first ground rule. The second ground rule is that the titles King of the North and King of the South are geographic in nature, rather than dynastic.
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So the title attaches not to a single dynasty, but to whomever happens to be ruling the territory at the time.
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That's why, as we discussed, the Seleucids were called Kings of the
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North in Daniel 11, as long as they possessed the Northern territory through Daniel 11 .18,
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and after that point they're no longer called Kings of the North. The third ground rule is that the boundary between North and South in Daniel 11 is not the
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Mediterranean Sea, but the Taurus Mountains that stretch all along the southern coast of Asia Minor. And we demonstrated this last week.
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In episode 4 we showed that the Seleucids from Syria invaded Asia Minor in 281
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BC, conquering Lysimachus, and made Asia Minor their home. Daniel's narrative about the
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North -South conflict in chapter 11 does not begin until after the Seleucids are well established in the
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North in Asia Minor within the Taurus Mountains. And the Seleucids remained in Asia Minor until the
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Romans kicked them out. Thus, the Seleucids are only called King of the North in Daniel 11, so long as they occupied
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Asia Minor north of the Taurus Mountains. That is from 281 to 188 BC. By way of example, we showed that in Daniel 11 verses 7 to 9, which has traditionally been interpreted to refer to Ptolemy's invasion of Syria and Babylon, is actually fulfilled by Ptolemy's invasion of both
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Asia Minor and Syria, as recorded in the Adullas inscription. Next, the Seleucids are no longer called
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King of the North in Daniel chapter 11 after their eviction by the Romans, as depicted in Daniel 11 .18.
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What happened was, in 190 BC, the Romans defeated the Seleucids in the Battle of Magnesia. Two years later, at the
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Treaty of Apamea, terms of surrender were agreed to, and the Seleucids were forever kicked out of Asia Minor north of the
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Taurus Mountains. From Daniel 11 .19 on, the Seleucids are never called King of the
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North again, and the next time King of the North appears, it doesn't appear to be related to the Seleucids at all. This shows us that the title
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King of the North does not attach to a dynasty, but to a geography, and thus that Daniel's frame of reference had not changed at all.
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It was really a conflict between the King of the North and King of the South, just as we would have imagined in a plain reading of the text.
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There was no change in the frame of reference to make it a Judean frame of reference with Syria to the north and Egypt to the south.
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The fact is, the Seleucids had taken possession of the Northern Kingdom, and it's only after they possess the
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Northern Kingdom that Daniel calls them King of the North, and then as soon as they are kicked out of Asia Minor to the north of the
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Taurus Mountains, they're simply no longer called Kings of the North. The remaining passages from 11 .19
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-39 do indeed deal with the Seleucids, it's just that Daniel simply stops calling them Kings of the
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North. Next, we also show that one of the most difficult puzzles of post -Alexandrian
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Hellenism has only recently come to light in the last 50 years, and that puzzle is the possession of the southern coast of Asia Minor by the
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Ptolemies as part of the Southern Kingdom at the division of the Empire. They possessed the southern coast of Asia Minor at the time
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Alexander's kingdom was divided four ways, making the southern coast of Asia Minor part of the
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Southern Kingdom, and thus the Taurus Mountains the boundary between north and south. In Daniel 11 .15,
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the King of the North comes against the King of the South to cast up a mount and takes the most fenced cities, and as we see,
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Antiochus came and took all the Ptolemaic fortresses along the southern coast of Asia Minor as a fulfillment of that verse.
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That's proof from scriptures that indeed the southern coast of Asia Minor was considered part of the Southern Kingdom, not part of the
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Northern Kingdom. So, by these means, we have scriptural confirmation that the King of the
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North does indeed attach not to a dynasty, but to a geography, and also that the King of the South's geography includes the southern coast of Asia Minor, and thus the boundary between north and south in Daniel 11 is not the
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Mediterranean Sea, as has been traditionally assumed, but rather the Taurus Mountains that run along the southern coast of Asia Minor, leaving a thin stretch of land from the
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Aegean Sea to Syria in the hands of the Ptolemies. As we will demonstrate, that will become one of the most important crescents of land in the history of eschatology, and we're going to discuss that today.
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The reason this matters to us is that in Daniel 11, verses 40 to 45, the
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King of the North comes against the King of the South in a remarkably detailed battle, and according to the traditional interpretation of Daniel 11, no such battle has ever occurred in history.
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Traditionally, we've introduced what we've called the eschatological frame of reference to the chapter because we can't find any evidence that this war actually happened, so we assume that Daniel must have started talking at some point about a future
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Antichrist, rather than events that occurred under a Greek period of Daniel's visions. And yet, the chapter very much appears in a plain reading to have been written in the
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Greek framework, in the Greek time frame. That alleged invasion of Egypt by Antiochus or the
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Seleucids never actually occurred. In fact, by the time we get to Daniel 11 .39, the Seleucids are simply out of money and are in no position to mount such an invasion.
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And it's a well -capitalized invasion with many, many ships and soldiers and chariots.
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There was no way that the Seleucids could have amounted to such an invasion, and there's no way we would have missed in history an invasion by the
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Seleucids of such an invasion into Egypt. Because we can't find evidence for that invasion,
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Christian eschatologists are still waiting for the prophecy to be fulfilled, thinking that when it is fulfilled, we will have found the
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Antichrist of prophecy. But as it turns out, Daniel was not foreseeing an Antichrist figure in this prophecy.
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It's certainly a puzzle for the ages, and that's the puzzle we're going to solve today. So just to give a taste,
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I want our listeners to understand just how difficult this has been for eschatologists to understand.
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And as you read through the commentaries, we realize that there is a hermeneutical despair that comes across in the commentaries as they discuss these last six verses of Daniel chapter 11.
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And I want to start where we did last week with Calvin. And again, it's not because I don't like Calvin.
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I actually do like him. But I do want us to listen to the hermeneutical despair that he exudes when he's talking about the last six verses of Daniel chapter 11.
