40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Daniel 11:1-35 (Episode 523)

Episode Date: September 17, 2026

Chad and Daniel walk through one of the most detailed prophetic chapters in Scripture, tracing the rise and fall of Persian, Greek, Egyptian, Syrian, and Roman power. They focus especially on Antiochus IV Epiphanes, whose actions set the stage for the abomination of desolation and the Maccabean revolt. Have a listen. More from 1517: ·       Support the work at 1517 ·       1517 on Youtube ·       1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts ·       1517 Events Schedule ·       1517 Academy - Free Theological Education   New Books from 1517 Publishing: ·       The Turk at the Door by Adam Francisco ·       Luther and the Lion: A Narnian Catechism by Samuel Schuldheisz ·       By Water and the Word by Brian Thomas ·       Being Family by Dr. Scott Keith   More from the hosts: ·       Daniel Emery Price ·       Chad Bird   Follow 1517:  Instagram X/Twitter Facebook

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast, check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, check out everything else that 1517 is doing, you know, read some articles, sign up for some academies, all that kind of stuff. And then, of course, go over to that right-hand corner and go to that donate page and become a contributor and keep it all free. That's what you want to do because you don't want Chad and I advertising stuff. That's not what you want. You don't want us to have – I have – this is a true thing.

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Thank you very much to those of you who already do that. Chad, we are in Daniel chapter 11. Just wrapped up Daniel's terrifying vision of a man. That's what we got in chapter 10, which was terrifying. I mean, he was terrified. This is to be sure. But also, man, he got some great news, man. He got to find out that he was deeply loved by God and that he had nothing to be afraid of.

So while it is a terrifying vision, turns out that this man who we had determined is Jesus said, hey, man, you don't need to be terrified out of me. I got nothing but love for you. And now we transition into chapter 11 where, as we were talking right before we started recording, I mean, going to get a nice long history lesson. Yeah. So do not shut the podcast off. Now, maybe your history buffs are like, yes.

Maybe if you're not, you're like, I don't know about that. So hang in there. This is a, I was thinking, I don't know that in our, where are we at? 11 years into this now? 12? Whatever it is. 12 years. I don't know that we have ever, and we'll say 12, in the dozen years that we've been

doing this, had a chapter quite like Daniel 11. I mean, I know we haven't because there's really no other biblical chapter like Daniel chapter 11. And the reason is because what Jesus goes on to tell Daniel is very briefly what's going to happen through the rest of the Persian history. I mean, there's like a verse basically devoted to that. And then Alexander the Great's going to show up. All right. So that's verse three. And then once you get to verse four, basically through almost the end of the chapter, then you've got this breakdown of lots of details about what's going to happen, not just in the land of Israel or Judea, but all around there in Egypt and Syria. You get toward the end of the chapter and all of a sudden Rome shows up. Just a lot of future,

a lot of, from Daniel's perspective anyway, a lot of future, from our perspective, a lot of history that's coming up there. And this is kind of leading into what I would call the dominant section of the chapter. And that is when the guy that we've mentioned before in Daniel, Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Epiphanes means God manifest. So not a lot of humility in this dude. But when he shows up, that's kind of what most of the chapter is leading to. And he is very much of a small A Antichrist kind of figure. So we'll talk about him and the abomination of desolation and some other things related to that. But anyway, that's kind of a preamble to what we got coming up.

I mean, it is fascinating whether you're a history buff or not. And certainly fascinating because Jesus is the one who's basically telling Daniel, hey, write this down because here's what is about to happen over the next few centuries, more or less. I mean, if you're Daniel, and this is all in the future, super interesting. It's just, you know, we read it and we're like, yeah, I know. Yeah. Yeah. And we know, by the way, not just because it's here in Daniel 11, but because we have all of these Jewish and Roman historians who were recording all this stuff for these ancient historians. You got Polybius, who lives in the basically third century, writes about some of this.

