Allan McRae:  The Prophecies of Daniel:  Lecture 11 

            The assignment for today is to look at certain verses and briefly answer the following questions.  The first question was, "Do they have any bearing on the critical theory?"  I spoke about that last week and I want to reiterate it again. The critical theory is that the prediction in Daniel is written to make it look like he is looking forward to these four kingdoms but that he actually came late in the time of the third kingdom as you notice there on the sheet. I haven’t shown when the third kingdom ends or when the fourth begins because you know the third was divided into sections and the Romans took them one at a time over a space of about fifty years. But,  the critical theory is that the book of Daniel was not written by Daniel but a later writer who took the name of Daniel and wrote 300 years after Daniel’s time. He wrote at the time of Antiochus IV in order to make the Jews fight valiantly against Antiochus by claiming to give predictions that God was going to deliver them. So in the book when it looks forward to Antiochus IV he is giving history while pretending it is prophecy. And when he goes beyond Antiochus IV it is purely guessing on his part. Now that’s the Critical Theory which, of course, is utterly inconsistent with any belief that this is actually written by Daniel and belongs to part of God's Word.

            There are many small arguments that the critics have given, but most of them have been well answered. But there is a big point that I have mentioned in class. This is the fact that the critics run into a serious obstacle by what is described for four kingdoms. Then after the four kingdoms Daniel describes the great crisis in chapter seven. There are the four kingdoms in chapter seven and then a great crisis. And then in chapter two there are four kingdoms and then a description of what all the kingdoms represent. Whereas Antiochus III comes at the end of the third kingdom and the critics say that the author of Daniel gives a marvelously accurate picture of history between Nebuchadnezzar and his time claiming it is prophecy.  He did make a serious mistake in this. Because there were only three kingdoms. And so they say the writer imagined that between the Babylonian Kingdom and the Persian Kingdom there was an empire you would call the Medean empire--the empire of the Medes.  

            Where as in Daniel 5:25, Daniel said to Belshazzar, “Your kingdom is given to the Medes and Persians.” He put them together as one group. And then in chapter 6, in three cases, it speaks of the Law of the Medes and Persians. We would not speak now that you would have to obey the law of Great Britain and the United States.  It's one or the other. Great Britain controlled this country until 1776, and then the United  States gained control.  But here we find the law of the Medes and Persians. And chapter 8:20 says, speaking of the animal that he described as making a great conquest, “These are the kings of Media and Persia.” Then in chapter 10:1 he refers to Cyrus king of Persia. And in chapter 11:2, still in Daniel's lifetime, there are yet three  kings of Persia. So there are all these evidences that there was no kingdom of the Medes in between. The Medes were a scattered group of tribes over which there was a sort of general authority held to which the Persians were subject for a time but over which they gained supremacy before the end of the Babylonian empire.

