The Little Horns; Daniel 7-8
We have the remember that the
fourth empire ends with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who
destroys the kingdom, its final manifestation, and establishes His
kingdom—which means that this has never happened in history before. So that has
to be future, and that final manifestation of the fourth kingdom, even though
Rome existed and dominated history some 2000 years ago and passed off the scene
in the 5th century, nevertheless the Bible says this is the empire
that comes back into existence in a final form, and this is the empire that
will manifest all of the characteristics of rebellious mankind. In Daniel
chapter seven we saw that the final form of the empire is represented by this
beast that has ten horns and that after those ten horns come together in the
final form of that kingdom that is the Roman kingdom and eleventh horn is going
to come up which is called a little horn. This little horn is described in
Daniel 7:7, 8.
Daniel 7:7, 8 NASB
“After this I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast,
dreadful and terrifying and extremely strong; and it had large iron teeth. It
devoured and crushed and trampled down the remainder with its feet; and it was
different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns.
[8] While I was contemplating the horns, behold, another horn, a little one,
came up among them, and three of the first horns were pulled out by the roots
before it; and behold, this horn possessed eyes like the eyes of a man and a
mouth uttering great {boasts.}” The “eyes like the eyes of a man” is just a
picture of the fact that what he thinks and his knowledge is just pure human
viewpoint. Eyes in Scripture often reflect something about knowledge. The
antichrist has pure human viewpoint and he is arrogant.
In chapter eight we see a
further development of two of these kingdoms. It deals with the second kingdom,
the Medo-Persian kingdom, and the third kingdom, the kingdom of Greece.
The reason is that God is going to zero in on events that will have a closer
fulfillment for Israel than the events of this fourth kingdom. In order to teach Israel (and us) lessons about this final form of the kingdom
God in His sovereignty is going to zero in on these two kingdoms and
specifically focus in on one king that comes out of the Greek empire. God shows
that this one person is the closest picture of what the Antichrist will be
like. When we study this we are going to see some things about evil. What we
have been trained by our culture to think of as evil is somebody who looks like
an Adolf Hitler and does the terrible things he did. While Antiochus Epiphanes
does this kinds of things he also shows the really attractive side of evil and
that there is a beautiful front that Satan puts on evil so that the kind of
people he puts out in front are have attractive personalities, are brilliant,
capable; the kind of people that most people according to the thinking of the
world want to be around. And we see that again and again in world leaders: that
people don’t see past the façade of attractiveness and beauty of personality,
intelligence, or whatever those superficial abilities are, and that masks the
evil that dominates their soul. So God is going to pick up this one individual
in history who is going to be His chosen picture of what the Antichrist will be
like. His name was Antiochus Epiphanes, Antiochus IV, the king of the Seleucid
empire.
There has developed the
theory, and it is gaining some traction, that the Antichrist is a Syrian in his
origin. He is called the Assyrian Antichrist which comes out of a reference to
the term “the Assyrian” in Micah chapter five, right after the reference to
Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. But it is believed that the term there is not
referring to an individual but to the Assyrian nation. What also goes along
with this is that the old territory of the Assyrian empire was in modern Iraq, Syria, parts of Turkey, and that therefore the Antichrist is going to come
out of this area which today is dominated by Islam. So the future Antichrist,
according to this view, is going to be an Islamic Antichrist. Part of this is
based on an interpretive problem is Daniel eight which is used as a type of the
Antichrist.
