The Statue In The Book of Daniel

I've started, of course, I have two series of sermons going on at the same time, one on the Beatitudes and one that's going to take us a year to go through as we've been going through the basic, very basic prophecies of the Bible. And what we've done so far in two sermons and a Bible study is shown how Genesis 3.15 is the first prophecy. Adam and Eve are kicked out of Eden, and God says, but I'm going to fix this. You're going to be under the rule of Satan, and then there's going to come a point.

I'm going to interact with you in history and bring about a point where I fix this. And then we went through the three basic major covenants, also touched on some of the smaller ones, and how in the Abrahamic covenant, the Sinai covenant, the New Covenant, and even talked a little bit about the Davidic covenant, all the promises that are made, all the prophecies of those covenants that lead to the first and second coming of Jesus Christ.

And you take books like Isaiah. It's amazing how much there is in Isaiah that's about the first and second coming of the Messiah. So these prophecies were just, this is what I'm doing, God says, over and over again. This is what I'm doing. And I'm setting this all up so that I fix this in the end, even though Satan and humanity is going to spend a period of time separated for me, for the most part.

So we looked at that as the basis of all prophecy. Now I want to start where we were able to see what Satan is going to be doing from a certain time period up to Christ's return. And we'll get into a little bit of, okay, now we're looking ahead to the prophecies we're all interested in, you know, the beast power at the end, the false prophets, 666, all those things. We're going to start looking at the templates for that. But they'll always be laid on top of each other.

We'll always start with Genesis 3.15. We'll always lay on top of that, the prophecies of the covenants about what God's doing. And then we get to lay on top of that now, what is Satan doing? What is his plan? And how is God going to intervene and interact with that, what his plan is? In fact, I've even been thinking about another sermon in this series I had planned, but I just may go through part of it and show how these two plans are at war with each other all the time.

And the whole Bible is about the war between these two plans. And that we know, because of this remarkable grace we've been given, this calling from God, we can know that God wins in this. That God solves these problems, but we live in this time, so we live actually in the middle of a spiritual warfare.

So, we're going to start in Daniel, and we're just going to go through, in the sermon and then in the Bible study, three basic passages in Daniel. I'm going to be going through a lot of material. Don't feel overwhelmed by it. Just understand the story flow. That's all you need to know is the story flow. This is the basis of how, in the United Church of God, back in the worldwide Church of God, the Radio Church of God, this becomes the basis of how we understand so much prophecy.

It's Daniel 2, Daniel 7, and Daniel 8. So, we're going to look at those and tell you why we've come to that conclusion, because other people come to totally different conclusions. The material I'm going through today is used by some to say that the great beast power is centered in Mecca, and it exists today in Mecca, and the Muslims are the beast. So Christianity has to come together. All Christian natures have to come together to fight them to prepare the way for Jesus Christ.

That was declared, by the way, the first time back in the ten hundreds AD, when the Catholic Church declared that, and they invaded, took Jerusalem, and slaughtered a lot of people. So it's very interesting. That declaration, that that's where the beast power is, this isn't the first time this has come along in the Western world. But that is not. Is that what that says? Because we come to a totally different conclusion. So, let's start with, who was Daniel? Some of you might remember this, because I was going to make a slide presentation, and I realized, wait a minute, I did a slide presentation on this seven years ago. So I just sort of pulled the old one and rewrote it some.

Some of you may remember some of it. Some of you weren't here, and if you're like most people, you've forgotten it anyway. So, who was Daniel? He was from the upper class of Israelite society, of Jewish society, possibly from a royal family. Now the reason we know this is because he ends up a captive in Babylon before the rest of the Jews do.

Babylon invades Judah about, well, we know of three times, which was sort of a pattern of theirs. And the first time they would go into a nation that didn't want to submit to them, they would take the brightest, the best and brightest of the young people, take them to Babylon, and train them how to be Babylonians. So they'd get to Babylon and they'd be like, wow, this is an amazing place. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World was there.

It was one of the largest cities, if not the largest city, known city in the Western civilization. We don't know exactly what was going on in China. But remember, all these prophecies are centered around Jerusalem. The biblical prophecies are always centered around Jerusalem. That's the center point. And we say, well, why? Well, remember what we've already gone through in the covenants.

The Messiah is going to come to Jerusalem twice. So this is the center point. This is the center point of what God's doing. So it becomes the center point of what Satan's doing. Oh, he's active in the whole world. But this is always his focal point because he has to, in his mind, keep Christ from coming. He has to stop this.

And so when we look at the Bible prophecy, it always ends up centered around this area. So we know they came in somewhere around 605 B.C., took the best and the brightest, took them there in order to teach them how to be Babylonians. Because then they can send them back and these young people can change society. Okay, so you train them, you send them back, and they change things. You also take the best and brightest and keep some of them there because you want the best and brightest people of the entire empire to come in and be advisors to the king.

So they were bringing in, okay, the best and brightest from Egypt, from all over different places, bringing them there and saying, some of you are staying here, you young people. Of course, they're sort of wealthy now. They get to live in palaces. So, you know, this is considered the greatest success, basically, that you could have at the time. So he's probably a teenager at this time. He's very young, we know that, because he's writing years later and he's an old man. So here he is deported to Babylon. He's there eventually within about maybe 20, 30 years. What happens is that Babylon destroys Judah, takes them into captivity, and takes the majority of them to Babylon itself to live there, away from their own land. Nebuchadnezzar took many of the sacred objects of the temple.

And so now the entire worship of the God of Israel was destroyed. The people were gone. They were taken out of the land. The temple was destroyed. And the temple, the things that had been set up by God, designed by God, to be in his worship was gone. That's why it's interesting we want to have time to go through the warfare that's happening here. When we go through this, we see there's a constant attempt to destroy the people of God. And that's going to happen with the beast power at the end, too. Because the church itself now is to proclaim the second coming of Jesus Christ, so you don't want the church to exist. So that's why there's persecution by the beast power on the church at the end time. This now is basically against the Jews. The rest of Israel, remember, has already been taken into captivity. The Assyrians took them into captivity, and they lost who they were. They were just scattered. But the Messiah must come through a descendant of David. So the Messiah has to be a Jew.

So it keeps God just narrowing this down to the greatest thing. And all this, what's really amazing, all this history. We're going to talk about all these empires and armies and things that's going on. There is a teenage virgin girl in Bethlehem at the exact moment she's supposed to be there. You know, it's like, God, how are you going to do all this? Oh, just watch this.

