Daniel 11:36-45 | The Antichrist Behind Antiochus

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Pastor John and Pastor Jeff teach through the book of Daniel. You can join live on Wednesdays at noon.

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Action. Lord, we come to you knowing you are sovereign and knowing that the history of man was determined from before time, but we know that as you've recorded through your prophets and for those who have written in the scriptures your glorious story, it comes to a culmination at the end where you are victorious.
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Father, we're going to talk about Antichrist and we're going to talk about things that happen, abomination of desecrations, those types of things, but you are sovereign.
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We thank you for these words. We pray, Lord, for them in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. So we have seen the face of evil and that is when a human being is able to ride a paraglider or cut through a fence and storm not a castle or any other fortress or even any kind of military installation, but storm into somebody's home and murder babies and women and men sleeping in their beds and to go to this music festival and shoot people indiscriminately.
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It is a kind of evil that cannot be explained by a secular humanist worldview.
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There is something demonic, spiritual about that level of evil. In fact, in order to overcome the natural human instincts toward compassion, do you know that these jihadis will take a pill?
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It's a kind of psychedelic drug that they take to make them almost like being just in a rage and not feeling, so that they could calm just what would be the natural instinct to not do such an evil thing.
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So they're hopped up on drugs. They go in and kill. Yes, Richard?
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The Nazi SS used to take it. They did the same thing. Perverted, very similar. Similar thing, yep. Yeah, and that's how they kind of restrain their natural instinct to protect life.
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Now, there's also evil in America, which is the inability of college students in particular, but also throughout the larger culture.
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You're seeing large number of people unable to differentiate good from evil.
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When Israel is bombing in Gaza, they're not targeting civilians.
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They're warning civilians in multiple ways. They're dropping pamphlets saying that this is going to be a war zone in a certain amount of time.
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They're literally calling the houses of the people who live in these buildings and warning them of what's coming.
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They're dropping shaker bombs on buildings before they blow them up, all to warn people to get out.
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The problem is the evil Hamas leaders are forcing the
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Israelites, I mean the Palestinian people, to stay rather than to flee south into safety.
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So the level of evil there, they're using these people as human shields. Of course, in our culture, if you turn on certain news channels, they portray it exactly the opposite.
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And this was described in Isaiah chapter five, verse 20. They call evil good and good evil, sweet, bitter, and bittersweet.
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Up is down, down is up. Everything, light is darkness, darkness is light. They turn everything on its head.
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This is an evil spirit. And the only explanation for such a thing is that Satan is not just a myth or just a principle, but a real spiritual power in heavenly places.
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And his demons are at work in the world. The kind of things that we're seeing in our day go all the way back to the creation of the nation of Israel.
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Think about what are some times when Israel has been targeted with this kind of persecution? Well, from 1948.
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Yeah, prior to 1948, in World War II, the Holocaust. Yeah, and after the
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Holocaust, yeah. Stalin wrote a decree that all
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Jews would be killed believing that would entice the United States into a war because they had the hydrogen bomb and we didn't.
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But he somehow died in his sleep before he signed the decree. That's right. I read about that.
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The Jewish people have been in the crosshairs. What else? Yeah, the 70 years where they went into captivity.
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Yeah. They were trying to eliminate them back then. Right. And Haman. Wicked Haman.
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Yeah. Yep. Well, we learned last week about one of these attempts, and you guys are familiar around the year 168 in that vicinity.
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The perpetrator in this case was named Antiochus Epiphanes, as he called himself.
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Epiphanes, as the people called him. And that means, of course, Epiphanes was illustrious one. He thought he was something great.
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But the people called him madman, Epiphanes, because he was indeed insane.
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So, let's go back to Daniel chapter 11 verses 36 to 45. We see the spirit at work even in our day.
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One of the things that John taught, was it about two weeks ago? Maybe it was last week, that I fully agree with is that Satan always has someone in mind to make him an antichrist.
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The antichrist. Right. What restrains the revealing of the antichrist is
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God, by the Holy Spirit and through the church, not releasing that spirit on the world.
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So, it may very well have been Satan's design that Hitler would be the antichrist.
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But God. But God. Using Great Britain, the United States, and the forces of his own power, just to restrain the evil that was in the world.
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Satan is not omniscient. He doesn't know the day or hour. He's always trying to work his destructive plan.
