R. Dean: Daniel Lesson 34
The Seleucid Empire and The Antichrist – Daniel 8:9-14
We will continue our study in Daniel 8 where we get a profile of the antichrist. Daniel 8 really gives us a picture of an individual who came to the foreground historically in the ancient world and most of this prophecy is fulfilled, or was fulfilled in the person of Antiochus Epiphanes. He was Antiochus IV of Syria; Antiochus Epiphanes and he is a type of the antichrist. He was a historical figure and in this prophecy, this unusual prophecy in Daniel 8 we get a profile of the antichrist and the way this takes place in terms of prophetic terminology is you have a fulfillment of prophecy, the historical part of it is fulfilled with Antiochus Epiphanes. You don't talk about double fulfillment when you talk about prophecy because a prophecy can only be fulfilled once if all the details are taking place.
Now some people want to look at this and say it's double fulfillment, you had it partially fulfilled with Antiochus Epiphanes and then it's a greater fulfillment with the antichrist. But if you understand the word "partial" correctly it can either be fulfilled or it's not fulfilled but partial fulfillment is a contradiction of terms. So there's only one fulfillment and that's historical fulfillment is in the person of Antiochus Epiphanes, but he is then used by God the Holy Spirit as a type of the antichrist. So by looking at Antiochus Epiphanes and studying him we can learn something about the character of the antichrist and the activities of the antichrist.
And as I said last time, it's going to surprise a lot of people because we think that the antichrist is going to show up and he's going to have a certain appearance, he's going to be dressed in black and he's going to look evil and he's going to have 666 tattooed across his forehead and everybody is going to immediately know that this is an evil guy. And the problem is he's going to have a wonderful personality, he's going to do all kinds of things to make people like him, he'll probably be very magnanimous with whatever money he has available to him and he will have a fantastic welfare program, give out lots of food stamps, have lots of social programs to make everybody happy so everybody will think he's wonderful. He's going to have an excellent personality and reputation and no criticism is going to stick to him. He's going to be like some President's we've had recently, that no matter what they do they manage to get away with it. Antiochus was like that at the beginning point of his reign until a few things went south for him and as things went bad he began to get a little arrogant and basically went nuts.
So from looking at this study of Antiochus Epiphanes in Daniel 8 we're going to get a profile of the antichrist. Now let's just review a couple of things that we saw last time in relationship to Antiochus Epiphanes. First of all, he is going to be a successor to Alexander the Great. In the vision that Daniel had he looked and he saw a ram, in verse 3, "a ram which had two horns standing in front of the canal" and that represented Medo-Persia, the two horns represent the Medes and the Persians. Then in verse 5, "a male goat" comes along from the west, "over the surface of the whole earth without touching the ground; and the goad had a conspicuous horn between his eyes," and that is Alexander the Great. [6] "And he came up to the ram that had the two horns," and destroys that ram, and then we're told that [8] "the male goat magnified himself exceedingly. But as soon as he was mighty, the large horn was broken, and in its place there came up four conspicuous horns," so this outlines the plan of this second animal, the male goat, the he-goat, represents the whole panorama of the Greek Empire.
So this figure that comes up later on, this little horn in this chapter comes up on the he-goat, and that Greece. Now there is a little horn that we talked about in Daniel 7 and the little horn in Daniel 7 came up on the fourth beast which was Rome, so don't confuse the little horn in Daniel 8 with the little horn in Daniel 7. They are two different individuals. The little horn in Daniel 7 comes out of the Roman Empire and that's the antichrist. The little horn in Daniel 8 comes up out of the he-goat which is Greece. So they are two different individuals but it is the little horn of Daniel 8 that is the type of the little horn of Daniel 7.
So first of all, he's a successor to Alexander the Great; second, we see that he's going to move south and east of his position and against what is literally in the Hebrew, "the desire," and it's translated "the Beautiful Land," so he is going to move south which is towards Jerusalem, he's going to come from Syria in the north, and he also heads east to consolidate his control over the area that was the old Babylonian Empire.
Third, he will persecute the Jews in the land. Now this is important because if he's going to persecute the Jews in the land, remember Daniel is writing this and seeing this in about 551 BC; the Jews aren't in the land, they're in captivity, they're in Babylon. So if he's seeing this prophecy, that the little horn will persecute the Jews in the land, then that means that the Jews must return to the land in order for this to be fulfilled. So that was an encouragement to the Jews that were in captivity.