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Earlier in the chapter, he talked about how significant it was that the angel is revealing this information to Daniel, speaking about future events as if they were from yesterday's newspaper.
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And then he gets to Daniel chapter 11, verse 40, and he is simply resigned to the obscurity of the passage and throws his hands up, basically saying, this is not something we were meant to understand.
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And this is from Calvin's commentary on Daniel at 1140. Now, that's a remarkable statement from Calvin because he's basically saying, it's just not possible for us to correlate
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Daniel's prophecies with the historical record. And he's not the only one. Ellicott's commentary for English readers says,
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Benson's commentary. So that's what
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I call the introducing the eschatological frame of reference, saying that we can't find evidence for this in history because we can't find evidence that the
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Syrians invaded Egypt, and therefore Daniel must have shifted his focus to a future Antichrist. Matthew Henry's concise commentary makes the same assessment.
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He says, The Cambridge Bible for schools and colleges says,
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The pulpit commentary says, This suggests war begun by the king of Egypt against Syria.
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It is difficult to see how this could take place after the fourth expedition of Antiochus into Egypt. Edward J.
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Young's commentary on Daniel says, Now, I want to pause here with E.
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J. Young's commentary because I actually agree with him about his observation regarding Antiochus.
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It's very difficult to try to correlate the passage to Antiochus' death. I agree with him. Part of the problem that expositors have faced here is that they introduced a
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Judean frame of reference at verse 5 and assumed that north must refer to Syria and south must refer to Egypt, and therefore they're looking for some sort of conflict between the king of Egypt and the king of Syria to fulfill these last six verses.
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But Young says something else in addition to this observation in Antiochus. After saying how hard it is to correlate the events of the last six verses of Daniel 11 to Antiochus IV, he then says that we don't really need to apply the actual text to actual events because it just means generally some sort of battle.
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Here's what the verse says in Daniel 11 40. It says, Now, that sounds like an awful lot of military equipment, including a lot of ships.
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We are talking about a major military engagement here. But unable to find a historical fulfillment on the passage,
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E .J. Young simply minimizes the explicit statements of the passage and ignores what Daniel plainly states about many ships.
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On verse 11 40, this is Young's commentary. His mighty forces are represented by the chariots, horsemen, and ships.
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The description is probably intended merely to stress the great power of the king. Since it is said that he comes into the lands and overflows and passes over, it seems clear that the reference is to a land battle.
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Hence, it is not necessary to press too literally the words chariots, horsemen, and ships.
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Well, let me just say that this is the current state of hermeneutics on Daniel 11 verses 40 to 45, which describes what is simply one of the greatest military engagements in the history of the world.
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Nobody can seem to find it. And we've been making all sorts of assumptions to aid us in our quest for it and to understand the text.
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And by all accounts, this military engagement was supposed to happen at the end of the period of Greek rule, according to Daniel's timeline, but it's completely missing from the historical record.
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Where did it go? Where is that gigantic military engagement? Well, as it turns out, it has been right under our noses the whole time.
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And the way to find it is simply to adopt Daniel's frame of reference. By reorienting our compass to conform to Daniel's Alexandrian frame of reference, where north refers to Asia Minor within the
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Taurus Mountains plus Thrace in Europe, and south refers to the Egyptian territories plus the southern coast of Asia Minor south of the
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Taurus Mountains, we can pull back the curtain and guess what happens? We find in the historical record exactly what we should have expected to find and what
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Daniel actually predicted. A battle royale between someone who possesses Asia Minor within the
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Taurus Mountains and someone who possesses the southern coast of Asia Minor, complete with chariots, horsemen, and ships.
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And it happened just before the Republic of Rome became an empire, which is what we would have expected, because Daniel explains the military engagement by saying, at the time of the end.
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There is no reason to interpret this as at the time of the end of the world, since Daniel has given us no reason to shift our view away from the period of the
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Greeks. This is simply the end of the period of the Greeks in Daniel's timeline. And so when he says at the time of the end, he's talking about the time of the end of the period of the
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Greeks, prior to the rise of Rome as an empire, as the fourth empire in succession, according to Daniel's vision.
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It is simply the last major military event to occur before the Iron Period begins and Rome shifts from a rising republic to a bona fide empire that will rule the known world.
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So, let's dive in. Where are we in Daniel? Last week we left off with the Seleucids being kicked out of Asia Minor by the
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Romans in Daniel 11 -18. According to the terms of surrender at the Treaty of Apamea, the
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Seleucids were to stay out of Asia Minor and Europe permanently and must pay a heavy war tribute to Rome.
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Additionally, Antiochus' younger son, Antiochus IV, is to be held hostage in Rome as a guarantee of compliance with the terms of surrender.
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So, Antiochus III is humiliated at Magnesia. He retreats to Apamea in 188
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BC and negotiates terms of surrender. Rome, as a republic, imposes a heavy war tribute on him, evicts him from Asia Minor, and takes his younger son,
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Antiochus IV, hostage in Rome as a guarantee that Antiochus will stay out of Asia Minor and will keep on making his payments.
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So, Daniel 11 -19 says, Then he shall turn his face toward the fort of his own land, but he shall stumble and fall and not be found.
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The outcome of this passage was that Antiochus III, facing such a heavy war tribute, had to raise taxes and rob temples and went to the far reaches of his eastern empire to raid temples and he died there.
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Unable to raise taxes by robbing other temples, they turned their attention toward Jerusalem, which is what is recorded in the next verse,
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Daniel 11 -20. 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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This actually refers to Heliodorus, who was sent by the Seleucids to rob the temple of Jerusalem.
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And that gets us to Daniel 11 -21 -39, which I'm going to just say here by way of bookmarking it, is that it refers to the exploits of Antiochus IV, who then came to rule over the
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Seleucid Empire. He was restored to his throne after having been held hostage in Rome, so he came and took his position as the rightful descendant of the
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Seleucids. And in our discussion on Daniel 11, we'll return to speak a great deal about Antiochus IV, but first we want to establish what we will figuratively call the bookends of the chapter.
