18: World News & Prophecy - Daniel 11:1-6

[Darris McNeely] Good morning, everyone, and hello to all of you that are watching online at some future time in history, this series on Daniel 11 and the whole book of Daniel. We are at chapter 11.

And a little bit of a recap, we started the story of Daniel 11 actually in chapter 10. And remember, we said at the time that Daniel chapters 10, 11, and 12 form one unit. There are artificial chapter breaks there put by translators and people put the Bible together, but it's actually on the scroll, it would have been one unit. And so we began in chapter 10 as Daniel, if you remember, set himself for a period of three weeks to understand and to know what was happening. Likely he was concerned about the Jews that had returned to Jerusalem from Babylon and the halting of the rebuilding of the temple there at that time. And he was concerned about what that meant. We are, as we saw in the 10th chapter that we were in the third year of Cyrus.

So that puts us in the year 536 BC. Daniel is in his 80s. He did not return with the Jews to Jerusalem, too old, probably felt that his role would have been more advantageous remaining in where he was in Babylon, etc. The job back in Jerusalem was a massive rebuilding project and they had capable people with them at that time. So Daniel set himself to understand, again, what was happening, what all this meant. A messenger came from God. He had been delayed for three weeks because one of a powerful archdemon was withstanding him, the Prince of Persia. And finally, Michael had come, as the story goes, and helped him. And he then begins to reveal to Daniel exactly what is happening here and what is taking place. And so that takes us through down to the end of chapter 10, just to kind of recap.

He says in verse 20 of chapter 10, the messenger to Daniel.

Daniel 10:20“Do you know why I came to you? Soon I will return to fight with the Prince of Persia and when I have left, behold, the Prince of Greece will come.”

And so here we have the Prince of Greece, Prince of Persia, two archdemons. We talked about the fact that behind the scenes of history are the spiritual forces at work that do have principalities and do have power, according to what Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter 6, which is where our great struggle resides spiritually. And in terms of what impact they have in the world influencing the course of history, there are demonic forces that it seems are the genius, the spiritual force behind empires, certain governments, large political and or cultural movements that sweep across the world, which should tell us that the great cultural changes we're seeing in our own world today, sexual revolution, progressivism, etc., that really speak to evil, the breaking of God's Word and law, what is behind that, what is really pushing that agenda into human culture is the spirit world. That's a whole other topic to get into, but we should always remember that and understand what we are dealing with. And this is the beauty and the genius and the great revelation that we get from this part of the book of Daniel. And so he says here.

Daniel 10:21 “I will show you what is recorded in the Scripture.”This is verse 21 of chapter 10. “in the Scripture of truth. And there is no one who helps me in these things except Michael the prince.”

And so we have Michael there, and he is introduced as a figure, and he will help this messenger, possibly Gabriel, we're not told explicitly, in this struggle with the princes of Persia and Greece. Now, I did tell you as well, as we were looking at this on the map last time, that with the...whoa, these things can attack you. Persia, we're looking at everything on this side of the map and perhaps even off the map. Asia, the Middle East, the Persian Empire was here. And largely right up through Asia Minor, what is today Turkey, was kind of a line. And everything from Greece upwards would be the prince of Greece, its domain. But looking at this, you can get an idea of, in a sense, two vast cultures, historically, empires as well, Persia, Greece, but cultures and other empires like Rome, as we will see, that succeeded Greece in the sequencing of Daniel. And there's a lot to learn and to look at there. We'll probably get more, do a deeper dive of that when we come back to this in Revelation 17 and 18 next semester.

And so what we're introduced to here. He says, “is recorded in the Scripture of Truth.” What is the Scripture of Truth? We don't know. There's a vague reference here at the beginning of chapter 11 as well. Some feel, and I think is a logical assumption, conclusion that the Scripture of Truth is something, some record of what these prophecies are detailing in heaven. That is the truth of history of what is going to happen. And this messenger has seen it and is delegated to bring it to Daniel. And what unfolds now beginning in chapter 11 is a portion. I don't think all of it, but a portion of whatever this heavenly Bible or the Bible of heaven is, the Scripture of Truth. It's all we have to go on. It's just a little fragment of a sentence and don't need to try to make anything more out of it than that. But it's delivered from God, from heaven, through this messenger here. So with that, you may want to go ahead and open your Bibles and take your handout for those of you that are watching online. This particular handout I'm talking about will either have it linked on the website, or you can go to the section of the ucg.org website that has the Bible reading program. And at Daniel 11, this is there in a PDF form that you can download as well and look at and have. It's also exerted in the Middle East in Bible Prophecy booklet that we have as well. One of the chapters there goes through and has this material. But I think there's more information in this particular handout along with a very handy chart of the Greek kingdoms. And I don't have that with me, but a nice full-color map, which should be on the back of your years today or the last page. There is a map, yes. So anyway, that's online for those of you watching this later on. And that map will prove helpful for you as well. And students, you've learned that maps are very, very important when it comes to this class.