The fourth thing we saw about the little horn last week is that he would attack the entire Old Testament religion; he would make a personal assault in an attempt to destroy the religion of Israel. And then the fifth thing that we saw is that this happens towards the end of this period, it says "toward the latter time" and it's the end of the Greek kingdom. So this summarizes the events that we covered last time, I think we got as far as verse 11 or 12 last time but we're backing up a little bit to get some more information.
Remember there are three key principles for understanding Scripture. We have a little saying, it's the "ICE" principle, the "I" stands for isagogics, the "C" stands for categories and the "E" stands for exegesis. Now isogonics has to do with the historical background; a key principle in interpreting Scripture is that the Scripture must be interpreted in the time in which it was written, so we have to understand the historical background of so many passages, and one of the problems that you get into with Daniel is that Daniel sort of presumes a phenomenal understanding of events that took place between about 600 or 605 BC with the first group of young men taken out to Babylon, between 605 BC and about 150 BC. Now most of you remember taking courses where you spent a lot of time studying that in high school…don't you? Well you see, that's the problem, we have such a horrible education system today that nobody ever learns anything much about American history or modern history or world history, much less something that happened in the ancient world. So part of the thing that we have to do to understand Daniel is to spend a lot of time going over ancient history again and again and again, and I know that is a little rugged for some of you but for others of you, you enjoy it, but if we're going to understand what is covered in Daniel 11 and 12 we're going to have to do some heavy background study in the history of the Greek Empire because everytyhing that's coming up in Daniel, Daniel 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, is going to presume that you have an excellent understanding of the history of the Greek Empire and the Roman Empire. Since you don't we'll have to review that frequently.
Just to give you that broad panorama understanding, we have on the screen a picture of the image that Daniel saw in Daniel 2; that lays out the chronological flow of ancient history. Babylon was the first kingdom, that's the head of gold in Daniel 2; it was the winged lion in Daniel 7. The Babylonian Empire lasted from 605 BC to 539 BC and is most widely represented by Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar really established the Babylonian Empire and then it was Belshazzar who was the last emperor when the Persians under Cyrus the Great came in and destroyed the Babylonian Empire.
The Medo-Persian Empire lasts from 539 BC to 331 BC and it is a combination of those two groupies, the Medes and the Persians, the Persians being the most dominate side. Now very important and I've gone over this before in Daniel 7, one of the most important things that the Persians did was their invasion of Greece. They looked westward and after conquering the Lydian Empire that was in Turkey, or in Asia Minor, what we call Turkey today, they looked across the Aegean Sea and under Darius III and under Xerxes they made an assault down the Greek peninsula. That's where you get battles like Marathon, which is where we get the distance of 26 point something miles for a marathon runner; the distance from Marathon back to Athens when the runner ran to warn of the tactics and strategy of the Persians so they could pull their forces back and hit them while the Persians were making an end run for a naval battle.
So you have the Persian Empire and the result of that really angered the Greeks so by 340-330 BC when Alexander the Great comes to power, he wants to reek vengeance on the Persians and conquer the Persians, which he does in five short years and then he died in 331 BC but by then he has established the Greek Empire and it will split in four directions. It will split among four of his generals and that's what we're going to look at tonight and we have to understand that. And eventually the Greek Empire is destroyed by Rome in 146 BC and that begins the Roman period.
But what we're looking at in Daniel 8 is what takes place between 331 BC and 146 BC with the Greek Empire. So let's look at Daniel 8:8, "Then the male goat magnified himself exceedingly," that's a reference to Alexander the great. He "magnified himself exceedingly," and he did that through his conquests, through his conquests of the Persians and then he headed down through what's called the Levant or Palestine, then he heads across to Egypt and he reversed himself and he went back to Persia and finally conquered the Persians again, defeated their armies again and then took his armies all the way east to the Indus River, conquering the entire area of what we would call today Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. All that was conquered by Alexander the Great and then he turned around, went back to Babylon, had a great party, got drunk and died. He had become an alcoholic by that time, once you conquered the world there wasn't much else to do, so he spent a lot of time partying and it got the best of him and he died in his early…he was about 32 or 33 years of age when he died; and there was no one else who could pull the kingdom together.
That's what this second part of Daniel 8 refers to, "But as soon as he was mighty," as soon as he had completed his conquest, "the large horn was broken; and it its place there came up four conspicuous horns toward the four winds of heaven." This is the focus in the development of the Greek Empire for the next 200 years. Who are the four conspicuous horns? We have first of all Ptolemy; Ptolemy assumed control of the Egyptian section, he was the strongest of these four generals, he took control of Egypt and it was really under his protection, under his sponsorship that Seleucus is going to take control of Syria. But he takes control of Egypt, he establishes a great city up on the Mediterranean which he names after Alexander, he calls it Alexandria, and he begins a new life of Egyptian rulers, the last of which is Cleopatra VII, that's the one everybody knows about who had an affair with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, she was the seventh Cleopatra in her line.