You've got the Jewish writings, which most people have probably heard of, first and second Maccabees, they're in the Apocrypha. You've got Josephus, also a Jewish historian, later first century AD, who writes about some of these. I mean, there's plenty of historical resources, which when you align them, you put Daniel 11 on one side, all these historical sources on the other, you're like, wow, yeah, these line up exactly. This is what happened. I mean, down to some very minor details, what's laid out here, Daniel 11 is recording what was going to happen. And this is a source then of like criticism, right? Of like, well, I know we've talked about this as we've gone through like sort of prophetic literature or whatever. So people be like, well, you know, this was at least added on to at the very least, because how could Daniel write these things down? Yes, precisely. Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of people will say, you know, depending on their perspective, maybe they'll say, some will say, yeah, there was a historical Daniel and he wrote some of the book

and this later part was added on. Other people will say a guy who's living in the middle of the second century, actually smack dab in the middle of the conflict that erupted between the Jewish leaders such as the Maccabees against Antiochus, the fourth Epiphanes that this Daniel in quotes was living then. And he wrote all this and then, you know, pretended like he was living much earlier. And this chapter is definitely, if you want to talk about weak and strong arguments from their perspective, this is their strongest argument is because there's so many historical details here. From our perspective, we'll say, well, so what? I mean, Jesus is the one who told him to write this. I'm pretty sure that the God who knows all things was able to tell a prophet

exactly what was going to go down, even two or three centuries prior to when it happened. I mean, I would get it if you were arguing that this was written, you know added on way way way later like some dude in the second century tagging it on as it's happening i don't know i don't even know what the motivation would be like to do that uh yeah i mean the only motivation i can think of is he's claiming prophetic ability that he doesn't have you know so the whole thing becomes uh but it doesn't but it wouldn't benefit him really like you know like because he's pretending to be someone he's not yeah right yeah yeah it'll be a grand deception. Okay, so as we have seen many, many times over these last dozen years,

the folks who divided up the Bible did not always get the chapter divisions in a perfect spot. And Daniel 11.1 is one of these cases, really. Daniel 11.1 should be Daniel 10.22. It should really be tacked on to the previous chapter because it says, as for me, this is still Christ speaking. In the first year of Darius the Mede, I stood up to confirm and strengthen him. So this is going all the way back to the son of God talking to Daniel, saying that in this case, I stood up to confirm and strengthen Michael, the prince who was talked about at the very end of chapter 10. So 11.1 goes with the previous chapter. Now picking up here with 11.2, what is he going to say? And again, keep in mind, this is the son of God who appeared as this messenger talking to

Daniel. And he says, now I will show you the truth. So here comes the truth. We're going to first get the Persian part of this. Behold, three more kings shall arise in Persia. They're left unnamed. People have guessed as to who these four are, these three are. But anyway, three more kings shall arise in Persia. And a fourth shall be richer than all of them. And when he's become strong through his riches, he shall stir up all against the kingdom of Greece. So most folks here are pretty convinced, and it makes historical sense, that this fourth king who's going to be richer and stir up all of these people against the Greeks is our friend from way back in the book of Esther, King Xerxes or Ahasuerus as he's called there. So he's 46 to 465 BC. I mean, he was

just massively wealthy. He gathered, if you can believe the ancient historians, he gathers like two and a half million troops from not just Persia, but from all over the place. And they lead this grand invasion of Greece. And if you know the story of, you know, the Thermopylae and the, the 300 Spartans and that famous battle, then that's, that's when that happened. Uh, so they, they come through, uh, the 300 hold them back. They go on to, they, to, to invade. They, they, they do burn Athens, but they basically, uh, are defeated after that. Uh, so the Athens Navy defeats them they're defeated later on and so xerxes more or less ends up as a defeated persian leader but that's what he that's what he does he invades stirs up everyone against the kingdom of

of greece and that's uh takes us through verse two in response to this verse three we're told that a mighty king shall arise who shall rule with great dominion and do as he wills well this is our friend, Alexander the Great. We've talked about him many times before. He certainly was ruling with great dominion, doing as he wills. In fact, if you can believe the reports, one of the reasons that his father wanted to invade Persia, and then the reason that Alexander adopted was actually retribution for what Xerxes had done a century and a half prior to that. So Alexander the Great's mighty king, he arises, he's going to rule with great dominion, do as he wills. Verse four, as soon as he has arisen his kingdom shall be broken and divided to the four winds of heaven