All right. Now, and so if you look at this outline, we're going to kind of follow that and go in and out of it with additional material. And I brought in some slides from the purchase of a slide set that another biblical teacher, biblical scholar has put together, a man named Todd Bolin who has a website, Bible Lands, and has a lot of very good material. And I've used his material in Acts, and he has put together slides for every verse within not only this chapter, but the book of Daniel. And some of them we'll look at here as they at least give us a little bit of a help to visualize certain things that we need. But in the handout from the Bible reading program, you'll see that it's bracketed off, boxed off by verses. And so follow along as we go there.

So let's go ahead and begin and look at this. It says in verse 1.

Daniel 11:1“Also in the first year of Darius the Mede, I, even I,”and this is the angel that is sent to Daniel, “I stood up to confirm and to strengthen him.”

And so this is referencing Darius the Mede. Your notes will label this as a Gubaru, the governor of Babylon under the emperor Cyrus, the great. And when we cover that in chapter 6, I mentioned that some recent articles and scholarship are saying that this perhaps is actually Syaxre's the second. But we're not going to get into all of that, but at least just understand that that's the period. The first year of Darius is 539 BC. And now in verse 2.

Daniel 11:2 It says, “In the third year of Cyrus,” which would be 536, “I,”again the angel, “will tell you, Daniel, the truth.”

And so here's again a reference back to chapter 10 in this book of truth in verse 21 that he saw recorded in the scripture of truth. So here's a real quick reference. He said, I will tell you the truth. All right.

“Behold three more kings will rise in Persia. And the fourth shall be far richer than them all by his strength through his riches. He shall stir up all against the realm of Greece.”

And so we have a lot packed in here. So the first year of Cyrus, 30 years of Cyrus, 536, I tell you this, Cyrus is the first king, but then it says after three more kings will arise in Persia.

Now there were many more kings than just three, but these are the three that are mentioned for this particular prophecy. And the first one is, or the three more, first one would be Cyrus. The three more then begins here. And the second would be Cambyses that we have on the board here is labeled in the text here on your notes. Cambyses 529, 522, and then the next one would be one called Pseudosmerdis.

How would you like a name like Pseudo-Smurdus? In other words, you're not really Smurdus, but if I had a name like Smurdus, I'd want it to be Pseudo, meaning false, fake, or temporary. I could get rid of that name. But Smurdus, who is followed by Darius I. Now there are several Darius' within Persian king history. This happens to be Darius I. It is not the Darius against whom Alexander the Great battled. We studied that back in chapter 8. But then it says, “a fourth shall be far richer than them all, and he shall stir up all against the kingdom of Greece,” here in the latter part of verse 2. And so there are many different inscriptions and matters regarding this. This is this particular picture.

It's from a very famous monument that is in Iran today. I believe it's in Iran. But it's the Houston monument, and it is a huge, huge rock wall cliff that contains writings and carvings of figures. In this case, it happens to be Darius with his foot on Pseudo-Smurdus, and basically conquering him and the story that goes along with it. I'm not going to go into all the detail, but this is a picture of Darius subjugating his predecessor. You see writing in the background on this particular picture, and all of that has been deciphered. That's a fascinating story from modern archaeological history of the Englishman who hung on a roping scaffolding in the 1800s and copied that off and then translated it.

Fascinating story from, let's say, the modern age of archaeology that we have here. This particular picture that I'm showing you right now is of Darius I. This last would have been the fourth in the line here of who is being talked about. And I want to make a comment here just briefly. In some of these, I'm going to show you, you're going to see a lot of coins. This is a coin from the Persian period of Darius. All right. It appears to be a gold coin. And if you ever go to one of the big, great museums of the world to look at what's there in line of ancient history, many of them have entire rooms devoted to coinage of the period, whether it's Greek, Roman, Persian. And they've carefully put them all together and you really have to be a history nerd to really get into that.

