The Reign of Rebellion, Pt. 1
Daniel 11:1‑35
We are living in an age of rebellion. In fact, the first 35 verses and even the whole chapter chronicles for us the reign of rebellion upon the earth ... the time that man kicks against the traces, as it were, man defies God. And the Scripture establishes for us that the time of man's rebellion will go on only until the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, within this larger picture of the world's rebellion against God, something else is going on and that is the chastening of the nation Israel. Israel, in the Old Testament, clearly were called of God as a chosen people and they disobeyed repeatedly, they were idolatrous, they went after false gods, they lived in immorality, they defied God, they spurned His love, they turned their backs upon His loving kindness and grace. And as a result, God set about to chasten the nation Israel, to punish them for their idolatry and their sin and disobedience.
They were warned of this and there are many passages in which this warning was given, but I want to just read you a couple. In Deuteronomy chapter 4 verse 25,
When thou shalt beget children and children's children and you shall have remained long in the land and shall corrupt yourselves and make a carved image or a likeness of anything and shall do evil in the sight of the Lord thy God to provoke Him to anger, I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day that you shall soon utterly perish from off the land where unto you go over the Jordan to possess it, you shall not prolong your days upon it but shall utterly be destroyed and the Lord will scatter you among the nations and you shall be left few in number among the nations where the Lord shall lead you. And there you shall serve gods, the work of men's hands, wood and stone, which neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell. But if from there thou shalt seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find Him if thou seek Him with all thy heart and with all thy soul. When thou art in tribulation and all these things are come upon thee, even in the latter days, if thou turn to the Lord thy God and thou shalt be obedient unto His voice.
Now the Bible says that if Israel is corrupted and idolatrous and disobedient, they will go into scattering and that scattering will remain until the latter days. And if at that time truthfully and honestly they look upon God, turn to Him and obey Him, they shall be restored to the promise. In the twenty‑eighth chapter of Deuteronomy we find a very similar word given in verse 62:
And you shall be left few in number whereas you were as the stars of heaven for multitude because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God. And it shall come to pass that as the Lord rejoiced over you to do you good and to multiply you, so the Lord will rejoice over you to destroy you and to bring you to nothing and you shall be plucked from off the land to which thou goest to possess it and the Lord shall scatter thee among all peoples from the one end of the earth, even unto the other, and where thou shall serve other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even wood and stone. And among these nations shalt thou find no comfort, neither shall the soul of thy foot have rest but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart and failing of eyes and sorrow of mind. And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee and thou shalt fear day and night and shalt have no assurance of thy life. In the morning thou shalt say would God it were evening and at evening thou shalt say would God it were morning. For the fear of thine heart where with thou shalt fear and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see.
Now God says I'm going to punish you and you're going to wish that it was night when it was day and you're going to wish that it was day when it's night, you're going to be in agony and you're going to be scattered and you're going to be weak and you're going to be few in number if you corrupt yourselves. Now that is exactly what they did. And they're still scattered around the world and they will be until they're restored in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now you have to understand this element of history or you cannot understand the vision and prophecy of Daniel 11. Jeremiah, the prophet, said that Israel would go into captivity for seventy years. Daniel had read that. The 70 years had come to an end. Daniel fully expected that all of the land of Israel would be restored and that the city of Jerusalem would be rebuilt and the temple would be refurbished and all of the people in captivity would return. But it didn't happen. Only a small remnant, 40 thousand went back. The city remained in ruins and the nation was nothing significant at all. And Daniel was greatly disappointed. He thought the chastening only needed to last for 70 years. But you see, that was only the first phase. They never really responded to that chastening that's why they never went back. They were solidly entrenched in pagan life style and they really weren't interested in returning to the broken‑down land they had left. And so this was not the end of their chastening, it was only the beginning.
