Battlefield Israel

Daniel 11

Are you ready for a soap opera? We are living in an age of rebellion today. But the time of man’s rebellion has always been, and will go on until the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our text is like the scores of seasons of “As the World Turns.”

Now within this larger picture of the world’s rebellion against God, something else is going on, and that is the chastening of the nation Israel. Israel in the Old Testament clearly were called of God as a chosen people, and they disobeyed repeatedly. They went after false gods. They lived in immorality. They spurned His love. And as a result, God set about to chasten the nation Israel, to punish them for their idolatry, and their sin and disobedience.

The Bible says their chastening will remain until the latter days. And if at that time they truthfully and honestly look to God, turn to Him and obey Him, they shall be restored to the promise.

In chapter 10 Daniel was depressed that the 70 year captivity had ended, and yet only a smattering of Jews returned to Israel. He asks God to help him understand what is going on, and now in chapter 11 he gets the full meal deal, a much bigger answer extending all the way to the end of the world. He sees an appearance of Christ, and other angels, and then Michael in particular, who have been the protectors of the nation Israel. Even though they’ve been chastened, they have been marvelously preserved for a future redemption. The Prince of Persia is introduced, and he’s still at work today!

Now to begin in chapter 11, we have to look at verse 1 and really connect verse 1 back with chapter 10. “Also I” – says the angel – “in the first year of Darius the Mede, even I stood to confirm and strengthen him.” That is Michael he strengthened and helped.

Now this is very interesting. The angel said, “I was held up by a demon, and Michael had to come and deliver me.” And that’s in the third year of Darius, as it says in the beginning of chapter 10. “But two years before that, in the first year of Darius, I had to go and help Michael.” So they work together.

Now what happened two years before this? Two years before this was when the decree was given for the people to return to the land. And surely at that point, the prince of Persia wanted to stop them from going back at all; and it was then that Michael was working and this angel went to assist him, and together they allowed at least that decree to be made and 40,000 of them to return, out of what must have been millions. So we get a little bit of an insight into how God’s holy angels are busy preserving His people and carrying out His will for His people in spite of demon activity.

This is the last revelation in the book of Daniel, and it reveals the history of the suffering of the people of Israel clear through the tribulation.

Now this has happened a couple of other times in the book of Daniel, where we get the whole flow of history [statue/beasts]; and we get it again here. Only this time, rather than focusing on the Gentile powers particularly it focuses on the nation of Israel and the suffering that Israel will endure.

The details of this prophecy are so accurate, and so remarkable, and so verifiable, that it is this section of Scripture that has been the cause of most all the attacks on the book of Daniel. Daniel prophesies specific events about the Persian and Greek Empires. We know they came to pass, because we know Persian and Greek history; there’s no question about it. We have many sources for that. And the critics have found that the prophecies are so absolutely accurate that they have concluded that they must have been written after these events happened. Therefore they say it’s impossible that anyone should be so accurate.

Now, of course, their basic supposition is that God didn’t write the Bible. And their secondary supposition is that Daniel was a liar, because Daniel said he was receiving these revelations from God before they happened. So they’ve got two problems. Number one, they’ve got a God who doesn’t know the future; and number two, they’ve got a man like Daniel who has impeccable character of whom the other prophets said he was one of the three most honorable men that ever lived and they’re making him into a first-rate liar. But isn’t it interesting what the critics will do to try explain away reality? These are incredible, accurate prophecies.

By the way, there are multitudinous reasons why we know this couldn’t have been written at a later date: linguistic reasons, historical reasons; many others. But most of all, because Daniel is not a liar; he has too great a character for that; and because God can predict the future, and His Word is inspired.

We look now at 6 kings, and they all begin with an ‘A’:

Ahasuerus

v. 2          The fourth one was named Xerxes. But he had another name, and his other name was Ahasuerus. He is the Persian king mentioned in the book of Esther. He is one of the greatest rulers of all time. He had fabulous wealth. He commanded the largest army in the Ancient World. In fact, he commanded the largest army that we know about in ancient history. And he decided that he wanted to attack Greece.

Alexander

He’s the second king, Alexander, in verse 3. Of course, you know that following the Persian Empire came the Greeks.  This is a mighty king, none other than Alexander the Great of Greece. All Bible commentators agree that that is who is in mind. He retaliated for what had happened earlier to Greece. He seized the entire Persian Empire. It says he had great dominion. He stands out in history as perhaps the most remarkable military leader ever. By the age of 33 he had conquered the world. His army couldn’t go any further. They were literally worn out. They had conquered everything from Europe to India, and he was weeping because there were no more worlds that he could conquer.