But here's why it's important to at least know that and why we're looking at this. In the ancient world, coins were minted by the king, the emperor, the dictator, and they put their bust on there. They put an image of the king, the dictator, and that coin was worth the X number of drachmas or whatever it might have been, you know, manas, as we looked at in Daniel 5. But their picture was there. Their picture was there. And that coinage was distributed and bought bread, bought a ship, bought passage on a ship and traded goods back and forth. And it was like we don't use coins today. We will use paper money, but more and more we're just using our phone. We're tapping, or we're using a credit card. And coins are interesting development in the modern time, but in the ancient world, coinage was not only money, but it was also propaganda.

If you were the king, you wanted your picture there because that coin traveled all over your realm and beyond. And it basically said, I'm in charge. I'm in charge. And this is me. And usually on the backside there would be a lot of cases a depiction of a Greek god, Zeus or Apollo, or depending upon their patron god or goddess. And they would be associated with that. So on one side, the king, the dictator, the Caesar, on the other side, a pagan deity. And that showed, hey, I've got power. I've got connection to this god or goddess. And obey me. Keep in line. Maintain the order. And these have survived. We don't have great paintings. We don't have pictures.

But we have coins. And that's why the collection of these coins and the display of them in museums is very important in understanding and putting together the story of history in many different ways. And we have those here. Now, you may recall that Jesus, on one occasion, a question was put to Him and He said, bring me the coin. There's a question about tithing. Bring me the coin. And they brought Him a coin, a drachma, I believe. And He said, whose picture is on this? Well, it was the picture of a Caesar. It was actually Tiberius, the son of Augustus, whom we've talked a lot about already. But Tiberius, who was the Caesar when Christ was alive.

And then Christ makes the well-known statement, render under Caesar that which is Caesar's. So the coin that He was actually referring to had a picture of Tiberius on it. And Christ then made His particular point. But that coin was propaganda. And it was power. It was also wealth, assembled, represented a certain amount of money. But beyond that, it was used by these emperors and kings to basically let everybody know, I'm in charge, it's my time, and let's all get along, go along and worship me, obey me, do what is necessary, etc. So that's why you see a lot of coins in this particular presentation and as you would study that. This particular book is about the Hellenistic kingdoms or the Greek kingdoms of this period we're studying, portrait coins and history. And it's just full of pictures of portrait coins of these various Greek kings, most of whom figure into the story of Daniel 11.

So enough about that. Let's get back into the text and keep moving. Now, we want to look at this last one that is mentioned here, this last king in the story who is called the fourth and will be far richer than them all. He will stir up all against the kingdom of Greece. Very important statement. This is the king Xerxes. Put that on the board here. This is a relief of him, somebody carrying an umbrella, shade him from the sun. But this is Xerxes. I think I got that spelled right. Also known as Ahasuerus, who is the consort of Esther in the biblical book of Esther. So Xerxes is referenced here and it's the same king of Persia, Ahasuerus of the book of Esther, which takes place within this larger framework here. All right. So it says here that he will be far richer than them all.

So by the time he gets there, he's got a lot of wealth, a lot of money, and it says he will stir up all against the realm of Greece. We'll take it to another picture here. This is a modern movie depiction of him. I don't know if any of you have seen the movie The 300, which is a story of the invasion of Greece by this king. This was the actor who portrayed Xerxes in that movie, stirred up all when he invaded Greece in the year 480 BC. And so it's an interesting movie that is built upon the defense of the pass at Thermopylae by these 300 Spartans in that story there, which is one of the great stories as well. But they stopped Xerxes at that point for a period of time. Xerxes has crossed over into Greece, and he is attempting to subjugate Greece. He's conquered everything down through here. Now he wants to go after Greece, and this is 480. This is not the first time the Persian Empire has tried to come in there, nor will it be the last, but it is the most significant. The Greek historian Herodotus tells us that this king had a million men with whom he launched this invasion. And it's a fascinating story, a lot of sidebars to that one as well. Modern scholars say, oh, it wasn't really a million, but I mean cut it in half, half a million. That is as many soldiers as the United States had in Vietnam during the Vietnam War of the 1960s, which is so half a million is still quite large. And the point is, whether it's half a million or a million, or even just several hundred thousand, it's a big army.

