Some Bible prophecies cut across more than one time period, even when those events are separated by thousands of years. Daniel 8 is a case in point. It tells of the little horn first appearing on the scene of history back in the Greek era. Then it and goes on to talk about the little horn in the end-time drama. Daniel's later vision in Daniel 11 expands on the same story. Daniel got this info back in 550 B.C. during the Babylonian era. The saga begins with a history two of the four Greek kingdoms to emerge after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C.. Precisely as Daniel states, Alexander's kingdom did not go to his posterity. The Greek Empire was divided among his four generals.
The King of the North and the King of the South, (north and south of Israel/the Med), began their warring in the ensuing centuries. They were the Seleucids in the north and the Ptolemies down in Egypt in the south. It was Antiochus, the ruler in the north, who erupted into history with the abominable destroying spirit of Antichrist. Returning from a failed campaign against Egypt in 167, short of money, and in a great rage He came up to Jerusalem to enforce a politically correct humanistic Greek culture on the Jews and destroy any and all things that were holy. Bursting into the Temple he stopped the daily sacrifices and killed a pig on the altar, thereby desecrating the Hebrew Temple. He incited his army to commit many heinous and bloody acts against the covenant people of the God.
As we read on in chapter 11 the prophecy is now also talking about the end-time Antichrist. He too, according to Daniel 9:27 and according to Jesus in the Olivet Discourse will commit an unspeakable abomination in the rebuilt Temple to initiate the Great Tribulation and start the final 3.5 years of this age. The prophecy in Daniel 8 very definitely points to the Seleucid ruler, the King of the North, as the end-time aggressor and eventually the desecrating destroyer. So the little horn is an abominable beast demon manifested in two rulers 2 millennia apart. And this beastly ruler is very clearly going to emerge from the West. The prophet Daniel saw the he-goat, in its ultimate end-time manifestation "crossing the face of the whole earth without touching the ground." Was Daniel actually seeing aircraft, perhaps a massive airlift coming in from afar?
History reveals shades of this eastwards charge of the he-goat. We saw it after the preaching of the first Crusade by Pope Urban in Clermont, France in 1096. The Western European powers crusaded eastwards by land and crossed the Mediterranean Sea in their quest towards the Holy Land. These Dominion Christians, warrior monks of the bloody sword and mace, attacked the infidel with gusto. They captured Jerusalem and controlled the Holy Land for a century or so. Eventually the Crusaders were defeated by the Islamic powers under Salidin and sent packing.
The expeditions of conquest by Western powers continued under Napoleon in the 1790's. The French attacked in Egypt and at Akko/Acre. The French fleet was chased down by Admiral Nelson and finally destroyed by the Brits at Alexandria in the epic Battle of the Nile. (Remember the poem "the boy stood on the burning deck"? The French attack on Akko was a total disaster. They were met by cannon fire from Napoleon's own guns, the ones British had captured earlier and sent to defend Akko.
Whenever Western powers come to the peak of their power they surge towards the Middle East. This same pattern continued in the 20th Century. During Word War 2 in the 1940's German General Rommel surged eastwards across North Africa. His goal was to seize the Suez Canal and take the Holy Land. This attack was stopped by the Aussies at El Alamein, (along with a few other sundry Allied forces.:-).
Have we seen Western military and economic incursions into the Middle East in more recent times? . . . . . Like a Western army in Iraq and in Afghanistan? Do we not now have a string of military bases on both sides of Persia? And is this not the ancient nation we fought in times past, the nation that had its name changed in 1927 from Persia to IRAN?
Due to the sensitive nature of this subject and certain warnings I have been given I have deleted certain bits of this ongoing story and redone the video. I have also considered it best to disable comments for this video. We are called to be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves. I have no political ax to grind here. All I wish to share in this video is the astounding accuracy of Bible prophecy and the fact that God is real. He is on our case. He is the Hound of Heaven. And He will chase us down, even to the Ends of the Earth.
. . . . . . . So what can we say?
. . . . . . . Is our Messiah sort of like
. . . . the Man from Snowy River?
See the poem in the YouTube video.