Both the Persian Empire and the Greeks, led by Alexander, overran the nation Israel. But you remember that he died at 33. And what happened?

Verse 4    Now remember, this is all written a couple of hundred years before he’s even born.

Alexander had a half-brother who was mentally retarded. He had an illegitimate son, and he had a baby born posthumously. In other words, the mother of the child was already pregnant when he died, and the child was born after he died. All three were murdered, and he had no posterity to take his place.

The angel was exactly right. The kingdom did not go to his posterity, it was thrown to the four winds. A great battle ensued for who was going to rule, and the battle was won by four generals, and the kingdom was divided into four parts. The two closest to Israel were Egypt and Syria. Egypt is south of Israel. Syria is north of Israel. Those two become the ones we focus on the remainder of the chapter. Both warred with each other, and they fought most of their wars on the soil of Israel. So Israel became the pawn in this.

All right, now we come to vv. 5-6

They’re going to make an alliance. And how do they do it? This was the old way to make an alliance: the king’s daughter of the south comes to the king of the north to make an agreement. You give your daughter to the nation you want to make a treaty with, she marries the guy, and you hope that makes the right kind of relationship. And that’s exactly what happened. The angel was right on.

Antiochus Theos

Can you imagine taking the name Antiochus Theos? Theos means God. That’ll show you the kind of problem he had. Antiochus Theos who was the next king of Syria needed to make a treaty with Egypt. And so he decided that what he wanted to do was marry the daughter of the king of Egypt, or the king of the south. Unfortunately, he was already married. But that was no problem, he divorced his wife, and he married this daughter of the southern king. Well, his wife wasn’t real thrilled about it, so she murdered his new wife. She not only murdered his new wife, but she murdered all her attendants too, then she poisoned him to death.

It says in the middle of verse 6, “She shall not retain the power of the arm; neither shall he stand, nor his arm.” In other words, the power of both of them, the whole thing fell apart. “But she shall be given up, and they that brought her, and he that begot her, and he that strengthened her in these times.” In other words, everybody involved is going to go. And that is exactly what happened.

Look at verse 7: “But out of a branch of her roots” – that is, out of the roots of the murdered wife. And “one shall stand in his estate.” And verse 8 says of the next leader – “He carried away captives into Egypt, took their gods, their princes, their precious vessels, silver, gold, and so forth and so on.”

Now history tells us all about this. It tells us he took 40,000 talents of silver, 2,500 idol statues, and it goes on and on. And even he died, because he fell off his horse. And at the end of verse 8, it says: “The king of the south shall continue more years than the king of the north.” And that is exactly what happened. Now the reason I just point this out is because you need to know how accurate the Word of God is. But the point behind it all is that in the middle of this sits Israel, and all these wars are going on raging across their land.

Antiochus the Great

We’ve seen Ahasuerus, we’ve seen Alexander, and Antiochus Theos, now we come to Antiochus the Great. And history again doesn’t even argue. You can read a liberal commentary or you can read a conservative commentary and they all come up with the same names, because there’s so much evidence in this area.

vv. 9-10   It says he would come with a multitude of great forces. History tells us he had 75,000 soldiers. And he came to attack Egypt, and he stomped right through the land of Israel.

Verse 11 says, “And the king of the south was moved with anger.” Wouldn’t you be? Somebody arrive at your border with 75,000 soldiers.

Verse 12          The south put a whipping on the north, but it just made the king of the north more angry. And so in verse 13, the king of the north is to return. [read] Amazing. It was thirteen years later that he came back, exactly as the angel had said, with a great army, and great riches; and he came back to get his revenge.

Verse 14:         Who were Daniel’s people? The Jews. Who were the robbers? Well, the Hebrew term here means “sons of breaking,” “children of breaking.” And what that means is people who don’t keep their promise, covenant breakers. They are the rebels. It could be translated “men of violence who break the law.” Frankly, what they are is strong-willed, apostate Jews who are revolutionaries. They are like mercenary soldiers, and they join the cause of the king of the north, and they aid him in his attack.

Verse 15          The north literally routed the south, destroying them.

