Daniel 8

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Good evening everybody, this is Truth in Love Network. We get truth and love from Ephesians chapter 4 verse 15.

Paul says, but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, even

Christ. So we want to do that. We want to speak truth. We want to speak truth and love, and we definitely want to grow up in all aspects into Christ who is our head.

He's our savior. He's our Lord, creator, sustainer. Um, I appreciate, uh, our summons that we're going through on Sunday mornings at our church.

We went to the last, the last of the seven churches of revelation and, um,

Jesus said himself, and I just thought of it and I can turn there real quick.

Jesus said of himself in, in revelation chapter three, the amen, the amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of creation or the, the art or source, the origin of creation of God.

And so we, we serve a mighty God, a loving savior, um, but someone who cares enough to write warning, cares enough to come down to rescue us and save us.

And so we are so thankful for the God that we serve, who he is and, um, the scriptures that he gives to us.

He, he allows us to know who he is through his word and that's what we want to share with you. If, uh, if you're so willing, we'd love for you to help us share, uh, the message of God's word.

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But thank you for your support. Thank you for your prayers as we seek to glorify God. I'm with Dan again, and I'm so thankful for his commitment, uh, to do this with me, to discuss

God's word tonight. We are continuing in the book of Daniel. We're in Daniel chapter eight.

And just as a reminder, I wanted to say this, that Dan and I are looking at the book of Daniel, the prophecies, and of course, as we look at other books, when we look at prophecies, we are looking at it from a preterist perspective and preterist means past.

And so we believe that as you hear us discuss, as you hear us interpret, as you hear us look at, um, prophecies, for example, in the book of Daniel, um, we are going to be interpreting them and seeing them as they have been fulfilled in the past.

Now we believe that there are prophecies in the Bible that have yet to be fulfilled, but many of them have been fulfilled, um, compared to other branches or streams of eschatological theories or interpretations.

So that's how we're going to look at Daniel. And that's how we see Daniel chapter eight as, um, being fulfilled or happening in the past.

Um, as an introduction, Daniel is receiving another vision.

It's my understanding that it's, that it's a, a waking vision. And, um, there seems to be more interaction with the angel this time.

It's more than just someone talking to him. But you have, you have Jesus appearing here in chapter eight.

You have an angel, a Gabriel appearing here in chapter eight and, and Gabriel, the angel actually making physical contact, it seems like in, in chapter eight possible.

So there's, there's a lot of interaction, a lot of, a lot of characters, um, in chapter eight.

Um, and this is not, as we've looked at in the past, this is not a vision, uh, going to the

King morning meeting or wanting an interpreter. This, this is another vision, just like chapter seven to Daniel.

And um, and it happens two years later, um, from, from the vision that happened in chapter seven.

So I'm going to, I'm going to stop talking. I'm going to read the first section and I'm going to let

Dan, um, do some commentary here. So I'm thankful for your patience and Dan's patience as I did that little introduction.

So Daniel chapter eight, we'll start in verses one through eight, and we'll let Dan give us some commentary.

In the third year of the reign of Belshazzar, the King, a vision appeared to me,

Daniel, subsequent to the one which appeared to me previously. And I looked in the vision and it came about while I was looking that I was in the citadel of Susa, which is in the province of Elam.

And I looked in the vision and I, and I myself was beside Eula canal.

Then I lifted my gaze and looked and behold a ram, which had two horns was standing in front of the canal.

Now the two horns were long, but one was longer than the other. With a longer one coming up last,

I saw the ram budding westward, northward and southward and no other beast could stand before him, nor was there anyone to rescue from his power.

But he did as he pleased and magnified himself. While I was observing, behold, a male goat was coming from the west over the surface of the whole earth without touching the ground.

And the goat had a conspicuous horn between its eyes. And he came up to the ram that had the two horns, which

I had seen standing in front of the canal and rushed at him in his mighty wrath. And I saw him come beside the ram and he was enraged at him and he struck the ram and shattered his two horns and the ram had no strength to withstand him.