The little horn is Daniel
chapter seven depicts the Antichrist and the little horn of Daniel chapter
eight depicts Antiochus Epiphanes. They are very different in their origin and
where they come from. The little horn of Daniel 7 arises out the fourth kingdom
which is Rome. The fourth kingdom has ten horns and an eleventh
horn comes up within those ten horns. He will subdue three of them and he will
become the leader of that ten nation confederacy. That is the origin of the
little horn in chapter 7 but if we look at Daniel chapter 8 the little horn
that arises there comes up from the second of two kingdoms. In that chapter
Daniel has a vision of a ram and a goat. The ram represents the Medo-Persian
empire; the goat represents Greece. It is out of the goat that there is the rise of the
little horn which is Antiochus Epiphanes, so he is going to come into existence
out of Greece. The thing that strikes as really odd is that in the
theory of the Assyrian Antichrist is that it has to postulate not only a
revived Roman empire but a revived Greek empire in order for the
Antichrist to come out of. We have to remember that the Roman empire covered key areas of the Middle East. So the view that they have is that, going back to the statue in
Daniel 2 of the ten toes, five are from the west and five are from the east. So
they are going to take Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Iraq and these are
going to be the five nations coming out of the eastern part of the old Roman
empire; and, of course, that covered the area that was old Assyria and so that
is where the Assyrian Antichrist is going to come from.
The little horn of Daniel
seven is the eleventh horn which rips out three of the original ten horns,
whereas the little horn in Daniel eight is actually the fifth horn which comes
out of earlier horns, as mention in 8:8, 9. The male goat is going to have one
large horn (Alexander the Great), it is broken off (the early death of
Alexander) and in place of it four notable ones come up (the split of the Greek
empire into four kingdoms). After that, v. 9., came a little horn which grew
exceedingly. So the little horn mentioned there is totally different in its
origin from the little horn in chapter seven. A third contrast is that the
little horn in Daniel seven will persecute Israel for three and a half years,
according to 7:25—the last half of the Tribulation period. According the Daniel
8:13, 14, the little horn in that chapter will persecute Israel for 2300
days—six to seven years—so it is a completely different period of time than
what is in Daniel chapter seven.
In Daniel chapter seven
the Antichrist is pictured as arrogant, violent, he conquers three of the
previous ten kings. This is described as “ripping them out.” It is an extremely
violent image that is presented. Daniel 8:24
NASB “His [Antiochus Epiphanes] power will be mighty, but not by his
{own} power, And he will destroy to an extraordinary degree And prosper and
perform {his will;} He will destroy mighty men and the holy people.” He gets
his power from someone else. That would be demonic power, so that would either
be Satan or a demon. There are similarities between the two because Antiochus
Epiphanes a picture or a type, he foreshadows what the Antichrist is going to
be like. The way he ran his kingdom is the way the Antichrist will run his
kingdom. The way he runs the government, his personality, his hostility to Israel all depicts the characteristics of the future
Antichrist.
The Antichrist is said to
be man centered. He has the eyes of a man, Daniel 7:8. He thinks pure human
viewpoint, reject what the Bible says completely and rejects God. In 8:23-25 Antiochus Epiphanes is pictured as insolent,
deceitful towards people, crafty and sly in the way he conducts diplomacy, he
says one thing and does something else. The Antichrist is incredibly
blasphemous, hostile and arrogant toward God. That is very similar to Antiochus
Epiphanes, Daniel 8:25 NASB “And through his shrewdness He will
cause deceit to succeed by his influence; And he will magnify {himself} in his
heart, And he will destroy many while {they are} at ease. He will even oppose
the Prince of princes...” That is a reference to the pre-incarnate Jesus
Christ. He is going to set himself up to be worshipped in an act known as the
abomination of desolation, setting up an idol of himself in the holy of holies
in the temple. He is exalting himself over God. That was fulfilled
historically. The Antichrist is depicted as increasing blasphemy in the face of
divine judgment. Daniel 7:11
NASB “Then I kept looking because of the sound of the boastful words
which the horn was speaking; I kept looking until the beast was slain, and its
body was destroyed and given to the burning fire.” He gets more and more
arrogant toward God the closer judgment comes. Antiochus Epiphanes was very
much the same way. In fact at the end of Daniel chapter eight Daniel is so
sickened by what he has seen that he passes out and is sick for days because of
what he has seen. The Antichrist is going to have fame, celebrity and power
beyond all others. Antiochus was a brilliant leader, a brilliant military
commander. What led to his downfall was his anti-Semitism. In Daniel 7 the
Antichrist is depicted as one who would bring war against Israel until the Son of Man would come to establish His own
kingdom. That is what ends the Antichrist’s reign. But that is not what happens
with Antiochus Epiphanes. He is depicted as removing the daily sacrifices and
he redefines truth.