            Now the second question. “Do these verses prove anything about the place of the kingdom in Daniel 8 in relation to those in Daniel 2 and Daniel 7?” Now, one or two thought this word "place" here referred to the geographical situation. I gave you an assignment some time ago in which I asked you to look at the beginning of chapter 8 and to see if you could tell which of the four kingdoms the verses are related to, and that is what I mean here. The place of the kingdom of  Daniel 8 in relation to Daniel 2 and Daniel 7. Because in Daniel 8 the kingdoms are specifically named.  One is the king of Media and Persia and the other is the King of Greece. These are specifically named and someone asked, "We learn that only from the history, don’t we?"  And it was the end of class and I was a little tired I guess and I said “Yes.”  I should have said, “No, you learn it from these verses in chapter 8 which will be in the  assignment three weeks from now.”  And as you notice, the verses make it clear that it was the Persians who succeeded the Babylonians and the Greeks that succeeded the Persians.  Therefore chapter 8 is speaking about the two middle kingdoms and says nothing about the first, except it tells about his great conquest but it doesn’t say anything of the conquest.  It does but imply that, and it does not refer to the fourth kingdom at all.
            Now the current assignment is this:  In Daniel 9:25-26, the word "messiah" occurs twice. What does the Hebrew word represent?  Now of course, those who have had Hebrew or have much Hebrew, can easily look it up in their Hebrew Bible. If you're lazy, you just look up "Messiah" in Young’s concordance. If there are different words that are translated "Messiah" Young's will give these words with an English transliteration of the Hebrew word.  It gives you the references, and you can easily see there what Hebrew words are used for "Messiah" in these two places. Then if you have a Hebrew concordance or have access to one you can look up this Hebrew word and see all the cases where it is used. If you want, however, you can look up this Hebrew word in the back of Young’s Concordance, you can do that as the words are arranged in English letters so they are easy to look up even if you know no Hebrew.  There you can see how many different ways this word is translated in the Old Testament.  For instance, if the word, translated "Messiah" twice, and translated "God" five times, those are two ways this word is translated. In such a case you would have to decide from the context which of the two was right or whether in some way they represented two different phases of the same idea. So the assignment continues:  how many times this word "Messiah" is used in the Old Testament.  In how many ways  does the King James Version render the word into English?  List the verses where it occurs. You can easily get them out of the Hebrew concordance or out of Young’s concordance. You can also get them out of Strong's Concordance if you want, but it takes a little bit longer. List the verses where the word occurs and after each reference state whether it refers to a prophet, a priest, a king, or something else. You should be able to tell that at a glance in each case, I believe. And count the references in each category. Now, of course, if there are some you're not sure of the antecedent, just mark them with a question mark. And then one further question:  Does the term ever apply to a non-Israelite?  If so, where? This takes almost longer to give than to do, but you will find the assignment on the bulletin board.

            Now we are speaking about chapter eleven. Chapter eleven has much in it that is rather difficult to understand as to precisely what it means. And there are two reasons for this. The first reason is because the prophecy relating to future events is not given with real explicitness. You take the prophecies of Christ in the New Testament and it says, “This was done that it might be fulfilled.” But in most cases you can see how it has been fulfilled, but you wouldn’t, in advance, be able to predict how it would be fulfilled. And so these predications which are not figurative, in plain language, yes some of it is a bit vague in the predictions of the future, but it was not given to satisfy the curiosity of the future. It is given so that people can see that the prophet really spoke from God.  And so we noticed how the statement about how Seleucius was fulfilled in verse 5. So Seleucius was called the conqueror--literally. He was called that in his lifetime, and later on they called him Seleucus I.  But we read how he was prince of the Ptolemaic king of the south. But he become stronger than Ptolemy and had a great dominion. And so we have that about Seleucius predicted 300 years in advance. You couldn’t tell what was going to happen  but when you see it happen, you know that if the words had been stated differently it would not have been fulfilled.

            Then we notice number two of the outline and Antiochus II, and that was a striking event; an event in which everyone in Syria and in Egypt was aware of what happened. I don’t think you could have told beforehand exactly what was going to happen. Notice in verse six it says, “In the end of years they will join themselves together.” In other words, there is a space of time in between here that skips over Antiochus I completely and goes to Antiochus II. And Antiochus II and Ptolemy II, as your sheet shows you, were reigning at the same time. When Antiochus II was reigning Ptolemy II was becoming an old man, for you notice that he began to reign until age 83 and Antiochus II until age 61. And there had been considerable strife between the two kingdoms, and now they tried to make a treaty--or alliance--and in those days they usually sealed such treaties by an intermarriage.

            And so, as we mentioned last time, Seleucius who was already married to Leodice who had a grown son, discarded her and married Bernice, the daughter of Ptolemy II. And as the verse says of her, “The king's daughter of the south shall come to the king of the north to make an agreement, but she shall not retain the power of the arm nor shall he stand nor his arm.” And you remember he lived with her for a brief time and then he left and went into Asia Minor where his first wife was living. And his first wife was afraid he would make the child of Bernice his successor, the infant child of Bernice. And so, it is usually believed that she poisoned her.  We also read, "But she shall be given up and they that brought her and he that begot her and he that strengthened her in these times." And after the king died, the people who favored his son who succeeded him managed to get a hold of Bernice and her child and  killed them.

