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The End Times According To Daniel- Part Two, Chapters 8 & 9

Saturday, December 7, 2013 12:16
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(Before It's News)

Two years after Daniel’s vision of the four beasts that we described in chapter 7, he had another vision, this one of a ram and a goat. As we’ll see, it was intended to give both him and us more detail on the things to come, because the vision has a dual fulfillment. For Daniel this vision was all in the future.  But for us the first fulfillment is now history, assuring the final one, which is still in our future.

 

Daniel 8

Daniel’s Vision of a Ram and a Goat

In the third year of King Belshazzar’s reign, I, Daniel, had a vision, after the one that had already appeared to me. In my vision I saw myself in the citadel of Susa in the province of Elam; in the vision I was beside the Ulai Canal. I looked up, and there before me was a ram with two horns, standing beside the canal, and the horns were long. One of the horns was longer than the other but grew up later. I watched the ram as he charged toward the west and the north and the south. No animal could stand against him, and none could rescue from his power. He did as he pleased and became great. (Daniel 8:1-4)

The year was 551 BC. It was 16 years before the fall of Babylon to the Medo-Persian coalition. Susa was 230 miles east of Babylon in modern day Iran and would become the capital of the Persian Empire. Both Daniel and Nehemiah lived there, as did Queen Esther. Today it’s known as Shush. An unusual white cone shaped stone there marks the traditional resting place of Daniel. In addition to the Persian Jews, many Shiite Muslims who also revere the prophet visit his grave to this day.

The King of Persia wore a ram’s head crown into battle, so the ram with two horns represents Medo-Persia. The longer horn that grew up later is the Persian component of the coalition that eventually became dominant. (The Angel Gabriel will confirm the identities of both animals for us later in the chapter.) As we’ve noted before, Media was home to the Kurds of today while Persia has become Iran. Together these two conquered an area extending from Pakistan in the East to Greece in the West and to the shores of the Black and Caspian Seas in the North and ruled it for 200 years, until about 330 BC. A Royal Road ran from Susa all the way to Sardis in Western Turkey bringing goods from the Mediterranean to the capital city.

As I was thinking about this, suddenly a goat with a prominent horn between his eyes came from the west, crossing the whole earth without touching the ground. He came toward the two-horned ram I had seen standing beside the canal and charged at him in great rage. I saw him attack the ram furiously, striking the ram and shattering his two horns. The ram was powerless to stand against him; the goat knocked him to the ground and trampled on him, and none could rescue the ram from his power. The goat became very great, but at the height of his power his large horn was broken off, and in its place four prominent horns grew up toward the four winds of heaven. (Daniel 8:5-8)

The one horned goat was the symbol of Phillip of Macedon, father to Alexander the Great. The Persians had humiliated Phillip, and Alexander built a powerful army to exact revenge. To unite the warring factions of Eastern Europe against the Persians, Alexander invented a new language, called Common Greek, so they could all speak together and settle their real and imagined grievances. Showing the Persians no mercy, he soundly defeated Darius III’s 200, 000 man army at the Battle of Guagamela in 331 BC with only 35,000 troops of his own. He was 22 years old. Seven years later he died in Babylon leaving the empire to be divided among his four generals, Cassander (Macedonia and Greece), Lysimachus (Thrace and Asia Minor), Ptolemy (Israel and Egypt) and Seleucus. (Syria, Lebanon and Jordan)

Out of one of them came another horn, which started small but grew in power to the south and to the east and toward the Beautiful Land. It grew until it reached the host of the heavens, and it threw some of the starry host down to the earth and trampled on them. It set itself up to be as great as the Prince of the host; it took away the daily sacrifice from him, and the place of his sanctuary was brought low. Because of rebellion, the host of the saints and the daily sacrifice were given over to it. It prospered in everything it did, and truth was thrown to the ground.

Then I heard a holy one speaking, and another holy one said to him, “How long will it take for the vision to be fulfilled—the vision concerning the daily sacrifice, the rebellion that causes desolation, and the surrender of the sanctuary and of the host that will be trampled underfoot?”

He said to me, “It will take 2,300 evenings and mornings; then the sanctuary will be re-consecrated.” (Daniel 8:9-14)

Now we fast forward to 175 BC and a descendant of Seleucus named Antiochus IV, called another horn here, who gave himself the name Epiphanes, or Divine One. By now the Seleucid Empire had grown substantially and included Israel (the Beautiful Land) taken from descendants of Ptolemy. Antiochus Epiphanes hated the Jews and swore to wipe their religion off the face of the Earth. He almost succeeded.