Now when Daniel realizes that the 70 years are up and when he realizes that only 40 thousand have gone back, he does what he always did, he got on his knees and began to pray. And his prayer is sort of along the line of "Why, God?" "Why hasn't it worked out like I thought it would? Why haven't all these people returned? Why isn't the city being rebuilt, the temple restored? Why isn't the great and glorious land of God's people being what it used to be?" And he's praying. And finally after prayer for three weeks, the answer comes.
And you'll remember how it came, first of all in chapter 10, Daniel had a vision of the Son of God and he fell on the ground and his legs trembled and shook beneath him and he quivered and he couldn't speak, he was literally devastated in the presence of the Son of God. And then you'll remember that in verse 10, an angel touched him and he got back up and the angel said, "I'm here to deliver the answer to your prayer. It's taken me three weeks because I had to fight my way through a demon up in space that was holding me up and Michael had to come to my rescue. But I'm here to give you the message of God, I'm going to tell you why it is that everybody didn't go back at the end of 70 years, I'm going to tell you why it is that Jerusalem has not been returned to its former glory, I'm going to tell you why it is that the wall is not rebuilt, that the land is not what you thought it would be." And that is the message of chapter 11 and into chapter 12. And the message concisely is this, because the chastening of Israel is going to continue until the time of the refreshing, or until the time of the restoration, or until the time of the Messiah coming in His Kingdom, this was only the beginning.
Now you'll remember, cause it's an important thing to understand the opening of chapter 11, that the angel who was sent by God to give Daniel this message was withheld by a demon. And Michael, you'll remember, had to come and sort of together they could knock off this demon, the prince of Persia he's called, and proceed with the mission. And you'll remember that the tenth chapter closes with this angel telling Daniel about the particular angelic conflict that's going on in space. He says, in fact, in verse 20, "When I'm through with you, I have to return to the fight with the prince of Persia."
Now, Persia was the ruling power over the children of Israel still in captivity. There must have been millions of them. Persia still ruled them. And the prince of Persia was a demon who influenced Persia to no doubt oppress and annihilate these Jewish people. So this angel had been assigned to counter‑attack the attack of the prince of Persia and preserve the people of God even in their captivity. And so we are let in on an angelic conflict and the angel says in verse 21 that he and Michael worked together to protect the people of God. And by the way, when Israel is finally restored and finally given its kingdom, guess who the main figure is in bringing it all to pass? Chapter 12 verse 1, "And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince who stands for the children of thy people."
When it comes to the end day, it is Michael again who will restore the people and this tells us that all through the time of Israel's chastening Michael in particular, and other angels also, have been the protectors of the nation Israel. Even though they've been chastened, they have been marvelously preserved for a future redemption.
Now to begin in chapter 11, we have to look at verse 1 and really connect verse 1 back with chapter 10. Also 1, says the angel, in the first year of Darius the Mede, even I stood to confirm and strengthen him. That is Michael. Now this is very interesting. The angel said, "I was held up by a demon and Michael had to come and deliver me." And that's in the third year of Darius, as it says in the beginning of chapter 10. But two years before that, in the first year of Darius, I had to go and help Michael. So they work together.
Now what happened two years before this? Two years before this was when the decree was given for the people to return to the land. And surely at that point, the prince of Persia wanted to stop them from going back at all and it was then that Michael was working and this angel went to assist him and together they allowed at least that decree to be made and 40 thousand of them to return. So we get a little bit of an insight into how God's holy angels are busy preserving His people and carrying out His will for His people in spite of demon activity.
So, Daniel is alerted then to the fact that he's going to have information about what God has planned for His people. It's coming through this angel. And in addition to that, Daniel gets incredible insight into the whole issue of the fact that whatever happens in Israel's history is being attended to by mighty angelic beings. Now this is a wonderful confirmation to Daniel because Daniel is about to hear that God's people, Israel, are going to be in a kind of punishment, a kind of suffering clear until the Messiah comes, clear until the last days, the end of time. And if they are to be under all of this for all that time, it is comforting to know that the holy angels are going to be their protectors. And that is the reason, I believe, that God gave to Daniel that insight as a comfort to his own heart when he was made fully aware that his people were going to have to suffer for millennia of time, until the coming of Christ.
