The Little Horn of History
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Daniel Chapter 8
Daniel Chapter 8
OPENING REMARKS
Several weeks back we studied the identity of the little horn of Daniel chapter 7, and discovered it to be the man of sin (or the antichrist) of the end times. Today as we study Daniel chapter 8 we will hear of another little horn which rises up and persecutes God’s people, causing great suffering and distress.
There are some who believe that the little horn of Daniel 7 and Daniel 8 refer to the same person, I hope to show you today through examining the text that that cannot be the case. These two horns represent two kings, one past and one yet to come.
I also want for us to see once again God’s sovereign hand over all the affairs of men, even over evil men, and evil times.
I want also for us to see once again that this book, the Bible is not like any other piece of literature on the planet. It speaks accurately of the past and of the future, it’s just as fresh and relevant here in the 21st century as it was to the early saints of the 1st and 2nd century AD.
“It is a remarkable fact that the Bible never becomes exhausted, never acquires sameness, never diminishes in its power of responsiveness to the quickened soul who comes to it.” - Philip Mauro
Such is the incredible accuracy of this chapter in predicting events 200-300 years into the future that sceptical scholars simply deny that it was written by Daniel, since to acknowledge this they would have to accept the supernatural power of God.
9 remember the former things of old;
for I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me,
10 declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,’
VERSE 1
This vision takes place two years after the vision of Daniel chapter 7, and around a decade before the fall of Babylon. The year is roughly 551BC, Daniel is in Babylon serving the King Belshazzar.
VERSE 2
In his vision he is in Shushan, the citadel in the province of Elam. This same city mentioned in the book of Esther, it’s about 230 miles east of Babylon in the land of Persia. At the time Daniel saw this vision Susa would not have been the great citadel that it was by the time Esther lived, since this is just before the rise of the Persian empire.
VERSE 3-4
Daniel sees a Ram standing by the Ulai canal, with two horns, both were high but one rise higher than the other at last. The ram charged westward, northward and southward and no beast could stand before it and he became great.
As we have seen in the prophetic symbolism of Daniel, beasts represent kingdoms, horns represent kings or sometimes governmental powers within kingdoms. He sees this ram in the land of Medo-Persia and the angel Gabriel tells us who it represents in verse 20.
20 As for the ram that you saw with the two horns, these are the kings of Media and Persia.
This ram, then, represents the same as the second beast of Daniel 7, the one like a bear raised up on it’s side with three ribs in it’s mouth. Both beasts represent the medo-persian empire.
The Ram was actually a symbol of the Persian empire for centuries, Persian kings on military crusades were said to carry a Rams head into battle.
We’re told that the ram charged in three directions, westward, northward and southward. This speaks of Persia’s military victories over the Kingdoms of Babylon (and the holy land) to the west, Lydia to the North and Egypt to the south. These victories are also represented by the three ribs in the mouth of the second beast of Daniel 7.
We also see that the Rams two horns represent Media and Persia, with one growing larger than the other at the last, this represents the eventual supremacy of the Persians over the Medians.
Note that the rise of the Medo-Persian empire is still future to Daniel, Babylon is still the power in the east at the time he saw this vision.
VERSE 5
21 And the goat is the king of Greece. And the great horn between his eyes is the first king.
Gabriel tells Daniel that the goat is the King or Kingdom of Greece and that the great or conspicuous horn between it’s eyes is the first King. The best interpreter of scripture is God! Daniel sought to interpret the vision, but it was the angel Gabriel who gave it to him. When we read scripture as Christians we pray that the Holy Spirit might help us to understand it, we lean not on our own understanding but lean into His.
Well before Daniel’s time Greece was known as the land of the goat!
So, this goat represents the same as the third beast of Daniel chapter seven; the leopard which had four wings. This is important, since we will see that the little horn of Daniel 8 rises out of the Kingdom of Greece, whereas the little horn of Daniel 7 rises up not out of the third beast (Greece) but out of the fourth beast which is Rome.