            Now this phrase “He that begot her” is usually taken to mean that Bernice's father died at just about this time, though I notice the New International Version changes this to “and her son” and bases that on the ancient translation of the Septuagint and Latin Vulgate which render it that way. That “he who begot her” is “he who was begotten by her”--her son--who was  killed along with her. Whichever way you take it you see it fits with what happened.

            And then number 3 of the outline, we go down to Egypt and verse 7-9 says, “And out of a branch of her roots shall one stand up in his estate.” Now, "in his estate" suggests that it refers to her father’s estate, "he that begot her" “He shall stand up in his place a branch of her root,” in other words, her brother Ptolemy III, and he made a great attack. We read in verses 7-9 in which his armies went through a great part of the empire and he took a great amount of booty and he carried it south with him and he continued more years than the King of the North. He outlived both Seleucius II and Seleucus III.

            Then we have the second son of Seleucus II:  Antiochus III. And as I mentioned last time Antiochus III was one of the great conquerors of Antiquity. Eleven verses  are devoted to the history of Antiochus III.  As far as we are concerned, the interest of these events is that though it would be pretty hard  to tell in advance what it predicted, it is easy to see that it touches on most of the events of Antiochus III’s reign.  It touches upon them in the order in which they occur. We will not take much time for that now.  By the way, I have been asked if someone would like to look further into this particular matter. On this material, up to Antiochus IV, there is no difference of opinion. Conservatives believe it is a remarkably accurate predication that Daniel had of events made up to the time of Antiochus IV.  And liberals believe it is a remarkably accurate picture of what occurred, but it was written by someone who already knew what had occurred. And if you are interested in the details on it beyond what we have time to do in class, almost any extensive commentary on Daniel will narrate them, whether it be a liberal commentary or a conservative commentary.  There will be no difference on this particular section. Now, there are a number of books on the history of Persia. The most extensive I know is one by Bevin called "The House of the Seleucids," which I have used a considerable amount.  But we better not take too much time on the history of Antiochus III given in the eleven verses of chapter 11.

            I want to point out two or three matters about this time period. I believe I mentioned last time that Palestine and Southern Syria had belonged to Egypt for 150 years. And Antiochus III in addition to spending 15 years conducting expeditions to the east and reestablishing the control that Seleucius I had made over the area Alexander had conquered, right to the borders of India--in addition to that, he fought with Ptolemy of Egypt and  he took away from him Palestine and Southern Syria. He took them and annexed them to his territory. We read in verse 14, "In those days many shall stand up against the King of the South. Also the robbers of thy people shall exalt themselves to establish position. But they shall fail.” And that is usually taken to mean that there were Jews in Palestine who were not satisfied with the generally decent ways they had been treated by the Ptolemies for 150 years. But they would be much better off under Antiochus III.  And, therefore, to establish their freedom from the Ptolemies they gave their help to Antiochus III and moved away from Ptolemy into the hands of the Syrians. "But they shall fail," means of course that their vision, their idea--how much better of they will be under the Antiochus--proved to be utterly false because they were far worse off. At least they were when Antiochus IV became king.