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That is, the beginning is the transition from the Medo -Persian Empire to the Greeks, and the division of the
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Greek Empire, and the end of the chapter is the last major military engagement under what we could call the period of Greek rule, before Rome rises as a world empire.
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So, for now, let's pick up with Daniel 11 -40. That's the verse that Tim Shaughnessy read for us at the beginning of the podcast.
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It is the first mention of the king of the north since Daniel 11 -15, when Antiochus III had to avenge the king of the south for his invasion of Asia Minor.
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And in his attack, he takes the fenced cities along the southern coast of Asia Minor from the Ptolemies. For the scriptures say, the arms of the south shall not withstand.
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That's back when the Seleucids were in control of Asia Minor within the Taurus Mountains, and therefore were still king of the north.
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But the Seleucids have since been forbidden to cross over the Taurus Mountains of Asia Minor, according to the Treaty of Apamea, and therefore can no longer be considered king of the north.
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There must be a new king of the north now, and frankly, an awful lot has happened since Antiochus IV died.
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Remember, Daniel 11 -4 has prophesied that Alexander's kingdom would go not to his posterity, nor according to his dominion which he ruled, for his kingdom shall be plucked up even for others besides those.
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And what we're going to find is that that is exactly what happened. After his kingdom was divided four ways, each of those respective kingdoms then was eventually plucked up by others.
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This is the consistent character of Alexander's broken kingdom, that it kept on being plucked up for others and by others.
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In the west, in Macedonia, the line of kings from Antigonus' son
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Demetrius continued to reign until the Romans came in the middle of the second century and took over.
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In the north, in Asia Minor and Thrace, after the Romans defeated Antiochus in 190
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BC and then kicked him out of Asia Minor permanently at the Treaty of Apamea in 188
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BC, the Romans actually did something unusual. Their only interest in Asia Minor was to hold off the menace of Antiochus III.
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And so they destroyed his army, they got him out of Asia Minor, they imposed a heavy war tribute and said he could never come back, and then they just walked away.
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Initially they didn't leave anybody in charge of Asia Minor, but eventually the various kings who did live within the
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Taurus Mountains went on a pilgrimage to Rome and they went to the Senate to ask for them to make some sort of decision about who should be in charge, and eventually the kingdom was given to Eumenes of Pergamum.
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The Senate did not take Asia Minor for Rome, they simply left it in the hands of Eumenes of Pergamum, who had fought with them against Antiochus.
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This is from Strabo's Geography, Book 13. It says, Eumenes fought on the side of the
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Romans against Antiochus III and against Perseus, and he received from the Romans all the country this side of the
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Taurus that had been subject to Antiochus. So, for that time, Eumenes was king of the north.
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Eumenes reigned there for many years and then left his empire to his young son, under the guardianship of his brother,
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Attalus Philadelphus. Philadelphus administered the empire and subjugated Thrace. That's from Justin, the
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Epitome of Pompeius Trogus, Book 36. When Philadelphus died, he left the kingdom to Philometer, who then died in 133
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BC, and having no sons, he left the Romans as his heirs. That's from Strabo's Geography, Book 13.
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So, basically what has happened is that although Eumenes inherited the kingdom and passed it to his sons, eventually his last son had no actual heirs, and so he bequeathed the northern territory to the
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Roman Republic. Rome's original plan for Asia Minor was for it to serve simply as a buffer against the hostile nations to the east, denying them direct access to Europe.
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The Senate had no original designs on taking the territory. Nevertheless, at the death of Attalus Philometer, the territory was ceded to Rome, and it was at that time that the
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Romans proclaimed the entire country a province of Asia. From an Alexandrian frame of reference, that made the
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Roman Republic the king of the north. Well, that leaves the Roman Republic in charge of the territory in Asia Minor, and that territory brought with it a whole host of problems.
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Instead of having a buffer kingdom fighting its proxy wars to the east to keep the Roman territory safe,
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Rome would have to actually engage its enemies directly. This new reality was felt most deeply when
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Mithridates invaded Asia, recruiting the native population and issued orders to murder
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Roman and Italian citizens in their midst. That slaughter came to be known as the
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Asiatic Vespers. In his History of Rome, Appian summarizes in bloody detail the atrocities committed by the
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Asiatics against the citizens of Rome. Memnon, in his History of Heraclea, places the death toll at 80 ,000.
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Plutarch places it at 150 ,000 in his Life of Sulla. Either way, it was a huge price to pay for the new territory, and it led to 25 years of war with Mithridates in what history has come to call the
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Mithridatic Wars. This is the price Rome paid for serving as its own buffer against the foreign kingdoms in Asia Minor.
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The important thing is, the Republic of Rome is now the Northern Kingdom. Now, what happened in the east?
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After several years of internal strife and squabbling in the Syrian dynasty ruled by the Seleucid line, the
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Assyrians eventually gave up on the Seleucids and chose Tigranes, king of Armenia, as their new ruler and gave him the crown of Syria.
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That was in 83 BC, and that made Tigranes of Armenia the king of the east. Remember, the eastern kingdom in an
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Alexandrian framework is Syria and beyond. In the south, it was also very interesting.
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They also were troubled by internal squabbles. They were on their 11th
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Ptolemy. They named all of their kings Ptolemy, so this is now Ptolemy XI. Their kingdom was basically on the verge of implosion.
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They were torn apart by internal strife and mismanagement. It had, in essence, become a Roman protectorate since the 150s
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BC, when Ptolemy VIII bequeathed the kingdom which belongs to me to the Romans. That's actually from Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum.
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It's number 9 .7. That is actually an actual historical document in which the kingdom of the south bequeathed its kingdom to the
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Romans. So here we have, throughout the Greek Empire, slowly but surely, the kingdoms that initially had been taken by the successors to Alexander, the
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Diadochi, were named and claimed by Lysimachus to the north, the
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Ptolemies to the south, the Seleucids to the east, and Demetrius and his offspring to the west. And eventually, just like Daniel had prophesied, those kingdoms would be plucked up by others as well.