And it takes a lot to feed that army. Herodotus says that Xerxes camped here on the eastern tip of Asia Minor, what is today Turkey, and for about two years before he launched his invasion, and they farmed and took in food, dried it, did whatever they did, salted down meat so that they could feed this army once they launched. And it's an interesting thing to consider. Today, I go through this area on my tours of Turkey and the seven church locations from the book of Revelation. And it's a very rich agricultural area, and I'm always amazed at what's growing there. Every vegetable you can imagine, very rich soil and everything. No wonder Xerxes stopped here and built up supplies for this invasion into Greece. This invasion didn't work.

Ultimately, he was thrown back, and the Greeks finally got their act together, and they threw him back, but they never forgot. Now Xerxes had to go home, and that's where the story of Esther comes in after Xerxes has been humiliated by this failed invasion. And that's where he kind of takes up with Esther. And you got the story there of Esther, and beautiful story, love story, and whatever. I always think, you know, Xerxes, you just should have stayed home with Esther. You know, you took all your men over there, you got beat up and thrown back and disgraced, and you had Esther back there. You should have just stayed with her. She was a, you know, good lady, good woman, and you would have been far more happier and prosperous than your people would have been happier as well. But kings don't do that. He stirred up, it says, he shall stir up all against the realm of Greece. Now go on to verse 3.

Daniel 11:3 “Then,”and then is 129 years later, all right, from the time of, let's say, 480. “A mighty king,”and this is Alexander the Great.

This is Alexander the Great, who then comes on the scene. And this is a bust of Alexander, one of many busts of Alexander. I'll tell you the world at the time of Alexander and afterwards, everybody wanted to remember Alexander and have a picture of him, or, you know, they didn't have a picture, so they, there were whole factories turning out replicas of these marble statues of Alexander the Great. You go into any museum today in the world, there's going to be a bust like this or statue of Alexander the Great. He left his mark upon history. But it says that verse 3, that…

“He shall arise, who shall rule with great dominion, and do according to his will.”

And so we covered this in Daniel 8. We talked a lot about Alexander's mother, his father Philip II, and that story. But Alexander was the one who now avenge the attempted Persian takeover of his homeland Greece. And Alexander himself coming out of Macedonia, he kind of took over all the other parts of Greece, and then he launches his army into Asia, Asia Minor, later called by the Romans. And so this is what the first part of verse 3 is saying, he will rule with great dominion and do according to his will. And we talked about that he was unstoppable until his death at age 33, roughly 10 years after his invasion. He went down into Egypt, he conquered all of this all the way over into India. And so this is what is being described here in verse 3. And then in verse 4.

Daniel 11:4 It says, “When he has arisen, his kingdom will be broken up.”

So he died in the year 323 BC, and he was at the height. He had not yet accomplished everything he wanted to, but we told the story how his army mutinied over here in India, and they had to march back to Babylon where he dies, 323 in the palace in Babylon. And it says here that “his kingdom is divided toward the four winds of heaven.”All right, but not among his posterity, meaning his own progeny. He did have a son, but they got rid of him. But not among his posterity, nor according to his dominion with which he ruled. The generals spent about 20 years fighting it out among themselves. And there was one larger-than-life type general, Antigonus, who made a bid to control everything. But then the other four members of his kingdom, remember, we talked about the four wings of the image of the leopard in Daniel 7 being representing these four generals that finally take over the remnants of his kingdom.

He says. “His kingdom shall be uprooted even for others beside these at this time.”

So the kingdom is split up among his four generals. This map here will kind of show that of Alexander in different colors there. You have the blue to the south is taken over by the general Ptolemy, who starts a dynasty in Egypt.

And that's the one of the two to remember. And then you have this yellow section here, and a very large yellow section, which represents the area taken over by Seleucus. Another general, and he is Seleucus, called Seleucus I. These names are in your notes here. And then Lysimachus, the kind of the orangish area, and then Cassander over in the area of Greece and Macedonia. And so those are the four general regions of control that after about 20 years from the time of Alexander's death are settled among these generals. Now, for this story in Daniel 11, the only two that you need to remember is, and we've talked about this, but it's Ptolemy, who is in Egypt. And Egypt was a prize. Very rich agricultural, the heritage of all the pharaohs, the pyramids, and all the monuments of Egypt, the Nile and everything. That was, in one sense, a crown jewel for Alexander's empire. Ptolemy gets it. He starts a library in Alexandria.