but not to his posterity nor according to the authority with which he ruled for his kingdom shall be plucked up and go to others besides these and what's this talking about well alexander the great is as most people know i mean he dies young he's 32 years old this is 323 bc uh his kingdom does not go to his son. Instead, it's split between his four generals who duke it out, basically, for quite a while until finally everything's kind of sort of divvied up, even though, as we're going to hear in these next few verses, the two of these parts of the kingdom that are under the Ptolemies of Egypt, it's written like Ptolemies, P-T, but it's not Ptolemies, The Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids of Syria, those two guys, those two, not just

guys, but those two kingdoms, we'll call them, territories, heirs of Alexander's conquest, they're going to go back and forth. And for a while, the Ptolemies will have the upper hand, then the Seleucids will have the upper hand, then the Ptolemies will have the upper hand, then the Seleucids will have the upper hand, and eventually they kind of settle into their own territories. So two of the heirs of Alexander are going to really be the focus of the rest of the chapter. And that's why the ESV titles this chapter, the Kings of the South, that would be the Ptolemies of Egypt, and the North, and that would be the Seleucids of Syria and Palestine. So that's going to be the major focus as we move our way forward. yeah i think you've recapped the history correctly yeah not much not much to say besides that so that's i mean this is kind of what's going on right so son of god's telling daniel hey

this is what's going to happen you got some more persians you got this big guy coming he doesn't name him uh alexander and then when he dies split four different ways all right verse i'm going to read five and six so when every time uh so when you're listening to this every time you hear the king of the south think egypt ptolemies every time you hear the king of the north think the seleucids and syria judea that area so the king of the south shall become strong but one of his princes shall be stronger than he and shall rule and his authority shall be a great authority what's happening here is you've got the ptolemies who take in one of the seleucids He's there for a while, then he leaves and kind of establishes his dominance again in Judea and Syria

And then verse 6 continues, after some years, they shall make an alliance And a daughter of the king of the south, so a daughter from the Ptolemaic kingdom in Egypt Shall come to the king of the north to make an agreement Yeah, this is typical stuff, you know, you got, I got a daughter here and I want to make peace with this kingdom So I'm going to ship her off to be the wife of this king this is not going to work out well because she shall not retain the strength of her arm and he and his arm shall not endure but she shall be given up in her attendance he who fathered her and he who supported her in those times i'm not going to get into all the details but this marriage

alliance fell apart partly due to the fact that the king of the north who had married this girl from the king of the south well his former wife that he put aside when he got this new wife uh decided that she was going to engage in a campaign of assassination. Imagine that, a scorned woman. And so this whole attempt at kind of maintaining some sort of peace or balance through this intermarriage didn't work. It fell apart rapidly. All right, continuing, verse seven. and a and from a branch from her roots one shall arise in his place he shall come against the army and enter the fortress of the king of the north so a branch from the roots of this girl from the south so a future leader from the uh the Ptolemaic kingdom um he's gonna he's gonna come up so this

is Ptolemy the third if you're keeping track of this he's gonna come up he's gonna enter the fortress of the king of the north so he's gonna invade the Syria Judea shall deal with them and shall prevail. He's going to be victorious over the Seleucids. He's going to carry off to Egypt their gods with the metal images and the precious vessels of silver and gold. And for some years, he shall refrain from attacking the king of the north. Then the latter shall come to the realm of the king of the south, but shall return to his own land. All right. I mean, even if you don't know any of this history, you're kind of picking up on what's going on right here. So for a while, these southern guys prevail for a while these northern guys prevail and they're just back and

forth back and forth this guy invades for a while and then he retreats then this guy invades for a while and then he retreats so that's what we're and that's what we're witnessing historically this basically this long tug of war between these Seleucids who are in Syria in Judea And then the Ptolemies Who are in Egypt Back and forth, back and forth Well, this is going to continue Once we get to the next section

This is verse 10 through 13 His son shall wage war And assemble the multitude of great forces Which shall keep coming And overflow and pass through And again they shall carry the war As far as his fortress And the king of the south

Move with rage Shall come out and fight Against the king of the north He shall raise a great multitude but it shall be given into his hand and when the multitude is taken away his heart shall be exalted so he wins this Ptolemaic king he wins he you know feeling really proud of himself he's cast down tens of thousands but in the end he doesn't prevail because the king of the north is going to raise a multitude greater than the first and he's going to come with a great army

and abundant supplies so again more of the same happening the king of the south dominant for a Well, gets a little bit too big for his britches and then gets defeated when the Northern Army moves in and once more is able to be successful. So for keeping track, this is now usually called the Fourth Syrian War. This is 219 to 217 BC. So more of this back and forth between these various groups. Yeah, this amount of detail is wild because the people that you know real well, you know, like Alexander the Great, you know, maybe you're talking about like, you know, the Greece falling and all this stuff. You're like, oh, yeah, I know a little bit about that. No details.