The second general that took control of Syria and Babylon was Seleucus. And that begins the Seleucid dynasty and he begins a hereditary line of rulers from which this little horn in Daniel comes. So this study tonight is going to be basically a history lesson on the Seleucid Empire. The third general was Cassander and he took control of Macedonia and Greece. The fourth general was Lysimachus who took control of Thrace and Asia Minor. Now in case your geography is a little weak I have a map. Here we see Ptolemy down here, this is Egypt and he also initially has control of Palestine, this area along the southeastern part of the Mediterranean. This section is the control that went to Seleucus and he has the southeastern section of Asia Minor, Syria as well as most of what modern Iran and Iraq; that went to Seleucus. Lysimachus took this section up to the northwest or Turkey, the northwestern part of Turkey and Thrace which is just on the western coast of the Black Sea. And then Cassander took Greece and Macedonia. But this doesn't last long, before long Lysimachus loses control and this whole area comes under the control of Cassander's heirs and then Seleucus and Ptolemy are going to battle it out for who gets control of Palestine. And that is what we will focus on.
Now we're not just guessing as to the fact that this large horn is broken and there are four horns that come up because the angel interprets this for Daniel. The Bible is not some guessing game in terms of interpretation. Daniel 8:21 reads, "And the shaggy goat represents the kingdom of Greece, and the large horn that is between his eyes is the first king. [22] And the broken horn and the four horns that arose in its place represent four kingdoms which will arise form his nation, although not with his power." None of them had the same power, same strength that Alexander had. [23] "And in the latter period of their rule," notice, "the latter period of their rule," so we're not talking about the beginning but towards the end of the period of what's called the Hellenistic Empires, "when the transgressors have run their course, a king will arise insolent and skilled in intrigue." So this is part of the king of character that the antichrist is going to have, he's going to be "insolent," and that is arrogant towards God, and "skilled in intrigue," that means he knows how to manipulate people, he knows how to win people to his side and he knows how to maneuver and manipulate the powers around him.
There are really three critical things we have to understand historically before we're going to grasp what's going on in this passage and they have to do with certain historical events that took place right after the breakup of Alexander's empire. The first has to do with the Hellenization of the Jews. The Jews, at this point, this is roughly about 300 BC, the time that we're talking about under the Greek Empire it's about 300 BC and so far about two thousand years the Jews have managed to maintain a strict Jewish culture and environment in the land. So what happens now is they begin to adopt the Greek ways and this happens primarily because of their colonies of Jews that are removed and relocated from Palestine. When Ptolemy took over Egypt he immediately took control over Israel and he entered Jerusalem on a Sabbath day in 320 BC and conquered it. He took one group of Jews to Egypt to move in to Alexandria because he saw the Jews as great administrators and as stable citizens. They would provide stability, they were educated and he wanted to establish a strong society there.
Eventually that group of Jews grew to take over 20% of Alexandria, they became the most prominent, cultural, social administrative leaders in Alexandria, but what happened along the way is these Jews began to amalgamate with the Greek ideas and they began to adopt Greek culture, so much so that by the time you get into the period of the 2nd century BC, about 185, 175 BC they don't read Hebrew any more. There's not a Jew in Alexandria that could read or understand Hebrew any more; they can't understand their Hebrew Bible, so the Ptolemy of that time authorized a translation of the Old Testament into Greek, and that became known as the Septuagint, and it is called the Septuagint because the legend, and I want to emphasize the legend, is that the Pentateuch was translated by 70 rabbis in 70 days, and so the term "Septuagint." "Sept" refers to seventy, and so this is often abbreviated the LXX, and that's how it is usually referred to, either as the Septuagint or the LXX. This just emphasizes the Hellenization.
Now as this one section of the Jewish society becomes more and more Greek in their customs, in their language, in their culture, more and more open to Greek ideas and Greek religious ideas and they become more and more distanced from the Mosaic Law and Mosaic customs and dietary laws, of course that's going to set up a real division among the Jews. And so whenever you have…the law of physics is whenever you have any action there's an equal and opposite reaction, and so just as these Hellenized Jews, which we might want to call liberalized Jews, as they become more and more Hellenized, there is an equal reaction on the other side and that group is known as the Hassidim, not the modern Hassidic, this is where they get their name, but they were originally called the Hassidim or the Hassidians and they were an extremely conservative party. And we will see how they play a role when we get to the third point but before we get there we have to stop and understand the second point.