Now having given us this picture of the protective working of the angels, the angel now beginning in verse 2 begins to unfold the revelation. This is the last revelation in the book of Daniel. And it reveals the history of the suffering of the people of Israel clear up until the Tribulation, chapter 12 verse 1 starts with the Tribulation. And chapter 12 verse 2 and 3, you have what follows the Tribulation, the resurrection into the Kingdom. So we see, then, and this is remarkable, from chapter 11 verse 2 to the end of the chapter, the sweep of history from the time of Daniel to the time of the Kingdom.
Now this has happened a couple of other times, hasn't it, in the book of Daniel, where we get the whole flow of history and we get it again here. Only this time, rather than focusing on the Gentile powers particularly, although they will be alluded to here, it focuses on the nation of Israel and the suffering that Israel will endure.
Now, I'm going to give you a footnote that I want you to remember. The details of this prophecy, particularly from verse 2 to 35, are so accurate, they are so remarkable they are so verifiable that it is this section of Scripture that has been the cause of all the attacks on the book of Daniel. There are two main books in the Old Testament that are attacked by the critics: Isaiah and Daniel. And they want to deny the prophecies that are there and in the case of Daniel, from verses 2 through 35, Daniel prophesies specific events about the Persian and Greek Empires. Now mark this. We know they came to pass because we know Persian and Greek history, there's no question about it. We have many, many sources for that. And the critics have found that the prophecies are so absolutely accurate that they therefore have concluded that they must have been written after these events happened. Therefore, they take the whole book of Daniel and they shove it up past the fulfillment because they say it's impossible that anyone should be so accurate. Now, of course, their basic supposition is that God didn't write the Bible. And their secondary supposition is that Daniel was a liar because Daniel said he was receiving these revelations from God before the time. So they're ... they've got two problems. Number one, they've got a God who doesn't know the future and number two, they've got a man like Daniel who has impeccable character of whom the other prophets said he was one of the three most honorable men that ever lived and they're making him into a first‑rate liar. But isn't it interesting what the critics will do to try explain away reality? These are incredible accurate prophecies.
I'm going to try my best to help you to understand what they're saying. There is so much here that...in fact, I couldn't even figure out an outline. And usually that comes real easy. And I worked and worked and finally it all came to me, there are five major kings mentioned and all of their names begin with "All and I went into immediate paradise. I couldn't believe it. It was so wonderful. I mean, I have this alliterative problem, why do you think our family is Matthew, Mark, Marcy, Melinda, Mom and Me and our dog is Mutt? No... But anyway, I want to take you through this and show you the amazing remarkable prophecy that is predicted here. By the way, there are multitudinous reasons why we know this couldn't have been written at the later date...all kinds of reasons, linguistic reasons, historical reasons, many, many reasons. Most of all, because Daniel is not a liar, he has too great a character for that and because God can predict the future as well as He can tell us about the past.
All right, let's begin and we'll flow through this period of history from Daniel's day, we'll go up to the time of the Antichrist. Number one king, Ahasuerus ... Ahasuerus, A‑h‑a‑s‑u‑e‑r‑u‑s ... Ahasuerus, verse 2: "And now will I show thee the truth." Here comes the revelation. "Behold, there shall stand up yet three kings in Persia; and the fourth shall be far richer than they all and by his strength through his riches he shall stir up all against the realm of Greece."