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Eventually, the Romans plucked up Macedonia to the west. They plucked up Asia Minor and Thrace to the north because that whole territory was bequeathed to them by the descendants of Eumenes of Pergamum.
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They didn't have the kingdom of the east yet, of course, because it was the Syrians who decided that Tigranes, king of Armenia, should actually be king of Syria.
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And so he has plucked up the east. And in the south, as far as the territory of Egypt, the
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Ptolemies eventually bequeathed their kingdom to the Romans. So that leaves us in early 1st century
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BC, and nobody seems to be running the whole world. The remnants of Alexander's empire have been plucked up repeatedly, and nothing is really in the hands even of Alexander's successors anymore.
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Rome, for its part, is a rising republic, but is not by any stretch an empire or a kingdom.
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In fact, they despise the very concept of a king, having cast off their last king six centuries earlier.
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Mithridates and Pontus is troublesome on Rome's northern frontier in Asia Minor, but is hardly a global power.
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Tigranes is in control of Syria, but is making little trouble for Rome in the east at the time.
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Egypt is just a pathetic client state to the south, and they had long since bequeathed their kingdom to Rome.
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That's pretty much the state of affairs at the time. But there is one more military power in the
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Mediterranean basin that we have not talked about yet. And that major power was on the verge of destroying the
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Roman Republic before it could even rise to its predestined role of being the next world empire after Greece.
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That military power was about to bring the Roman Republic to its knees. All historians of Western civilization know about it, and the early church and reformers were all aware of it, but they simply did not realize how powerful that nation was and what a significant role it would play by almost wiping out the
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Roman Republic before it could even become an empire. It was a seafaring empire with more than 1 ,000 ships and 400 ports of call throughout the
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Mediterranean basin, and they were rich beyond the wildest imagination of any empire, and certainly they were richer than Rome at the time.
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Their home port, the capital of their kingdom, was a little promontory in the Bay of Pamphylia called
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Choracesium, located on the southern coast of Asia Minor. So we're going to get into the history of this seafaring nation, which was actually a pirate nation, and it is a remarkable history to hear.
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We're going to start with the Mithridatic Wars, and part of Mithridates' naval strategy in the first war against Rome was to send out pirates to disrupt any
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Roman counterattack by sea. The problem with having pirates as your employees is that they're pirates.
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Plunder is their creed, and pillage is their commerce, and terror is their primary export. After his defeat in the first Mithridatic War, Mithridates made peace and retired and went back to his homeland, but his pirate navy went rogue, and they were enamored by the prospects of wildly profitable autonomous operations throughout the
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Mediterranean Sea, and they grew into a formidable seafaring empire. They started with nothing but a few small ships, but because they did their job so well as pirates, the result was enormous wealth, and with that wealth, the pirates of the
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Mediterranean were able to capitalize a dramatic expansion. Capital investment is followed by infrastructure, which in turn leads to more growth, and soon they were sailing in squadrons under pirate chiefs, and before long, the pirates of the
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Mediterranean had become both a military and an economic power to be reckoned with. In a few short years, they had come to rule the sea from the
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Straits of Gibraltar all the way back to Syria. In their own eyes, and in the eyes of the world, they had graduated from mere robbers, and had become a full -fledged kingdom.
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This is quoting from Appian's History of Rome, the Mithridatic Wars, chapter 92.
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In the beginning, they prowled around with a few small boats, worrying the inhabitants like robbers. As the war lengthened, they became more numerous and navigated larger ships.
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Relishing their large gains, they did not desist when Mithridates was defeated, made peace, and retired. Having lost both livelihood and country by reason of the
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Mithridatic War and fallen into extreme destitution, they harvested the sea instead of the land. At first, with a few small ships, and then with two bank and three bank ships, sailing in squadrons under pirate chiefs who were like generals of an army.
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They fell upon unfortified towns. They undermined or battered down the walls of others and captured them by regular siege and plundered them.
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They carried off the wealthier citizens to their haven of refuge and held them for ransom. They scorned the name of robbers and called their takings the prize of warfare.
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They had artisans chained to their task and were continually bringing in materials of timber, brass, and iron.
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And that is quite a kingdom. And they're basically running the entire
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Mediterranean Sea and they're holding all the other kingdoms at bay and in fact striking terror into their hearts.
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According to Plutarch's Life of Pompey, they ended up having more than a thousand ships and four hundred ports of call in the
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Mediterranean Sea. In a very short time, says Appian in his History of Rome, he says, in a very short time they increased in number to tens of thousands.
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They dominated now not only the eastern waters but the whole Mediterranean from the pillars of Hercules all the way to Syria.
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Those pillars of Hercules, by the way, are the Straits of Gibraltar. Even some Jews from Israel had joined in the piracy, according to Josephus in his
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Antiquities of the Jews, Book 14. So, with a thousand ships and four hundred ports of call, they were the dominant power of the sea.
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And as anyone with eyes could plainly see, they were rich beyond imagination. Their fleets were not merely furnished for their peculiar work, with sturdy crews, skillful pilots, and light and speedy ships.
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More annoying than the fear which they inspired was the odious extravagance of their equipment, with their gilded sails and purple awnings and silvered oars, as if they rioted in their iniquity and plumed themselves upon it.
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The ships of the pirates numbered more than a thousand, and the cities captured by them four hundred. That's Plutarch from his
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Life of Pompey, Chapter 24. So, basking in their remarkable fortunes, there was really only one decision left for them to make.
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A seafaring empire cannot long endure without a capital city, a home port, and a safe harbor where ships could be built and repaired.
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They needed a central location from which their operations could be administered and to which all their accumulated wealth could be delivered.
