Word of Salvation – Vol.51 No.5 – February 2006
On and On and On it Goes! Is That All There Is?
A Sermon by Rev John De Hoog
on Daniel 11:2-35
Scripture Reading: Daniel 11:2-45
[Note: read this passage just before the sermon, probably with the help of another reader emphasising the failure of all attempts to conquer depicted in this chapter.]
Suggested Hymns: BoW 30:1,2,5; Rej 18; BoW 321; 468:1,3; 332; 337
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
H C Leupold, a well-known and faithful Lutheran commentator, wrote this about Daniel 11: ‘We do not see how it could be used for a sermon or for sermons.’ Should we really try to preach from this passage? What are we going to do with the mass of detail that Daniel 11 presents to us? What should we learn for ourselves from this passage?
I aim to deal with the first 35 verses of this chapter today. The title of this sermon is, ‘On and on and on it goes! Is that all there is?’ Perhaps that title gives away something of what I think this passage is teaching us. ‘On and on and on it goes! Is that all there is?’
Let’s just remember where we are in Daniel. Daniel Chapters 10-12 should be held together as one section of Scripture. Chapter 10 describes the messenger angel who has come from God to deliver a message to Daniel, and Chapters 11-12 contain that message from God. From Chapter 10 we saw that when the message for Daniel is sent off from God, it arouses intense spiritual warfare. The hosts of evil prevent the messenger angel from getting through to Daniel for 21 days, and finally Michael, the chief angel prince of Israel, has to come to the messenger angel’s assistance to enable him to get through to Daniel.
Why is this message so important? There is a message that the spiritual forces opposed to God do not want Daniel to hear. What is this message? It is this: ‘Yes, the temple will be rebuilt, and the exiles will be able to go home and Jerusalem will be resettled. But Daniel, realise that a time is coming when the temple and Jerusalem will no longer be important. A time is coming when the temple and Jerusalem will be destroyed; and it will not matter! The rebuilding of the temple and the resettlement of Jerusalem are only stepping stones to God’s much greater purpose, which will be fulfilled in the coming of Jesus Christ into the world. It is time to refocus your hope!’
This is the message that the forces of evil are opposing in Chapter 10. they are opposing the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ! Here is a case of Old Testament opposition to the gospel. This is the message that almost drives Daniel mad with grief at first. Daniel has invested all his hopes, throughout his long life, on the eventual return of the exiles to Jerusalem. And now, here is the shocking news ‘ a time is coming when Jerusalem simply won’t matter any more, for God is planning to do something much greater!
Now the actual words of Daniel Chapters 11 & 12 constitute the message that the messenger angel brings. It is a preview of what is going to happen to Israel. This preview, the prophecy of Daniel 11, has a huge amount of detail. One scholar has said that the first 35 verses of Chapter 11 contain 135 separate predictions of detail, and that every single one of them can be shown to have been fulfilled with perfect accuracy!
Verses 2-4 refer to the end of Persia and the rise of Alexander the Great, the first Greek emperor. Verse 3, ‘Then a mighty king will appear, who will rule with great power and do as he pleases.’ This is Alexander the Great, the amazing Greek emperor who conquered the world before he was thirty years old. Verse 4, ‘After he has appeared, his empire will be broken up and parcelled out towards the four winds of heaven. It will not go to his descendants, nor will it have the power he exercised, because his empire will be uprooted and given to others.’
Even though Alexander was the most amazing military general the world had ever seen up to that point, he could not even secure his most basic wish – to pass his inheritance to his children. His two sons were soon assassinated, and his empire was divided into four regions under four of his generals.
Now in verse 5 we see the beginning of this long and detailed prophecy about the king of the South and the king of the North and about all the wars between them. The prophecy goes all the way through to the end of Chapter 11. What are these verses about?
Alexander’s empire was divided into four regions, and the South and the North of Chapter 11 are two of those four regions. The North in Chapter 11 is Syria, and the South in Chapter 11 is Egypt.
North and South of what? Well, Syria is north of the Promised Land, the land of Israel. And Egypt is south of the Promised Land, the land of Israel. If North is going to invade South, it must pass through Israel. If South is going to invade North, it must pass through Israel. The warfare between Syria and Egypt, between North and South depicted in Chapter 11, must necessarily involve Israel, the Promised Land.
Now the rest of Daniel Chapter 11 is a prophecy predicting some of the details of the perpetual warfare that dragged on between the North and the South. The messenger angel talking to Daniel alludes to thirteen of the kings involved in these days of unending conflict. Let me just point out the kings he refers to:
[Show the following on an overhead or printed sheet.