Just watch this. And he did it! She's there at the moment she has to be there to give birth to Jesus Christ. Once you know that basis we've already gone through, you understand what God's doing. We're looking at what Satan's doing. So Daniel spent most of his life, ever since he was young, in Babylon. He became an advisor to the Babylonian government, but he remained faithful to God. And there were times when people tried to kill him because of that. So, here is Daniel. And what we have is this dream. So let's go to Daniel, chapter 2. We have a dream that Nebuchadnezzar has. He's very disturbed by it. And I'm going to read this because it tells us so much about Nebuchadnezzar.

Verse 1. Now in the second year of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar's reign, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams. And his spirit was so troubled that his sleep left him. And the king gave the command to call the magicians, the astrologers, the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans to tell the king his dreams. So they came and stood before him. So they're very superstitious people. They're pagan. So he was the astrologers. He was all the people that worked with dreams, all the people that have the magic, and the Chaldeans. The Chaldeans were a group of people who had attached themselves to the Babylonians, and they were considered sort of the intelligentsia of the kingdom. So this is like saying, I want all the guys from Oxford here, too. I want them here because I want someone to tell me what's happening. And the king said to them, I have made a dream, and my spirit is anxious to know the dream. Then the Chaldeans spoke to the king in Aramaic, O king, live forever, tell your servants the dream, and we will give you the interpretation. It's simple. Just tell us the dream. We'll be able to tell you right away. The king answered and said to the Chaldeans, my decision is firm. If you do not make known the dream to me and its interpretation, you shall be cut in pieces, and your houses shall be made as an ash heap. He said, no, I've been tricked enough times. If you're really as in touch with the supernatural as you say you are, you have to tell me my dream first. However, if you tell the dream and its interpretation, you shall receive from me gifts, rewards, and great honor. Therefore, tell me the dream and the interpretation. The answer to the Chaldeans said again, let the king tell his servants the dream, and we will give its interpretation. And the king says, I know for certain that you would gain time because you see that my decision is firm. You're just trying to give yourself some time to go out and try to figure this out. If you're in touch with the supernatural, just tell me. If you do not make known the dream to me, there is only one decree for you, for you have agreed to speak lying and corrupt words before me until the time has changed. Therefore, tell me the dream and I shall know that you can give me its interpretation. And the Chaldeans answered and said, there's no man on earth who can tell this to the king. Who can tell what happened in someone's head? He says, nothing has ever been asked of magicians or astrologers or Chaldeans. It is a difficult thing that the king requests, and there's no other who can tell it to the king except the gods whose dwelling is not with flesh. And for this reason, the king was angry and very furious and gave the command to destroy all the wise men of Babylon. So the decree went out and they began killing the wise men, and they sought Daniel and his companions to kill them. Now, this tells us something about Nebuchadnezzar. I just want everybody killed. Just kill all the people that are supposed to be my advisors, and I'll find new advisors. So Daniel and the Jewish young people that were with him, they get the death penalty, too. So Daniel goes to God, and he asks for God's direction. He asks for God to help him understand the dream. And so what happens is God tells him the dream. So we see the story, we've looked at it. The king threatened to kill his advisors because they couldn't tell him the dream. Daniel asked the king for some time to interpret the dream, and he did give him that. And Daniel prayed, and God revealed the dream and its meaning to him. And here's the dream. Here's the dream.

I always tell people, this is sort of cheap images here, but they're all I could afford. I usually make my own slides, but every once in a while I buy some images, and that one was cheap. Okay, so here we go. The dream showed a statue with four sections. The head was of gold, the chest was silver, the belly and thighs were bronze, the legs were made of iron, and the feet were iron mixed with clay. Now once again, with no revelation, there's no idea what this means. I mean, Daniel didn't know what it meant, but suddenly God showed him the dream because God had caused the dream. Because God is meddling in Satan's affairs.

Satan's ruling through Babylon, and they've already taken the Jews out of Judea. There's all kinds of prophecies that can't be fulfilled now about the Messiah. See? I've ruined God's plans. And he says, well, wait till I give Nebuchadnezzar this nightmare, and we'll see how well your plan works. So there's this constant warfare. So then a large rock struck the, destroyed the statue, and it became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth. So that was the end of the dream. So Daniel told King Nebuchadnezzar the dream, and here was the interpretation. So let's now go back to Daniel 2. Then we're going to have to figure out if we know what this means. If we can put this together. Because it's put together a lot of different ways. Daniel 2, verse 28 says, But there is a God in heaven, this is what Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar, Who reveals secrets, and he is made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days, And your dream, and the visions of your head upon your bed, were these. And so he tells them, he tells them exactly what the dream was. And he says, now let me tell you what it means. He says, verse 30, But as for me, the secret has not been revealed to me, because I have more wisdom than anyone living. But for our sakes, who make known the interpretation to the king, That you may know the thoughts of your heart. He says, this isn't because I know, it's because it's been revealed to me, So you can understand what God is telling you. You, O King, were watching me hold a great image. So he explains the image that we just talked about. So let's skip down to verse 36. This is the dream. Now we will tell you the interpretation of it before the king. You, O King, are a king of kings. For the God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power, strength, and glory. And wherever the children of men dwell, or the beasts of the field, and the birds of heaven, He has given them into your hand. And he has made you ruler over all of them. You are the head of gold. Okay, we have now a definition of one part of this. So we don't have to try to guess what that is.

But after you shall rise another kingdom inferior to yours, then another, a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. Now, all the earth is in relationship to Jerusalem. None of these kingdoms ever reigned over South America. And yet there were lots of people in South America 2,000, 3,000 years ago.

They didn't reign over China or Japan. It's all in relationship to Jerusalem and what's round there in the Middle East. And actually around the Mediterranean Sea. The Mediterranean Sea is center, too, of a lot of these dreams we will see.

He says, And the fourth kingdom shall be as strong as iron, as iron breaks in pieces and shatters everything. And like iron that crushes, that kingdom will break in pieces and crush all the others. Whereas you saw the feet and toes partly of potter's clay and partly iron, the kingdom shall be divided, yet the strength of the iron shall be in it. And just as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay, and as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly fragile.

And he says in verse 43, And you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, and they will mingle with the seed of men, but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay. And in the days of these kings, and so here we have these toes, he's describing this, at the end of the prophecy here, it won't mix together and there will be these kings, these ten kings. Now there's more he's going to say, but let's just stop there.