The first point we see is that the Jews are becoming more and more Hellenized, their distinctiveness is being lost, they're losing the Law, they're losing their dietary code, they're losing the way they dress, they're beginning to look, act and think like Greeks and no longer like Jews.
Now the second thing that happens during this time has to do with the conflict between the rising power of Rome in the west and the Seleucids in Syria. And this ultimately ends up in one of the… it's sort of like the treaty of Versailles of ancient history, and it's the peace of Apamea. Now what happens here is that up in the north, in the northern part of Greece, in Macedonia, Philip V is concerned about his western boundary, that's pushing over towards modern Yugoslavia, the are of Bosnia and Serbia that we see today, and he's concerned about his western border because the Romans are now gaining more and more power and they're beginning to push eastward into Macedonia. So he wants to secure his western boundaries so he goes into an alliance with Hannibal and the Carthaginians down in northern Africa.
In the Second Punic War which ends in 202 BC, so we've skipped ahead a little bit, we started off with the Ptolemies establishing the kingdom in Egypt in about 300 and now we're up to about 200 BC, the Second Punic War ends and the Roman army under Scipio, we studied that earlier, the Roman army under Scipio went across the Mediterranean and invaded Carthage and defeated Hannibal there and destroyed Carthage. Once they destroyed Carthage they're now free because they don't have to worry about their western border or the southern flank coming across with the Carthaginians, they're free to go after Philip and to expand into Macedonia, which they do. They expand into Macedonia, they defeat Philip and they take over the Greek peninsula.
Now that became a tremendous concern to the Seleucids. Here is Macedonia and now all of this area is under the control of Rome and part of this area coming all the way over to the Bosporus, all of this is now under Rome's political control and across Bosporus into Asia Minor you have the Seleucid Empire and this growing threat on the west called Rome. So they have to do something to secure their western border and this becomes a great concern to the Seleucid ruler at this time who is known as Antiochus the Great; he is Antiochus III and he is the father of Antiochus Epiphanes who we're going to be studying a lot more of in this lesson.
So first of all, Antiochus decided that he needed to solidify his empire so he heads east and he gains control of Parthia in the east and that becomes a major source of taxation for him. And then he heads to the south. Now remember in the prophecy in Daniel 8:9 it talks about the fact that he will become "exceedingly great toward the south and toward the east," so there is this initial movement to gain control of the east over Parthia and in the south. But he is concerned about the Romans in the west so he begins to push up this way towards the west and he's going to invade over into Greece, to seize control of Greece, and to take it away from the Romans. But the Romans respond and in three battles they destroy Antiochus the Great's army. They defeat him first of all at Thermopylae which was the scene of the famous battle with the Spartans and in 191 BC the Seleucids, Antiochus III is defeated there. Then his navy is defeated out in the Aegean Sea, and the next year, in 190 BC at the battle of Magnesia his army is defeated one more time. So after three major defeats he no longer has the ability to make war against the Romans and the Romans impose a peace treaty on him at Apamea in 189 BC that is as harsh as the armistice was on the Germans at the end of World War I and of course that set things up for World War II. In the same way, the peace of Apamea set up everything that was going to happen for the next 150 years in ancient history.
Now here are the conditions of the peace of Apamea. First of all, Antiochus III had to surrender all of his territory in Asia Minor; he had to give up everything and this hurt because that was some of his wealthiest territory and gave him his largest tax base. The second thing they had to do was to surrender all their elephants. You raise your eyebrows at that but that's their heavy cavalry that's their heavy armor divisions, so after you give up your elephants you no longer have your heavy armor to go after the enemy so that's a major disarmament policy; that's the same thing that the allies did to the Germans at the end of World War I in making them give up all of their weaponry. Third, they had to surrender all the ships of his fleet; that hurts because now you don't have a navy to protect your commercial and your merchant fleet out on the Mediterranean and the ships also provided a basis for communication so he has to give up his communication base and protection for his merchants. Fourth, no troops can be recruited for his army. They always built their armies off of a large number of soldiers that they recruited from other areas and they couldn't recruit troops in Asia Minor, Greece or in the Aegean Sea area.