And then, yeah, the Alexanders, four generals, and those came with loads of details. Yeah, yeah. It is pretty wild. I mean, this is all documented. I'm not going, I researched all these details, but I'm not going into the weeds on this because if we did, we'd spend four episodes on Daniel chapter 11. Just trying to kind of give you a surface look here. But there are, I mean, in Daniel 11, there's tons of details. You get into the histories that are written by Polybius and others, and there's way more details about, you know, it's standard stuff. You got political intrigue. You got bloated egos. You got, uh, well, you know, this dude did this thing to my great grandfather. And so I'm going to get revenge by invading and taking back part of the land that was taken away from, from him. I mean, these, these folks, uh, I have long-term memories, you know, I remember 300 years ago when they did this terrible thing to my ancestors and I'm going to get, I'm going to get revenge against them. so you got a lot of stuff happening uh in daniel 11 as well so pick it up with verse 14 uh just keep reading through these in those times many shall arise against the king of the south all right so again we're talking about an invasion here of the of egypt the violent among your own

people now keep in mind all of this is spoken by the son of god and he's talking to daniel so now It's not just going to be just the Seleucid armies from Syria, but some Jews also are going to join with him. So the violent among your own people shall lift themselves up in order to fulfill the vision, but they shall fail so they can try and not be successful. The king of the north shall come and throw up siege works and take a well-fortified city and the forces of the south shall not stand, even his best troops, for there won't be any strength to stand.

He who comes against him shall do as he wills and none shall stand before him And he shall stand in the glorious of the beautiful land with destruction in his hand So this is basically the story of Antiochus III, who is taking control of Judea He's going against Ptolemy V of Egypt Again, this back and forth, back and forth between these two powers verse 17 he shall set his face to come with the strength of his whole kingdom and shall bring terms of an agreement and perform them he shall give him the daughter of women to destroy the kingdom but it shall not stand or be to his advantage so what happens here is the the

leader through through this kind of diplomatic ploy gives his daughter to marry the the the Ptolemaic king, but when push comes to shove, she actually sides with her husband. And so it all falls apart, his plan. Afterwards, he shall turn his face to the coastlands and shall capture many of them. Now this is where things are expanding outward. This is verse 18. Afterward, he, so this is the he here is Antiochus III. Now the reason this is important is because this is the dad of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the one that we're going to hear about more in just a minute. So this is the dad of the guy who thinks he's God manifest, the one who ends up taking over the Jerusalem temple, sacrificing pigs on the altar, leading to all the stories

recorded in the first and second Maccabees. So this is his dad at this point. Afterward, he, Antiochus III, shall turn his face to the coastlands. So he's actually going to forget Forget about Egypt for a while. He's actually going to invade modern-day Turkey, Asia Minor, and is going to be successful for a bit. Shall capture many of them, it says. But where is he heading toward? If you can kind of picture the map, so you can picture Israel, you can picture Syria to the north of it. Then you go into Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey.

What's he getting close to? Rome. And the closer he gets to Rome, then the more the Romans take notice. And that's what happens next. He says, but a commander shall put an end to his insolence. And this commander is Lucius Cornelius Scipio, a Roman official, Roman warrior, Roman general. So they stop. They put an end to this aggression.