Now the angel says, Look, there are going to be three kings and then following those three there is going to be a fourth, he'll be stronger and richer than the others and he is going to try to stand up against the nation of Greece. Now the prophecy then centers on the fourth king. Let me just say this as a note. There were more than four kings in Persia but the angel picks out the key right here. There were three who ruled just before a fourth and that fourth one was the one who led a major attack on Greece. And that's the thing we want to see. The first of that line of four was a man named Cambyses who was the son, by the way, of Cyrus who was king at this time. The second, history tells us, is a man named pseudo‑Smerdis. He was, by the way, a usurper and an impostor. He looked so much like Cambyses that he claimed to be Cambyses and through all kinds of deception he got himself into the throne. The third king was a man named Darius Hystaspes. And the fourth one was named Xerxes, but he had another name and his other name was Ahasuerus. He is the king mentioned in the book of Esther. He is one of the greatest Oriental rulers of all time. He had fabulous wealth. he commanded the largest army in the Ancient World. In fact, he commanded the largest army that we know about in ancient history. And he decided that he wanted to attack Greece. The mood with the other three kings was moving that way, and in fact that third king, Hystaspes, made a sort of small piddly little attack on Greece. But this fourth one really stirred up all he had against the realm of Greece. By the way, he was totally and utterly in a devastating way defeated by the power of Greece. And the Greeks never forgot about it.
After that, 150 years went by and a lot of other little nondescript kings came along, but they never forgot what Ahasuerus did and 150 years later, the Greeks finally got their act together and decided to retaliate based upon what this guy had done 150 years before. And they came. And when they came, they came led by another king whose name is Alexander, and he's the second king...Alexander, verse 3. Of course, you know that following the Persian Empire came the Greeks: "And a mighty king shall stand up that shall rule with great dominion and do according to his will." A mighty king, none other than Alexander the Great of Greece. All Bible commentators agree that that is who is in mind. He retaliated for what had happened earlier to Greece. He seized the entire Persian Empire. It says he had great dominion. I'm telling you, the man was a man who stands out in history as perhaps the most remarkable military leader ever. By the age of 33 he had conquered the world. His army wouldn't go any further. They were literally worn out. They had conquered everything from Europe to India and he was weeping because there were no more worlds that he could conquer. He changed the course of history more than any other ruler. He was the son of Philip of Macedon and it says in verse 3 that he did according to his will. He was an absolute monarch, an absolute sovereign who had not only the power of personality and the power of leadership but the power of military might.
And of course, both the Persian Empire and Alexander overran the nation Israel. The Persians possessed it and controlled it. The Greeks under Alexander, possessed it and controlled it. But you remember that he died at 33. And what happened? Verse 4, "And when he shall stand up, his kingdom shall be broken." It seems no sooner does he stand up and get his kingdom than it is shattered. And watch, "It will be divided toward the four winds of heaven."
Now remember, this is all before the man is even born. I mean, this is a couple of hundred years before he's even born. "And it will not go to his posterity, nor according to his dominion which he ruled." In other words, it won't go to his children and it won't be to the extent that it was when he was ruling. It will be plucked up and given to others.
Now look carefully at that verse. It will not go to his posterity. Alexander had a half‑brother who was mentally retarded. H e had an illegitimate son and he had a baby born posthumously. In other words, the mother of the child was already pregnant when he died and the child was born after he died. All three, his mentally retarded illegitimate son ... or rather his mentally retarded halfbrother, his illegitimate son and his newborn baby, all three were murdered and he had no posterity. The angel was exactly right The kingdom did not go to his posterity. It was thrown to the four winds. What does that mean? A great battle ensued for who was going to rule and the battle was won by four generals and the kingdom was divided into four parts: Cassandra took Macedonia, Lysimachus took Thrace and Asia Minor, Ptolemy‑‑remember that‑‑took Egypt, and Seleucus took Syria. Egypt is south of Israel, Syria is where? North of Israel. Those two become the ones we focus on the remaining of the chapter because they are the ones that are right around the nation Israel. And in Egypt, a Ptolemaic line of kings was established and in Syria a Seleucid dynasty was established and through the centuries, those two dynasties warred with each other and they fought most of their wars on the soil of Israel. So Israel became the pawn in this. From here on to the twentieth verse, we cover about 200 years when these wars waged on the borders and throughout the land of Israel.
