The Rise of Antiochus
Epiphanes. Daniel 8
There are three characteristics that come out in relation to Antiochus
Epiphanes and these are then a type or picture of what will be seen in the
Antichrist. The first is that he comes on the scene and is extremely popular,
he trades on his own popularity, his own personal charisma, and he is able to
sway the masses. Secondly, we see with Antiochus Epiphanes something that is
truly reflective of the character of the Antichrist is that he was the mater of
what we would term today the culture war. He recognized that as he was trying
to consolidate his kingdom, the Seleucid empire, that he needed to bring
everyone together and Hellenise—make them all thinking like the Greeks
thought—the entire kingdom. He needed a homogenous kingdom; he wasn’t a fan of
multi-cultural diversity; he wanted everybody thinking the same way according
to the same pagan system. Antiochus was the product of a Roman education. On
his way to take power in Syria he stopped for a
while in Greece and so had
absorbed many of the Greek ideas and was trying to implement those. There was
one group of people under his authority who just didn’t want to go along with
all of this paganism and multiplicity of gods and goddesses, and everything
that went with Hellenisation, and that was the Jews. Immediately they set
themselves up as a thorn in the flesh for Antiochus, who is trying to do
everything he can to control the politics and the people, to appoint his people
in place who will then appoint others to move the Jews away from a rigid
biblical orthodoxy. Third, in his arrogance he becomes so anti-God that he
thinks of himself as a god. He sees himself as being able to do only those
things that God can do, only those things that deity can do—he can solve everybody’s
problems, sets himself up as one to be worshipped. He takes the name Epiphanes
which means “the manifest God” or “the manifest deity.” Those who didn’t like
him called him Epimanes, which meant “the crazy one.”
Daniel 8:23 NASB “In the latter period of their rule
[Greek rule], When the transgressors have run {their course,} [an allusion to
the Greeks] A king will arise, Insolent and skilled in intrigue.” This refers
to Antiochus Epiphanes, so we see that there is a historical fulfillment of
this and that it isn’t looking to a future fulfillment. It was fulfilled
historically during the period of the Seleucids.
When Antiochus III came to
power Rome was beginning to expand and reach out and were having
battles with the Carthaginians. There were two series of wars between Rome and Carthage called the Punic Wars. The second Punic War ended the
brief Carthaginian ascendancy and Rome began to expand, but what had happened during that
second war was that Philip VI in Macedonia had become fearful of Rome. He was afraid that Rome was going to come in and defeat him and so he had a
allied himself with Hannibal and the Carthaginians. When Carthage was defeated the Romans came in to defeat Philip.
Philip who is Greek is allied to Antiochus III who was also Greek, so Antiochus
is called by Philip to come to his aid and he marches his army to Macedonia where he is defeated both on land and sea by the
Romans. The Romans impose upon him a treaty called The Treaty of Apimia;
important because it was the ancient world’s version of the Treaty of
Versailles, the treaty that ended World War I. The one word that characterizes
both of these treaties would be the word “revenge,” and they imposed egregious
and harsh penalties upon the vanquished that it virtually made another war
necessary. The vanquished could not continue to exist under the terrible
penalties that were assessed by the victors.
The penalties that were
assessed: first of all, Antiochus III had to surrender all of his territory in Asia Minor, some of his wealthiest territory. Second, there was a restriction on
armaments and a reduction of forces. He had to surrender all of his elephants.
Third, he had to give up all of the ships of his fleets. This effectively cut
his ability to wage war, to conquer any territory, and to defend himself in the
future against the Romans. The Romans cut all of his communications lines and
supply lines and also his ability to protect trade on the Mediterranean. Fourth, he could no longer recruit troops for his
army or navy from Asia
Minor, Greece or the Aegean area. Fifth, he had to pay fifty-two
thousand talents of gold a year to the Romans in twelve installments. In order
to make sure he did this he had to give up a hostage and his son Antiochus IV
was taken to Rome. He is educated in Rome and he comes to think like a Roman. So he is to some
degree multicultural in his thinking. He thinks like a Roman, he understands
their system of thought; later he will go to Greece and he is the product of Greek culture so he will
understand Greek thinking, and then he will take over the empire.