Read the first couple of lines of this table and point out the verse references in Daniel 11.]
Ptolemy I Soter, son of Lagus,
322-285 (vs 5a)
Seleucus I Nocator, 312-280
(vs 5b)
Ptolemy II Philadephius,
285-246 (vs 6)
Antiochus I Soter, 280-261
Ptolemy III Euergetes, 246-221
(vss 7-9)
Antiochus II Theos, 261-246
(vs 6)
Seleucus II Callinicus, 246-226
(vss 7-9)
Seleucus III Soter Ceraunus,
226-223 (vs 10)
Ptolemy IV Philopator, 221-203
(vss 10-12)
Antiochus III Magnus, 223-187
(vss 10-19)
Ptolemy V Epiphanes, 203-181
(vss 14-17)
Seleucus IV Philopator, 187-175
(vs 20)
Ptolemy VI Philometor,
181-146 (vss 25-28)
Antiochus IV Epiphanes, 175-163
(vss 21-45)
Antiochus V Eupator, 163-162
Demetrius I Soter, 162-150
It’s a fascinating history that you can follow up in the history books. For example, Verse 10 refers to a campaign of Antiochus III, who invaded Palestine and captured a large part of it. Verse 11, ‘Then the king of the South’, Ptolemy IV sent an army to engage with Antiochus at Raphia, near the Egyptian border of Palestine. According to a Greek historian Polybius, Antiochus took 62000 infantry, 6000 cavalry and 102 elephants into battle against Ptolemy’s 70000 infantry, 5000 cavalry and 73 elephants. Ptolemy won the battle and slaughtered 14000 of Antiochus’ men, yet he did not press his advantage and made peace with Antiochus, which was in the final analysis a mistake, because the conflict was reignited not long afterwards.
Now I’m explaining this not so much that you will remember it, but so that you will see what it is that the angel is talking about in Daniel Chapter 11. We have very detailed historical accounts of this period, and you can trace this history right through the whole of Chapter 11. As that one scholar that I mentioned earlier said, he estimates there are 135 points of detail in verses 2-35 that were exactly fulfilled in history.
[Pause]Let’s now step back from the details and think about what we are faced with in this chapter. It would be foolish of me to spend all my time treating this passage as a history lesson, for one very simple reason – it is not history! It is prophecy; it is the messenger angel’s message from God to Daniel about what will happen in the future.
However, this passage is not just about predicting future events. Biblical prophecy is never just history written in advance. You know: This will happen and that will happen and then this event will follow and then that event. At first sight it might seem that this is all Chapter 11 contains, but Biblical prophecy is never like that, never just historical facts written in advance. Rather, Biblical prophecy always has a particular message from God. God is, through this prophecy, teaching something particularly important to Daniel, and to Israel, and also to us.
This is not just history written in advance. Rather, it is history as God sees it and as God wants us to see it. There are at least three pointers to this fact in the passage before us.
1. See how the messenger angel speaks about Alexander the Great. One of the most amazing military men in all of history, about whom historians have written hundreds of volumes, is dismissed in Daniel 11 in one verse! Earlier in our studies in Daniel we saw that the great battle between Persia and Greece for control of the known world is depicted in Chapter 8 as a scrap between a ram and a billy goat. Alexander is not important in God’s eyes. In God’s eyes the great empires and emperors of history are like a drop in a bucket.
2. The focus of this chapter, from verse 5 to the end, is on the wars between two small divisions of the Greek Empire. Really, in all of history, rather insignificant little scraps. But of course, in God’s eyes, of central importance. Why? Because they involve the Promised Land, and they involve his people Israel. The passage speaks of the kings of the North and the South – north and south of what? North and south of the centre of the world, the beautiful land, as Daniel calls it, Israel, the Promised Land.
3. And then notice also that the focus of this chapter is really on one person, Antiochus IV Epiphanes. He is already introduced in verse 21 and is referred to from there all the way to the end of the chapter. The whole prophecy revolves around this particular person. Why? Not because he was so significant in human history. He only reigned 12 years and did not achieve anything particularly remarkable. Oh yes, he did some particularly nasty things in Jerusalem, especially against the Jerusalem temple, but in secular accounts of human history that’s like a blip on the screen – hardly even noticed. And yet it is the very focus of Daniel 11, just as it was the focus of Chapter 7 and Chapter 8 and the second half of Chapter 9.