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So, when you see the things happening in the world, Satan would fully devise to create an absolute conflagration in the
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Middle East. He would like to see this thing expand and take over the world and the full destruction of Israel from the river to the sea.
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What stops that from happening? God. And he uses instrumental means to keep that from happening.
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The military force of the IDF. The support of America, which from the beginning has upheld
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Israel. Now, that seems to waver somewhat in our day, but I've been pleasantly surprised that there's still been some support from the
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White House. More than I expected, to be honest with you. Which is good. But when you look at the
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Democratic Party right now, half actually would side with the Palestinians. Amazingly.
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But fortunately, by God's grace, God has even used Joe Biden to restrain at some level the
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Iranian intrusion by placing aircraft carriers right there in the Mediterranean. By giving strong warnings and actually firing back when our installations have been attacked recently, it so far has deterred
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Iran from bringing the big guns into this war. Because Israel would be vulnerable if all of the nations unleashed at the same time.
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God is the one restraining the anti -Christ spirit in the world. What we're going to see today in Daniel 11, 36 to 45, is both a history and a prophecy.
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Now, there's two ways to read this. I have two commentaries that I trust the most. And that is the
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Bible knowledge commentary of Dallas Seminary and Matthew Henry. I read other commentaries, but I always read those two before I preach a sermon or do a
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Bible study. And they differ very much on this subject. The Bible knowledge commentary will see verses 36 to 45 as entirely future.
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They see it as entirely about the 70th week of Daniel that is yet to come.
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Matthew Henry sees all of this as fulfilled in Antiochus Epiphanes.
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So, you have a difference of interpretation here. We're about to read through it. And I'll propose to you,
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I actually do think it's still referring to Antiochus Epiphanes, but the emphasis is on that, remember what we've talked about before, the two mountain peaks.
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The emphasis here actually goes to the future. So, I'm more with the Bible knowledge commentary, but I don't deny that there's still some references being made to Antiochus Epiphanes.
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We'll see two examples of this elsewhere in the scripture, Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28. But first, have you prayed yet, or did
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I just start talking? I have not. You did quite eloquently. Here we go. I don't write in.
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No, but you did pray. Oh, you did pray. Yeah. Neither one of us remembered. Yeah. I remember.
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Yeah. Yeah. You did pray. Okay. I guess it's the prototype, right?
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Yes. We could pray again. You know, we're forgetting. Yeah. No, but let's dive right in.
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How about I have you be my first reader, if you would read Daniel 11, 36. Yeah. So, what
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Rich started to say there is Daniel is seeing Antiochus Epiphanes as the prototype of the coming, or the anti -type, which would be antichrist in this case.
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I think living during World War II would have been hard to not believe that Hitler was the one.
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Yeah. Many generations have been fully convinced. As it came to the first millennium,
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Christians were very convinced that it was the time. The reformers in the 1500s, when so many of them are being killed, it looks like the book of Revelation.
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And they were sure the Pope was the antichrist and that this was the very end of time. And there was a major movement that way after World War II, where very many people, you know, late great planet
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Earth, left behind series, very many people were convinced that this was the terminal generation, the one that was born before 1948.
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It doesn't look like that's the terminal generation, but I do think we're in the end times. I do think we're getting near to the end.
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So, John, would you? Just 36? Yeah, just start with 36. And the king shall do as he wills.
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He shall exalt himself and magnify himself above every god, small g, and shall speak astonishing things against the god of gods.
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He shall prosper till the indignation is accomplished, for what is decreed shall be done.
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This is speaking of Antiochus, but even more so of Antichrist. And what
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I mean by that is the Antichrist spirit is the point. The Antichrist spirit exalts to the place of God.
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This is what Antichrist desires. When it begins in verse 36, Matthew Henry reads the king and says that's the king referred to earlier,
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Antiochus, the king of the south. That's Antiochus Epiphanes. But the Bible knowledge commentary points out it just says the king.
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It doesn't say what king, and it could very well have made that leap into the future. Now, a couple of evidences that we are beginning to move towards the end time.
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Look at verse 35 when it says some of the wise shall stumble so that they may be refined, purified, and made white.
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Until when? Yes. Or as the ESV translates it, and I think it's a good translation, until the time of the end.
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So there's even a textual indication here that we're moving towards end times. This is eschatological at that point.
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For it still awaits, there you have it, the appointed time. Okay, and then it says end the king.
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Now look at the language as this one is described. Yes, it describes Antiochus Epiphanes as a prototype, but as the anti -type of that prototype, you have the
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Antichrist himself. He does as he wills.