So he hurled him to the ground and trampled on him and there was none to rescue the ram from his power.

Then the male goat magnified himself exceedingly. But as soon as he was mighty, the large horn was broken and in his place, there came up four conspicuous horns for the four winds of heaven.

All right, Dan. All right. I don't want to say too much because and here's why.

When one of the rules that we have put in place, not just we as in me and Robert, but we as in like Orthodox Christians throughout history and the world, is that you always let scripture interpret scripture.

Now, the reason why I don't want to say too much is because in chapter or verse 15 through verse 19, the scripture actually goes ahead and says, hey, this is what this means.

So I don't want to jump the gun and say too much, but I would like to go over some things.

At the first, you see Belshazzar, Belshazzar in the third year of his reign. He's getting ready to drop off.

We've already seen his end in a previous chapter. And in fact, this vision has absolutely nothing to do with his kingdom.

It has to do with the two kingdoms that come after him. These two kingdoms are identified by name later on.

So if you take the book of Daniel as a whole, what you're seeing is you're seeing the king of Babylon, who was that head of gold in the first vision, the

Medo -Persian empire, which is mentioned by name as coming afterwards. Then you have bronze, which is a

Greek empire, which is also mentioned by name coming afterwards. Then the next large empire that we know of is the

Roman empire, which was at the bottom. So this is right in line with those other prophecies is trying to give us a big picture of the history between Daniel's time and the time when

Christ would come. When it says the little stone would hit the statue, crumble the statue, and the mountain would grow up.

Or the four beasts that would come and then some would devour other ones, the destruction and mayhem, and then

Christ would come. Or here as we'll see, it actually ends on a sour note, but the end of even that vision is eventually, because he leaves off kind of like three quarters of the way through the story.

There's another quarter of the story and then Christ comes. All of this is showing the history of what happens between the time of Daniel and when

Christ is going to come and actually take away sins, pay for sins, take them upon himself, enter the grave, then rise again.

So what Daniel is seeing, what he's hearing is supposed to be a great comfort to a people who think that they have absolutely completely blown it, which they had.

They'd blown it so bad, they'd chased after other idols, they'd chased after other gods. They'd lost their place in the land of Israel.

And once they lost their place, they almost thought that they, you know, what hope do we have?

Now, you had certain prophets that come to him and say, hey, you need to settle down here. You know, go ahead and build houses and plant vineyards and get settled and, you know, make it go well with the kingdom that you're with because that'll make it go well for you.

But at the same point, they had to be wondering, you know, have we broken covenant with God to such an extent that we're not going to see, that we're going to see all of those curses that were mentioned in Deuteronomy come upon us?

And these are messages of scary, messages of turmoil, but ultimately messages of hope that God was going to be faithful to his people.

And so you see him just going over the vision one more time.

You see this two horned ram just kind of hanging out.

And then this one horned goat, a unicorn goat just comes up and it says it hits him with all his might.

I mean, you've seen goats like going at it and rams, I mean, you've seen those bighorn sheep from Colorado just wailing on each other.

And it's impressive. You know, I get a headache just thinking about it. I mean, I don't have any padding up here. You know what

I'm talking about? I mean, it would just hurt. Hey, come on now, everybody can see.

Say come on now, everybody can see. Are you talking to me? No padding.

For the ram. Anyway, moving on. I was just going to say, how in the world did this goat get traction?

Floating over the surface. We'll talk about that. Because that actually comes up a little bit later.

That's a go to corn.

Yeah, it's a, what do they call that? It's a word picture that shows something, something else going on.

So they run into each other and the goat defeats the ram. And then the goat, his one horn breaks off.

Four little horns come up. And as we'll see later in the next little section, one of those little horns that comes up is an interesting character.

We'll leave that until we get there. So as we're watching this unfold, as we're looking at the vision that Daniel's getting, and as we go through it, as we walk through it together, from the predator's perspective, looking at it in the past, we can see history.