            And so, that was verse 14 and we have in the end of verse 17 that says, “He shall give him the daughter in marriage, corrupting her, but she shall not stand on his side, neither be for him.” Antiochus III thought he would emulate Alexander the Great’s conquests. He had reestablished the Seleucid empire over the whole east, but he didn’t have the territory that Alexander had come from:  Macedonia.  So, he wanted to make his situation safe with Egypt, and so he made a peace arrangement with Ptolemy.  He gave Ptolemy his daughter, Cleopatra, in marriage thinking she, as queen of Egypt, would give his support to him, but she didn’t. It says, “But she shall not stand on his side and neither be for him.”  That was a great disappointment for him when she threw her whole loyalty to her husband. But she was the first Egyptian to bear the name Cleopatra. And then in verse 18 it is says, “After this he shall turn his face onto the isles and shall take many.” And we know that Antiochus III turned westward, north and westward.  He already held most of Asia Minor which the Seleucids had held for a century and a half. He now marched across into Europe and began seizing territory in Europe. And he was quite  successful in seizing Macedonia, the territory to the north and much of Greece. And then he got a message from Rome, and the Roman representative said to him, “We want you to stop trying to make conquests in Europe.” And He said, “I don’t interfere in Italy, in your region. What right have you to interfere with what I have to do back here.” And so the Romans, whether they had any right might be questioned, but they had the might. And they sent an army which defeated him and drove him back out of Europe, and then followed him into Asia Minor and defeated him at Magnesia. So verse 19 says, “to be seen no more.”  This is a very brief summery of what happens when the Romans, after driving him from out of Greece, after their great victory, followed him into Asia Minor. And there in Asia Minor they fought a great battle at Magnesia, and as a result of this battle they completely defeated him and when he was thus completely defeated, the Romans made him pay the whole cost of their expedition.  The reparation was for all that it had cost them to send the expedition. He had to promise to pay a large sum of money each year for the next twelve years and give them 20 of his leading supporters, including his own sons to go to Rome and live there as hostages guaranteeing his good behavior. And so, this complete and utter defeat of Antiochus III completely ruined the great glory that he had gotten after 35 years of hard fighting. And it is summarized here, “to be seen no more”.  

            This word "stumble" is interesting. It doesn’t suggest he is killed in war. It doesn’t suggest he dies in his bed. It doesn’t suggest there is an uprising. What happens was that in trying to pay these heavy reparations to the Romans, he went eastward in order to loot the temples of various deities.  And he came into a little temple of a small tribe that he looked on with utter contempt, but he knew they had considerable treasure in their temple. He had taken treasure from temples of various deities. He went into this one and he was getting careless and the local guardians got excited and killed him. He stumbled and fell. He was killed in such a minor little thing. A man who had carried on such tremendous successful war--like expeditions.

            And so, that is what is said about Antiochus III in eleven verses, and then I have listed Seleucius IV in verse 20. Because it is very interesting that we have only one verse, but the verse shows such a remarkable contrast to Antiochus III.  Seleucius IV, his oldest son, succeeded him and the kingdom was in pretty bad shape because they had to pay these heavy reparations to the Romans, and they had so many of their leaders in Rome as Hostages, and so “They shall stand up in his estate a raise taxes in the glory of the king.” The glory of his great war expeditions was gone, all he could do was to try to get money together to pay the indemnities and to get in good shape again. And so, Seleucus IV reigned for eleven years.  He got no glory, but he did get the government on a good fiscal base again by raising taxes and getting things organized in the kingdom.

            But then we read, "But only for a few days."  And compared to Antiochus III's reign from 233-187 B.C., eleven years seems like a few days. “But within a few days he shall be destroyed neither in anger nor in battle.” Now, how are you destroyed neither in anger nor in battle? His chief minister made a plot against him and murdered him and so he was destroy "neither in anger nor in battle."  His chief minister who destroyed him that way tried then to reign in the name of his infant son. He had an older son who was a hostage in Rome. But in the name of the infant son the chief minister tried to reign. But he didn’t succeed very long.

            And the next ruler is so important from a biblical viewpoint that I am giving him another head capital D in the outline, Antiochus Epiphanes, Antiochus IV called himself "Epiphany;" he is given fifteen verses here, and in the history of Judaism he is one of the most important rulers. Why is he important to Israel? Because he was not simply a man who wanted conquest, though he did, he was not simply a man who caused trouble for the Jews and persecuted them, though he did; but he, toward the latter part of his reign, set himself attempting to completely destroying the Jewish religion.  He forced the Jews to become pagans. He tried first to be nice to them and give all kinds of favors to the ones who would turn pagan, and many did.  But some were very strong against Antiochus and he proceeded with extremely harsh measures against them, and the religion of the Old Testament--humanly speaking--would have been completely wiped out except for a priest who resisted Antichus's efforts to force the people to sacrifice to Zeus.  In a little town of Modin (NW of Jersusalem) Mattathias and his sons resisted and rebelled. And they came to the town where this man worked. He and his sons fled into the wilderness and they became such good guerilla fighters that they came to be called "The Hammers," or "The Maccabees" and soon others joined and eventually they gained their freedom completely from Antiochus IV.  