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His will is not restrained by the will of God. He shall exalt himself and magnify himself above every god and shall speak astonishing things against the god of gods.
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He shall prosper till the indignation is accomplished, for what is decreed shall be done.
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That's a strong implication that the church is no longer there. Yeah, why do you say that?
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Well, the church is the restrainer. Yeah, and this you're referring forward to 2
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Thessalonians chapter 2, and we'll read a couple verses from there in a minute, but there the
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Antichrist is revealed and does this very thing in verse 4. He proclaims himself to be
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God, but we're told later in that chapter it can't happen until the restrainer is taken away.
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Right, so very good. Okay, very often in Scripture you have these double fulfillments or you have two things going on at once.
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The king of Babylon in Isaiah chapter 14. The king of Tyre in Ezekiel 28.
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In both cases, the prophet is talking to them, a human being, an actual real physical king who is alive at that time, and he's addressing things that are very particular to that particular historical person, but then the prophet starts describing that person in ways that seem to go above and beyond the description of the individual.
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For example, Ezekiel 28 13. Sandy, would you look on your notes there?
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You don't have to turn to it. The second one there, Ezekiel 28 13. Referring to a human king, the king of Tyre, but then he starts describing him like this.
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You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was your covering.
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Sarnias, topaz, diamond, beryl, onyx, and jaspers, sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle, and crafted in gold were your settings and your engravings.
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On the day that you were created, they were prepared. Who's that talking about?
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Satan. So what's happening here is the king of Tyre is being addressed, but the prophet sees through the human man to the spirit empowering him.
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Do you see that? Behind this wicked ruler who's bent on destruction, who wants to destroy
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Israel and is an enemy of all that is good and right, behind him is a demonic power, and sometimes the demon behind a ruler can be
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Satan himself, the most powerful angel of all. And in that case,
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I think the prophet will sometimes address Satan through that king. So you see that,
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Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28. Look back at Daniel chapter 10, just one page back.
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Daniel chapter 10, verses 20 and 21. When this vision comes to Daniel, the angel doesn't come right away with the answer that Daniel had been praying for.
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In fact, Daniel prays for 21 days, the 21 -day fast, and on the 24th day of the month, the angel shows up.
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But listen to what he says in verses 20 and 21. And he said, do you know why
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I have come to you? But now
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I will return to fight against the prince of Persia.
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And when I go out, behold, the prince of Greece will come.
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But I will tell you what is inscribed in the book of truth. There is none who contends by my side against these except Michael, your prince.
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So are we talking about human princes on earth or spiritual princes and powers in spiritual places?
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I see you nodding. The answer is yes. Yeah. So Michael is an angel.
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He's not a human ruler on earth, but he's your prince. He's a prince over Israel.
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He's a defender of Israel. He's a warring angel that protects the nation of Israel.
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Did you know that the angels of God encamp those who fear him and that there are angels that are fighting for Israel to guard them from the worldly invisible forces that want to destroy
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Israel? Okay. Now notice there's a prince of Persia and a prince of Greece, human powers or spiritual.
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Yes. Yes. You get it. There is a human power. Cyrus will be the power over Persia, right?
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And Alexander the great we learned will be this Greek power who will then divide his powers among his four generals.
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Descending from them will come the Seleucid kingdom in Syria, the Ptolemaic kingdom in Egypt, these clashing of kingdoms in chapter 11.
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Antiochus Epiphanes is from that Syrian line. These are human rulers, but behind them are demonic powers.
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So there's a wrestling in heaven. These particular angels are fighting against demons over these kingdoms.
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So this is what you have happening in Daniel 11, 36. We go back to that now. Here you have a king, an actual ruler.
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Is it Antiochus Epiphanes? Yes. My answer is yes.
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Now the Bible knowledge commentary thinks it's only about the future Antichrist. I'm saying it's both. And I'll give you a reason why in just a minute.
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I think it's talking still about Antiochus Epiphanes, but it's prophetically seeing to the spirit behind him, the
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Antichrist spirit that was in Antiochus. John will tell us in his epistle, first John, not this
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John or this one or that one, but John the revelator will tell us many
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Antichrists have gone out into the world. Antiochus Epiphany is an
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Antichrist. Hitler was an Antichrist. Stalin was an Antichrist that God restrained.