Daniel prophesied, Daniel predicted, or was given this vision. And we see how it fits in history.

And we are going to look at that. There's so many things that folks are looking forward to, looking to happen in the future.

But we can see that many of these prophecies, if you will just look at a history book, you will see how well it fits with these visions that they had and how they've been interpreted.

And you were talking about how there was the head of gold.

And it gives the kingdoms, some of those kingdoms by name. And of course, some of them he didn't know yet.

But he gives the names of some of these kingdoms that were going to be, that represented these different parts of the statute, that represented the different parts of these visions.

And then somehow, some certain interpretations want to skip and create a gap and say, well, the rest of it will be fulfilled later.

Instead of just following the natural progression of the prophecy and see what comes next.

This little horn that's coming up in the next section, a lot of people will say that, they'll even agree with us on our interpretation that we're going to give here in a second, that it was a certain person in the past.

But then they'll say that that person was just a type or a foreshadowing of the

Antichrist to come. So they'll agree, but then say, but since we have all this other stuff going on, because we've turned the clay and iron toes into a separate revived

Roman empire in the future, for whatever reason, because we've done that, we're also going to take something from the

Greek empire. We're going to throw him into the future too. And I just, hopefully we'll show a consistency in our interpretation that will kind of put that to rest in a lot of people's minds.

That's what I hope that we can do for folks, is give them some confidence in God's word, looking at this consistency.

All right, let's look at verses 9 through 12. I kept looking until thrones were set up, and the

Ancient of Days took his seat. His vesture was like, I'm on chapter 7.

That was a wrong chapter. Good stuff, just wrong chapters. Yeah, that's right. Verses 9 through 14.

And out of one of them came forth a rather small horn, which grew exceedingly great toward the south, toward the east, and toward the beautiful land.

And it grew up to the host of heaven, and caused some of the hosts, and some of the stars, sounds like familiar language here, and some of the stars to fall to the earth, and it trampled them down.

It even magnified itself to be equal with the commander of the host, and it removed the regular sacrifice from him, and the place of his sanctuary was thrown down.

And on account of transgression, the host will be given over to the horn, along with the regular sacrifice, and it will fling truth to the ground, and perform its will, and prosper.

Then I heard a holy one speaking, and another holy one said to the particular one who was speaking, how long will the vision about the regular sacrifice apply?

While the transgression causes horror, so as to allow both the holy place and the host to be trampled.

And he said to me, for 2 ,300 evenings and mornings, then the holy place will be properly restored.

Right. Piggybacking off of the last vision, you've got four little horns that grow up on this goat when the one big horn is broken off.

One of these little horns, it says, it's funny, it calls it a rather small horn.

In other words, he's nothing much important, except he tries to make himself important.

Actually does a decent job of it in history. He makes a name for himself. We're still talking about him today.

He's in the Bible, he's in the history books. But what he does is he goes toward, he goes to Jerusalem.

He goes to the Holy Land, and he actually desecrates the temple. That's what you're looking for, the normal sacrifices, which is like the lifeblood of Jewish ceremony and ritual.

The thing that shows God is going to pay for our sins. He's told us to come and bring these sacrifices.

He's also told us that he desires repentance more than sacrifice. They know that there's more to it.

They may not, but they're supposed to know that there's more to it than just these sacrifices, but that they point to a reality that God is the one who takes away their sins.

If they don't have that in front of them, they're lost. Imagine if somehow we were to have taken from us the

Word of God, and preaching, and prayer, and the

Lord's Supper, and baptism, and all these things were somehow, somebody figured out a way where we were locked down and could no longer observe any of those things.

What would the true Christian do? It would be a terrifying thought.

So, he asked him, how long is this going to take place?

He says, 2 ,300 days. 2 ,300 evenings and days. Actually, we have a figure who fits all of this.

I don't think... His name's not mentioned, so I'll just go ahead and say his name.