Well, no, let's go ahead and finish it, because I want to get you the whole picture here. He says, And in the days of these kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, and the kingdom shall not be left to other people. It shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. And as much as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, that it had broken pieces, the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold, the great God is made known to the king what will come to pass after this. So this goes clear down to the time when the promises made in the Abrahamic covenant, the divinic covenant, the Sinai covenant, and the new covenant happen when the kingdom of God is set up on earth by the Christ. So we know the beginning of it. It's Nebuchadnezzar. We know there's four kingdoms that follow that are different than each other, and yet similar. They're all part of the same image here. And we do know that when that ends. So we have that much. So we now have a template to begin to build off of. So, by the way, Daniel received a lot of great gifts, and he was made a very, one of the top men in the government of Babylon, which made him hated by a lot of men. But then some of the other astrologers and other soothsayers had to be happy because because of Daniel, they weren't all wiped out and killed. Because now the king wasn't mad anymore. Okay, so let's look at the head of gold, Babylon. This version of Babylon didn't last very long. The first version of Babylon lasted for a lot longer time. Then the Assyrians came up and they conquered Babylon, and then the Assyrians were the major power in the region. And then the Assyrians sort of collapsed, and the Babylonians defeated them, and now we have this second Babylonian empire comes along. But it only lasted from 626 to 539. It didn't last a long time. But it conquered what was the primary known world at the time.

So, this is 600 years before Jesus, and what is now modern-day rock. In fact, they have the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon, and they're always excavating those ruins. They actually have a large building that some archaeologists say was the Tower of Babylon. I don't know if it was or not. But they realized that this city is what is talked about in the Bible.

Of course, it was eventually defeated by the Persians. We know that much in 539. This is how big it was. See this? Now, that's not a real huge region. It's big for the day. All of Egypt, all of this area of what is Jordan now, today, Syria, of course, Judea. You have Babylon here. That's the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, if you can see that. Because you can see this on both sides. Okay, good. That's the Tigris and Euphrates rivers right here. And this is modern-day Turkey up here. So it got into southern Turkey. This was the Babylonian Empire. And this was the wealth. I mean, much of this area around here... Now, you go south into Africa. There were, like, Nubian kingdoms or kingdoms here. But you go up in here, you have Greece. But Rome really doesn't exist anymore. There is no Roman Empire. So you don't have, you know... But you have Persia over here. Persia is going to be... Persia and the Medes would join together to eventually fight the Babylonians. So...

Persia and Medes get together, and they decide they're going to take Babylon. And this happens in the book of Daniel. Now, remember, Daniel's told, you're the first kingdom, and a second kingdom's going to follow you. During the life of Daniel, the second kingdom came along.

Remember where there's a big party going on, and a finger writes on the wall how your days are numbered? Right?

Well, that night...

Because the Persians had come along and surrounded Babylon. The Babylon had huge walls, highly trained army. There was no way they were going to take it. They had enough food for them to last for years.

But what they had done is they had taken the Euphrates River and built a canal.

A dam, and then a canal that came off the Euphrates River. Because the Euphrates River went right through the middle of Babylon, and there were huge iron gates that came down. So ships couldn't go through. You couldn't go through there unless the gates were raised, and nobody was going to raise those gates. That night, they broke down the dam they had built, and the entire Euphrates River ran off out into the desert. The soldiers just marched through the mud, went underneath the gates. When they woke up the next morning, the entire city of Babylon was under the control of the Persians.

So what he predicted here happened. So now we know who this second part of this image is. It's the Medo-Persian Empire. And this is the chest of silver. So Darius the Mede took Babylon by draining the Euphrates. And by 538 Mesopotamia, which is northern Greece, and Judea were under Persian rule. Later the Persians gained control of Egypt and Libya. This is important when we get into the Bible study because we're going to go through Daniel 7. So some things we're saying here will be explained in other prophecies. Now look at the size of the Medo-Persian Empire because it included everything.

It included not in Egypt but over here in Libya, which was a whole empire by itself. They have taken all this area. They've taken all this area that was now Turkey up here into Russia. All this area over here, this river here is the Indus River. It's into India. Now the difference though, the Babylonians basically ruled, set out armies, beat up people and said, pay us taxes.

The Persians said, no, we're going to actually govern this. They created this complex administrative system in which this whole area was administrated by them.

And so what happened was where all the wealth would flow into Babylon, all the wealth was now shared. It was huge what was happening here. Plus you have this introduction of a whole other culture that comes from Persia all the way over from India.

And so this then, these people now rule. Daniel's still alive. He now serves the Persians. King Cyrus, and other kings of the Persian Empire, but Cyrus is actually predicted in the Bible. If I do a sermon on the warfare between these kingdoms and the kingdom of God, Cyrus is an interesting person. He developed a policy that allowed all people the freedom to go to worship their own gods and go back to where you came from. Both the Assyrians and the Babylonians just moved people out of their area because if you were gone from... Remember, everybody believed in local gods. If you destroy their local god, that means you show you're stronger than that god, so you better worship our gods and you better have our culture. So they just mixed peoples together. The Persians started saying, let's not do that. Let's everybody go back. Go back. Have your own culture. And let's just learn to rule, live under the Persian Empire. And many people liked it. That's what made the Persian army so amazing. It was made up of units from like 30 or 40 different countries. And they would put these units together and they would fight together. These scrolls that you see right here, actually, they still exist. Those are scrolls from Cyrus. It's a cylinder which is written on there, giving people the right to go back. So, in 538, Cyrus sends the Jewish community back and we have this in Ezra. So now this is fascinating. We won't have time to go through this. I still may do it because it's just... now you see the warfare. Okay, what happens is Babylon, under Satan's rule, stopped, moved the people. Messiah can't come. He can't do what he promised Abraham. He can't do what he promised the Israelites. Well, they went back. And this was, you know, Satan's kingdom too. It's totally pagan kingdom. And they send them back because God tells Cyrus to do it and he does it. And so they go back. And so he makes his decree and they send them back. And they also set back all the utensils from the temple. Now the worship of God is reestablished in Jerusalem. Jerusalem becomes a focal point all over again. For 57, Artaxerxes of Persia sent Ezra back. Ezra and Nehemiah. Nehemiah actually becomes the governor under the Persians. And they rebuild the temple. They rebuild Zarebabel's temple. Zarebabel was a temple. They rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. They set up a country. And they're a nation all over again. Now Satan didn't give up. You've read the book of Esther.