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These mullahs, the one in Iran right now, Ayatollah Khamenei, whatever,
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Antichrist. All of these are Antichrist spirits that aspire to kill the
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Jewish people, but there's coming one final one when the restrainer is taken out of the way, who's allowed to do what this
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Antichrist spirit has wanted to do from the beginning. When the promise seed was given in Genesis 3 .15,
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Satan wanted to destroy that seed. In Genesis 12, when that seed was identified with a particular line,
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Abraham, he wanted to destroy Abraham. And so all the fights he went through. And then from Isaac and Jacob and all of the 12 tribes,
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Satan has always wanted to destroy this line and always will right up until the end.
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You see it actually, one more thing before I call on you, Carol. You see it even after Christ.
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See, some people think these are the preterists think all of this is fulfilled from 33 AD through 40, or maybe they jumped to 70
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AD. They think it's all fulfilled. But in Revelation chapter 12, we have the woman giving birth to a son and the dragon wants to devour the son, right?
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Well, by the end of that chapter, you find that the son, which is Jesus, is caught up to heaven.
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And so he can't touch him. So what does he do? He tries to kill the woman that gave birth to the son.
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He's still trying to kill Israel, even after the Messiah has ascended. So he's still after Israel.
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And when he sees he can't kill Israel, guess what he does? The last verse of Revelation 12, he turns his ire against the other offspring.
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If he can't get the Jews, because the earth swallows up that flood, God protects the Jews, the church.
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And in the tribulation, any Gentile believer in Christ will also be beheaded. So you see the killing of Christians, just like you see the killing of Jews.
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This is the Antichrist spirit to murder. But is this after the church was raptured, or at least tribulation
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Christians? In Revelation, yes. In Revelation, the rapture, I believe, and there's differences there.
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But my view is that the church gets raptured, but people are still born again during the tribulation. There are some dispensationalists that don't think anybody gets saved during the tribulation period, because there's no wrath for the church, and there's questions about that.
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Side trail we could talk about later. But Kara, I said I'd call on you after that point. So, could you consider
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Obama an Antichrist? Obama was very, moved the needle very much against Israel, compared to what he took of Israel.
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Yeah, the spirit was there. Do you think it's, that Satan just moves around looking for anybody that could take that role?
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Yeah, yeah, that's what I think. Yeah, and I believe when he went on his apology tour in the Middle East, and didn't stand for Israel, but appeased
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Muslims, he strengthened the hand of Antichrist by doing that. Yeah. So, 1 John talks about those
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Antichrists among you. So, there are probably degrees of Antichrist, if you would.
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The penultimate will be the Antichrist. But somebody that comes into the church as a pretender, and influences the church towards woke culture.
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I'm thinking of the pastor that got put into the Baptist church in Naples, Florida. That's definitely an
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Antichrist. He took a church that was very healthy and strong, and moved the needle so far left that you couldn't recognize it.
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So, it could be some large person, large figure, politically recognized, or could be localized.
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An Antichrist is somebody who's pushing the needle against Christ. Very good.
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Well, we see that in the church. You know, not in this church. In this church here,
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God has really lifted up, because we stand on truth. We stand for the word of God. But it's the woke churches where the
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Antichrist is now getting his foothold in, and you're seeing a lot of them crumbling and crumbling because they're woke, and they're the people that are born there.
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They're in a sinful mode, and they're being accepted, and their sin ways are being accepted.
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Amen. Well said, brother. So, Daniel 11 .37. Let's continue on. Did you have a question?
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Yeah. Yes. When you were mentioning about how Satan's coming after not only the
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Jews, but the Christians, I see that happening now. We're thinking about all the people that are martyred for being
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Christ. So, you're saying that, too. Yeah. And so, what you have is birth pangs.
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It gets more and more intense, and then I believe when you get into that final seven years, it's worse than anything you could imagine.
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Jesus describes it in Matthew 24 as something the world has never seen before. It is just above and beyond, and if God hadn't shortened the times, nobody would have made it.
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So, it's described as a great tribulation, but there's already persecution in the world throughout the entire church age.
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There's martyrdom, and some people live through things that are as horrifying as the tribulation itself in individual cases.
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So, there have been Christians that have been skinned and died a very painful, slow death.
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Fox's Book of Martyrs. Yeah. Fox's Book of Martyrs has all kinds of stories. So, we need to be ready to persevere, whether we're to go through the tribulation or not, which is debate in eschatology.
