Daniel 8

The Babylonian empire was eventually over-run by the Medes and the Persians, some-when around 550 years before Christ. And the Persian half of the partnership became the strongest, and soon controlled an empire that stretched from Macedonia and Egypt to the Modern Pakistan. It was massive,amazingly organised, incredibly powerful. The Biblical stories of Esther and Nehemiah take place against the setting of the vast empire, one of the biggest the world has even seen.

Two hundred years after Daniel's time,between 334 and 331 BC,the tiny nation of Macedonia (Northern Greece) moving with incredible speed, won a a series of battles against the Persians, and so the Greek Empire of Alexander the Great replaced the Persians. But Alexander’s empire grew too big too quick, and after his death at the age of 32, it was divided between four of Alexander's Generals. One of these guys was called Seleucius, and his bit became the “Seleucid Empire” and included Judaea. The Seleucid empire let the Jews do their own thing, for about 150 years, until a guy called Antiochus Epiphenes became empereor. A mean spirited, calculating sort of person, Antiochus was called Epiphenes because he claimed to be a god in human form; he insisted that everyone in his empire worship him; he wouldn't allow the Jews to sacrifice to the Lord; eventually he rededicated the Jewish temple for the worship of Zeus. But God didn't do anything. At the end, Antiochus outlawed every trace of Judaism – reading the law and having your son circumcised, became illegal, and as a result, the Jews rebelled, fought against the empire and won, 160 years before Christ.

Why am I giving you a history lesson? Because over 350 years earlier, God gave Daniel the same history lesson. We read about it in Daniel chapter 8. He is given the main points of the story in picture form, and given the interpretation. The Medo-Persian Empire was the ram with two horns. The goat that flew into the attack was the Greek empire of Alexander the Great. The four horns are the four kingdoms, the last horn, the one that started little (literally came from smallness) is Antiochus. The Abomination that causes desolation happened under Antiochus' rule, and the eventual restoration of the temple followed immediately after Antiochus's defeat.

Isn't it amazing how accurate Daniel's vision actually was? And what an encouragement for the Jewish people going through all the unpleasant experiences of Antiochus's reign, to know that God had already foreseen all that stuff. Not that he sent it; but that he knew about it and would bring them through it. That small-minded ruler who came from nothing and caused desolation and abominations to happen in the Temple, would eventually “ be destroyed, but not by human power”.

Daniel was still  doing the daily grind of a fairly obscure job in Belshazzar's civil service when he had this vision two or three years after the vision of the beasts (Dan 7). This vision is different in a number of ways:

1. It wasn't dream-like; it seems to be a different sort of experience. Daniel seems to have been transported in the vision, from Babylon where he lived and worked, to Susa, the capital of the Persian empire. In Daniel 7 the whole revelation happened in a dream. In chapter 8, Daniel is so overwhelmed by what he hears that he falls to his face, and falls asleep (v. 17-18); but the angel won't let his sleep. He needs to be alert and ready to listen and obey. As we welcome the Holy Spirit, God is the God of surprises: he may speak to different people in different ways; and he may speak to you, in different ways at different times! Be ready to listen for God's voice.
2. As we have noticed, it included a clear historical interpretation.
3. It involves a conversation with the angel Gabriel. Gabriel turns up again in Chapter 9, and then in Luke 1 where he visits Zechariah (father to John the Baptiser) and Mary. His name means something like “a strong man of God” or “God has shown himself strong.” This was a significant message about the power of God and the triumph of his Kingdom.
4. And it is recorded in the Hebrew language. That may be the result of some accident; but it may be that Daniel writes here in Hebrew not Aramaic because he was bringing a message that specifically refers to the situation of his own, Hebrew people. To his people, in the most difficult of circumstances, God speaks, in their own language. To his people, in their most difficult circumstances, God has show himself strong.

The vision is for the "Time of the end" (v. 17) Not “the end of time”, but the end of the worsening season of persecution against God’s people. It answers the question in verse 13: How long will this time of desolation last?

So Daniel 8 is about the Greek empire. Daniel has to seal this message up, because it's for "Many years hence". How does that speak to us, today? 160 years after Antiochus turned the Lord's temple into a temple of Zeus, Jesus stood in the same temple claiming to be God, and used the language of Daniel to speak of a coming time when the “abomination that causes desolation” would appear in the temple. (Matt 24. 51) And a few years after Jesus, his followers were warning of a man of lawlessness appearing.

Our world is still soaking up the influences of Greek and Roman culture: our mathematics, our ideas about “truth”, our laws, are built on Greek and Roman ideas. We all learned Pythagoras' theorem at School. Pythagoras was one af many Greek mathematicians. Philosopehrs like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle (all Greeks) still influence our ideas today. John Lennox suggests that the Greek world contained seeds that are still bearing fruit today. "It is a as if we were looking through the contours of Antiochus and his time to a much bigger and more terrible scenario..." Ronald Wallace says, “The spirit that possessed Antiochus is the same Spirit that will inspire the final Antichrist in the last days.” so...

• We must be on our guard, ready to judge with discernment every new movement around us.
• We must be sober, and not imagine too soon that this means the end of the world. For generations if not centuries, Christians have been quick to label individuals they disagree with, as the Antichrist.
• We must be confident. Gabriel, God's strong man, always brings hope. What he says to us, what he said to the Jews in 165 BC, he says to us: Antichrist “will be destroyed, but not by human power”.
• And we must be both troubled and getting on with the job as Daniel was. He now had to find a new way of living victoriously with deeper unanswered questions than he had faced before.
• Daniel is still taking time to read his Bible (at least the bits of it that had been written by that time), to keep himself up-to-date with what was going on in his world, and to pray continually  for that world; and, from time to time, something supernatural would happen: we must be informed by Scripture, aware of our surroundings, and filled with the spirit.

© Gilmour Lilly October 2016