This guy's name is Antiochus Epiphanes. He goes through and he actually sacrifices a pig on the altar.

A pig, swine flesh? The Old Testament, the Book of the

Law says that a pig, a hog, is an unclean animal.

To put it on the altar is to desecrate the altar. It's to take what was clean and holy and set apart to God and make it filthy and worthless.

How are they ever going to have a clean sacrifice upon a defiled altar?

They are... You know, this is a scary thing to hear. This is what's coming for you. Yeah. I guess we'll kind of fit him in when we...

Okay. If I'm not mistaken, since you brought up the pig and sacrificing the pig, from my notes, he also set up an altar to Jupiter and Olympus in the

Temple of Jerusalem. I mean, really defiled and desecrated the temple to the uttermost.

Yeah, he treated it like it was just some other place to live whatever kind of life you wanted and take the

God of the universe out of the picture and do whatever you wanted to there. He definitely took what was holy, set apart and profaned it by making it some commonplace for sin and debauchery.

So ready to go to the 15th or 19th? Let's do it. This is when we get some interpretation going.

And it came about when I, Daniel, had seen the vision that I saw to understand it and behold standing before me was one who looked like a man and I heard the voice of a man between the banks of Eli and he called out and said

Gabriel, give this man an understanding of the vision. So he came near to where I was standing and when he came

I was frightened and fell on my face but he said to me, son of man understand the vision pertains to the time of the end.

That's interesting. That pertains to the time of the end. Now while he was talking with me,

I sank into a deep sleep with my face to the ground but he touched me and made me stand upright and he said behold,

I am going to let you know what will occur that the final period of the indignation pertains to the appointed time of the end.

Now before you get started, he says it twice. This has to do with the end and somehow the interpretations are aimed toward or the prophecies are aimed toward events that are getting ready to happen.

And yet here, twice, he says these visions are pertaining to the end.

Pertains to the time of the end. If you take a phrase and pull it out of the scripture and take it out of context yeah, someone could point to these two verses and say see it's pointing to the end of time.

It's pointing to the end of time. But we are interpreting scripture with scripture interpreting it in context and we're trying to figure out what does he mean by the time of the end and pertains to the appointed time of the end.

So as we go, as Daniel gives us or Dan gives us some commentary here, an interpretation, maybe we can figure that out.

What does he mean by the end? Right, and I think that's probably the main point of this section right here because you see what may not be, but looks an awful lot like it might be a pre -incarnate

Christ saying Gabriel, tell this dude right here what's about to happen.

He says hey give this man an interpretation. He says this is going to be at the time of the end.

But then look at what he says. It says it right in the text. It's real interesting.

It says now while he was talking to me I sank into a deep sleep with my face to the ground and he touched me and told me to stand upright or he made me stand upright.

He said behold I'm going to let you know what will occur at the final period of the indignation.

Now what indignation? That is the my interpretation judging by what nations are being spoken of here.

That is the indignation of God towards his covenant people. He's letting him know what is going to happen at the end of the time where the covenant curses are coming upon the nation of Israel.

What is going to happen at the end? Ooh, got knocked over a whole bunch of stuff.

So this whole section is coming up on the time of the end of the old covenant.

A lot of people will say they'll put it this way. They'll say the Bible speaks of two ages.

Well actually it'll speak of more than that. But they'll say that there was the old covenant age or the age of promise the age of the old covenant where things were leading to Christ and then there was a time afterward until Christ's second coming.

It's that first age that was ending in Daniel's time.

So when he says the time of the end, he's talking about the time that will end leading up to what's coming next.

So what's coming next? It's the end of Israel as a physical national entity in the beginning of that same group of people as a spiritual kingdom that will cross over the earth and be a part of every single country on the planet.

You're gonna have true Jews or believers with the like faith of Abraham everywhere.

You're gonna have them all over the place. You're gonna have them scattered across the globe. And that is what's happening.