Verse 19, then he shall turn back his face toward the fortresses of his own land, but he shall stumble and fall. He's dead in 187 BC and shall not be found. Just kind of pause here for a second. so persians in alexander comes in alexander dies kingdom of greece basically is split into four different parts the two parts we're concerned with are here called the north and south north seleucids south ptolemies and now we find ourselves with the generation right before everything just falls apart and this is antiochus the third who pushes this weight into asia minor the romans push back. And the Romans now have entered the picture, and we're going to hear more about them

in just a second, but that's kind of where we're at historically. Kind of middle, a little bit closer to early second century, but this is where we fall historically. The great lesson in all this is that marriage alliances rarely work, but it doesn't stop people from trying them over and over again. Yeah, yeah, I know. Yeah, just because this king thinks, oh man, I'm going to send my daughter and she's going to marry this dude. And then, you know, she'll be able to basically work my will in his kingdom. Well, are you sure about that? Because it turns out that, you know, sometimes you marry somebody and you actually get to where you like them, love them, even with a arranged marriage and you side with them. The guy that you, you know, the father of your children,

you share your bed with, you side with them as opposed to your father who kind of sent you into this marriage without your consent. Yeah, it's not hard to believe that people eventually side with, you know, the place they have to live, you know. And against the person who forced them, right, into this situation. Okay, so now where are we? We're in verse 20. What's going to happen next?

Well, then shall arise in his place, so in the place of Antiochus III, one who shall send an exactor of tribute for the glory of the kingdom. but within a few days he shall be broken, neither in anger nor in battle. So after Antiochus III dies, his son takes over. He's got this huge war debt and he's trying to pay that. He's kind of a short-lived character though. So he's there for a bit and then he's gone. Now, verse 21. Verse 21 finally brings us, and I've tried to hasten this a bit so we can get to this guy, because usually we'll leave the focus of this chapter. We're going to get to a person that Jesus calls a contemptible person. So to Daniel, the son of God, kind of laying all this history out, says,

hey, in his place is going to arise a contemptible person. All right, who is this contemptible person well that's going to be antiochus the fourth epiphanies and again remember epiphanies means god manifest just imagine he wasn't named that that's a name he chose you know walk around yeah some call me chad lewis god manifest there's an arrogant name that someone could choose that's that's definitely it so in his place shall arise a contemptible person to whom royal majesty has not been given. So he's not really the heir that's supposed to be there. Well, then how does he become the ruler of the Seleucid Empire? Well, he comes in without warning and obtains the kingdom by smooth speech. ESV has flatteries, which is fine. It's just kind of a general term for

political entry, calculated diplomacy, smooth words. Picture a silver-tongued politician who always knows the right thing to say to the right people to get whatever he wants. Yeah, there you go. That's Antiochus IV Epiphanes. I'm having a hard time envisioning this, but continue. You know, smooth-tongued politicians getting with it. I can't. It's a stretch, but yeah.

It is a stretch, but, you know, exercise your creative mind. You know, it's a thought experiment. Not that this would ever happen, but suppose it did. Well, then that's Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Verse 22, armies shall be utterly swept away before him and broken. Even the prince of the covenant, who is this prince of the covenant? Most likely the Jewish high priest, Onias III, who was deposed by him and later murdered. So probably who we're talking about here with the prince of the covenant.

And from the time that an alliance is made with him, he shall act deceitfully and he shall become strong with the small people so it starts out small but he's he's gonna he's gonna grow in his power and influence without warning he shall come into the richest parts of the province and he shall do what neither his fathers nor his father's fathers have done scattering among them plunder and spoil and goods he shall devise plans against strongholds but only for a time. So what's happening here is he's beginning to exert his influence. He's scattering wealth. He's gathering more and more supporters because he's got a plan. Basically, he wants to win back Egypt. He wants to take from the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt what has been lost before.

all right so this is where we pick up with verse 25 he shall stir up his power and his heart against the king of the south with a great army all right so he's moving south to the ptolemies he's got a great army and the king of the south shall wage war with an exceedingly great and mighty army so the egyptian guy he's got his army but he doesn't stand because plots were devised against him. Even those who eat his food shall break him. His army shall be swept away and many shall fall down slain. So he's got people on the inside who turn against him, the Egyptian ruler. Now, as for the two kings, their hearts, both of them, the guy who's from the Ptolemies, Antiochus and the Ptolemaic king, their hearts are both bent on doing evil. They're going to sit

down. They shall speak lies to the same table. They're going to come to the same table, but they're going to lie to each other. It's going to be to no avail for the end is yet to be at the time appointed. So he shall return to his land with great wealth, but his heart shall be set against the holy covenant and he shall work his will and return to his own land. So what begins happened here is we're going to see more of this in just a second he's worked against egypt egypt fought against him unsuccessfully they came to the table try and work something out didn't work out really because both of them were not negotiating a good faith antiochus returns toward Israel, Judea, and he begins to work, as it says here, set his heart against the holy covenant.