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We have to be prepared for any kind of suffering. Now, by God's grace, he's given us the freest, most protected country in the history of the world where we've lived, and so we need to give thanks for that.
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What's that? We're losing our protection. Yeah, we are. It's moving the wrong way. Okay, would you mind reading chapter 11, verse 37?
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He shall pay no attention to the God of his fathers or the one beloved by women.
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He shall not pay attention to any other god, for he shall magnify himself above all.
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Okay, no attention to the gods of his fathers. So, that would be either, if it's
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Antiochus Epiphanes, he had a set of gods that he worshipped, pagan gods, and he did continue to exalt those, but the
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Antichrist, whatever his religious background is, say he's coming from Rome or somewhere in the
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Roman Empire, in Europe, he probably has some kind of Christian nominal background that he pays no attention to.
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Now, the next phrase says, or to the one beloved by women.
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There's a couple of readings here. The one beloved by women probably refers to Christ, that there's many women who worship
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Christ, and he has no regard for that. Some translators have actually read that no regard for the love of women, which would indicate a homosexual spirit in the
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Antichrist, which very well could be the case, because we know that everything is upside down.
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Anti, we have Christ, he's Antichrist. Light and darkness, the natural ordering of male femaleness, he has turned that on its head as well.
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It very well could be a homosexual spirit. Many Caesars were. Yes, many of the Caesars were homosexual.
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Yeah. Self -love. What's that? Self -love. Yeah, and ultimately, what is homosexuality?
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This is important for people to realize. The perversion there is to give adoration to a mirror image of oneself.
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Yeah, and if the Antichrist exalts himself, he pretty much worships himself.
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Of course, he would also be sexually attracted to himself. The image of himself would be his desire.
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Interesting. Talking about narcissism. Yeah, that's, yeah, homosexuality is narcissism. That's what it is, because the
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Edzer Kinecto in the Hebrew is the help meat. It's one who is the same as, man was ish, woman was isha.
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The same, but with differences, and those differences are complementary. So, in God's design, the male and the female are different in complementary ways, but the breaking down of that, the perversion and unnatural order of homosexuality is to fall in love with a mirror image of oneself.
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No differences. It's really interesting. So, that's, I think, probably what happens with Antichrist.
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More than likely, he's gay. I would put money on it, but it doesn't say necessarily. But when people say that, they're getting it from this verse,
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Daniel 11, 37. Yeah, we go on 38 through 39.
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John, why don't you just read today, because we're on a good roll. He shall honor the God of fortresses instead of these.
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A God whom his fathers did not know, he shall honor with gold and silver, with precious stones and costly gifts.
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He shall deal with the strongest fortresses with the help of a foreign God. Those who acknowledge him, he shall load with honor.
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He shall make them rulers over many and shall divide the land for a price. Okay, I said at the beginning that I think it's a both -and situation, where this is referring to Antiochus Epiphanes while speaking of the future
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Antichrist, and this is the reason for it. Because in the life of Antiochus Epiphanes, one of the things that he did, very interestingly, in Persia, they never worshipped a certain
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Roman God, a pagan God named Jupiter Olympius, the
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God of fortresses. That was not a Persian God, but a Roman God.
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And Antiochus Epiphanes, for the first time, introduced the worship of this God. So I think, to me, it becomes clear that this king is actually, in the historical near term, still talking about Antiochus Epiphanes, while prophetically showing what the
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Antichrist spirit is like, and referring to the end times, because he's even going to mention it again, the end times.
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So, a God whom his fathers did not know, he shall honor with gold and silver, precious stones, and costly gifts.
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Wouldn't the Antichrist love the gods of war? Hamas is bent on killing.
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The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. Satan was a murderer from the beginning.
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Satan is a murderer, and an Antichrist who's filled with Satan is murderous, desires to kill.
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And so, here you have a love of war, and a worshipping of this war god,
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Jupiter Olympius. It will still be the case in the coming Antichrist. He'll be a murderer.
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Now, he'll present himself exactly as the opposite, as the man of peace, and he'll sign this peace treaty, and make peace to the world, and everybody's singing kumbaya while he's plotting the murder of the
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Jews. Hitler did the same thing, yeah. Yeah, yeah, oh yeah. And the British were naive to it, right, for so long.
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Like, oh, he's goodwill. Until Churchill came along. Yeah, and Churchill was not falling for it like his predecessor.