But Antiochus III has to
start raising this money. How? He starts conquering territory in the direction
he can go. Which way is that? He can go north so he begins to attack and expand
his kingdom northward. He goes to the east and expands his territory over the
ancient kingdom of Babylon and Persia, and he begins to expand south. He needs money, and
where was money kept? In the treasury. Where was the treasury? In the temple.
Antiochus II is assassinated and Selucus IV, the older brother of Antiochus IV,
becomes the king. But he doesn’t last but twelve years and he dies. Now the
kingdom is going to shift to Antiochus who is still in Rome, so Seleucus’s son Demitrius is going to be sent to Rome to take his place and Antiochus is brought back to Syria in order to take over the kingdom. He comes back in
175 BC
and he has approximately an eleven-year reign (175-164). In about 171 he begins
to really oppress the Jews and then in 167 there will be a revolt against him
known as the Maccabaean revolt, and this leads to the Hasmonaean kingdom.
As Antiochus comes to the
throne he is faced with the same problem that his father had. That is, he has
to pay off this tribute to the Romans. He has to continue to expand the kingdom
in order to raise more and more money. He wants to expand his territory through
Israel in order to raise the taxes in that area in order to
pay off the tribute. As he expands the empire he decides the best way to do it
is through the process of Hellenisation. As he conquers these territories he is
going to impose upon everyone this culture that comes out of Greece and this is going to be a major conflict when he
comes to Israel.
Daniel 8:9 NASB “Out
of one of them came forth a rather small horn which grew exceedingly great
toward the south, toward the east, and toward the Beautiful {Land.}” This is
only a small horn and he doesn’t stack up against any of the great rulers or
great kings but he is the one who most represents the character qualities and
the attributes of the Antichrist. One of those is going to be what he does
historically when he desecrates the temple, committing the Abomination of
Desolation. [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 rather obscure verse and difficult to understand. In order to properly
interpret it what is needed is to go through a word study in the Old Testament
primarily and deal with the phrases “host of heaven” and “stars” in order to
find out how they are used. They are used together. It is not just the host, it
is the host of heaven. We have to deal with the phrase and not just the words
that are found there.
There are three uses of the
word “stars” that are used in the Old Testament. There is the use that refers
to physical bodies out there in space somewhere. The second use of “stars” as a
symbol is the stars that are used in Genesis 37 and Revelation 12 referring to
the twelve tribes of Israel. The third way is to refer to angels. Which is it in
this passage, and why would it be angels? “Host of heaven” is parallel to the
stars and when we have this phrase in the Hebrew it is used 18 times (one time
in the New Testament) and it either refers to the literal stars in heaven, as
in Deuteronomy 4:19 and Isaiah 34:4—it often refers to them as stars in the
heavens being worshipped by pagan religions—Deuteronomy 17:3, or it is used to
refer to the entire angelic host, as in 1 Kings 22:19; 2 Chronicles 18:18;
Isaiah 24:21. In Daniel 4:35
a similar phrase is used in the Aramaic. “All the inhabitants of the earth are
accounted as nothing, But He does according to His will in the host [army] of
heaven And {among} the inhabitants of earth; And no one can ward off His hand
Or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’” The word “host” is an archaic English
word meaning army. Here in Daniel in we see this reference to “the host of
heaven,” so there is a reference where it is used of angels. When we look at
the whole doctrine of the angelic conflict we recognize that the fallen angels
are referred to as demons who actually lie behind, are the influence behind,
the idols and false gods of the Old Testament. In fact, several places in Deuteronomy
indicate that the worship of the idol is parallel to worshipping the demons. We
see the same kind of thing in 1 Corinthians where Paul is dealing with doubtful
things. We
have to recognize that in many of these passages there is something going on
that is not so obvious to us, and there is a recognition that the use of this
phrase “host of heave” and “the stars” must indicate some kind of angelic
involvement.
There are two ways this has been interpreted by evangelicals. One is
that somehow this indicates the influence of demons empowering Antiochus
Epiphanes, giving him victory, and that would be true; they would be. But we
don’t think that is what this is saying because of other things in the context.
It seems to indicate that he is setting himself up. He is trampling down these
stars or angels, and what this would indicate is that he is elevating himself
over the gods, over the pantheon, of these other nations and their religion.
This actually began with his father as he was raiding and conquering these
other regions and raiding their temples. What is he doing? He is conquering
their gods, their idols, and setting himself up as the one who is most
powerful.