Now let's find out how it went. By the way, each one had a diminished dominion therefore what he said about it will be not according to his dominion did come to pass. Each of the four had a diminished dominion. All right, now we come to 5, "And the king of the south," who would that be? That would be the Ptolemies in Egypt because everything geographically is indicated in reference to Israel. You'll notice down in verse 6, in the middle of the verse, the king of the north, that's Syria. Now mark this in your mind. You're going to see for many verses now, the king of the south, the king of the north. That doesn't necessarily mean one king, we'll go through a lot of different kings in the Seleucid dynasty and a lot of different kings in the Ptolemaic dynasty. The point is the king of the south‑‑the king of the north is simply whoever's reigning in that are at the time. But I want you to watch how fabulously this unfolds.
"And the king of the south," that would be the Ptolemaic dynasty, "shall be strong and of his princes." That is of the princes of Alexander. And he shall be strong above him and have dominion. His dominion shall be a great dominion. And in the end of years they shall join themselves together for the king's daughter of the south shall come to the king of the north to make an agreement."
Now let me fill you in. The Seleucid dynasty is built in the north, the Ptolemaic dynasty is built in the south. The Ptolemaic dynasty starts out a little more powerful but it doesn't take very long until the north becomes more powerful as the expansion of the..of the north develops. Finally the two realized the tension that's existing and so in verse 6 it says they're going to make an alliance. And how do they do it? This was the old way to make an alliance, the king's daughter of the south comes to the king of the north to make an agreement. You give your daughter to the nation you want to make a treaty with. She marries the guy and you hope that makes the right kind of relationship. And that's exactly what happened. The angel was right on. Antiochus Theos ... can you imagine taking the name Antiochus Theos? Theos means God ... that will show you the kind of problem he had.
Antiochus Theos who was the third king of Syria needed to make a treaty with Egypt. The king of Egypt was a man named Ptolemy Philadelphus. And so he decided that what he wanted to do was marry the daughter of the king of Egypt, or the king of the south. Unfortunately, he was already married. But that was no problem, he divorced his wife. He divorced his wife and he married this daughter of the southern king. Well, his wife wasn't real thrilled about it. So she murdered his new wife. She not only murdered his new wife, but she murdered all her attendants, too. And she poisoned him to death.
It says in the middle of verse 6, "... She shall not retain the power of the arm, neither shall he stand nor his arm." In other words, the power of both of them, the whole thing fell apart. "But she shall be given up and they that brought her and he that begot her and he that strengthened her in these times." In other words, everybody involved is going to go. And that is exactly what happened.
Now this brought to the throne in the north, because now the Seleucid king Antiochus Theos is dead, so this brought to the throne a man named Callinicus(?). Look at verse 7. "But out of a branch of her roots," that is, out of the roots of the murdered wife, Berenice, there was a man named Ptolemy Euergetes and it says, I think it's in verse 8, no it's in verse 7, that "One shall stand in his estate." I don't know if you're following me too good, but stay with me. "Out of the branch of the roots of the murdered wife comes a brother from the south and he comes with an army." And he comes against Callinicus and he defeats him. And verse 8 says, this is what I want you to note, "He carried away captives into Egypt, took their gods, their princes, their precious vessels, silver, gold and so forth and so on."
Now history tells us all about this. It tells us he took 40 thousand talents of silver, 2,500 idol statues, and it goes on and on. And even Callinicus died because he fell off his horse. And there's an interesting note there, I'm just trying to think where it is, yeah, at the end of verse 8, it says: "The king of the south shall continue more years than the king of the north." And that is exactly what happened. Callinicus fell off his horse, died and the one in the south continued four more years.
Now the reason I just point this out is because you need to know how accurate the Word of God is. But the point behind it all is that in the middle of this sits Israel. And all these wars are going on raging across their land.
Now look at verse 10. We come to another king. The third one is Antiochus the Great. We've seen Ahasuerus. We've seen Alexander. Now we come to Antiochus the Great. And history again doesn't even argue. You can read a liberal commentary or you can read a conservative commentary and they all come up with the same Names because there's so much evidence in this area.