Arranging to have Israel’s last legitimate High Priest, Onais III, murdered, he began selling the office to the highest bidder, a money-maker that the Romans later adopted as well. He invaded Israel and took control of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. He banned circumcision, the speaking or reading of Hebrew, and possession of the Hebrew Scriptures, burning every copy he could find. He converted the Temple into a pagan worship center, erecting a statue of Zeus (Jupiter) with his own face on it there, requiring the Jews to worship it on pain of death. He slaughtered a pig on the holy altar and ordered the priests to do likewise.

This defilement of the Temple rendered it unfit for use by the Jews. It became known as the Abomination of Desolation and triggered the Maccabean revolt, a successful 3 ½ year long guerrilla action led by Judeas Maccabeas (Judah the Hammer) to oust the forces of Antiochus from Israel and restore the Temple for worship. Because of it, Antiochus Epiphanes has become the clearest type of the anti-Christ, with the Maccabean revolt a model of the Great Tribulation. For 1150 days (2300 evening and morning sacrifices) the sanctuary lay desolate until it was consecrated again in a ceremony celebrated today as the Feast of Hanukkah.

The Interpretation of the Vision

continue at Rapture Ready:

http://raptureready.com/featured/kelley/jack305.html

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  • Fairly accurate, but the article left out one of the most fascinating fulfilments:

    Passover is an evening and morning holiday. The 2300 evenings and mornings are believed by most bible scholars to represent Passovers. Which occur once a year in the spring.
    Alexander won the Battle of Issus in November 333 BC, and shortly afterwards entered Jerusalem.
    This began the time of the gentiles.
    You may notice that 2300 years later is 1967, when the Israelis reestablished Jewish control over the site of the Temple for the first time in thousands of years.
    Is that too convenient? Maybe we only can see that after it happened, then conveniently find an ancient battle near the start of the 2300 years and announce that the prophecy worked out?
    Not this time.
    Adam Clarke’s bible commentary, written in 1825, has this interpretation and speculated that the Jews would take control of Jerusalem in 1966. (I think he mistakenly counted from 334 BC.)

    If you find this interesting, consider reading “End Times and 2019″
    The author reviews many prophecies that already came true in great detail, especially in regard to Israel in 1948 and 1967, and of course the book also details prophecies that culminate with the end of the world in 2019.

    http://endtimesand2019.webs.com/

  • An interesting historical article spoiled by a reference to the “rapture,” an event which is not going to happen, and in fact has been condemned as heretical by Church Doctors and Fathers.

    Heresy, no matter how much it is preached, remains a fraud.

  • Pix

    The problem is ‘history’ is basically HIS STORY, ie one version of things that happened. We know that history is wrong, written by the victor. This is true today we can see it in the making as the media spin events and make it up as they go, as such the events written about are not how or why they happened at all.

    To put that into perspective there is only one historical story that was described accurately, a battle defeat written by an Egyptian pharaoh who was so impressed by the tactics used against him, he immortalised the event.

    There is not a single scrap of evidence that Israel existed prior to their fleeing Egypt as slaves. Their religion was invented by the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep IV, c1,300 BCE. The worlds first ever mono deity religion. He forced the entire population to follow his invented religion on pain of death. He was THE most detested pharaoh of all time and was forced to build a new city to live in for fear of assassination. He would through necessity have needed a new priest class, and an enforcer class to ensure his invention was being served and practiced.

    When Amenhotep died they had to flee for their lives from the back lash retaliation… people don’t tend to like mass murderers especially when it’s over religion. They fled Egypt wondering the deserts of Saudi Arabia for a while, and turned up in Palestine c1,100 BCE sporting tales of being the ‘chosen of a mono deity and having to flee Egypt over religious persecution’, sure, their persecution of traditional Egyptian beliefs.

    There is a grain of truth in each HIS STORY, but you need to cross reference with other peoples HIS STORY, to get to the truth.

    Rome wiped Israel off the face of Earth in 70 CE, because of their odious arrogance claiming favouritism from Amenhotep’s created mono deity, towards their master, Rome and it’s living god Emperor.

    :wink:

  • By clicking on http://www.raptureready.com , you can discover how close you might be to flying out of your pyjamas. The infidels among us should take note that the Rapture Index currently stands at 144, just one point below the critical threshold, beyond which the sky will be filled with floating nudists. Beast Government, Wild Weather and Israel are all trading at the maximum five points (the EU is debating its constitution, there was a freak hurricane in the south Atlantic, Hamas has sworn to avenge the killing of its leaders), but the second coming is currently being delayed by an unfortunate decline in drug abuse among teenagers and a weak showing by the antichrist (both of which score only two).

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