“According to history Antiochus Epiphanes set himself
up as God, thus disregarding the starry host [demonic powers of heaven]. He set
himself up as the prince of the host (v. 11) in the sense of making himself
great. Antiochus took away and stopped the daily sacrifices offered by the Jews
in the temple, and desecrated their sanctuary, turning it into a pagan temple.
He fulfilled the requirements of throwing truth to the ground (v. 12). History
has recorded that Antiochus by taking the name Epiphanes—which means glorious
one or manifest one—assumed that he was God, much as the little horn of Daniel
7 will do in the future Tribulation. His rile is similar to the future role of
the coming world dictator.” John Walvoord, The Prophecy Bible Handbook
Daniel 8:11 NASB “It even magnified {itself} to be
equal with the Commander of the host; and it removed the regular sacrifice from
Him, and the place of His sanctuary was thrown down.” What happened in
Antiochus’s life is that as he was raiding down into the south into Egypt he
was finally met by his opponent, Ptolemy VI, who up to that point really hadn’t
shown much military ability and hadn’t defended his empire very much, but now
that Antiochus had amassed this great army and has conquered the area of Israel
and is moving down into Egypt proper he decides that he is going to get his
army together and stop Antiochus. He called upon Rome to come in and stop Antiochus. Rome sends one of their top individuals who had been a
childhood friend of Antiochus. Antiochus in his arrogance thinks that as he had
conquered the Egyptian army in the past he is going to put them on the run and
easily sway Rome to his side because this negotiator that Rome has sent is one that is going to be on his side. But
what this negotiator did was draw a sword and mark a circle around Antiochus’s
feet, and he said, “Until you sign a peace treaty you can’t step out of that
circle or I’ll kill you.”
Antiochus has now had his
reputation sullied, his arrogance has been embarrassed, and so he has to take
it out on somebody. He turns around, marches his army into Israel and takes it out on the Jews. He starts killing Jews
left and right. This is when He desecrates the temple by taking a pig and
sacrifices it on the altar—an unclean animal—and scatters the pig’s blood all
over the temple. He then begins to issue a number of laws in order to stop the
worship of the Jewish God. The first thing he does is suspend all temple
ritual. Then he decrees that all copies of the Scriptures must be burned and
anyone caught reading the Scriptures or with copies of the Scriptures in their
possession meant an immediate death sentence—execution on the spot. A third
thing he instigated was that no special days would be observed, including the
Sabbath. Anyone caught observing the Sabbath would be executed immediately. All
dietary laws were abolished. Any woman caught circumcising their male child
would be executed—mother and child on the spot. He went into the temple,
dedicated it to Zeus and sacrificed a pig to Zeus. He ordered the Jews to begin
worshipping Baal Shamaim and this began to generate a tremendous reaction to
Antiochus Epiphanes. (Described partially in 1 Maccabees chapter one)
Daniel 8:12 NASB “And on account of transgression the
host will be given over {to the horn} along with the regular sacrifice; and it
will fling truth to the ground and perform {its will} and prosper.” What is the
transgression? The transgression is the Jews who were succumbing to the
Hellenisation. They were being assimilated into the pagan way of thinking. This
had happened before in Israel. Antiochus is a discipline on Israel in order to force them to retrench and to isolate
themselves from the Gentiles around them in order to protect their identity. In
164 BC a priest by the name of Mattathias will lead a revolt against the
Seleucids. He is a priest in the village of Modin
and when Antiochus’s men came to set up an altar and demand that everybody
sacrifice to Zeus he resisted. When one Jew came out to sacrifice Mattathias
killed him and then killed the Syrian leader who had come into the town to set
up the alter. That instigated a revolution against the Seleucids. Mattathias
had two sons, Simon and Judas (called the Hammer).
Al of this prophecy was
literally fulfilled and it is a picture of the end. Daniel 8:17 NASB “So he [Gabriel] came near to where I
was standing, and when he came I was frightened and fell on my face; but he
said to me, ‘Son of man, understand that the vision pertains to the time of the
end’.” This whole vision is fulfilled prophetically in the past, so we are not
talking about double fulfillment, but it pertains to the end in that it is a
type or a shadow of what will happen in the end. It is not a prophecy related
to the Antichrist, it is a picture of what the Antichrist will be like; he is
typified in Antiochus Epiphanes.
Illustrations