And then verse 16, this is the key: “But he that cometh against him shall do according to his own will, and none shall stand before him;” – that is the king of the north, Antiochus the Great – “and he shall stand in the glorious land.” That’s the land of Israel.

He decides, in verse 17, to strengthen his power, and to keep Egypt on his side. Notice “the daughter of women.” Now that’s probably a term referring to somebody who is the height of femininity. He picks out some fabulously lovely gal. In fact, it turned out to be his daughter who was named Cleopatra. And he gave Cleopatra to the Egyptian king, and he said, “Here, take her and marry her as a sign of good faith.” And what he really wanted was to plant a spy in the palace.

But you know what happened? She loved her husband more than her father, and the whole thing failed. It’s the Syrian Dynasty vs. the Egyptian Dynasty. And it sounds a lot like the soap opera “Dynasty”!

Now why does the Bible put a little thing like this in here? Just to show you how absolutely God knows history before it ever happens. If you for a minute think anything happens in history without God’s control, you’re wrong. He determines all the boundaries of the nations. History is “His story.”

Verse 18: “After this shall he turn his face to the coastlands.” You know, once Antiochus the Great had conquered that part of the world, he decided to go to the coastlands, and that meant the Mediterranean Islands and the borders of Greece. Well, you know who had the power out there by this time? Rome did. And v. 18 means that Rome utterly routed him. In 190 B.C. he was defeated by the Romans.

Verse 19:                 He was so distressed, he went back to his own land; and in a fit one time, he tried to plunder the temple in his own land and steal all the treasures in there; and the people got so mad they murdered him on the spot. He wasn’t found anymore.

He was followed by another ruler, verse 20, this is interesting. When Rome defeated him, they said from then on, “Syria, you will pay taxes to Rome.” And they were required to pay a thousand talents periodically to the Roman power. Therefore, the next king had to be a raiser of taxes – exactly what God said would happen happened. The detail is thrilling. The Bible is accurate.

Antiochus Epiphanes

We’ve already talked about this vile person. He comes in a sneaky way, and obtains it by flattery. He had no right to reign. He had no legitimate claim to the throne. He obtained it by buying off certain individuals; and he got in there.

Verse 22          He literally devastated the Egyptians and the king.

Verse 23          He tried to adopt a policy of friendship with Egypt, but he violated it, and he broke it. He’s a picture of the Antichrist.

Over the next verses he reveals two faces. On the one hand, he looks like Robin Hood. On the other hand, anything that begins to move in his kingdom he puts it down fast. He’s building an incredible power base. But in the end he was deceiving everyone. He breaks the treaties like the Antichrist will. You know how many treaties have been broken in the history of the world? All of them.

He comes back into the land of Israel and desecrates the land. In fact, he marched on Jerusalem after he left this meeting in Egypt. He marched on Jerusalem and he sacked the city, and he cruelly slaughtered people, and he brought about horrible suffering.

Verse 31          First thing he does is he puts guards all around the temple; nobody can worship. He stops the sacrifice; he halts all worship. And then on a given Sabbath, he sends his soldiers into the city, and he slaughters all the children they can find. And then he slaughters all the women. And then he makes heathen idolatry mandatory. And then he has nakedness flaunted by athletes in full view of the temple ground.

He enforces Greek culture upon the Jews. He erects a statue of the main god of the Greeks, Zeus, on the very altar in the temple. He slays a pig on the altar in the temple, and makes the priests eat the pork. This is the abomination of desolations. He abominates the temple to make it desolate; and he even had some Jews in it with him in v. 32.

The angel says, “Daniel, if you think the seventy years is the end, you’ve missed it. They’ll be seventy years. And then at the end of that seventy years they’ll be an Ahasuerus who will dominate your land. And then there will be an Alexander who will dominate your land. And then there will be Antiochus the Great who will overrun your land. And then there will be an Antiochus Epiphanes.”

And it says in verse 33, “They’ll fall by the sword, by flame, by captivity, by spoil.” And that’s exactly what happened.

God gave to Daniel through this angel the most incredible layout of the suffering of the Jews through the reign of the Persians and the reign of the Greeks. And you know who came in after the Greeks? The Romans. And the Roman period is described by the last final great Roman ruler:

The Antichrist

And that’s for next week.

I hope you have a heart for the Jewish people. I hope you realize that that remnant is there. They’re being purged, still today, but there has always been a remnant, and during the tribulation, multitudes in Israel shall be saved.