And then fifth, and this was the harshest part, they had to pay 52,000 talents, that's the equivalent of several billion dollars, to the Romans over a period of twelve years. This was going to completely strap their treasury and bankrupt them so they had to figure out where in the world are we going to come up with 52,000 talents so we can pay off the Romans every year. That sets up the whole play for future history because if you have to come up with that kind of money then you have to go conquer some people so you can take all their money. Now what happens is, remember I said Antiochus III started off by heading east and he secured the regions in Parthia, what is now modern Iraq. Now this was a very wealthy at that time, still because of all the residual effect from the Babylonians, so if you were living in Parthia and you heard about the terms of the peace of Apamea the first thing that you would realize is this meant that Antiochus was going to be putting his hands in your pocket. So there's always problems with taxation, and sometimes you have a tax revolt, and that's what happened to Antiochus the Great, there was a tax revolt in his eastern provinces so he had to send his army east in order to quell that revolt.
Now in the ancient world they didn't have banks, they didn't have a Federal Reserve Bank like we do and they didn't have savings and loans here and there that they could send somebody into to rob and get money, but they had temples and the temples in the ancient world was where people stored their valuables because nobody would violate the sanctuary of the gods so they figured their money was safe. So Antiochus begins to head east with his army and he just hits every major town and goes into the local temple and wipes it out and takes all the money for himself. That aggravated a few people so when he came to Susa, which was the former capital of the Medo-Persian Empire, when he went into the temple of Baal in order to relieve them of all of their wealth, one of the priests of Baal named Heliodorus didn't like that so much so he assassinated him.
Another thing that happened, while all of this was going on, another thing that had happened is that Rome wanted some level of security for their reparation payment. So it's one thing to tell the Seleucids that they have to pay off 52,000 talents of silver and it's another thing to guarantee it, so what they did to make sure that Antiochus III would pay off his reparation payments is they took his youngest son, Antiochus IV, they took his youngest son as a hostage back to Rome. That will act as security for their reparation payments. So Antiochus goes to Rome and during that time he is educated in the best Roman schools and he becomes friends with… a number of his childhood friends later became some of the major players in Roman history. So they held Antiochus IV in Rome. Now when Antiochus III dies he's got another son, Seleucus IV, and Seleucus IV becomes the king from 187-175 and his youngest son is Demetrius. So Seleucus decides that his younger brother really shouldn't be a hostage in Rome any more so he's going to send his son to Rome in exchange for Antiochus IV. Now that's not really a bad deal because he knows that Demetrius is going to get a really good education in Rome and so he's going to come out the better for it.
So Antiochus is released when Demetrius gets to Rome and Antiochus begins to work his way back home. On the way he comes to Athens, beautiful Athens with all of its education, all of its culture and he decides to take a year or two off and spend some time in Athens and get to know the Greeks and learn a few things and he just falls in love with Greek culture. Now at that point he begins to get the idea that the one thing that's going to enable him to unify the empire is if he Hellenizes everybody, if everybody has Greek language, Greek customs, Greek religion, then he can bring unity to this diverse empire that he has in the east. So about this time Seleucus IV dies and Antiochus gets back home as quick as he can because he is going to maneuver things, he's going to strand Demetrius back in Rome, his nephew, and there is a younger child, just an infant at that time that would have been Antiochus IV, but he is going to manipulate things so that he gets control and he becomes the king. So he takes over after manipulating things. He's so impressed with Greek religion and he's so impressed with himself that eventually he's going to have aspirations of deity and he takes the title of Epiphanes. In fact, on his coins he had the slogan stamped, Theos Epiphanies, which means God manifest of God incarnate. So he certainly has aspirations of deity, but the Jews always muttered Epimanies under their breath as sort of a play on words because that meant mad man or idiot. So they recognized that he really did have a couple of screws loose and that really is going to become worse later on, he is going to go nuts.
Daniel 8:9, "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." This small horn is Antiochus. He starts off with inauspicious beginnings and he is going to gradually accumulate power, he's going to consolidate the power in the east and then he's going to look south and he's going to look down at Jerusalem and he's going to hear a rumor that there is a vast amount of wealth, gold and silver articles and vast amounts of money in the temple in Jerusalem and he's going to think, hmmm, this is the solution to my problem, I'll just raid the treasury at the temple in Jerusalem. He's going to have to do battle though because at this point the entire area of Palestine is still under the control of the Ptolemies in Egypt. So he is going to head south and he is going to, three times he's going to invade Egypt.