He made a plot inside the Persian government to kill every Jew. To kill every one of them. Even the Babylonians didn't do that. But then, how in the world are they going back? Satan's removed them from where they're supposed to be. And now they're going back so that what we have to do is kill all of them. And that's what happens. He attempts to kill all of them. And that's what the Book of Esther is all about. It's the warfare between God's plan and Satan's plan. Okay, so the chest and arms made of silver represent this kingdom of Medo-Persia. The second power. Silver is a lesser value than gold. And so God said each one of these becomes worse. Less of value in terms of their relationship with God or any understanding of God. Less in value in terms of the quality of life they bring to people. Eventually, the Persian would be conquered by another kingdom, which is Greece. So this didn't happen during the time of Daniel. But when we get into Daniel 7 and 8, we'll see that it was prophesied it would happen. Daniel was told, you're living under the second one of these, but we'll tell you what the third one's going to be. And he would receive a specific prophecy that mentions Greece. So Greece comes along with the belly and thighs of bronze. Alexander the Great, in his early 30s, brought together the various city-states of Greece. Not all of them. Not all of them would follow him. But he was actually from Macedonia, which is north of Greece. And he brought them all together, formed an army of hoplites, and just went around conquering every place. The hoplites had a new method of warfare. They would simply... First of all, they were all well-trained. The Greek city-states, just for fun, every summer, would have a war season. You didn't want to kill off too many of each other, but they would fight a battle. Okay, 50 guys died, let's stop. And they'd go home. A winter was declared. I mean, they were just professionals at war. And of course, you had the Athenians and the Thebes and the people of Thessalonica and the Corinthians and the Spartans. The Spartans had better press than the rest of them. That's why they're famous for the 300. There were a lot of other Greeks there at Thermopylae. It's just that they had good press. So, they're professional soldiers. They live in a warrior society. And he unites them and says, okay, we're tired of having battles with Greece. I mean, Persia. Persia would keep it baiting. They'd drive them off. They would come with huge armies. They'd drive them off. And they'd already taken a bunch of the colonies because the Athenians set up Greek colonies all over the Mediterranean because they were shipbuilders. They took over their colonies, stopped their trade. So, let's go take them. Now, you have to understand, Persia has millions of people in it. Turkey is not that big of a country. Their army probably is between 30 and 40,000 men. But they're professionals and they have a new weapon, 20-foot-long spears.

And they had them in lines so that if you're, you know, armies would march towards each other and then slam in each other, push back and forth to one side, gave out, and then they'd kill them all.

Well, you can't get close to these guys because they're marching and then they would actually start running towards you. I think the worst thing you could be in a battle with the Greeks was a Greek soldier in the middle of the phalanx because if he fell down, they just ran over you. And they would run into the other group with 20-foot spears. You couldn't get close enough to fight. And then they'd break off and destroy them. And this worked for centuries. So, they met the Romans and the Romans were professional soldiers. And they looked at him coming and said, well, that's stupid. We're not going to stand here and take that. So, when they got close to him, they just got out of the way. And they just marched past him and then they tacked him from the rear. And that ended the age of the phalanx. I didn't mean to get off of that. I just fight. Every time you come up with a new way of fighting and it works, and then somebody says, I can beat that. And they did. The Romans did. So, they're marching all over the place, destroying everything. They get clear to the Indus River. They're into India. But the army starts to revolt. Now, this gives you an idea of how big it was. Greece, what's now Turkey, clear down here, the Tigris, Euphrates, Babylon. This would have been Syria up here. Down here is Syria, what is now Jordan, Judea, Egypt, Libya, and the entire Persian Medan Empire, clear into India. But then here's a small group of men, compared to the armies they were fighting, and they're fighting armies with elephants. And finally, they said, we want to go home. We thought we were going to get to the end of the world. Now, India just goes on. They didn't even know China was beyond that. What we now call Indochina was even before that. They didn't know that was all there. They just said, just goes on and on. We want to go home. So, he had to go home. He died on the way home, which meant that the Greek Empire lasted about three years as a cold, old Empire. Now, it would be fractionalized in parts. This is what the word Hellenization comes from. The Greeks called themselves the Hellenes. What they did is, every place they went, they created places of Greek culture.

When he took Egypt, what he did is, he went down, Alexander, he took a place along the shore there, along the Mediterranean, he measured it off, measured off where the big building should be, left behind some soldiers, some engineers and Greek officers, and said, build it. Make the Egyptians build it. Well, they just conquered the Egyptian army. And plus, Greeks were in charge. And so, they built Alexandria, Egypt. That's why it's Alexandria. And so, he did that all over the world. Now, you say, oh wow, that's a big deal. I'm getting bored. Understand, Western civilization is based on Greek culture. We go to public schools, don't we? We have public sporting events, don't we? In fact, we still do the Olympics every four years, don't we? There's all kinds of things we do that's based on Greco-Roman culture. Go drive through the, look at the government buildings in Washington, D.C. You notice they're always Greco-Roman style. Why? Because that's where Western civilization started. And so, he mingles this, though, with Eastern culture from India and Persia, and sort of creates his own culture. And he had two. He wanted to be created, he wanted to be worshipped as a god, and the Greeks were too independent. They weren't going to worship him as a god, so if he probably wouldn't have died, he'd have probably, his army would have killed him. So, he dies. They start fighting immediately, and they divide the empire into four parts. After about 40 years, Egypt does, the Ptolemies. Now, you know this. Who's the most famous Ptolemy of all time? Anybody? Cleopatra. Cleopatra was Greek, and she was the last of the Ptolemies that reigned there. So, the Ptolemies ruled Egypt. And she's an amazing woman, by the way. Talk about an ability to play power politics. She seduced two Roman emperors and got them to do what she wanted. And it wasn't just because she was seductive. It's because they were amazed with their intellect.

So, you have this, even at the time of Julius Caesar, what we're dealing with is a Greek ruler over Egypt. Syria, where the Seleucids were there, in what is modern-day Syria. Macedonia was a group, and then Pergamum, in what is now modern-day Turkey. Now, we know what Pergamum is because there was a city there at the time John wrote the book of Revelation, and there was a church there in Pergamum. Well, at one point, it was Greek. That's why there's so much Greek culture in Turkey today. The Turks hadn't come in yet. They came in off the steppes and took Turkey, but for a long period of time, it was just sort of an extension of Greece because it was ruled by them. So, the Jews who had been brought back into Jerusalem were now caught between the Seleucids and the Ptolemies, who were all fighting each other to always try to reunite the Empire.