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Right. Forty... Well, before you do that, this again goes into the fulfillment of history, because Antiochus Epiphanes, when he finally captured in 199, he sought those who would follow after him and rewarded them monetarily.
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Now, it wasn't a whole lot, but those who did followed him, and he gave them little fiefdoms that they could rule over as a reward for following after him.
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That's basically verse 39. Yeah, and in 39 here, he does acknowledge a god.
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So, is he actually submitting to a god after all? Behind every idol is a demon.
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He's empowered by demons, and then the nature of paganism, what's different between paganism and submission to a sovereign god in his will?
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In Christianity, we submit to the sovereignty of god, because he's god and we're not. Paganism is actually completely inverted.
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It's tapping into spiritual powers to wield power in this world.
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A pagan demon or an idol, what a pagan idolator does is try to manipulate spiritual forces to benefit him in this world.
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The evil eye, the different pagan rituals are meant to try to get the demon gods to work for you.
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It's wielding the power of the dark side. It's a cult. It's not at all submission or worship to a transcendent god.
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It's using these points of contact, whether it's this idol that you make that would then personify, and you can talk to this god or casting a spell, the hocus pocus.
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This is why Deuteronomy 18 is so against all these things. What you're actually doing is you're talking to demons.
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So what all the Antichrist is doing here is using demonic powers, probably Satan himself, to accomplish what he wants for himself.
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That's what's happening in verse 39, 40 and 41. Hitler did that on a lesser scale. He was in the cult.
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He was the occult messiah by General Suster. He got very much into the occult to give him power.
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Even though Islam is so devoted to the Quran and the Hadith and the Sunnah of the Prophet, folk
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Islam is the dominant force in the Islamic world. It's always using amulets and all kinds of beads, which is where the
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Catholics got the beads for saying certain prayers. That came from Islam, important to them. Folk Islam very much taps into these forces.
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The average person is wielding these powers because they're afraid of jinn. Jinn are the evil spirits, and they know how to manipulate them.
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What's the difference between folk Islam and Islam? So Islam would be like Saudi Arabia, Islam proper, following the traditions of Islam.
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But where Islam has expanded, it was mostly animistic cultures, and they retained those pagan kind of practices.
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So the evil eye and all those things, it's almost like casting spells and doing those magical kind of things.
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That's folk. It's called folk Islam. Yeah, which would be the majority of Muslims around the world, especially if you get out to Indonesia, places where Islam dominates, but it's farther from, you know,
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Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are more traditional Islam. We know who Allah is.
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Yeah, well, who is Allah? He was Al -ilah -Sin. That's the moon god.
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The moon god, yeah. Yeah, and then they shortened it to Allah. They left off Sin, Sin the moon god.
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Isn't it ironic that the god they worship is named Sin? And Al -ilah -Sin is just Allah, who they call
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God. They're actually worshipping Sin and a demon and Satan. Yeah, yeah, so it's a false god, about 40 and 41.
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At the end of the time, the king of the south shall attack him, but the king of the north shall run upon him like a whirlwind with chariots and horsemen and with many ships.
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He shall come into countries and shall overflow and pass through. He shall come into the glorious land and tens of thousands shall fall, but these shall be delivered out of his hand,
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Edom and Moab and the main part of the Ammonites. Okay, interesting. So, in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, his beef was with the
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Ptolemaic kingdom. Remember, John taught this last week. When he tried to overrun them the second time, the ships from Kittim, that's
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Roman ships, helped the Ptolemaic Egyptians and pushed him back, and so what did he do?
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He hit Israel on the way back up to Syria, but he never went across the
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Jordan to the highlands of Seir, that's the Edomites protected up in the mountains, the
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Moabites. He was always on the coastal region between Egypt and Syria, which is
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Israel, and especially that coastal run where all this drama was taking place is currently called
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Gaza, that 25 mile stretch, seven mile wide along the coast between Egypt and Israel.
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This has been the flashpoint, and it is as we sit here today where the war is taking place, the same region, not on the other side of the
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Jordan, the Moabite Ammonite region, but along this corridor between Egypt and Syria.
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Wow. So, what was happening in the days of Antiochus, where all this was taking place?
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He's ambitious, but he could never fully realize it, is what's happening. It's happening here.
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The powers, and then the people from the north, that's what we would call
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Hezbollah in Syria, or even farther north, Gog and Magog, which conspire to come against Israel, or Egypt from the south, all of the surrounding nations are a threat.