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It was not a hard decision to make. Ideally situated with a wide bay providing easy access to the sea, with the
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Taurus mountains themselves serving as their rear guard, and a tiny but fertile plain that could sustain their ground operations, the pirates chose to make their home at the fortress of Choricesium, in what
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Appian calls the Crags in Cilicia. This is from his History of Rome. Being elated by their gains and determined not to change their mode of life yet, they likened themselves to kings, tyrants, and great armies, and thought that if they should all come together in the same place, they would be invincible.
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They built ships and made all kinds of arms. Their chief seat was at a place called the Crags in Cilicia, which they had chosen as their common anchorage and encampment.
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This, as Appian describes it in his History of Rome, is the same Pamphilian stronghold of Choricesium that was in the hands of the
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Ptolemies when the successors of Alexander had finally been reduced to four. It is the same fortress that Ptolemy's troops, less than a century before, had occupied when
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Antiochus III came along and besieged them. At the division of Alexander's empire, Asia Minor, north of the
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Taurus, had gone to Lysimachus, Sirius, east of the Taurus, had gone to the Seleucids, and Pamphylia, south of the
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Taurus, had gone to Ptolemy. It is from Choricesium, located at the boundary between Pamphylia and Cilicia, that the pirates of Pamphylia waged a war against the fortified and unfortified cities throughout the
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Mediterranean. That little crescent of land on the southern coast of Asia Minor is simply one of the most important pieces of eschatological real estate there is in the
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Bible. This is the encampment of the King of the South in the last six verses of Daniel chapter 11.
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With Egypt essentially bequeathed to Rome, the pirate nation of Pamphylia was the last independent autocracy left in the region that could legitimately be called the
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King of the South. And that sovereign power was currently terrorizing the high seas from its home base in the former
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Ptolemaic stronghold of Choricesium. The pirate nation of Pamphylia had become the
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King of the South. This, of course, set Rome and the pirates on trajectories that would converge in an apocalyptic battle for control of the
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Mediterranean. Rome needed Egypt's precious wheat for sustenance, and the pirates needed
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Egypt's ships for their burgeoning navy. To discover who had the upper hand, we need look no further than the gilded sails of purple awnings and the silver oars of the pirates, who between raids were enjoying drinking bouts along every coast, according to Plutarch, in his
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Life of Pompey. The pirates, of course, feasted on their spoils while Italy was starving, threatened with famine by pirates on the sea.
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And the city of Rome felt this evil most keenly, her subjects being distressed and herself suffering grievously from hunger.
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Someone was winning this war, and it wasn't Rome. These pirates were invading the entire
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Mediterranean Sea with their ships, capturing all of the grain shipments from Egypt, and they were feasting while Rome was starving.
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The Roman navy was unable to muster a defense and was helpless against the pirates. Wheat production failed in Egypt as the ground lay fallow because the harvest could not make it to market and there was no need to harvest what could not be sold, no need to plant what could not be harvested.
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The pirates maintained their stranglehold on the shipping lanes and their fleets, taunting Rome even before the mouth of the
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Tiber. According to Cicero, in his speech on the command of Pompey, these pirates were already at the entrance to the
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Tiber, just outside the city of Rome, and they were taunting the Romans, and they were winning.
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In fact, in his History of Rome, Appian says, they vanquished some of the Roman praetors in naval engagements, and among others, the praetors of Sicily on the
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Sicilian coast itself. No sea could be navigated in safety and land remained untilled for want of commercial intercourse.
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Plutarch, in his Life of Pompey, says, Essentially, the
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Roman Republic was being assaulted in an unconventional war that caused perplexity and fear on all sides.
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Perhaps the situation could have continued except that the pirates actually made landfall on the
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Italian peninsula, kidnapping Italian women and Roman government officials, and even assaulting a suburb of the city of Rome itself.
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And that was the last straw. Rome had to respond, and they had had enough.
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So, unable to secure their wheat from Egypt, and now not even safe on the Italian mainland itself, it was time to strike back.
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But how does a conventional army fight back against a menace from the sea? How does a conventional navy conquer a nation of brigands who had castles and towers and desert islands and retreats everywhere, according to Appian?
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When Appian described the challenge before them, he said, So the question is, what do you do when you have an enemy who masters the sea, but also has 400 ports of call and can master the land as well?
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Well, there's only one thing to do, and that was to send in the marines. The Roman response to the invasion of their homeland was one of the most remarkable feats of logistics in the history of warfare, ancient or modern.
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To face an enemy that was nimble under sail and equally able to flee inland to its innumerable hiding places throughout the
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Mediterranean would require a fleet especially equipped to prosecute battles both on land and on sea.
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A law was passed called the Lex Gabinia, giving General Pompey authority over all the treasury of the empire and over all the sea from Gibraltar to Palestine, and all the land and territories as far as 75 kilometers inland from every coast in every direction, even over the greatest nations and most powerful kings who occupied those territories.
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It had been centuries since Rome had had a king, but what they gave to Pompey was the greatest power that any general in Roman history had ever been given, and there was a lot of controversy in this law because it basically made
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Pompey the most powerful man in the known world. This is what
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Plutarch said in his Life of Pompey. For the law gave him dominion over the sea, this side of the pillars of Hercules, over all the mainland to the distance of 400 furlongs which is 75 kilometers from the sea.
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These limits included almost all places in the Roman world and the greatest nations and most powerful kings were comprised within them.
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Besides this, he was empowered to choose 15 legates from the Senate for the several principalities and to take from the public treasuries and the tax collectors as much money as he wished, and to have 200 ships with full power over the number and levying of soldiers and oarsmen.
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So basically, he was equipped with ships and soldiers and a navy. As Appian describes it, and we're about to read from Appian's History of Rome, such absolute authority was granted to Pompey as was never before granted to a single man in the history of the
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Republic. So desperate was Rome to have the grain of Egypt restored to her and so high was the price the
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Republic was willing to pay to be liberated from the pirate menace. This is how
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Appian describes it. They sent letters to all kings, rulers, peoples, and cities that they should aid
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Pompey in all ways. They gave him power to raise troops and to collect money from the provinces, and they furnished a large army from their own enrollment and all the ships they had, and money to the amount of 6 ,000
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Attic talents. So great and difficult did they consider the task of overcoming such great forces dispersed over such a wide area of sea hiding easily in so many nooks retreating quickly and darting out again unexpectedly.