And part of the story is that the way he built his library is that any caravan, anybody coming into and crossing the border of his territory, they were searched. You got a book? It wasn't a book, like we think. It was a scroll. You got a scroll? Turn it over. It's ours. They would confiscate them. They would copy them. They would copy them, put a copy then in the library, and I guess then they would return the original to the owner. But that's in part how he built up this vast, legendary library at Alexandria. He starts it, Ptolemy does, and that's a part of history and even modern movie making as well. But you might find that on a quiz sometime as well.

Remember that one. And the other king then is Seleucus. Seleucus, okay? He is represented by this kind of this greenish-yellow segment. And you'll see, looking at the colors there, the regions, these are the two larger regions of the empire and very wealthy. There's a vast agricultural mining, gold, and something that you should understand as well. If you look at how those two kingdoms kind of straddle the whole region from North Africa up and through the land of Israel, keep that always in mind, up into Asia Minor and the regions there. And through all of those that are not marked on this particular map, I'll have another one that I'll show you, you have something called trade going on. You've got caravans coming and going. And on the backs of those camels and donkeys and mules and horses and on the carts and everything else, there's goods.

There's food. There's money. There's silks. There's spices that are coming out of all the regions here. And it's the interstate highway system of the ancient world. And these two kingdoms straddle that. And that's important to remember because what happens as we go from this point into the story, the story begins to develop around these two individuals. Look at verse 5.

Daniel 11:5 “Also the king of the South,” which is Ptolemy, Egypt, “shall become strong.”

He couldn't help but be strong. I mean, he would have had to have been a complete idiot and incompetent to not be strong militarily and financially to be able to fund everything that he wanted to do because he had Egypt, “as well as one of his princes, and he shall gain power over him and have dominion. His dominion shall be a great dominion.”

And so what you have, as your notes show here, from this point, the angel giving a message to Daniel focuses on these two divisions, these two generals, Ptolemy and Seleucus. And Ptolemy becomes the king of the South, biblically. That's why you want to remember that one. He becomes the king of the South. And Seleucus becomes the king of the North in this story in Daniel 11. We don't worry about the other two for the purposes of the biblical story here. And what happens and what develops from this particular point are a succession of kingdoms and kings that develop. This is a bust of Lysimch as one of the generals. And I want to go to this particular bust here. This is of Ptolemy I.

This is one of those coins. And you'll see that as he's depicted on this coin, he is decked out. He's got his hair done up really nice. He just came from the barbershop or beautician. And he's got a band around it symbolizing his power. And this is a coin from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. This is Ptolemy, so this is the king of the South. Here's a bust of Seleucus I who becomes the first of the kings of the North. So he was, again, one of Alexander's generals. And he and actually Ptolemy were working together for a while. They had to knock off this antagonist. But they settle into a rivalry. And the rivalry extends in the story through their kingdoms. These are the Greek kings of this Hellenistic kingdom. And so in terms of the history, this book has the title, the Hellenistic kingdoms or the Greek kingdoms.

This period that we're Daniel 11 and the first 35 verses largely are dealing with is the story of the breakup, the kingdoms and the succeeding dynasties and intrigues and stories following the death of Alexander the Great. Now, the story goes into great detail. And your notes will show that. Look at verse 6. At the end of some years, this comes down to the year 252.

Daniel 11:6 “They shall join forces for the daughter of the king of the south shall go to the king of the north.”This is a woman by the name of Bernice. And she's depicted here along with Ptolemy. “And to make an arrangement there, but she shall not retain the power of her authority,”it goes on to say. “And neither he,”who is referring to another king in Tychus, “nor his authority shall stand, but she shall be given up with those who brought her attendance.”

Now, this is talking about a lot of intrigue and drama. And the stories that make the stuff of historical novels, or if you were recording it at the time, these would be the stories of the palace intrigues of the House of Windsor. Alright? Prince Harry marrying some third-rate actress from Hollywood and trying to bring her into the royal family and she can't do it. Or even his father, Prince Charles, plucking out Princess Diana and making her a princess in a fairy tale wedding that took place, and then very quickly devolves into a soap opera of a marriage. But two sons come out of it. Alright? Prince Harry and Prince William, who are in the headlines today. Prince William will succeed his father as the next king. And Prince Harry has renounced the throne and rights and whatever. And he's gone off to La La Land, also known as Southern California, with his wife as she's through injury. This is the stuff of what we're reading about, but it's set back in this ancient period. But it's pretty dangerous times.