But before we get to that we have to stop and come to our next point which has to do with the history of Judah, what's going on in Judah at this time. We've looked at the Hellenization of the Jews in Egypt, we looked at the peace of Apamea and the consequences of that and now we're going to have to look at what's going on in Judah at this time. Let's back up and look at this map; here is the breakdown of these ancient empires. We have the Ptolemaic Empire down here in Egypt and at this time, they still had control of this area of Palestine but they're going to quickly lose it to Antiochus, he's going to gradually take control of Israel. This is going to set the stage for one of the greatest revolts that ever took place in the ancient world.
I want to read a summary of what happens from two passages in the book of Maccabees. Now if you were raised in a Catholic Church you had several books in your Old Testament that aren't in your Protestant Bible and they're called the Apocrypha because they were never accepted as Scripture. They were translated originally by Jerome because he thought they were good history. In fact in Jerome's Vulgate, the Latin Bible, when he translated these books he translated them because they provided good historical information and he thought people ought to be aware of what was in these books, but he did not think of them as Scripture, but because they were included with the Bible it wasn't long before people began to think they had the same weight, the same authority as the other books in the Bible. So that's why they are called the Apocrypha and they were never accepted as Scripture until after the Protestant Reformation. At the Council of Trent the Roman Catholic Church finally and formally accepted them as Scripture.
Two of the books that are located there are 1 and 2 Maccabees and they have to do with the history of the Jews between the Old Testament and the New Testament. You ought to read them sometime, it's fascinating reading, and it's good history, they're just not Scripture. In 1 Maccabees 1:29-32 we read: "And after two years fully expired the king sent his chief collector of tribute unto the cities of Judah, who came unto Jerusalem with a great multitude, [30] And spoke peaceable words unto them, but all was deceit: for when they had given him credence, he fell suddenly upon the city, and smote it very sore," I just love the thundering diction of the old King James, "and destroyed much people of Israel. [31] And when he had taken the spoils of the city, he set it on fire, and pulled down the houses and walls thereof on every side. [32] But the women and children took they captive, and possessed the cattle."
1 Maccabees 1:52-61, "And many of the people were gathered unto them, everyone that forsook the law, and they committed evils in the land [53] And drove the Israelites into secret places, even wherever they could find a refuge. [54] Now the fifteenth day of the month" Kislev in the Old Hebrew, Casleu here, "Casleu, in the hundred forty and fifth year, they set up the abomination of desolation upon the altar," if you want to know where that phrase comes from, that's where it comes from. It's referenced in Daniel 9, there will be an abomination but the phrase "abomination of desolation" comes from this passage. They built "an abomination of desolation upon the altar and built idol altars throughout the cities of Judah round about; [55] And burnt incense at the doors of their houses, and in the streets. [56] And when they had rent in pieces the books of the law which they found," they destroyed every copy of Scripture they could, "they burnt them with fire."
And then we read: [57] "And whosoever was found with any the book of the covenant, or if any found pleasure in the law, the king's commandment was, that they should put him to death. [58] Thus did they according to their might unto the Israelites every month, to as many as were found in the cities. [59] Now the five and twentieth day of the month they did sacrifice upon the idol altar, which was upon the altar of burnt offering. [60] And according to the commandment they put to death women that had caused their children to be circumcised. [61] And they hanged the infants about their necks, and plundered their houses, and slew them that had circumcised them."
Now this is where all of this is headed; it is going to be one of the greatest assaults on Israel in the ancient world, and once again you always have to think, and think of this in terms of the modern context, whenever you see Israel being assaulted this is always Satan's ploy because he is out to prove that God can't be God, and the one way he thinks he can do it is by destroying Israel. God has made certain promises to Israel in the Abrahamic Covenant, the Davidic Covenant and the New Covenant that God will give them a certain amount of real estate and they will have certain blessings in the land. If Satan can destroy every Jew so that God cannot fulfill His promise, then Satan thinks he can win. That is why Satan is the father of anti-Semitism and that's why anti-Semitism is such an evil. And Antiochus Epiphanes is a type of the anti-Semitism that we will discover in the antichrist.
In Daniel 8:12 we read, "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." Now "the host" here is first mentioned in verse 10 where it talks about the small horn, that is Antiochus, that "it grew up to the hose of heaven," the "host of heaven" here is Israel, "and caused some of the host and some of the stars to fall to the earth, and it trampled them down." That's talking about Antiochus' assault on Israel which we just read about in 1 Maccabees. Daniel 8:11, And "It even" that is the horn, "magnified itself to be equal with the Commander of the host," that is he's going to think he's equal with God, that is similar to the sin of Lucifer, "and it removed the regular sacrifice from Him, and the place of His sanctuary was thrown down." And that's talking about what we just read about, that the antichrist is going to defile the temple.