            Now number two in the outline is Antiochus's career, and in order to understand something of this crisis that occurred at this time it is necessary to know something about this man Antiochus IV.  Antiochus IV, was you know, from your chart here, was the second son of Antiochus III.  Antiochus IV was a hostage  in Rome.  We don’t know how many years he lived there but he lived there, long enough to become very familiar with Roman customs, situations, and methods of doing things. And then he was released from being a hostage in Rome and Seleucius III's oldest son--who became known as Demetrius--was made a hostage in Rome and Antiochus was released. Antiochus went to Greece and lived there, and he lived in Athens and became an important official in the Athenian government I have even heard that he was called a mayor. I don’t know what that exact title meant or what position that was, but he was very successful there. Antiochus IV had no right to become king because Demetrius, his older brother's son who was a hostage in Rome, should have succeed Selucius III. But when Seleucius, his oldest brother was killed, Antiochus immediately got in touch with some people in Asia Minor who had considerable funds, and he got them to fund him to try to become king. And he came with a  small force into Asia minor and he managed to get support with all kinds of promises, so he became king after his brother’s death and also killed his brother's infant son.  So verse 21 of chapter 11 says, "In his estate shall stand up a vile person whom they shall not give the honor of the kingdom but he shall come in peaceably and claim the kingdom by flatteries." And so Antiochus thus secured control there and he reigned from 176-164 B.C..  

            Now he was a man with very  peculiar characteristics. He called himself Epiphanes. Now, "Epiphanes" refers to a feast in many denominations. It is called "The Feast of the Epiphany." The feast of "the appearance" of the Lord. So when he called himself Epiphanes, he was claiming to be a god on earth. He was the "Outshining God," so he called himself "Antiochus Epiphanes." But he began, when he first came to Antioch, to go around soliciting votes to become king acting as if it was a democratic position looking for votes which he had gotten in Athens. And he went from one extreme to the other in his reign. He would be a tyrant who killed people on the slightest provocation, and then he would turn around and do all kinds of things for people and act in a way as if he was one of the commonest of people. And he was very unpredictable, but one thing he wanted was unity in his kingdom. He wanted everyone to worship him as a god and to worship the gods he worshiped. His brother had gathered considerable funds by this time, Antiochus set out to build a new temple to Zeus in Athens, and he built a tremendous temple--one of the greatest temples in Athens.  Yet he was unable to complete it in his life and it remained that way for 200 years and then a Roman emperor completed this great temple, one of the largest temples in Athens.

            After a time Antiochus saw his sister Cleopatra, whom you know was the queen of Egypt, and when her husband died there were two young boys, the oldest of whom was nominally the king, although his ministers were actually ruling. Antiochus decided that he would try to take control over Egypt. And there in Egypt he made up with his nephew who was nominally the king but who was in his teens still. The two of them ate together, and he thought he would rule Egypt through his nephew being the nominal King. His nephew talked as if he was going to do everything for Antiochus while the nephew as actually planning to throw off his uncle's control just as soon as he could.  We read here in verse 27, that, “They told lies at one table”; they sat eating together telling lies to one another. The city of Alexandria, one of the great centers of Egypt, Antiochus he was unable to get control of, and he thought he had established his nephew so that his nephew would get control of Alexandria.
            So he went back to his own land and on the way he stopped in Jerusalem in order to rob the temple. This brought him in sharp contact with the Jews and how he realized opposed they were to his desire to make them all pagan. When he got back to Antioch, he held a tremendous celebration and he invited people from all over the known world and spent tremendous sums on this lavish celebration in which he himself put on a great dance, and he himself did all kinds of things, mixing with the crowd in many different ways. Then he found out that his nephew in Egypt had thrown off all relationship with him, and had declared himself entirely independent.