There's a change in the constitution of the nation from being a purely physical entity purely political thing to a spiritual kingdom where Christ is ruling and reigning over that kingdom.

So for him to say this is at the end of the age the vision that he has of the ram and the goats and the things that came before it are all what's gonna happen in leading up to what's the sign of the end?

And when will these things happen? What's the sign of the end? Jesus' disciples ask in Matthew 24 this is

Daniel getting that same message 800 years earlier or 500 some years earlier

I had to do math real quick it's like, yeah, 500 some years.

So you're making, you're talking about an old covenant age and you're saying that that's what the vision here in Daniel is referring to the end of that old covenant age and now you're making a connection with Matthew chapter 24 where if folks aren't familiar with that, that is where people will talk about the tribulation.

That's where people talk about the end times passage so you're making a connection with the old covenant age ending and Matthew 24 and Jesus speaking of the same thing that Daniel was talking about here

I just wanted people that are watching and that are curious and they're learning with us to know or I wanted us to be clear on that so that they can kind of make those connections.

I wanted to throw one more thing out at you since you were talking about old covenant age and then new covenant age and second coming.

A lot of people are familiar with the language of the church age and you were talking about you were using that language age, old covenant age new covenant, new testament age and then second coming many are familiar with this term the church age would you give us some words on that and how that may fit in or doesn't fit in with what you're talking about?

Yeah, the church age is I would say is synonymous, it's the same thing as the new covenant and here's why

I would say that not everybody is going to agree with me especially those of a pre -tribulation, pre -millennial stripe

I believe that the church age is the same era as the new covenant what that means is what is

Israel, what is God's people going to look like in the new covenant they're going to look like the church because God's people are the church and in order to wrap your mind around this if you're not familiar with the concept most people are familiar with the picture of the olive tree that's found in Romans 11 what you have in Romans 11 is a picture of an olive tree it's a natural, cultivated like prim, proper good looking olive tree in an olive orchard

I don't know what you call those but a bunch of olive trees you've got the one, grove, there we go olive grove so you've got one that's great but there were some branches on it that did not produce fruit what what

Paul said in Romans under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit was that those branches that didn't have fruit were the unbelieving

Jews of the nation of Israel it says that they were broken off and thrown away it then says that there are wild olive branches that are producing fruit that are then taken and grafted onto that same tree and those are

Gentiles that do have faith so there hasn't been a change in what the tree is and there hasn't been a change in who the people of God are but the way in which the people of God are identified is changed, it's no longer a national identity it's the identity of the people of God, and where do we find those people today?

we find them in the church now obviously not everyone in a church is going to be a believer this is why there's language also of well if he broke off the natural branches for unbelief if you're a part of this group and you don't have faith you can be broken off anyway or as well so that's

I forgot exactly how I put it before but that's how I would say it works together with being called the church age now some would say that the church age is kind of like a parenthesis what they mean is that the nation of Israel was supposed to have all these promises and all these things happen to and for them but since they rejected

Christ's offer of a kingdom that God's whole plan and all the Old Testament all the

Old Covenant promises are halted now there's going to be a time where there's a

Gentile church and then that Gentile church where he was just letting Israel do its thing for a while is basically going to yoink it up out of the way and then start again with his promises to Israel but you don't see that as happening here in these passages what he says in chapter 2 of Daniel is explicit it says in the days of these kings which would be the four kings mentioned he's saying the time of the end of the indignation they're in exile

God is angry with them but he's also faithful to his covenant so he's telling them how is this all going to end how is your being in exile going to end what's the end result of it and here's what it's going to be once again

I forgot where I was going with that but that's all good information I appreciate that I appreciate you making that distinction because that's what many are familiar with is that language of church age and they're associating with that parenthesis that gap which is something that we'll get into later in further chapters in Daniel we'll find out where people put that gap and that's where they see the church age but I'm glad you talked about how that's not how scripture describes you know two different paths

Israel and the church and people will wrongly accuse folks that think like us in believing in replacement theology where we think the church replaces