And there's wars and battles back and forth. I'm not going to go through every verse here. You've got the material in front of you. And as I said, at two o'clock in the morning when you wake up and you just can't go back to sleep, you can pull these notes out and read them and go to sleep in five minutes. But here's the point that you need to make. It is that we need to understand this is the story of intrigue and rivalry and fights and battles and armies between the king of the south out of Egypt and the king of the north up in the area of, let's just say Asia Minor. And they're warring back and forth.

They're going back and forth. And we have coins and pictures of them here of these individuals. This is Ptolemy II. Here's another coin here. And these kind of back up what is being described and what is happening in these stories as we move forward. And there's a lot of detail. Here's one of the important things to know. Why is it here? It's an answer to that question. Why do we have this? Why did God do this? Why should we even look at it and why is it important? It's important because, number one, God put it into the Bible. But I think it's also very important that we realize God did this as it was written in the book of truth as history that God foretold. And I like to think of it as this. I think God has caused this to be given to Daniel, Daniel to record it, preserved in the Bible. And God is basically saying, I'm going to show you something. I can do this.

I am God. I can control history. And regardless of Satan and his great princes of Persia or Greece and his powers, which he does have, but he can only go so far because I have a greater purpose that I'm working out. And I am the God of history. I control who comes and goes, who rises, who falls. And I can do it down to the detail. And I can tell you that in advance. And I think what God is saying and what is the legacy for you, and I have to look at that and it is to marvel as God is saying, I can do this. I'm going to show you what I can do. And if I can do that, as I control history for my purpose, my eternal purpose, I am the God that can help you. I am the God who can advocate for you. I am the God that can hear your prayers. Nothing is too big, nor is anything too small for me.

That I think is one large and important takeaway as we look at this and deal with the intrigues that go back and forth. Now there's one other thing that I want to make here before we leave this. And I'm jumping ahead of a lot of this, but I want to take you to a map, and I've got it here someplace. I know I do. I really do. I have to bring it up.

Yeah, here it is right here. Okay. I talked about trade. This particular map that you see on the screen here shows different lines of white and turquoise and red. Those are trade routes. Look at those as interstate highways of the ancient world. But look at where they're situated. They go all the way down into Egypt. They go through the land of Israel. They go up the Mediterranean coast, up what is today Lebanon, through that, up into what is Syria and Turkey, and connect with that coming from the east and the west. And they come out through the desert. If you look at, there's one line that runs down from Jerusalem. It's kind of a purplish line that runs down through the desert just north of the Red Sea there. That goes through a very important place that we know from history called Petra. Petra. You ever seen pictures and heard about Petra? Anybody here been to Petra? Okay, we'll talk about that later on. I've been there twice. You've been there, Dylan? Okay, I figured you had been. I've been there twice. It's a fascinating place. But Petra in the day, this period, was kind of the Las Vegas of the time.

It was sustained by water that they piped in. It was in the desert, and they had fountains, and they had flowers, and not at all like what you see today. But it was also a kingdom, the Nabataean kingdom built on trade. And it was a major trade hub. The king of the north and the king of the south are fighting for the control of these trade routes, which means money, and power, and control. That's what's happening here. That's the big story behind these verses on top of the armies clashing back and forth. It is trade. Now, why is that important? It's important because we are dealing with the third kingdom of Daniel 7, soon to be the fourth kingdom with Rome. And this is the area of the riches of the time, but we are being told something. When we read between the lines, and know the backstory, that whether it's Babylon, Persia, Greece, or Rome, this whole system that the Bible calls Babylon, it is built as an economic power.

Money, trade. When we come to Revelation chapter 18 especially, we will see a description of this end time system called Babylon, the final revival of all that we've been studying in the time of the end, the time yet ahead of us. And we will see manifests, lists of goods that are carried and are traded and controlled by this system called Babylon. Trade. In a modern world that goes on ships, goes through airplanes, goes through the internet, as money is traded and transferred back and forth, and now into the world of AI. That we haven't even, I think, begun to see what will develop that will have its final flower and blossom and bloom in this system of Revelation 18 called Babylon. It's all built on trade and it's an economic system. It's a religious system. It's a spiritual system. It's a political system that will astound the world. And we're being shown here how it all worked at this time and how God controls it all. We'll end the class with that and we're going to come back in the next class and we're going to fast forward into the story because I'm not going to go into all the detail. We're going to come to the time of the great story of Antiochus IV, otherwise known as Antiochus Epiphanes, who is this larger-than-life figure that rises up in the verses of Daniel 11 and has a very important role in the story. So we'll pick that up when we come back in the next class then.