Daniel sees this goat literally fly out of the West and go across the face of the whole earth. This speaks of rapid conquest, rapid expansion. And this single horn represents the first king of the Grecian empire.
This king wouldn’t be born until 356BC, 200 years after Daniel saw this vision. His name would be Alexander, we know him now as Alexander the Great. Son of the king of Macedon in Northern Greece, Alexander was educated by the great Greek Philosophers of the age, and this warrior king conquered all the land from Greece to India by the time of his death at the young age of 32.
VERSE 6-7
He destroyed the entire Persian empire in just a couple of years, and took the holy land and Jerusalem from them also.
VERSE 8
Incredibly Daniel even sees the timing of Alexanders death coming when he and the Grecian empire was at it’s strongest, an event hundreds of years into the future. Yet more extraordinary evidence of the supernatural power of God’s word.
After the horn of Alexander is broken four more horns come up toward the four winds of heaven (or in every direction).
This again can only be speaking of the kingdom of Greece which was divided into four by Alexander’s generals after his death. The empire was divided into 4 regional kingdoms named after the generals; Cassander took Greece to the West, Lysimachus took Asia minor to the north, Seleucius took Syria and the east and Ptolemy took Egypt and the south.
22 As for the horn that was broken, in place of which four others arose, four kingdoms shall arise from his nation, but not with his power.
The incredible spread of Greek culture and in particular the Greek language across the world at this time created the perfect setting in which the gospel would spread like wildfire. Written in common Greek the gospels and the epistles could be read and understood by millions from Spain in the West to Persia in the East. God used Alexander the Great without him even realising it.
VERSE 9-14
So we see the little horn of Daniel 8 arising out of one of the four kingdoms of the Ancient grecian empire, not arising out of the 10 horns of the roman empire like the ‘little horn’ of Daniel 7. So the little horn of Daniel 8 must represent a ruler who reigned before the Roman empire came, before the arival of the fourth beast of Daniel 7. So this must be speaking of a figure from history, not of a future ruler, not of the antichrist who will come but of a type of antichrist who has already come and gone.
Who can it be? The Bible does speak of many ‘types of antichrist’ who have come and gone’; Pharoah in Exodus, Nebuchadnezzar was a type of antichrist, Haman in the book of Esther who plotted to destroy God’s people but was hanged on his own gallows, King Herod who sought to destroy the infant Christ. Indeed history has it’s own set of antichrists; Adolf Hitler to name one. A man clearly possessed by a demonic spirit; his followers would speak of how he would become a different man entirely when he stood behind a microphone, his closest aides talked of finding him in trance like states appearing to converse with spirits. It’s a proven fact that Hitler and the Nazi’s were heavily into the occult. And of course part of his demonic vision was the complete eradication of the Jewish people.
But we know that the little horn of Daniel isn’t speaking of Hitler or Herod or Haman, all these men ruled either before or after the Greek empire. The little horn of Daniel 8, the fierce looking king, who takes away the burnt offering in the temple, who destroys the holy people, who throws truth to the ground and causes deceit to prosper, is one who comes to prominence during the division of the Greek empire into four parts.
There is only one man who fits this description; the 8th ruler of the Seleucid empire, a man names Antiochus Epiphanes IV.
He is well known to history; he took over the kingdom through murdering the rightful successor to the throne and then having his son murdered too. He legitimised his rule through bribery and flattery and began to rule in around 175 BC.
Jerusalem fell under his rule and it wasn’t long before he began to make changes. Antiochus was a huge fan of Graeco-Roman culture and wanted to get rid of all Jewish culture. The high priest at the time, a man named Onias appealed for help from the Ptolemy and the Egyptians against Antiochus. Meanwhile a Jew named Jason went to Antiochus and reported Onias as a traitor and gave bribes to Antiochus asking him to make him the new high priest instead of Onias; Antiochus obliged. The new priest Jason promised to help Antiochus bring Greek culture to Jerusalem. So he had a gymnasium built right next to the temple where naked athletes would perform continually; providing entertainment for the people.