And so, they fought each other, and they fought each other, and they fought each other. But to get to Egypt, you had to march through Judea. To get to Syria, you had to march through Judea. And so, they fought each other. Today, even—I mean, this happens all the time. If you read archaeological magazines and so forth, they're always finding giant bags of Greek coins from this time period. Or armor. All kinds of things are finding all the time because the Greeks were going back and forth all the time. So, the Jews now are constantly caught between these two warring groups, and this has a lot to do with the abomination of desolation, which we'll have to talk about later. That's another end-time thing we always talk about. We have to understand what happened under this time period. So, Antiochus Epiphanes tried to force the Jews to abandon the law and accept Greek culture. He killed them if they owned a Torah. He killed them if they wouldn't eat pork. And if they circumcised their children, their boys, they would kill the baby, tie it around the mother's neck, and made them wear it. What happened here, we'll understand, was the first abomination of desolation. There's another one it's talking about in Revelation. So, now, what's the warfare again between God and Satan? God sent them back. And the Greeks are trying to slaughter them, trying to wipe them off the face of the earth, just like the Persians did. The Babylonians didn't try to do that. They just moved them out of their area. There's always the warfare between the two plants, and we're looking at that here. So, he desecrated the Jewish Temple, and we'll talk about that in much more detail.

Judas Maccabeus led a revolt in the middle of the second century BC, and he won, 164 BC, and rededicated the Temple. And that's what Hanukkah is. The celebration of Hanukkah is the celebration of the time when God saved them, once again, from annihilation. We have Purim, saving what the Jews keep. That's when God saved them from annihilation from the Persians. We have Hanukkah, and God saved them from the annihilation of the Greeks. The belly and thighs represent the kingdom of grace. Once again, this is a lot of information, but you have to understand this story flow, because this is how we interpret huge sections of the Book of Revelation. It's because of this. These are our templates that we lay on top of each other.

And we already have. We've gone through two of those big templates, and this is the third one. So, the bronze is inferior. Greece is inferior to Persia. And now they would eventually be destroyed by Rome. The legs of iron and feet of iron and clay. In 63 BC, Roman General Pompey conquered Jerusalem. Once again, we're back in Jerusalem. Now the Romans are there. And Julius Caesar tried to become the emperor, and the Senate didn't like it, so they killed him. And Octavian and Mark Antony defeated Brutus and Cassius, who killed him. And now you have a civil war going on inside of Rome over who gets to control everything.

So what happens is, is Octavian defeats Mark Antony. And guess who Mark Antony had become friends with? Cleopatra. And they put their armies together and tried to take Rome. Octavian beat him, beat them, and then changed his name to Augustus Caesar. So he became the first real emperor. In 37 BC Herod the Great, who was a descendant of Esau, was appointed King of Judea. And you find that a lot in the New Testament. Him and his descendants have a lot to do in the New Testament. So, once again, if you want to understand parts of the New Testament, you have to understand this. And this is all part of the warfare between two plans.

Herod the Great began to refurbish the temple. The temple Jesus went into was Herod's rebuilding of Zerubbabel's temple. So now the Jews are back. They lost their freedom, but they now have the temple again. That's why they believed the Messiah was coming. That's why there was this huge messianic movement at the time when Jesus came. And they thought He was coming to do what? Overthrow the beast and set up God's kingdom on earth. They had missed the fact that He comes twice. They missed it entirely.

So, now we have the next stage of the warfare again. Jesus was born somewhere between 6 and 4 BC. What did they try to do?

They tried to kill every baby, remember? I'll know. I've lost control. Satan says, just kill all the babies. And God takes Joseph and Mary and Jesus to Egypt. Get some out of there. Then brings them back. So He's crucified, though, by the governor of Judea, punches Pilate, and then He's resurrected. Once again, Satan wins, but he doesn't. He loses. So in 70 AD, the Romans finally came in and destroyed Jerusalem. They would do it again in the next century, but this was the first destruction.

Then, over time, the Roman Empire fell. At least the western part did. So the Roman Empire fell in 476. So He said, wait a minute. How could the Roman Empire fall? And yet it's not totally destroyed until the return of Jesus. So how does that make sense? How can that work? Well, let's go back to the statue. There's two legs made of iron. That's that fourth empire. Notice it's two. It's different than the other. It's separated. The Roman Empire was divided into two halves.

Constantine did it. They had two capitals at one time. Constantinople and Rome. Constantinople is Turkey today. But there's still Roman ruins there. All kinds of Roman ruins. So the Roman Empire would be strong, eventually split in two.

And this iron, they smashed there.

This is different than the other ones. This one was more brutal than any of the other empires and what they could do and what they would do militarily. So it's divided. You know the Eastern Empire didn't fall until 1453? That's when the Turks finally took Constantinople. The Eastern part of the Roman Empire did not fall until 1453. But between 476 and today, there are constant attempts to reunite the Eastern, Western parts of the Empire together to create some kind of unity to work together. And they're always driven to do it because when they're not doing that, guess what Europeans do? They fight each other.

So you've got to stop it. Let's just all unite. Over and over again. Justinian, Charlemagne. I mean, they're just an attempt after attempt after attempt. Let's put the two halves back together. Even Putin has said that's part of his motivation.

Because, don't you know, the Czars declared Moscow to be the third rogue. Now, that doesn't fit any prophetic model, but it gives you a lot of power. It's also the Eastern Orthodox Church has said that they have to take Europe because it's the Beast Power.

The Eastern Orthodox Christian Church in Russia has said we must take the West because that's the Beast Power. You know, prepare for Jesus Christ's return. Everybody wants to kill somebody to prepare for the return of Jesus Christ.

This kingdom will be in its latter stages. In its latter stages will be divided kingdom. Strong and weak. The iron is mixed with clay, which is very brittle. The kingdom will be a mixture of people who will not be totally united. We already read that in Daniel chapter 2. So, the stone then cut out, not by human hands, smashes the feet. The return of Jesus Christ that's out of his kingdom, as it says in the Abrahamic Sinai and New Covenants, will be at this point. In the time when you have 10 toes, 10 kings, in some kind of restored or attempt to restore the Roman Empire. So, it's got to be somewhere in Europe, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, where it comes together in an attempt to do this. There's a lot of implications to this, but we're just setting a template. We're not answering all the questions. But this becomes the basis, then, of how we have interpreted prophecy in our history, worldwide Church of God, clear back to the radio Church of God. These templates lay on top of each other.

