The Little Horns; Daniel 7-8
We have the remember that the fourth empire ends with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who destroys the kingdom, its final manifestation, and establishes His kingdom—which means that this has never happened in history before. So that has to be future, and that final manifestation of the fourth kingdom, even though Rome existed and dominated history some 2000 years ago and passed off the scene in the 5th century, nevertheless the Bible says this is the empire that comes back into existence in a final form, and this is the empire that will manifest all of the characteristics of rebellious mankind. In Daniel chapter seven we saw that the final form of the empire is represented by this beast that has ten horns and that after those ten horns come together in the final form of that kingdom that is the Roman kingdom and eleventh horn is going to come up which is called a little horn. This little horn is described in Daniel 7:7, 8.
Daniel 7:7, 8 NASB "After this I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrifying and extremely strong; and it had large iron teeth. It devoured and crushed and trampled down the remainder with its feet; and it was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns.
In chapter eight we see a further development of two of these kingdoms. It deals with the second kingdom, the Medo-Persian kingdom, and the third kingdom, the kingdom of Greece. The reason is that God is going to zero in on events that will have a closer fulfillment for Israel than the events of this fourth kingdom. In order to teach Israel (and us) lessons about this final form of the kingdom God in His sovereignty is going to zero in on these two kingdoms and specifically focus in on one king that comes out of the Greek empire. God shows that this one person is the closest picture of what the Antichrist will be like. When we study this we are going to see some things about evil. What we have been trained by our culture to think of as evil is somebody who looks like an Adolf Hitler and does the terrible things he did. While Antiochus Epiphanes does this kinds of things he also shows the really attractive side of evil and that there is a beautiful front that Satan puts on evil so that the kind of people he puts out in front are have attractive personalities, are brilliant, capable; the kind of people that most people according to the thinking of the world want to be around. And we see that again and again in world leaders: that people don't see past the façade of attractiveness and beauty of personality, intelligence, or whatever those superficial abilities are, and that masks the evil that dominates their soul. So God is going to pick up this one individual in history who is going to be His chosen picture of what the Antichrist will be like. His name was Antiochus Epiphanes, Antiochus IV, the king of the Seleucid empire.
There has developed the theory, and it is gaining some traction, that the Antichrist is a Syrian in his origin. He is called the Assyrian Antichrist which comes out of a reference to the term "the Assyrian" in Micah chapter five, right after the reference to Jesus' birth in Bethlehem. But it is believed that the term there is not referring to an individual but to the Assyrian nation. What also goes along with this is that the old territory of the Assyrian empire was in modern Iraq, Syria, parts of Turkey, and that therefore the Antichrist is going to come out of this area which today is dominated by Islam. So the future Antichrist, according to this view, is going to be an Islamic Antichrist. Part of this is based on an interpretive problem is Daniel eight which is used as a type of the Antichrist.
The little horn is Daniel chapter seven depicts the Antichrist and the little horn of Daniel chapter eight depicts Antiochus Epiphanes. They are very different in their origin and where they come from. The little horn of Daniel 7 arises out the fourth kingdom which is Rome. The fourth kingdom has ten horns and an eleventh horn comes up within those ten horns. He will subdue three of them and he will become the leader of that ten nation confederacy. That is the origin of the little horn in chapter 7 but if we look at Daniel chapter 8 the little horn that arises there comes up from the second of two kingdoms. In that chapter Daniel has a vision of a ram and a goat. The ram represents the Medo-Persian empire; the goat represents Greece. It is out of the goat that there is the rise of the little horn which is Antiochus Epiphanes, so he is going to come into existence out of Greece. The thing that strikes as really odd is that in the theory of the Assyrian Antichrist is that it has to postulate not only a revived Roman empire but a revived Greek empire in order for the Antichrist to come out of. We have to remember that the Roman empire covered key areas of the Middle East. So the view that they have is that, going back to the statue in Daniel 2 of the ten toes, five are from the west and five are from the east. So they are going to take Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Iraq and these are going to be the five nations coming out of the eastern part of the old Roman empire; and, of course, that covered the area that was old Assyria and so that is where the Assyrian Antichrist is going to come from.
The little horn of Daniel seven is the eleventh horn which rips out three of the original ten horns, whereas the little horn in Daniel eight is actually the fifth horn which comes out of earlier horns, as mention in 8:8, 9. The male goat is going to have one large horn (Alexander the Great), it is broken off (the early death of Alexander) and in place of it four notable ones come up (the split of the Greek empire into four kingdoms). After that, v. 9., came a little horn which grew exceedingly. So the little horn mentioned there is totally different in its origin from the little horn in chapter seven. A third contrast is that the little horn in Daniel seven will persecute Israel for three and a half years, according to 7:25—the last half of the Tribulation period. According the Daniel 8:13, 14, the little horn in that chapter will persecute Israel for 2300 days—six to seven years—so it is a completely different period of time than what is in Daniel chapter seven.