So there are some historians who record that tens of thousands of Jews were killed or sold into slavery at this time. What we begin to see is Antiochus is really gunning for the uh judeans and even more so in in just a minute yeah you also are seeing that uh it's making it pretty clear there's no good guys in this uh whole story um so so everyone's evil everyone's lying uh not really like a side to choose here yeah that's it's not like when you're looking at okay am i going to be for the north or for the south no neither you don't want to be on either side of because uh both of them have uh huge issues both of them have evil motives this is nothing more than you know land grabs power grabs trying to control more that's it's

it's kind of the way it worked you know i want that land that you have and you want this land that i have and it's not just because we want real estate because money is attached to that or control is attached to that i mean and the people you know like the jews and are not even And other than that, you know, the one instance where it's like, yeah, you tried to join up on one point and that didn't go well, they're not really mentioned, right? You're just kind of in the middle of all this. Yeah, yeah. And that, I mean, that's the geographical reality of Israel's location, right? It's the land bridge, basically, between all those people in Mesopotamia and then all those people in Egypt and Africa.

other year. So it's, you got to go through Israel to get either the North from South to North or North to South. And so Israel has always been, I mean, throughout its history, always caught between the powers on either side of them. And these powers on either side of them want to control this area for logistical purposes. So verse 29 says, at the time appointed, So you can see God has a time appointed. So this is, I mean, he knows how all this is going to go down. So at the time appointed, he shall return. That is Antiochus shall return, come to the south.

But it shall not be this time as it was before. So he did pretty good last time. He didn't like conquer, but he did pretty good against Egypt. But it's not going to happen this time. Why? Verse 30 tells us that something interesting happens. Remember that his dad got in trouble with the Romans when he invaded Asia Minor and it got pushed back. Well, the Romans are going to show up again because as soon as Antiochus IV

Epiphanes begins to invade the South and the South realized, the Egyptians realized that we don't stand a chance against him. They sent a delegation to Rome. This delegation from Egypt gets to Rome, meets with the Senate. The Senate issues a decree. This decree is then carried back to Egypt along with the Roman delegation. And here's what happens in verse 30. for ships of katim that's the romans shall come against him and he shall be afraid and withdraw and shall turn back and be enraged and take action against the holy covenant he shall turn back and pay attention to those who forsake the holy covenant okay so this is actually a pretty famous and from our perspective, a very humorous thing that happens.

So you got Antiochus IV Epiphanes, he's camped outside Egypt, he's about to invade, he wants to conquer them. And this delegation from the Roman Senate shows up. They're headed by a guy named Gaius Popilius Linus. We'll call him Popilius. So Popilius has a decree from the Senate and he goes out to meet Antiochus. Walks into his camp, Antiochus comes out, he's, you know, thinking, oh, you know, hope everything's okay. Papilius hands him this decree from the Senate, ask him to read it. And the decree is basically, get out of there. You shall not enter Egypt. You shall not do what you're doing here. Go home or else. That's what the Romans are saying. And Antiochus tries to stall. He's like, well, okay, give me some time. I need to consult with

my, my other leaders. And then I'll, I'll give you, I'll give you an answer, uh, for fairly soon. Papilius takes a stick and he draws a circle around Antiochus IV Epiphanes and says, I'll take your answer before you leave that circle. I had such a, I had such a brash, brash move. And, uh, I mean, Antiochus is like, his hands are tied because he does not want to become an enemy of Rome. And he knows if he makes the wrong decision here, then his fate is sealed. So he just says, all right, I'll withdraw. Well, imagine humiliated now what he's going to do. And that's exactly what the verse described to us. He's humiliated by this, not really even

defeat, he has to just basically say, okay, whatever Rome says, I've got to do. So he turns his back, goes back home, but he's enraged and he takes out his anger on the Jews. And that's what's being described in the next few verses. Yeah, man, if you've delved into the history of Rome at all, especially when they were rising up and when they were, not at the height of their power but like when they were like when you had all these um these guys like gaius and all these there are so many stories of them doing stuff like that you know that are that are just awesome yeah that's why you know the the joke is that guys are always thinking about roman history romans well okay maybe so i mean there's some pretty awesome things that that took place with

the romans some pretty terrible things too but yeah i mean just pretty awesome things too no They had like a long, you know, stream of generals and stuff that had a lot of mic drop lines. Yeah. Yeah. Drawing a circle around him and saying, I'll take your answer before you leave that circle. I mean, come on. That's some theater right there. They were good with the theater.