And then in verse 12, "And on account of transgression the host will be given over to the horn along with the regular sacrifice; and it" that is the horn, "will fling truth to the ground and perform its will and prosper." Now the question we have to ask is: what is this transgression. See, this isn't the transgression of the little horn desecrating the temple. This is the transgression, a sin on the part of Israel; because of some sin on the part of Israel they are going to be given over to the horn for divine discipline. And God is going to allow this desecration of the temple to take place because of divine discipline on Israel. So we have to understand some things about the history of Israel during this inter testament period in order to know why God is bringing this divine discipline on them.
As I said earlier, the Jews in Alexandria had brought in Hellenization, they were becoming more and more Greek like in their thinking, in their customs and their culture. That produced an equal and opposite reaction with the rise of the Hassidim or the Hassidians, a loyal conservative traditional group that eventually gave birth to the Pharisees, but this creates a tension, there is now division in Palestine. Now if you are the king sitting up in Syria, Damascus, or in Antioch which is where Antiochus had his headquarters and you're looking down on your domain and there's one group fighting another group, you want peace, because you don't believe either side is right because you're rejected your religion, so Antiochus wants to quell all of this disagreement and bring it under control.
Now at this point there's also a fight… [tape turns] … on the one side you have a high priest by the name of Onias, his Hebrew name was honiah but he is generally referred to as Onias, that's his Greek name. Now he is the conservative, he is the traditionalist. Then you have his liberal Hellenizing brother whose name in Hebrew was Yeshua, same as Jesus or Joshua, it's the same root name, but he's known in history by his Greek name, Jason. And so Jason comes along and he offers an enormous bribe to Antiochus telling Antiochus that if he will kick Onias out of the high priesthood and appoint Jason in his place that Jason is going to come up with incredible amounts of money out of the temple treasury for Antiochus. Antiochus is still stretching it to come up with the reparation payments to Rome so he likes that idea and he kicks Onias out and he puts Jason in, but Jason is a Hellenizer. Now at this time part of the deal was that Jason would turn Jerusalem into a Greek city. So one of the things that Jason did was that opened up a big gymnasium on the model of the Greek gymnasiums and he introduces all of the Greek athletic contests and all of the Greek games.
Now this really upset the traditional Jews. For one thing, whenever the Greeks were involved in their athletic contests they did it completely naked; they did it in the nude. In fact, that's what the term gumnazo original meant was in the nude, so when it says to discipline yourselves for the purpose of godliness in 1 Timothy 4 the term there is gumnazo and it means to strip naked. It doesn't mean physically but it means in the sense of stripping off anything that would hinder your or any encumbrance in an athletic contest. We just got through with the winter Olympics so just a little side note, when they were resurrecting the whole idea of the Olympics, I think it was in the late 1800s, they had not had any Olympic contests since the demise of the Roman Empire and so this is all new, and so these university students and university athletes who were all involved in this are classic students and so they're going back and they're reading all of the classic accounts of the Olympics and when they showed up to do their first trial run at the Olympics these guys all came running out of their dressing room butt naked, and that caused quite a stir, that was the only time that that happened. But you can imagine with the rigid, strict, traditional, legalistic Jews that they were not real happy with the fact that down here at the local stadium all the Greek athletes and the Jews that were joining them were out running around in the nude.
Not only that, the Jewish athletes were ashamed because they were circumcised, so they were trying to figure out ways to surgically alter their circumcision. This was creating a lot of trauma among the rabbis. Furthermore, the priests were becoming entranced with all this sports activity, they wanted to go down there and place a few side bets and they wanted to, after they got through with whatever Sabbath responsibilities they had they wanted to go watch the Saturday afternoon college games. Well, that created more problems. So this is about to explode in Jerusalem.
On top of that, Jason decides to send a team up to the games that are going to be held in Tyre. Now remember Tyre has a less than positive history with Israel. Tyre is where Jezebel was from; Tyre was the source of Baal religion and so the games up in Tyre dedicated to Hercules so any time you entered the games you had to bow down and you had to do obeisance and honor Hercules. So Jason sends his athletic team up to Tyre to take part in the games and that angered a lot of the conservatives back in Jerusalem that they are going to be using their money to further the Herculean games. But what they did was when they got there they ended up giving their money to the navy of Tyre in order to circumvent some of the problems there.