            And so he marched to Egypt again with a large force, and he came down to Egypt and got practically all of Egypt under his control. And when he had it all practically under his control, except the city of Alexandria, which he was expecting soon to get control of, a ship arrived from Rome. The ship arrived and he heard there were important Roman officials on the ship, and he went down to the shore in order to greet them. And one of them had been a good friend of his when he had been in Rome. And Antiochus greeted him, “Hello Antiochus, it is so nice to see you.” And he didn’t smile and he said, “I have a message for you from the Roman Senate.” And Antiochus said, “Oh that’s fine. Let's have a good chat, have dinner together, and then I will read the message.” Gaius responded, “The message must be read right now.” “Well” Antiochus says, “what is the message?” So Gaius took out the message and he said, “The Roman Senate declares that you must immediately leave Egypt and return to Asia and give up all attempts to conquer any of Egypt.” And Antiochus says, “Oh. well, that will require a good bit of consideration.” And his friend took his staff and he made a mark on the sand, a circle around where Antiochus stood and he said, “You can consider it just as long as you stay inside of that circle.” And when he said that, he was very well familiar with the rising power of Rome, having lived in Rome some years, and Antiochus said, “Oh, of course, I will then.” He said, “It is that important; it is that serious.” And “Come on,” he says “Let's have dinner.” And the fellows who had been so stern, now became friendly and cordial.

            But he wasn’t as happy as he made out to be. He went back up to his own land and he was very upset after that. The Romans for years after that loved to tell about that incident, that their power was recognized even as far away as Egypt by Antiochus's abject surrender on this occasion. But when he got back, now he determined that he was going to put an end to the attitude of these Jews. And so, he began harshly persecuting them, trying to seize their copies of the Scriptures, sending agents to all the little villages forcing people to sacrifice to Jupiter.  He went into the temple in Jerusalem and in the temple he put up a statue of Zeus, a Greek god. And he forced the people to sacrifice to him and to sacrifice swine’s flesh on the Jewish altar.  The persecution was so intense then.  If you ever get a chance to read Longfellow’s dramatic poem on the Maccabees, it gives a very good picture of the events that occurred then; a very beautiful picture.  We used it once at one of our occasions that we had at the very beginning of the school year many years ago. We went through the main parts of it. It is a very fine picture of the general course of events at this time. But after this persecution  was well underway, Antiochus found he was beginning to run out of money. And so he went east in order to recoup his fortune from  some of the centers where there was a good deal of money available, and there he was taken with a nervous illness and shortly died.

            But his young son became king for a brief time after him.  The persecution against the Jews was continued, but the group of the Maccabees fought and eventually they gained their independence.  They made a treaty of mutual support with Rome, and they were completely independent for half a century or more before the Romans finally took over what remained of the Seleucid empire. And so, Antiochus IV is a very vivid character and very dramatic character.  To him the attack on Judaism was a comparatively small part of his activity. But it was something that would have meant a complete end to the Old Testament and a complete end to the teachings in it had it not been for the Maccabean uprising. When the Maccabees began gaining power, then other people joined with them who were not so interested in much more than religious freedom.  Eventually the descendants of the Maccabees ruled independently but fell very far short of the standard with which they had begun. And so these latter descendents are not remembered with great favor among the Jews. It was the greatest crisis, perhaps, in the history of the religion of Israel prior to the time of Christ. And so, Antiochus IV is so important in this regard and it is important to see in Daniel 11:21-35 that we have events described. If you read through these verses you will see how many of the things I have suggested are there. Now, the assignment is posted.  We will continue our discussion next time.

            Narrated and edited by Dr. Perry Phillips

            Initial Editing:  Ted Hildebrandt

            Transcriber:  Lauren Parker