Israel but we don't believe that we don't believe the Bible teaches that we believe that God has always been drawing a people to himself there's always been those who are faithful go to Romans and Hebrews Hebrews 11 there's always been a faithful remnant that God has been saving, drawing to himself and he's just continuing that throughout history and we are the assembly then and now, we are the church then and now no distinction really we believe in the

Messiah by grace through faith alright, let's go on to the next section,

I guess I'll go ahead and read to the end 20 -27 the ram which you saw with the two horns represents the kings of Media and Persia and the shaggy goat represents the kingdom of Greece and the large horn that is between his eyes is the first king and the broken horn and the four horns that arose in his place represent the four kingdoms which will arise from its nation, although not with its power and in the latter period of their rule when the transgressors have run their course a king will arise insolent and skilled and intrigued and his power will be mighty but not by his own power and he will destroy to an extraordinary degree and prosper and perform his will he will destroy mighty men and the holy people and through his shrewdness he will cause deceit to succeed by his influence and he will magnify himself in his heart and he will destroy many while they are at ease, he will even oppose the prince of princes and he will be broken without human agency and the vision of the evenings and the mornings which has been told is true but keep the vision secret for it pertains to many days in the future, then

I Daniel was exhausted and sick for days and then I got up again and carried on the king's business but I was astounded at the vision and there was none to explain it hmm so it tells us flat out it gives us verses 20 and 21 are like the

Rosetta song for the whole passage once you figure that out and then you open up a history book it is absolutely incredible the level of detail that is given for what is about to happen it is amazing so the ram in the vision was the

Medo -Persian empire it had two horns it's talking about the kings some from Medea some from Persia but together two horns this is interesting he uses horns in the very next animal in sort of a different way it still means a king but it's not a line of kings in this instance it's just one king that's

Alexander the Great Alexander the Great took off I mean he went like you thought the

Germans took over Europe fast Alexander the Great took over the world with lightning quickness that's why back here in where is it yeah verse 5 it says the male goat was coming from the west over the surface of the whole earth without touching the ground it looked like he was flying he was going so fast you ever seen those cartoons where it's just a little circle for where their legs are and they're just booking it it's like that they don't even look like they're touching the ground they're just moving he took over he took over the world in almost no time at all he got to the end it says it says where we at but as soon as he was mighty the large horn was broken and his place came up for as soon as he was mighty as soon as he had taken over the whole world he was out towards India and he was partying it up and he contracted syphilis and went mad and died like real quick he had four generals then that took over his kingdom and if you look in the very next verse it says and in its place there came up four conspicuous horns toward the four winds of the heavens there was one who took over a northern kingdom a southern kingdom and a eastern kingdom and a western kingdom of the greek empire it was

Seleucus Ptolemy Cassander and I mispronounce this

Antigonus those were the four generals that took over areas they became four different kingdoms so they were all powerful in their own right but none of them was as strong as Alexander and then after a while one of them from the

Seleucid kingdom arose where it says later in the rule a king will arise verse 23 insolent and skilled with intrigue or he had a big mouth and he loved to run it basically he was ambitious he was going to talk himself up have a big game he was basically going to talk himself into power he he he liked to think of his name as something great magnificent he was trying to be his mouth got him in a lot of trouble but he ended up it was

Antiochus Epiphanes he came up he got himself in control of the

Seleucid kingdom he then took that kingdom went to Jerusalem desecrated the temple set up as you said altars and idols of other gods and then he sacrificed on the altar of god pigs completely desecrated the temple and then the vision ends it's amazing that every single thing that's in this chapter lines up one for one with a point of history it's so detailed and accurate that it's almost a mixture between chapters 3 and 4 and 5 where we saw how god was working his plan out to see the vision the previous vision actually manifest itself you got to see how the lion's den was brought into it how the fiery furnace was a part of it how the writing on the wall was a part of god's plan how