They certainly were. So what does he do? Well, our friend God Manifest here, Antiochus IV, he's mad. Oh, man. And he's going to break something. He's one of these people. He's the guy who punches holes in the wall. He's that kind of guy.

He's the guy who takes it out on his wife or kids or his dog. He means somebody's going to bear the brunt of his rage, and it's the Jews. Yeah, the Jews are about to be on the receiving end of a temper tantrum here. Yes, big time So verse 31 says 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 Drew a mural here This is our, you know, the abomination of desolation This is the, or the abomination that makes desolate As it's translated here And so basically he goes to He invades Jerusalem He erects a temple to an altar to Zeus.

He sacrifices pigs. He desolates everything, abominates everything. This is all documented in 1 Maccabees for those who might want to read about it. 1 Maccabees chapter 1 goes through all of this. It talks about how on the 15th day of Kislev in the 145th year, they, talking about the Assyrians, or the army, basically, of Antiochus IV, erected a desolating sacrilege upon the altar burnt offering. So this is it. This is the temper tantrum, as you put it. This is what he's doing. And verse 32 goes on to say he's going to seduce with flattery those who violate the covenant.

So he's going to draw some Jews to his side. But the people who know their God shall stand firm and take action. Well, that's what we have with the Maccabean family. Maccabee means hammer. So the hammer family led by, first of all, their father, Mattathias, and then by his son, Judas Maccabeus, also referred to as the Hasmoneans. They're the ones who lead the revolt against what was going on. Kill their fellow Jews who are willing to compromise. That's kind of how this all starts, and then begin to engage in guerrilla warfare against the Syrian army, against the Seleucid army, eventually remarkably becoming victorious. And this is where you have, you know, eventually they purge the temple. And this is the origin of Hanukkah. They cleanse the

temple and kind of rededicate it. A lot of legends associated with that, but that's the historical a background of what was going on there they do all that just for the romans to show up later yeah it doesn't last very long they got maybe 100 years till till poppy shows up in 63 bc and uh and takes over but kind of this way it starts so uh the wise among the people shall make many understand though for some days they shall stumble by sword and flame by captivity and plunder when they stumble they shall receive a little help and many shall join themselves to them with flattery. So basically some are opposed to this, some are in the middle, some are actually going to the side of the Greeks or the Seleucids. Then it says, some of the wise shall stumble,

so they may be refined, purified, and made white until the time of the end, for it still awaits the appointed time. So basically the way this ends is you've got Antiochus IV Epiphanes who tries basically to make the Greeks into Jews. He tries to Hellenize them and their culture, tries to eradicate their faith, desecrates the altar. And led by the Maccabean family, they revolt and are able to eventually maintain about a century of semi-independence. And Antiochus IV Epiphanes, he is unsuccessful in the mission in which he was engaged. And that takes us through verse 35 so that's a not the entire chapter but it takes us at least through a significant part of it yeah yeah hey i mean you know it's uh it is unlike anything that we've

done before but uh if if you like history at all like there i mean it's if it's one of those this is one of those chapters too if you don't um if you're not if you're not really like a history guy like you might be very much like what is god trying to say right here i don't know what's going on uh so uh it's actually not terribly difficult to make sense out of uh it's uh this is just god telling daniel things that are going to happen that did in fact happen yeah yeah and that you know god was none of this was like a shock to god he spells it all out before it happens and he's working in and through that to purify his people to still protect them and eventually through all of it.

I mean, this is all kind of, you think of this as the long runway for the landing of the Messiah. So things are getting set up for the Messiah who is to come shortly after all these events take place. Yeah. All right.

Well, we are out of time. We will leave it there and pick it back up next episode. Chad, I'll see you then. All right. See you then. We'll see you next week.