So, this is what's going to happen. The stone is cut out. It strikes the feet. So, it strikes at that time. It doesn't strike at the other times. And when it does, it destroys all of them. The whole statue is broken, because they're all connected. This is the history of Western civilization, is what it is. It's the whole history of Western civilization. And then what happens, it fills the whole earth. And God's kingdom is set up on earth with Jesus Christ ruling it from Jerusalem. That's why these prophecies all end up there. They all end up in the same place. So, Daniel told that the king that God would set up a kingdom will crush all the earthly kingdoms, and God's kingdom will never be destroyed. So, God says, that's what I'm going to accomplish. And all through the history of these four empires, I mean, the Romans not only tried to destroy the Jews, they didn't try to kill all of them, but they just tried to send them all over the world so they'd lose their culture, scattered them all over the Roman Empire. They tried to kill the Christians. The other people, they're supposed to be telling about the Second Coming. Well, the First and Second Coming. The Jews don't understand it. Only those who understand who Jesus Christ is understands those things. There was an attempt by the Romans to destroy the church. That will happen again. That will happen again because it's Satan's plan to make sure that nobody knows what God's doing. And he can somehow thwart what God's doing. He believes he can. He has to. But then again, when you're insane, nothing makes sense. It's not logical. You're insane. And he's an insane being. And as we see him drive more and more to try to do this again and destroy God's plans, that the Messiah can't come back, what you're going to see is insanity in the world.

Absolute insanity.

It's like my son-in-law showed me something the other day. He said, this is just nuts. And there was some Catholic priests, I think it was. They had signs, abortion is wrong. And they were just standing there. I mean, they weren't shouting. They weren't, I didn't see them saying anything. You know, abortion is wrong. All human beings are valued by God or something like that. I don't remember what it said. And confronting them were dozens and dozens of people looked like upper teens, early twenties.

And instead of arguing with them, they were barking at them like they were dogs. And they were acting like they were dogs.

Now there's good discussion, right? There's logic and intelligence. I'm going to act like an animal. That will get worse.

That will get worse. Because Satan's plan isn't working. So the only thing he has left is what? He either makes humanity and the animals unworthy of God, or he destroys us. That's the two things he's motivated to do. He's either going to turn us into animals if he can, or he's going to destroy us. And guess what? This template alone tells us it's not going to happen. But so do all the other things we looked at. The first prophecy. All the promises God's made. All the prophetic things He's done through the covenants He's made with human beings. It's not going to happen. But He's going to try. So that gets us now, like I said, that's a lot of history. You don't have to know all that history. But you have to understand at least the overview to understand why we think it's not Islam. Why we believe it's not China. You know, there's whole arguments out there that the beast is China, or the beast is Islam. The beast is Islam. It's really big. Now there may be some Islamic nations involved in this new creation of a Roman Empire. Why do I say that? Because there were some Middle Eastern nations that were part of the Roman Empire. But there weren't all of them. It wasn't all of them. Some of them were. Some of them weren't. You could argue Egypt was part of the Roman Empire. Egypt became part of all those empires.

But all the empires basically moved and became centered in Central Europe somewhere.

So we get ten nations that are going to come together. So that gives us our template. We'll take a break. I won't do a long Bible study. But I will go through Daniel 7 and 8. As I go through Daniel 7 and 8, you'll see where those prophecies explain this prophecy. They explain it. And putting it together. So that when we look at the world, what we see sometimes isn't what everybody else sees as being obvious. Because we're watching two planes at war with each other.

I want to pick up where we left off because I want to fill in some details. Fill in some details that will let you continue to see this warfare that's going on between these two planes. And we'll stay in Daniel for a while. So let's stay in Daniel for a while. So here's what we saw. Here's what we saw then in the sermon. We saw the statue, we saw the stone cut and destroyed it. And this represents the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

Any questions about this? We just go through all this and I cover all this. Any questions? Okay. So now we're going to go to chapter 7. Okay, so let's go to Daniel 7. Because it's about 50 years after Nebuchadnezzar's dream, Daniel has a vision.

So Daniel has a vision, and here's what it says here in verse 1. And the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and a vision of his head while on his bed. Then he wrote down the dream, telling the main facts. Daniel spoke, saying, I saw in my vision by night, and behold the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea.

The Mediterranean again. See how everything centered Jerusalem and the Mediterranean. It's all around that. That's where all these prophecies take place. And four great beasts came up from the sea, each different from the other. The first was like a lion, had eagle's wings, and they watched till its wings were plucked off.

It was lifted up from the earth and made to stand on two feet like a man, and a man's heart was given to it. And suddenly another beast, a second like a bear, and it was raised up on one side and had three ribs in its mouth, between its teeth. And they said thus to it, arise, to devour much flesh. And after this I looked, and there was another, like a leopard, which had on its back four wings of a bird, and the beast also had four heads, and dominion was given to it.

And after this I saw in the night visions of behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, exceedingly strong. It had huge iron teeth, it was devouring and breaking in pieces and trampling the residue with its feet. And it was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns. Now, the rest of this will go through, much of it, in a future, one of these sermons, because it describes certain things that are going to happen at the end time. We'll cover a few verses, but we won't do it totally today, just parts of it. I wouldn't know what this means.

To tell you the truth, Daniel didn't either. Daniel didn't know what this meant. Here's what he saw, a lion with eagle's wings, a bear, a leopard, and a terrifying, powerful beast. We have no way to interpret. This is the problem when we start just interpreting prophecies. I can make prophecies say whatever I want.

There's prophecies I don't understand. There are numerous prophecies. I have no idea. As we go through these things, there are certain details I don't tell you what it is, because I don't know. But the templates keep building a story. If these templates don't build the story, I don't know what the meanings are. Daniel didn't know what this meant, and he was very disturbed by it.

So the four beasts are four kingdoms. We know that. It says that. If Daniel 2 is our next template, this lays on top of it. If this lays on top of it, it's talking about the same four beasts, the same four kingdoms. This is very interesting, because when we get to Revelation 13, we're going to come back to this. In Revelation 13, we come back to this. But I don't want to jump ahead. I want to stick with what we can know from each one.

So the lion has to be Babylon. Either that, or this has nothing to do with Daniel 2, and I don't know what to take from it. So if it's similar, just more Revelation of Daniel 2, then what we have is actually a description of what some of these empires are going to be like.

The bear would be Beto Persia. The leopard, Greece. The terrifying beast with ten horns is Rome. I immediately think there were ten toes in the Roman Empire. We have ten horns here. So this is important. That number ten comes up twice. Is there a connection? If there isn't, I don't know what this means. Now, some of the explanation we're going to get to tells us what it means, and then we can compare the two.

So then we've got this first beast. It's a lion with eagle's wings. Now, it's very interesting that in the Bible, Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, is compared to a lion in Jeremiah and an eagle in Ezekiel. That of itself doesn't prove this is what it means, but it is interesting that the same imagery is used.