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Never did any man before Pompey set forth with so great authority conferred upon him by the Romans. Presently he had an army of 120 ,000 foot and 4 ,000 horse and 270 ships.
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He had 25 assistants of senatorial rank whom they called lieutenant generals, among whom he divided the sea giving ships, cavalry, infantry to each and investing them with the insignia of predators in order that each one might have the absolute authority over the part entrusted to him while he,
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Pompey, like a king of kings, should course among them to see that they remain where they were stationed lest, while he was pursuing the pirates in one place, he should be drawn to something else before his work was finished and so that there might be forces to encounter them everywhere and to prevent them from forming junctions with each other.
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That's from Appian's History of Rome The Mithridatic Wars Chapters 93 -94
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What's so remarkable about this tremendous military engagement is that Pompey made short work of the pirates using that strategy that he devised.
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Setting sail in the spring, he wrapped up the war by the middle of the following summer. That's from Cicero on the command of Pompey, Chapter 12.
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Once he had cleared the remotest regions of the sea, Pompey led his entire armada to Coricesium to deliver the final blow in Pamphylia.
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The pirates had put all their treasures and families in the fortress at the foot of the mountains and awaited
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Pompey's arrival. At Coricesium they made their last stand. Plutarch, in his
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Life of Pompey, gives us the final report. But the most numerous and powerful had bestowed their families and treasures and useless folk in forts and strong citadels near the
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Taurus Mountains, while they themselves manned their ships and awaited Pompey's attack near the promontory of Coricesium.
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Here they were defeated in battle and then besieged. At last, however, they sent suppliant messages and surrendered themselves, together with the cities and islands of which they were in control.
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Pompey had completely routed them, according to Velius Patricullus in his
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Roman History, Book 2, Chapter 32. In his war for the control of the sea, there was not a stretch of coastline in the
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Mediterranean Sea that he had not touched. And after the final confrontation at Coricesium, there was left not one ship belonging to the pirates on this side of the
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Atlantic, that's from Cicero, on the command of Pompey, Chapter 12. Now, where that gets us to right now is that we have basically covered the first part of this battle.
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But what we should expect next is that we should expect Pompey, at this point, to be distracted by very unwelcome news.
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When we read Daniel 11, verse 44, it says, But tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him.
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Therefore he shall go forth with great fury to destroy and utterly to make away many. Well, based on our
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Alexandrian frame of reference, we should actually see some news that comes from Asia Minor and some from Syria.
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And Pompey should get this information, having concluded his battle against the king of the south, and be distracted into a follow -on war in which he destroys even more people.
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And sure enough, that is exactly what happened next. No sooner had Pompey wrapped up his operations in Pamphylia, on the southern coast of Asia Minor, than he received news that Roman territories in Asia Minor were about to be invaded by the twin threats of Tigranus in Armenia and Syria to the east and Mithridates of Pontus to the north.
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Mithridates had spent his days rebuilding his army and was already advanced into Cappadocia within the
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Taurus Mountains. We join Cicero now in mid -speech as he argues now in favor of a new law, the
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Lex Manila, granting Pompey the authority to respond to the new threats emerging both from north and from east.
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This is from Cicero on his command of Pompey. Chapter 2 An important war and one perilous to your revenues and to your allies is being waged against you by two most powerful kings,
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Mithridates and Tigranus. One of these, having been left to himself and the other having been attacked, thinks that an opportunity offers itself to him to occupy all
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Asia. The kind of war is such as ought above all others to excite and inflame your minds to a determination to persevere in it.
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It is a war in which the glory of the Roman people is at stake. The most certain and largest revenues of the
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Roman people are at stake. Mithridates is not content to hide himself in Pontus or in the recesses of Cappadocia but seeks to emerge from his hereditary kingdom and to range among your revenues in the broad light of Asia.
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That's Cicero on the command of Pompey expressing his great concern that Rome now faces a threat from Mithridates who is already in Asia Minor and Tigranus who is joining him in his invasion from the east.
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Mithridates was determined to force Rome to engage two enemies simultaneously and now, according to Cicero, two kings are threatening all
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Asia. Those two kings were Mithridates threatening from within the Taurus Mountains allied with Tigranus east of the
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Taurus Mountains occupying the former dominions of the Seleucid dynasty in Syria. This double threat had
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Rome on edge and in view of Pompey's recent victories against the pirates Cicero insisted that the
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Senate entrust everything to him alone. The law called the Lex Manila was passed immediately and Pompey was commissioned to eliminate the double threat.
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Pompey carried on a notable campaign against Mithridates the king was defeated and routed and after losing all his forces sought refuge in Armenia with his son -in -law
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Tigranus the most powerful king of his day. Pompey accordingly entered into Armenia and pursued both kings at once according to Belais Patakoulas Roman History Book 2.
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The result was a series of decisive victories for Rome and an end to the threat from the north and the east.
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The rest is recorded in the history of the Third Mithridatic War. Having now vanquished three enemies
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Pompey turned his attention to the king of the Arabians as far as the Red Sea. Pompey accordingly marched against him and his neighbors and overcoming them without effort left them in charge of a garrison.
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That's from Cassius Dio A History of Rome Book 37. In this way the Romans without fighting came into possession of Cilicia in both inland
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Syria and coal Syria Phoenicia, Palestine and all the other countries bearing the Syrian name from the
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Euphrates to Egypt and the Sea. That's from Appian History of Rome The Syrian Wars.
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But just when Pompey was about to march against the Nabataeans in the land formerly known as Edom and Moab two brothers
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Aristobulus and Hyrcanus were arguing over who should govern Judea. That's from Cassius Dio A History of Rome Book 37.