Daniel 8:1 NASB
“In the third year of the reign of Belshazzar the king a vision appeared to me,
Daniel, subsequent to the one which appeared to me previously.” This is two
years after his vision in chapter seven. The way in which he states this shows
that he understands that there is a connection between the vision he is sees in
chapter eight and the one before that in chapter seven. Daniel chapter eight is
going to focus on these particular examples of the kingdom of man. Because of
that we can do an analysis of these chapters, an analysis of history, and come
to understand some of the key characteristics that we find in the kingdom of
man. One of the foremost ones that we see from its initial appearance back in
Genesis chapter eleven in Babylon
is that the king, the state, take son for itself responsibilities that only God
can fulfill. There is always a religious overtone to the claims of the state
that they can solve all of man’s problems because of their great power and
their great ability. This was the hope of Nimrod when he established the kingdom of Babylon initially and we see that all through these periods of time when we
are talking about the Seleucid kings, the Caesars in Rome, about modern kings and empires. Always the threat to
political leadership is to think you can do more than you can, and that the
state should do more than it is supposed to. All the way through the Scriptures
the role of human government is to restrain evil, it is not to promote
prosperity. Only by restraining evil can it allow for an environment of freedom
where righteousness can then prevail. Daniel chapter eight takes our attention
to Antiochus Epiphanes—Epiphanes was Greek meaning “God manifest.” He viewed
himself as the incarnation of God on the earth but he got so arrogant that people
began to laugh at him and called him Antiochus Epimanes—“crazy one.”
The real downfall of
Antiochus Epiphanes was that he established a reign terror in Israel from 171-164 BC—almost seven years when he was making
life miserable for the Jews. But God will raise up leaders in the form of the
Maccabees who will lead a revolt and this will eventually establish the
Hasmonean kingdom in Israel.
Daniel 8:2 NASB
“I looked in the vision, and while I was looking I was in the citadel of Susa, which is in the province of Elam;
and I looked in the vision and I myself was beside the Ulai Canal.” Nobody is really sure where the Ulai canal was
located. [3] “Then I lifted my eyes and looked, and behold, a ram which had two
horns was standing in front of the canal. Now the two horns {were} long, but
one {was} longer than the other, with the longer one coming up last.” We know
from Scripture that horns represent power, kingdoms. The horns depict the Persian empire which came up after the Median empire came up and
came to dominate the Medo-Persian empire. This is identified in 8:20 NASB “The ram which you saw with the two
horns represents the kings of Media and Persia.”
Daniel 8:4 NASB
“I saw the ram butting westward, northward, and southward, and no {other}
beasts could stand before him nor was there anyone to rescue from his power,
but he did as he pleased and magnified {himself.} [5] While I was
observing, behold, a male goat was coming from the west over the surface of the
whole earth without touching the ground; and the goat {had} a conspicuous horn
between his eyes.” This depicts Alexander the Great. Verse 21 identifies this NASB
“The shaggy goat {represents} the kingdom of Greece,
and the large horn that is between his eyes is the first king.” [6] “He came up
to the ram that had the two horns, which I had seen standing in front of the
canal, and rushed at him in his mighty wrath. [7] I saw him come beside the
ram, and he was enraged at him; and he struck the ram and shattered his two
horns, and the ram had no strength to withstand him. So he hurled him to the
ground and trampled on him, and there was none to rescue the ram from his
power.” The defeat of the Medo-Persian empire. [8] “Then 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} toward the
four winds of heaven.” Alexander died young and the kingdom then was split
between his four generals. [9] “Out of one of them came forth a rather small
horn [Antiochus Epiphanes] which grew exceedingly great toward the south,
toward the east, and toward the Beautiful {Land.} [Israel] [10] “It grew up to the host of heaven and caused
some of the host and some of the stars to fall to the earth, and it trampled
them down.” This is a really interesting verse because usually “host of heaven”
refers to angels. It shows the interplay between human history and the angelic
conflict.
Illustrations