Nebuchadnezzar being turned into a werewolf or whatever he was and then brought back how that was a part of the plan but in chapter 2 you saw a vision chapter 8 is almost like they take vision and reality and smoosh them together because when we look back at it it's undeniable that all of these things took place exactly as they were it was commanded by Christ himself to be told to Daniel and he wrote it down for us and we saw it happen

I'm not entirely sure where I could study this more but if you read the

Apocrypha in the books of Maccabees it actually details a lot of the things that happened in that time period you can see the revolt and the different things that happened at that time period not scripture but interesting to read anyway it references history and what happens in history just like we talk about Josephus and there's another historian

I heard them reference when I was studying his name starts with an A and I can't remember

Antiochus some of the rulers were named

Antiochus and Antiochus and I don't know but that historian's name starts with an

A and I can't remember what it was but just like the Maccabees and some of the books in the Apocrypha it gives us some of the history and as reference to what's going on in these prophecies

I'm trying to find I can't find it right off the bat but anyway we see in Daniel chapter 2 we see in Daniel chapter 7 we see in Daniel chapter 8 these visions these dreams these prophecies to the king and to Daniel and you've got the same characters in chapter 2, chapter 7, chapter 8 so something

God is repeating these visions it comes across as being merciful it comes across as something that's true that we should pay attention to that he would repeat these same visions in different ways, different forms but it's the same people it's the same nations, it's the same characters and to have a consistent interpretation to look at this and understand it consistently is not to take the parts that are easy to understand the parts that are clear and tell us what they're talking about and then create a gap in history but the consistent interpretation is to take these kingdoms as they describe them and then the ones that haven't come about yet but do come about you can see them now looking back through these historians that we're talking about, the

Maccabees and Josephus and the other historians, you can see how they fall right in line with the prophecy in Daniel.

He speaks of the Medes and the Persians, the Macedonians the Greeks and so would it not make sense to continue in a consistent flow there and see if that prophecy continues to line up and sure enough, it does it continues to line up one right after the other and then the verse that I was looking for in chapter 2 was about the small stone that knocked down and crushed its feet but that small stone becomes the great mountain and so which is

Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God all the kingdoms of the earth that they were familiar with at that time that come against them that took them into bondage and to exile that God used to punish all these kingdoms were crushed and will be crushed and are being crushed by that small stone that's now growing into the large mountain and that large mountain is

Jesus Christ and his kingdom and all the nations of the earth, all people will be coming to him to hear his law to sing his praises to turn their swords into plowshares

I mean this is something that is continually happening it's now we're in that final stage

I would say of that prophecy in Daniel we've gone through all those kingdoms and now we're in that time of the mountain where the stone is becoming the mountain and Jesus is going to crush all his enemies until they're all crushed the gates of hell will not prevail against it the gates of hell will not prevail against it we have victory, we are living in victory, we are living in a victorious time, it doesn't look like that everywhere all the time but it's

God's program, it's God's plan and if scripture is true, which is proven to be true over and over again it speaks of the

Persians and the Medes, it speaks of the Greeks it speaks of Alexander the Great it speaks of Antiochus, the four generals that come up after him come up after Alexander the

Great and it talks about I mean it fits so perfectly what's the verse in chapter 8 where it says one went to the south verse 9 one went to the south, one towards the east one toward the beautiful land you've got these four generals that come up after Alexander that divide up these nations into four parts and they take over and Daniel tells us there's going to be four horns after this one great one and they divide it up and one, what does he do?

he takes the south, one takes the east and Daniel describes perfectly how all this unfolds and there's an interpretation for which direction the beautiful land, which would be what

Jerusalem one general took over that area and it was was it

Antiochus? and he defiled Jerusalem, the it falls into place it's so consistent and I hope that's what you got as Dan and I look through and walk through Daniel chapter 8 is the consistency the the truthfulness, the faithfulness the reliability that's huge the reliability of Scripture that you can trust

Scripture and you can trust the God that wrote the Scripture and if you do not know