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They appealed to Pompey for arbitration Hyrcanus going so far as to accuse Aristobulus of involving
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Judea in the piracies that had been at sea. He instructed them to stand down and promised that he would settle all their affairs after he had first taken a view of the affairs of the
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Nabataeans. But Aristobulus ignored him and promptly marched on Judea. This of course incited
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Pompey to anger and taking with him that army that he was leading against the Nabataeans he turned back to Judea to engage
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Aristobulus arrested him and then proceeded to Jerusalem. That's from Josephus Antiquity of the
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Jews Book 14. Thus the Nabataeans escaped from Pompey's hand and with them all the lands of Edom and Moab.
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When Pompey arrived in Jerusalem the party of Aristobulus had to shut themselves within the temple walls and prepared for a siege.
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Hyrcanus' party assisted Pompey granting him access to the city in order to effect a siege and Pompey pitched his camp within the city wall on the north part of the temple where it was most practicable.
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That's from Josephus Antiquities Book 14. We'll turn now briefly to Julius Caesar's recollection of the
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Civil Wars Book 3 where he says that Pompey's custom was to have a royal palace of a tent and so if Julius Caesar's recollection is accurate
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Pompey in his final campaign under the authority granted to him under Lex Gabinia and Lex Manilia pitched his royal tent at the
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Temple Mount in Jerusalem a city that we are very quick to note abides between two seas according to Zechariah 14 .8
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In retribution for the Jewish resistance Pompey clipped off some of the territory that had been forcibly appropriated by the
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Judeans according to Strabo's Geography Book 16 a reference to his reorganization of what would become known as the
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Decapolis including mountainous Philadelphia formerly Rabba capital of Ammon Pompey left forthwith for Rome to celebrate his triumph leaving the choicest most fertile parts of the valleys of Ammon to the east completely untouched
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When Pompey returned to Rome he received a triumphal entry as no general of Rome had ever enjoyed before It was a remarkable conquest and he had vanquished the pirates at the sea who by then were the king of the south
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He had recovered Asia Minor from its invasion from Mithridates to the north and Tigranes to the east
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After that he turned his attention south and basically covered all of Judea except Edom Moab and the choicest parts of Ammon Remarkably a man of his stature and accomplishment should have lived a long life of ease and luxury but within a few years he was assassinated by a man who had once served under his command
59:43
Pompey who had held the most authority of any man in the history of the Roman Republic who had conquered the world and had mastered the seas and had triumphed over three continents and had led kings captive in his train was slain in a little boat by a trusted friend
01:00:01
Septimus who had served under him in the pirate war according to Julius Caesar Civil Wars Book 3
01:00:09
So let's now summarize these final years of Pompey in a single paragraph The Roman Republic had taken possession of Asia Minor and Thrace which had been the northern kingdom after the division of Alexander's Empire The pirate kingdom based in Pamphylia which had been part of the southern kingdom ruled the whole sea and almost brought the
01:00:29
Republic of Rome to her knees by terrorizing her citizens intercepting their precious grain shipments from Egypt and even making assaults on the
01:00:36
Italian mainland including a suburb of Rome herself In response the Roman Senate gave
01:00:41
Pompey power over all the treasury of the Republic equipped him with many ships equipped for battle both naval and land and granted authority to sail anywhere and march inland as far as 75 kilometers throughout the
01:00:55
Mediterranean even as far as Judea where some of the pirates had originated In a remarkably rapid campaign he cleared the pirate threat in just a few months and conquered not a few nations in the process
01:01:08
The pirates had made their final stand at the Pamphylian stronghold of Choricesium The precious grain shipments of Egypt were now back within his control
01:01:18
No sooner had Pompey conquered the pirates at Choricesium and restored grain shipments from Egypt than he received news that two kings to the north in Asia Minor within the
01:01:28
Taurus Mountains and to the east beyond the Taurus and Seleucus' former domains in Syria were threatening
01:01:34
Rome's interests He was entrusted again by the Senate to engage those two kings and conquered them just as readily as he had handled the pirates
01:01:43
Thence he conquered every territory from Syria to the Red Sea except Edom Moab and the Chorices parts of Amman In his final conquest before returning to Rome in triumph he even pitched his royal tent at the
01:01:55
Temple Mount between two seas when the Jews made their last stand against him in Jerusalem But alas such a great man who had conquered most of the world was assassinated without a fight
01:02:09
Now I've summarized him that way for the benefit of our listeners and anyone who is even passingly familiar with Daniel chapter 11 verses 40 to 45 will recognize that we have just recounted its fulfillment which took place between 67 and 48
01:02:23
BC Here is Daniel's prophecy as was read at the beginning of the podcast And at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind with chariots and with horsemen and with many ships and he shall enter into the countries and shall overflow and pass over he shall enter also into the glorious land and many countries shall be overthrown but these shall escape out of his hand even
01:02:50
Edom Moab and the chief of the children of Ammon he shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries and the land of Egypt shall not escape but he shall have power over the treasuries of gold and of silver and over all the precious things of Egypt and the
01:03:07
Libyans and the Ethiopians shall be at his steps but tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him therefore he shall go forth with great fury to destroy and utterly make away many and he shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas and the glorious holy mountain yet he shall come to his end and none shall help him
01:03:29
Now I do want to make one brief comment here and that is that attentive readers and history buffs will notice that Pompey never actually even ventured into Ethiopia and certainly never conquered it in the campaign against the pirates but we'll also clarify that Ethiopia here is just a contribution from the
01:03:46
Septuagint the original Hebrew text refers to the Kushites and the Kushites lived between Egypt and the
01:03:53
Philistine holdings on Israel's southern coasts so those Kushites would have actually been within Pompey's grasp because he was authorized to conquer everything or at least invade everything 75 miles inland around the
01:04:08
Mediterranean Sea So Pompey died but not before giving the
01:04:14
Roman Republic a foretaste of empire and unlimited power they did not yet have a world empire their first king had not yet come up but the first Caesar Julius Caesar would take the purple only four years later by take the purple
01:04:31
I mean he would take the robe and declare himself to be a dictator and the iron period of Daniel's visions the
01:04:38
Roman Empire would finally begin So we have walked through a pretty detailed summary of what happened leading up to Daniel 11 verse 40 and then we walk through a very literal blow by blow fulfillment of Daniel 11 verses 40 to 45 that occurred between 67 and 48