See, I'm very careful about taking imagery to prove something when sometimes they just...it's a common imagery. But it is...it just...you know, these two images are used to describe Babylon. What's very interesting to me, because I've seen these, is in the Pergamum Museum in Berlin, you have parts of the ancient wall of Babylon. They tore it down because the Germans went in and, you know, they were there at the time, and no one there, the Iraqis...back, this is way a long time ago, they didn't care about the ruins, so they just carted it all up, took it to Berlin, and rebuilt it.

It's fascinating to walk along these walls and realize they date it to the time of Daniel. So you're standing there looking at the same thing Daniel saw. And on those walls, all over the place, are different images that all come back to a very similar... a lion with eagle's wings and a man's face. Now remember he said that he had given it the heart of a man. Well, when we go back and read what happened in Nebuchadnezzar, God literally drove him to insanity, and then afterwards gave him back his mind, and he said, Wow, you really are God. And he gave him a man's heart.

In other words, he took him away from that vicious, terrible...and that didn't mean he converted, but he did recognize God, and he changed some from being that vicious tyrant that he was. So we have this beast, and we know that it's Babylon.

The second beast is a bear. And it's very interesting if you wanted to describe Persia. How do people describe, throughout history, they describe the Russian bear? No, not that this is Russia. And that some people say this is Russia, because it's the Russian bear. No, Russia was compared to a bear because it was big and lumbering. That's how the Persian Empire was. Big, over-administrated, lumbering. That's what it was. And so we have the Persian Empire. The bear was raised on one side. Probably, I don't know, this probably shows...remember it's the Medes and the Persians, and the Persians were more dominant.

So it's probably...okay, there's two parts here. One's more dominant. That may be a stretch a little bit. Otherwise, I have no idea what it means. It had three ribs in its mouth. Now, what's interesting is Persia conquered Babylon, Egypt, and Lydia, the three great empires of the day, around the Great Sea. So it had in its mouth three ribs. It had eaten other beasts. And what it had eaten was Babylon, Egypt, and Lydia.

The bear was commanded to devour much flesh, which is, once again, a reference to their military expansion throughout the world because of this army that would just...okay, we conquer you. Your best troops are now our troops. You read ancient descriptions of the Persian army, and one unit would be dressed one way, the next unit dressed another way. But if your army was famous for archers, there would be a huge contingent of that army in the Persian army once they conquered you. If you were famous for fighting as hoplites with your sword and your spear, you were now hoplites. Whatever you were, that's what you were in the Persian army. They just took the best of your troops and made a part of their army. They just defeated everyone until they came to the Greeks. Persia would be conquered to court by Alexander the Great. So I'm just taking this and laying it on top of what we've already covered to come to conclusions of what this is about. The third beast, Daniel's vision of the leopard, had four heads and four wings. If this is the fourth empire of Daniel 2, then the four wings illustrate the speed which Alexander took over the world in three years. He took over the whole known world around the Mediterranean and clear over into India. But also, it has four heads. And remember, the kingdom didn't last very long in three years and then it broke off into four parts. And we're going to see this in a minute again, too, how these prophecies... because there's another prophecy we have to lay on top of this one. The fourth beast... that's my muppet version of the fourth beast. Remember, it was cheap, okay? Daniel had a vision of a terrifying beast with ten horns and iron teeth. The beast's ten horns are ten kings that would rise from this kingdom. Let's go to...

Let's go to Daniel 7 and just look at verse 15. So, that was grieved in my spirit, within my body, and the visions of my head troubled me because of this vision he saw. And so he asked what are the messengers, what are the angels that sent to him? He says, those great beasts which are four are four kings which arise out of the earth. But the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom. So, you know, this is going to happen. Eventually, these four beasts will be destroyed and... once again, God's kingdom will be on the earth. He says, I wish to know the truth about the fourth beast, which was different from all the others, exceedingly dreadful with its teeth of iron, its nails of bronze, which devoured broken pieces and trampled the residue with its feet, and the ten horns which were on its head, and the other one horn that came up. And it goes and talks about that these ten horns are ten kings. Now, we have to talk about that in relationship to other events. But once again, two feet of iron and clay broken to ten kings, or ruled by ten kings. Now, we have a kingdom before the saints rule, right before Christ returns, we have a kingdom and what? It's iron with ten kings. So, if we lay them on top of each other, it's just talking about the same events in different ways. It's the same as Daniel 2. The Son of Man comes... Oh, let's go read that. Verse 9, he says, they watched... Jumping around a little because the ten horns and the one horn, I'll talk about later, but you can see what's happening here. These four beasts, they lay right on top of the four kingdoms of Daniel 2. He says, I watched till thrones were put in place, and the ancient of days was seated. His garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head was like pure wool. His throne was a fiery flame, its wheels a burning fire. And a fiery stream issued and came forth from him a thousand thousands, ministered to him, and ten thousand times ten thousand. And the court was seated, and the books were opened. And then it says in verse 13, I was watching in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of Man. That's a messianic term. So we have God the Father and the Son of Man coming with clouds of heaven. He came to the ancient of days, and he brought him near before him. Then to him was given dominion and glory in a kingdom. And all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his kingdom is one which shall not be destroyed. This is exactly what's happening in Daniel 2.

So they're once again connected to each other. So the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, comes, is led into the presence of the Father, and he's given authority over all. So we lay these two on top of each other, and we have more and more details. And we'll go through some of those more details later. Now there's one other thing we're going to look at. And that is Daniel 8, verse 1.

So it's in the third ear of the reign of King Belzazar, and Daniel has another vision. He says, I lifted my eyes, verse 3, and saw, and there standing beside the river was a ram which had two horns, and the two horns were high, and one was higher than the other, and the higher one came up last. And I saw the ram, in other words, one horn grows up faster, you know, these horns come, but this one comes later on, and comes up and is bigger than the first horn.

And I saw the ram pushing westward and northward and southward, so that no animal could withstand him. Nor was there anyone that could deliver from his hand. But he did according to his will, and became great. And I was considering suddenly a male goat came from the west, across the surface of the whole earth, without touching the ground, and the goat had a notable horn between his eyes. There came to the ram, then he came to the ram, this goat with a notable horn, a big horn, and had two horns, which I had seen standing beside the river, and rammed him with furious power. And I saw him confronting the ram, and he was moved with rage against him, attacked the ram, and broke his two horns. And there was no power in the ram to withstand him, but he cast him down to the ground and trampled him, and therefore was no one who could deliver the ram from his hand.

So, what does this mean?