Now there's a third guy on the scene for high priest by the name of Menelaus. This guy isn't even a Levite; he's not a descendant of Aaron, he's not from the tribe of Levi but he wants to be high priest so he comes along and Jason apparently hasn't been able to come up with all the money for Antiochus that he wanted, so Menelaus says I'm going to give you a lot more money so Jason is kicked out, Antiochus kicks Jason out and puts Menelaus in. This really angers the conservatives because this is just blatant bribery, he's not a Levite, he's not a descendant of Aaron, it's just complete disregard for the Jews. And in the period after the captivity the priesthood is supposed to be a Zadok high priesthood. Of course he's not a Zadokite, he's not a Levite, and he's not a descendant of Aaron so there is a strong reaction among the Jews. Now at this time, the period of time that we're talking about has been roughly the period from about 174 down to 171 BC. Now notice this date, 171 because from 171 to 164 we're going to be the last seven years of Antiochus Epiphanes' reign.
Now look down to Daniel 8:14, this is a conversation between two angels that Daniel overhears. "And he said to me," that is the angel, "For 2,300 evenings and mornings; then the holy place will be properly restored." Now 2,300 evenings is approximately 7 years. I also want you to notice it's morning and evening. That means that these are literal 24 hour days just like the 24 hour days of Genesis 1, because there at the end of each day it said it was morning and it was evening, day one; so in consistent exegesis morning and evening equates to 24 hour days and this is roughly a period of 7 years. Now the reason that's important is because in the early 1800s the Seventh Day Adventists came along and they said the 2,300 is years and they figured out that those years ended up about, I think it was 1844 and that's when Jesus was coming back. Well, Jesus didn't come back, they all went out and stood on a mountain top waiting for Jesus to show up and He didn't so they had to go back and figure out another way to interpret the 2,300.
But the 2,300 is seven years and it's this last seven year period, notice how that's analogous to the seven years of the Tribulation, it's this last seven year period where everything is going to fall apart and Antiochus is really going to go nuts. He's been going down three different invasions into Egypt and on one of these the rumor comes back that Antiochus has been killed. So Jason, whose been exiled, comes back in and deposes Menelaus and the Hassidim, the Hassidians are all celebrating and all the conservatives are celebrating, they're having parties, and all of a sudden in walks Antiochus IV; he's not dead, and when he sees all the Jews celebrating his death…well, he decides he's going to get a little vengeance so he attacks Jerusalem, kills thousands of Jews and sells thousands more into slavery and he went into the temple and carried off almost all the gold and silver vessels. And then he treats Jerusalem as a captive city.
Eventually the Jews retake control because Antiochus had to get his army together and head down to Egypt again because he's trying to keep the Ptolemies from retaking Palestine. When he gets down there, and the reason he thinks that he can attack the Egyptians, remember the Egyptians are allied with Rome, the reason he thinks he can attack the Egyptians is the Romans are tied up in a fight up in Macedonia. Well, they end that war and now all of a sudden Antiochus is in trouble; suddenly as he's in Alexandria a Roman ship comes in with a Roman legate by the name of Popillius Laenas, and in a tremendous scene, a very famous scene in the ancient world, this Popillius Laenas was a childhood buddy of Antiochus IV and Antiochus IV is thinking boy, do I have it made now, this is my old childhood buddy and I'm going to be able to get exactly what I want. But Laenas comes up and he has a scroll from the Senate in Rome that he gives to Antiochus and the scroll is basically a demand for Antiochus to leave Egypt and to take his army with him and to give up all claims on Egyptian territory. And Antiochus says well, you know, I don't know what's going on, I'm going to have a committee study this, let's have a congressional investigative team, he's just stalling for time. Well, Laenas pulls out his sword, draws a circle around Antiochus and says you can't leave the circle till you make a decision.
This humiliates Antiochus and he goes nuts. It's after this that he has his delusions of grandeur and delusions of deity. So he heads back to Israel and on the way he seeks vengeance on the Jews. He sends in Apollonius, his chief tax collector, with 22,000 men to attack Jerusalem, once again on the Sabbath. Most of the male population was killed and the women and children are enslaved; the walls are torn down and the old city is now garrisoned by Syrian troops. As a result of this he suspends all temple ritual, he burns every copy of the Scripture that he can get a hold of; he forbids the observance of any special days like the Sabbath, all dietary laws are abolished, any woman caught circumcising their infant was executed and the child was executed, and then he went into the temple, desecrated it, sacrificed a pig on the altar in the Holy of Holies and dedicated the temple to Zeus. And that is the abomination of desolation which is a type of what the antichrist will do halfway into the Tribulation.
We'll come back and wrap up the rest of Daniel 8 next week.