In Daniel chapter seven the Antichrist is pictured as arrogant, violent, he conquers three of the previous ten kings. This is described as "ripping them out." It is an extremely violent image that is presented. Daniel 8:24 NASB "His [Antiochus Epiphanes] 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." He gets his power from someone else. That would be demonic power, so that would either be Satan or a demon. There are similarities between the two because Antiochus Epiphanes a picture or a type, he foreshadows what the Antichrist is going to be like. The way he ran his kingdom is the way the Antichrist will run his kingdom. The way he runs the government, his personality, his hostility to Israel all depicts the characteristics of the future Antichrist.
The Antichrist is said to be man centered. He has the eyes of a man, Daniel 7:8. He thinks pure human viewpoint, reject what the Bible says completely and rejects God. In 8:23-25 Antiochus Epiphanes is pictured as insolent, deceitful towards people, crafty and sly in the way he conducts diplomacy, he says one thing and does something else. The Antichrist is incredibly blasphemous, hostile and arrogant toward God. That is very similar to Antiochus Epiphanes, Daniel 8:25 NASB "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..." That is a reference to the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ. He is going to set himself up to be worshipped in an act known as the abomination of desolation, setting up an idol of himself in the holy of holies in the temple. He is exalting himself over God. That was fulfilled historically. The Antichrist is depicted as increasing blasphemy in the face of divine judgment. Daniel 7:11 NASB "Then I kept looking because of the sound of the boastful words which the horn was speaking; I kept looking until the beast was slain, and its body was destroyed and given to the burning fire." He gets more and more arrogant toward God the closer judgment comes. Antiochus Epiphanes was very much the same way. In fact at the end of Daniel chapter eight Daniel is so sickened by what he has seen that he passes out and is sick for days because of what he has seen. The Antichrist is going to have fame, celebrity and power beyond all others. Antiochus was a brilliant leader, a brilliant military commander. What led to his downfall was his anti-Semitism. In Daniel 7 the Antichrist is depicted as one who would bring war against Israel until the Son of Man would come to establish His own kingdom. That is what ends the Antichrist's reign. But that is not what happens with Antiochus Epiphanes. He is depicted as removing the daily sacrifices and he redefines truth.
Daniel 8:1 NASB "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." This is two years after his vision in chapter seven. The way in which he states this shows that he understands that there is a connection between the vision he is sees in chapter eight and the one before that in chapter seven. Daniel chapter eight is going to focus on these particular examples of the kingdom of man. Because of that we can do an analysis of these chapters, an analysis of history, and come to understand some of the key characteristics that we find in the kingdom of man. One of the foremost ones that we see from its initial appearance back in Genesis chapter eleven in Babylon is that the king, the state, take son for itself responsibilities that only God can fulfill. There is always a religious overtone to the claims of the state that they can solve all of man's problems because of their great power and their great ability. This was the hope of Nimrod when he established the kingdom of Babylon initially and we see that all through these periods of time when we are talking about the Seleucid kings, the Caesars in Rome, about modern kings and empires. Always the threat to political leadership is to think you can do more than you can, and that the state should do more than it is supposed to. All the way through the Scriptures the role of human government is to restrain evil, it is not to promote prosperity. Only by restraining evil can it allow for an environment of freedom where righteousness can then prevail. Daniel chapter eight takes our attention to Antiochus Epiphanes—Epiphanes was Greek meaning "God manifest." He viewed himself as the incarnation of God on the earth but he got so arrogant that people began to laugh at him and called him Antiochus Epimanes—"crazy one."
The real downfall of Antiochus Epiphanes was that he established a reign terror in Israel from 171-164 BC—almost seven years when he was making life miserable for the Jews. But God will raise up leaders in the form of the Maccabees who will lead a revolt and this will eventually establish the Hasmonean kingdom in Israel.
Daniel 8:2 NASB "I looked in the vision, and while I was looking I was in the citadel of Susa, which is in the province of Elam; and I looked in the vision and I myself was beside the Ulai Canal." Nobody is really sure where the Ulai canal was located. [3] "Then I lifted my eyes 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 the longer one coming up last." We know from Scripture that horns represent power, kingdoms. The horns depict the Persian empire which came up after the Median empire came up and came to dominate the Medo-Persian empire. This is identified in 8:20 NASB "The ram which you saw with the two horns represents the kings of Media and Persia."
Daniel 8:4 NASB "I saw the ram butting westward, northward, and southward, and no {other} beasts could stand before him nor was there anyone to rescue from his power, but he did as he pleased and magnified {himself.}
Illustrations