What do these two things mean? Well, let's look at it. So around 550 B.C., Daniel has a vision of a ram and a goat. Okay? This vision left him overwhelmed, sickened, and actually bedridden, it says, for days. He was appalled by what he saw. He didn't understand it. Daniel stood at a bank of a canal, the city of Shushan, and saw a ram with two horns. One horn was higher than the other. The ram was charging in every direction, dominating everyone in his path. Then the male goat approached him, who was hovering above the ground. He's so fast, it's like his feet aren't even touching the ground. And he has a great horn between his eyes. The goat charged the ram, shattered the ram's horns, and trampled the ram. The goat became great, but soon one of its horns was broken, its one horn was broken off, and four horns came into its place. Okay, the interpretation starts in verse 15.

Verse 17, we'll say, So he came near where I stood. This is where Daniel is asking this angel, what does this mean? And he says, and he came, and I was afraid, and he fell down on my face, and said, Understands that of man, that this vision refers to the time of the end. He says, this is beyond your time here, where this is going to happen. This is moving forward in this warfare until you get to the final completion.

Now, as he was speaking with me, I was in deep sleep with my face to the ground, but he touched me and I stood up.

And now, we say, what does this mean? What does this mean? Okay, verse 20. The ram which you saw, having the two horns, they are the kings of Media and Persia. Oh, he tells us.

Okay, now we know who the ram is. And the male goat, verse 21, is the kingdom of Greece, the large horn that is between his eyes, it's its first king. And for the broken horn and the for that stood up in its place, for a kingdom shall rise out of that nation, but not with its power. And then it says, in the latter time of these kings, now, remember, Greece grows into another kingdom called Rome. So this continues on. But okay, he says, as this thing continues, when it gets to an end, then God's going to set up his kingdom on earth. But we know who these two things represent. We know one represents the means of the Persians.

He tells us. So we have the part of the statue that's silver, we have the part of the statue that is the bear, or I mean the beast that is the bear, and now we have them directly said, this is what's going to happen in the future. Now, remember, he's living under the time of the Persians.

Or he's about to, you know, because there's this time period where the Babylonians are going down and the Persians come and take them. So he's crossing over between two of these kingdoms in his own lifetime, and he's telling him, by the way, the next one's going to be Greece. That's going to be a shock. You mean, the Greeks, the barbarians who live up there across the water up there, that are always causing us trouble because they keep setting up colonies and, you know, and so then, you know, the Persian Empire has to go fight them. And what? The Greeks? That's almost unbelievable.

Under size the Great, Persia became greater than the Empire of the Medes. And so one horn was higher than the other. Most of the military campaigns of this joint kingdom were to the west, north, and south. They didn't go to the east much. They were stopped by India. So they didn't go that way.

The male goat rushing to the west without touching the ground, once again, has to be Alexander the Great. He's so fast. He's always shown as being so fast because he conquers everything in three years. And he's the king of Greece. Short-lived. His kingdom didn't last long. And what happened? He's the first notable king of Greece. He's replaced by his four generals. Just like he says, he'll be replaced by four, and the four of them won't have as strong of an empire as he had.

Seleucus was one of Alexander the Great's generals who ruled over Mesopotamia and Persia. And of course, we'll talk about this vile little horn in the future. So this gives us now, and I want to...

I did want to take a long Bible study because this is just so much information. But I wanted to lead to this because you say, what do all these visions mean? Okay, let's break it down into its simplicity. The statue of Daniel, head of gold, the four beasts of Daniel 7, lions within those wings. Daniel 8 doesn't even mention them. But we know from what Daniel said, this is Babylon, right? We know that. Two, chest and arms of silver, Daniel 2. Four beasts, bear raised on one side, three ribs in his mouth. Daniel 8, he's a ram with two horns, one higher than the other. How do we know that? Because it tells us. It says, oh, this is the come and its needs in the Persians. And that is the Medio-Persian Empire. We have Daniel 2, belly and thighs of bronze. We have Daniel 7, a leopard with four wings and four heads. We have a goat with one horn that is broken and four horns that take its place. We know that's Alexander the Great and the Greeks. Legs of iron and feet of iron and clay, that's Daniel 2. Daniel 7, beast with iron teeth, ten horns.

You're not mentioned here, Daniel 8. This is just loft off to the future as far as, I mean, he did not know that it would be Rome. The Roman Empire. Because it's the fourth one that's connected. They're connected because each one succeeded the other by conquering it. And then we have the stone cut out, not by human hands.

Son of man, Jesus Christ, and Daniel 7, not mentioned in Daniel 8, the everlasting King of God.

All this comes down to this simplicity.

That we can put together because we know the history of it. Daniel couldn't have understood all this. There's no way for him to understand all of it. He didn't know about Rome. He knew there was some iron kingdom coming. He would have known what it was. He would have known that Greek was going to be number three, except he's told that in Daniel 8.

Oh, that's the next one?

He would have known Persia was going to be number two, except he was told it was going to be Persia.

So you have in Daniel 2, 7, 8, and all this is the template. Now there's details we haven't explained, and there's details I don't know how to explain. Now there are details I can, or we think we know, which we'll explain when we go through the abomination of desolation. And some other prophecies. But you see the template. It's actually incredibly simple. Satan is going to try to control the Mediterranean and Jerusalem through four successive empires. The last one would spend, as we know now, 2,000 years trying to rebuild itself. Trying to constantly rebuild itself, establish itself again. And at the end time, when that fourth one finally is used to almost bring humanity to the brink of self-destruction, Christ says, okay, now we fix it. Or the Father says, go fix it. And he comes and he fixes it.

And that warfare is what we've been talking about. Don't get overly discouraged with the bizarreness of the world we live in.

It was bizarre to be a Jew and live in the Babylonian Empire. It was bizarre to be a Jew and live in the Persian Empire. It was bizarre to be a Jew and live in the Greek Empire. It was bizarre for Jews and Christians to live in the Roman Empire.

Just read the book of Acts and see what the Christians went through.

Because why? As strange as it is, us, a bunch of little people here in the middle of nowhere, in Satan's mind, we're a threat to his empires. Because God is working to bring Christ about. And we're telling everybody about that. Christ is coming back, right? And so we're a threat. So that sets us up now where we can begin to look at some other aspects of Daniel and how they interact with other prophecies. But it will always build off step by step from the templates that we've already set.

So now you're probably all confused. It's not that hard. It seems like until you get to the end it's like, oh, okay, yeah. This is the template. Good. So was the blessing asked on the food? I know it's a little early to eat, but I'm hungry. Oh, it's not? Oh, good. Okay. Well, let's go eat. And then once the sun goes down, we can place it.