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BC in which someone who controlled the territory within the Taurus Mountains and Thrace in Europe had to do battle with someone who was based along the southern coast of Asia Minor in the
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Bay of Pamphylia the King of the South and what we see unfolding before us is actually the prophecy that Daniel had foreseen this was the last major military engagement of what could be construed as the
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Greek period because as we mentioned and as was read at the beginning of the chapter those kingdoms that went to the
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Diadochi the successors of Alexander would also be plucked up by others and by the time we get to the
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Daniel 11 verse 40 the northern territory has been plucked up by Rome and the southern territory has been plucked up by the
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Pirate Empire and that battle between Rome and the Pirate Empire is exactly what
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Daniel had foreseen including Pompey actually setting up the tents of his palace between the seas on the glorious Holy Mountain exactly as Daniel had prophesied so let's just pause briefly for a second and think about the significance of this conservatives date the writing of Daniel to the time of his service in Babylon in the 6th century but are still unable to find fulfillment of the chapter after verse 39 even the most liberal textual critics will accept that Daniel 11 was written about the time of the death of Antiochus in about 163
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BC they would date it to that time frame because they're simply not comfortable with the accuracy of the prophecies leading up to verse 39 and many of them believe that the rest of the chapter is just what the author hoped would happen to Antiochus but was never actually realized what we have discovered is that the fact that the prophecy was actually fulfilled in the years from 67 to 48
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BC and they were fulfilled to the letter and in fact more than 100 years after even the most liberal scholar would accept as the date of the writing of Daniel chapter 11 that's pretty significant in itself now there's several other matters that need to be addressed and we promise to come back to these in future episodes the first one is this if Daniel 11 is written in a single frame of reference and is a continuous narrative describing the transition from Median Dominance to Persian Dominance regarding the second empire of Daniel's visions which is the
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Medo -Persian Empire to the transition to Greek Dominance which is the third empire of Daniel's visions then the natural flow of the chapter should lead us all the way to the end of the
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Greek Dominance rather than skipping directly from Greek Dominance to the fifth empire which is the empire of Antichrist there was no reason and nothing given in the chapter that would have suggested this that Daniel has simply skipped over the fourth empire the chapter very much appears to have brought
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Daniel's view all the way to the cusp of Roman Imperialism which would be the herald of the fourth empire which is essentially the transition from the bronze period of Daniel's statue to the iron period of Daniel's statue that is critical in the establishment of a
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Danielic timeline because it helps us determine when the iron period began this helps us understand
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Daniel 2 7 and 12 as well as Daniel chapter 11 and 8 and 9 and we'll return to all of them in this series the next matter is the fact that Daniel chapter 11 starts with the transition from the
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Medo -Persian Empire to the Greek Empire and the four way division of Alexander's Empire and then in verses 40 to 45 concludes just before the rise of Roman Imperialism that confirms for us that Daniel 11 verses 21 to 39 which appear to depict the reign of Antiochus IV actually did occur during the
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Greek Empire in a continuous narrative we have the transition from the Medo -Persian dominance to Greek dominance to the four way division of Alexander's Empire and then from Antiochus IV coming out of one of those kingdoms and then finally at the end when all the kingdoms have been plucked up but before Rome has risen as an empire we have one final battle that actually involves the
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Jews and the Temple Mount but it actually takes place just before Julius Caesar crosses the
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Rubicon and becomes the first king of the Roman Empire now that may not sound very profound in itself but keep in mind that Daniel 11 31 refers to the abomination of desolation being placed in the sanctuary
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Daniel 8 13 and 9 27 make reference to it as well and Daniel chapter 12 makes reference to the abomination of desolation too the problem is that Jesus appears to place the abomination of desolation in the future he says in Matthew 24 15 when you therefore shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet stand in the holy place whoso readeth let him understand it
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Jesus said that the arrival of the abomination of desolation of Daniel's prophecies would be the harbinger of doom for the kingdom of the
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Jews and yet from Daniel 11 it looks very much like Daniel places the abomination of desolation under the
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Greek Empire before the rise of the Roman Empire what did Jesus mean? we will discuss this as part of our series in the
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Danielic timeline that is why does Jesus refer to the abomination of desolation as if it was still future if Daniel seems to show it occurring under the
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Greek Empire as a teaser to that episode we'll just say that Daniel was exactly right to place the abomination of desolation in the
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Greek period and Jesus was exactly right that the very same abomination that Daniel had foretold would return as a sign of the end of the earthly kingdom of the
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Jews we will return to this with a lot more information in a future episode we just want to make sure that our listeners understand that we believe
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Jesus was exactly right that the abomination of desolation would return finally in chapters 8, 9, 11, and 12
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Daniel repeatedly appears to place the abomination of desolation at quote the end but in chapter 11 and 12 he keeps on writing about even more things that will happen even after the abomination of desolation this has caused some confusion in the interpretation of Daniel and his different visions because it's assumed that when
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Daniel says that the abomination of desolation will occur at the end he's referring to the end of the world or the end of time or the end of all of Christian eschatology but actually he's talking about simply the end of the indignation as he plainly states in several places in his prophecies so we will come back to that we promise but we do appreciate people listening please send us comments and emails as you see fit we hope that it has been worth the wait five episodes to get to the fulfillment of Daniel 11 verses 40 to 45 it's a pretty critical chapter and it's extremely important in order for us to understand a
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Danielic timeline because Jesus refers to one and John refers to one when they convey significant events of eschatology we have to be able to establish that Danielic timeline and being able to find in history the fulfillment of Daniel 11 verses 40 to 45 is a very important step in establishing that timeline and that's why it took us five episodes to get here so we'll continue with this series after a short break on Gordon Clark and celebrating the