Isn’t this tactic so evident today? When the devil wants to distract and subjugate God’s people he doesn’t need to mount a fullscale assault, he sends entertainment, he distracts them. A distracted church is a powerless church, a church addicted to entertainment is a powerless church, is no church at all really. Is it any suprise that all the devil has had to do to derail the church in this nation is create options; create other options for amusement on a Sunday. There was a time when Sunday was a day for going to church with your family; now it’s Sky Sports Super Sunday, all the shops and retail parks are open. Church attendance on Sundays has now become one option amoung many for Christians; it has to compete with the football fixture list, along with other social commitments. Soon enough we are only attending church once every other week, that’s only half the Sundays a year. We’re only giving God’s church half of who we are, half of what we’ve got to give. The devil’s ploys don’t change, they are the same now as they were then. We turn to read our Bible app on our phone but up pops a notification; ah I’ll just check that! (Entertainment!) Half an hour later and we’re too tired to read our Bibles now. There’s nothing wrong with entertainment every now and again, but we have to be aware that it is being used to distract us every day, and especially from our duties as Christians, from church, from prayer from Bible study.
Jason the new high priest did everything he could to turn his countrymen from following God to the new Greek way of life, that is until he was deposed by another Jew named Menalaus who bribed Antiochus with even more money. Menalaus the new high priest went straight into the temple and stole some of the golden vessels and sent them to AE as a tribute.
We are told that this tribulation came upon Israel because of transgression, because of their sins God raised up this little horn; Antiochus Epiphanes as a judgement.
In the year 168BC Antiochus was humiliated by the new Roman governer in Egypt and as he returned north to Syria he attacked Jerusalem in a rage, destroying much of it, ripping down the walls and building a new fortress named Acra next to the temple. On December 25th 168 BC he erected an altar to Zeus in the temple and sacrificed a pig on it and ordered the Jews to worship it.
31 Forces from him shall appear and profane the temple and fortress, and shall take away the regular burnt offering. And they shall set up the abomination that makes desolate.
He ordered thar God’s name be changed from Yahweh to Zeus Olympus and forbade the Jews from offering sacrifice and took away all the temple utensils leaving the temple desolate.
He ordered his troops to murder all who would not comply with the new rulings; women who circumcised their sons were murdered on the spot along with their babies.
It wasn’t until the year 165 with the Maccabean revolt that AE was finally overthrown and the temple was rededicated in December of that year; this was the origin of the celebration of Hannukah.
All that AE did, all of the deceit, all of the destruction, all of the blasphemy is just a foretaste of what will happen in the great tribulation before Christ returns.
We know that the antichrist will be like AE in that he shall be great but not by his own power, the implication being that it will be the devil that empowers him. He will be wily, just like AE, he will be full of rage against God and his people, this won’t show at first but eventually he will turn against God’s people and persecute them terribly.
We don’t know the exact time when this future antichrist will arise but we know much of what to look out for by looking at this man AE.
We also know that the same power that gave rise to AE is at work in the world today, and we can see some of the tactics the devil is using against God’s people by looking at the life of AE.
Flattery and deceit
Naked ambition, unhealthy interest in power
Attemtping to undermine worship with entertainment
Empowering toxic, false shepherds in the church
Truth is thrown to the ground like it’s worthless
Lies rise up and are considered to be true, especially in the area of theology and God’s design
Persecution and physical destruction of God’s people
AE died just a year after Jerusalem was retaken in 164 AD from a short illness just as Daniel saw he was broken without human means, just as the little horn of Daniel 7 and Revelaion 13 will also be destroyed not by man but by God.
Saints we are given this word from God so that we might be prepared for what is coming, we are given this word to inform us of how to live now because of what has happened in the past. God is gracious, may He grant us the strength to pursue Him now, to push past the distractions, to be strong in the face of persecution and suffering and to resist the evil one.
We can have hope, since we know that our King is coming back. All of the shaking we are seeing in the world today is just a timely reminder that Jesus is coming soon. And we want to be always in a state of readiness since none of us know the exact time and date when He will come back, riding on the clouds to meet us in the air.
Pray