Christ if you do not know Him He is King and He is through us and through His Scripture proclaiming, having us to herald the fact that He is

King calling you to repent of your sins and put your faith and trust in Him to be a part of that Kingdom and not be among the group that is sifted out with the chaff and thrown into the lake of fire that eternal place of torment for Satan and his angels we want you to be saved and we want you to grow with us into Christ any last words

Dan as we close? no

I say I say that just like every week and then I always have something to say laughter one of the things that I was thinking of I was thinking about the

Exodus earlier one of the things I was thinking about what would have happened if they would have gotten to the

Red Sea and it didn't split open what would happen if the nation of Israel was just destroyed at that point and if the nation of Israel was destroyed at that point

God's promises to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph His promises to Adam and Eve in the garden would have all been lies

He would have promised to Abraham that I'm going to make of you a great nation, I'm going to bless all the families of the earth in you and then he was going to let his family be destroyed it was never even a possibility that that sea wasn't going to split open because God is faithful and God was taking care of his people, he was ensuring that one day the cross would take place this is why he can over and over again tell of all these nations that are going to rise and fall and who's going to be there and how it's going to happen because his plan all along was that the lamb that was slain before the foundations of the earth would come in time and die for the sins of men that he knew exactly who was going to live and exactly the sins that they were going to commit and that he came and died anyway, that he purposefully laid in the ground for three days dead and was raised again to prove his power over death so as we look at these different visions it's so much more than just, well that's neat the prophecy was fulfilled it is it's much more important because the integrity of God and the salvation of the world rides on him being right and he was 100 %

I mean if we have to try to make excuses for why God got something wrong and insert gaps and fanciful interpretations as to why things didn't work out exactly the way that we thought that they should we are doing no service to God by trying to get him off the hook for something we need to trust in what he says and know that if we dig if we do the research we will find that he has been exactly faithful to every single promise that he has ever made there's no lying or shadow of turning in God, there is only goodness and righteousness and that's why we can trust in him for our salvation there's so much more to it than just simply looking at prophecy to see what end times view is correct, or which one we want to hold to, you can hold to a different one just trusting

Christ for your salvation because he is he's good for it because he is good and he's righteous and merciful and he is the covenant keeping

God and that's all I have to say that I didn't have to say well you've been turning my mind as you've been talking, that's why post -millennialism and if you're listening post -millennialism that's what we're convinced of, that's why post -millennialism is the eschatology of hope if you are

Israel, just like Dan was talking about, if you are Israel standing before the red sea and you have

Egypt on your heels and a sea that you cannot cross in front of you the only thing that you have to hold on to is the promises that Dan was talking about that God was going to preserve his people that he was going to make them so numerous more numerous than the sands of the sea and the stars in the sky the promises of God is what they had to hold on to and God was good on his promise to preserve them and have them a way out a way of escape and the

New Testament promises that too if we are standing in front of that red sea in our life there's evil in our life there's spiritual warfare in our life, we're being attacked we're going through difficult times we're standing in front of the gates of hell trying to do

God's work trying to spread his kingdom, disciple whatever it may be when we face opposition the scripture says and that's why postmillennialism is the eschatology of hope that his promise is that he is putting his enemies to death, he is putting his enemies under his feet and it that particular enemy that's in front of you it may not be in our lifetime, it may not be it may not happen instantly but it is happening he is putting his enemies under his feet and we can trust in that just like Israel trusted in God to give them a way of escape from Egypt as Dan was discussing earlier

New Testament talks about a way of escape from temptation it will give us a way out if we're being tempted but the eschatology of hope is that we are we are now serving a king who is reigning now and that process of him putting his enemies under we don't have to wait for it to come later and then wait another thousand years that process has already started and it's continuing and it's going and we're in it now we've seen some of those victories and that may be something good to talk about one day the victories of Christ in history but he's going to continue to create victories as he's putting his enemies under his feet until that second coming so learn the

Christ if you don't know him, trust in him today and with that being said,