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Verses 42 and 43. He shall stretch out his hand against the countries, and the land of Egypt shall not escape.
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He shall become ruler of the treasures of gold and of silver, and all the precious things of Egypt, and the
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Libyans and the Cushites shall follow in his train. Okay, so you see this in history with Antiochus, even after that slaughter of the
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Jews, where he presents himself as God, and sacrifices a pig.
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You can read about this in the book of Maccabees, 1st and 2nd Maccabees. It's not part of canon of scripture, but the
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Catholic Church at the Council of Trent in 1545 said it was. It's not, but it's still good history.
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You can still learn a lot from it. For example, there's a story in there of Eleazar, who was an older man, and when they killed that pig, they tried to force him to eat the pig meat, and he spit it back out in their face, knowing that they would torture him to death, which they did.
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And time and again, they make these sins, and so there's good stories in there, inspiring. These actually,
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I believe, are the kind of the men of renown that resist this
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Antichrist, but the point is here, Antiochus tried to do it. He got back into Egypt for a while, but ultimately failed.
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He's never fully able to realize his ambition, and we'll see that fall in 44 and 45.
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You mentioned that Antiochus worshipped Zeus, sacrificed a pig for Zeus, which is, of course, the
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Greek equivalent of the Roman Jupiter Olympus. Yes, same god. Yeah, Jupiter Olympus that he introduced, a foreign god, which was not from Persia.
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Yeah, very good. John, let's finish it up. You have a couple minutes. News from the east and from the north shall alarm him, and he shall go out with great fury to destroy and devote many to destruction.
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He shall pitch his palatial tents between the sea and the glorious holy mountain, yet he shall come to his end with none to help him.
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And this is the fate of Antiochus Epiphanes, the madman. Rich, what do you know about how he died?
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Antiochus? Antiochus Epiphanes. I don't know either. I know he didn't make it.
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Did the Maccabees get him? I don't know if the Maccabees killed him or what, but we could look that up.
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Somebody's got their smartphone out. Yeah. I was thinking here, though, in preparation, that it's picturing more that the
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Antichrist, ambitious to reign in Jerusalem. He makes it so far as to be in Jerusalem, right?
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He's defeated all these powers, but ultimately he still has to face one king, and that's
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King Jesus at the second coming. Do you think Satan is so deceived as to actually think he has a chance?
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Do you think he's that self -deceived? Yeah, I think so. I think he celebrates his victories in this world and thinks, look at me,
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I'm winning, you know? Yeah, but ultimately it's our hope is not, and this is the difference between post -millennialism and pre -millennialism.
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We believe that we're restrainers in the world, primo, that the church will be taken out of the way and Antichrist will be revealed.
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This is second. We didn't get a chance to read it, but if you get a chance, 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. The Antichrist proclaims himself to be
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God, so then there's this apostasy that's taking place before that, which
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I think might be now the apostasy where formerly Christian countries are completely turning away.
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In Scandinavia now, it is almost entirely atheist, almost the entire region.
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The apostasy, the revealing of the Antichrist, then the restrainer is taken out of the way.
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We think that's the church. We think that's the rapture, and things get horrible for seven years, and it does look like, and I think
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Satan thinks he's going to win. The Antichrist thinks he's going to win until the Lord Jesus Christ himself comes and slays him with the breath of his mouth, the word of God.
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Isaiah 11 pictures that slaying with the breath of the mouth, and then of course Revelation 19 pictures it as well, and the
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Antichrist is thrown into a pit called hell, and where he'll always be. What's that?
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I guess he never read Revelation. Yeah, he's scared of that book. According to 2
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Maccabees, he died from divinely inflicted disease. So similar to Alexander the
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Great. But the all -seeing Lord, the God of Israel, struck him with an incurable and invisible blow.
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Incurable and invisible blow, according to Maccabees. 2 Maccabees would record that.
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Some good history there, even though it's apocryphal. Right, it's apocryphal work. We don't trust it as scripture by any means, but sure, just like we look at any other historical source, it's helpful.
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Yeah. Well, John, would you mind closing us a prayer after that mouthful? Lord, we stand confident in you.
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We can talk about things that are going on in the world today. Even courts right now, they can't rule on sororities because they can't define women.
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We know that the definition of the truth is you. We know that the end has already been written.
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It's in the book of truth, and so we trust it. We hold our confidence in you, and we,
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Lord, know that your word changes lives. So, Father, thank you for this time.