Now, remember that the Ptolemy of the south at this particular point in verse 10 has conquered. So he's kind of ruling in Israel. He's kind of got the power base. He's defeated Callinicus in the north. Ptolemy Euergetes, if you want the name, has defeated Callinicus in the north. Callinicus fell off his horse and died. And now the north doesn't like the south winning. So Callinicus has two sons, verse 10, "His sons," plural, "shall be stirred up and shall assemble a multitude of great forces and one of them shall certainly come and overflow, pass through and return and be stirred up even to the fortress."
One of Callinicus' sons died. The other one became the king of the north. His name, Antiochus the Great. And he came. And it says he would come with a multitude of great forces. History tells us he had 75,000 soldiers. And he came to attack Egypt and he stomped right through the land of Israel. Verse 11 says, "And the king of the south was moved with anger." Wouldn't you be? Somebody arrive at your border with 75,000 soldiers? "And he comes forth and he fights with the king of the north and he shall set forth a great multitude." And so the multitude begins a fight. Now the king of the south is Ptolemy also by the name of Philometor, he has 73,000 men, history tells us, 5,000 cavalry and he also had 73 elephants. They used elephants like battering rams and to carry things and so forth. And so this tremendous war goes on.
Verse 12, "And when he hath taken away," and the "he's" and the "him's" are very difficult to figure out in here unless you know the history and so we'll just run by it as quick as we can. "And when he hath taken away the multitude, his heart shall be lifted up and he shall cast down many ten thousands but he shall not be strengthened by it."
The king of the south was very effective in the battle. History says that they caused the north, Antiochus the Great, to lose 10,000 footmen, 300 cavalry, and five of their elephants. This we know from the historian Polybius. But this didn't really strengthen the king of the south, it just made the king of the north more angry. And so in verse 13, the king of the north is to return. "And he'll come down with a multitude greater than the last multitude and he'll certainly come, after certain years."
Amazing, it was 13 years later that he came back. Exactly as the angel had said. With a great army, and great riches, and he came back to get his revenge. Verse 14, "In those times there shall many stand up against the king of the south." Boy, he had a great army and people were joining it along the way because they hated the south so much. And look at this, "Also, the robbers of thy people." Who were Daniel's people? The Jews. Who were the robbers? Well, the Hebrew term here means "sons of breaking, children of breaking." And what that means is people who don't keep their promise, covenant breakers. They are the rebels. It could be translated men of violence who break the law. Frankly, what they are is strong‑willed apostate Jews who are revolutionaries. They are like mercenary soldiers and they join the cause of the king of the north. And they aid him in his attack.
Really, most historians feel they wanted Judean independence, these mercenaries, these apostate Jewish revolutionaries. They thought that by war, if they could get in with Antiochus the Great, knock off Egypt, maybe Antiochus would give them freedom for their assistance. That's really what they wanted. But at the end of verse 14, it says they shall fail. They didn't get their goal. He didn't give them what they had hoped to get.
Verse 15, "So the king of the south [John should have said north] comes, casts a siege mount." And it goes on to describe how the battle takes place. And by the way, if you want to know who won, it's very simple. The north won. The north literally routed the south, destroying them.
And then verse 16, this is the key. "But he that cometh against him shall do according to his own will and none shall stand before him," that is the king of the north, Antiochus the Great, "and he shall stand in the glorious land."
What is the glorious land? What land is that? That's the land of Israel. And here again we see the same kind of thing. They didn't get their independence, the mercenaries didn't get what they wanted. All they got was domination by Syrian power from the north, the Seleucids. Antiochus the Great took a lasting dominion over Palestine. Now he was a smart man. Because some of them had assisted him in the battle with the south, he gave them some money, he treated them with some favor, but he was basically their captor.
He decides in verse 17 to strengthen his power and to keep Egypt on his side. S