Why is there such a focus on Antiochus IV in these chapters of Daniel? Because in God’s providence, Antiochus IV is the great type, the great example, of all the anti-God forces that have attacked God’s people, attacked God, in the history of this world. We have seen before that Antiochus IV points us to the Antichrist, the final enemy of God, who will bring in the short end time of unprecedented suffering for God’s people before the end of the world comes, but whom God will finally defeat. We have seen that from Chapter 7, from Chapter 8 and from the second half of Chapter 9. And the message is repeated again here in Chapter 11, this time giving us even more details about how these things will happen. I want to come back to that next time.
That final end time is outlined at the beginning of Chapter 12. See how it simply continues the message of Chapter 11. Daniel 12:1, ‘At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people – everyone whose name is found written in the book – will be delivered. Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.’ And so the end will come, and a new eternity will begin: the new heavens and the new earth.
So that’s how Chapter 11 fits together. This difficult chapter, which seems so full of detail, is on the one hand focussing on Antiochus and about five years of terrible distress for Jerusalem, and on the other hand giving us insight into the whole of human history and how it will finally end. And in it all, God’s great concern is not with the superstars of human history like Nebuchadnezzar or Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar or Hannibal or Genghis Khan or Napoleon or Hitler or Churchill or any other great man, but rather with his people, first with Israel, and then with the Christian church.
When we put on the glasses of the Bible, human history looks completely different. Great men in world history are not necessarily great in the kingdom of God. The great ones in God’s kingdom are the servants of all. The great ones in God’s eyes are those who have humbly served him in their lives, like Daniel. The great forces and turning points of human history have been those times that most deeply affected God’s people. The greatest event of all was the death outside Jerusalem, on a cross, of the man Jesus Christ, God the Son, who died and was buried, but who rose again on the third day, and lives today as the Lord and King of all human history.
Focussing on the first 35 verses of this chapter then, what should we think about how this history is recorded here? Here, remember my title: ‘On and on and on it goes! Is that all there is?’
When we read this chapter earlier, you will have noticed that we tried to emphasise the cycle of folly and failure that is the great feature of this chapter. A king rises to power, only to lose it all, and this happens with constant repetition in this chapter. Let me just give an example of how this pattern develops in the first few verses of the chapter.
Verse 2 introduces a great exercise of human power. But that exercise of power only leads to conflict with another kingdom (second half of verse 2). The conflict then produces internal strife and finally power runs out of the hands of the one who held it like sand (verses 3-4). Another power arises, but his strength is quickly eclipsed by someone else (verse 5). Kings do not recognise this problem of power that always slips away; they always want to strive for that final elusive victory. They seek it by marriage alliances (verse 6), but this fails. The use of force also fails (verses 8-9). They may win famous victories, but a victory always turns out to be temporary (verses 10-12).
This is the continuing picture of Daniel Chapter 11. Kings obtain wealth and power, they get into positions of authority that seem unchallengeable, they use marriage to cement dynasties, but it all comes to nothing except ceaseless invasion and warmongering. In the end, the events unfold as a pointless sequence of invasions, battles, schemes and frustrations. We read it, and we say, ‘On and on and on it goes! Is that all there is?’
And yes, that is all there is, unless we are under the good news of the gospel and in the family of God. Everything that the kingdoms of this world are devoted to is ultimately pointless, nothing at all, a chasing after wind. This is true whether we are devoted to idols we call gods, or simply to the idols of ambition, power, sex, fashion, fame, security, human love and esteem, or possessions. These kingdoms have no final foundation; they are bound to crumble.
That’s just the way the universe is! We live in a moral universe created by a moral God. What kingdoms sow they will reap. Where there is only self-seeking and pride, there will also be intrigue and deceit – we are taught that in verses 6,7,23,27,32, and 34.
And it seems that the kingdoms of this world never learn their lesson. They simply keep on and on and on growing and collapsing in the dreary nothingness that is described here in Chapter 11. They plot their schemes, they grow and become strong, but God brings them to nothing. Just consider verses 4,6,7,9,11,12,14,18,19,20,21,25,27 and 29. And the wrath of God is coming, and the kingdoms of this world do not even know it. Indeed, their preoccupation with the things of this world is in itself already a sign that God’s wrath is upon them. God has given them over to their own futility.
Brothers and sisters, friends, boys and girls, come out from this! How futile, how frustrating, how utterly meaningless, to be stuck in these cycles that just go on and on and on! Here is life under the sun, as we see it in the Book of Ecclesiastes. Rise up, leave all that behind and have done with all the futility of life apart from God!
God is the Lord of history. He predicted to Daniel every detail of the history that eventually came about. What he says is true and will come about.
Why did Daniel need this message? Why was it so utterly crucial that Daniel record these words in all their detail? It was because they point to the endless nothingness of human chasing after the wind. And it was because they point to God’s great solution to that endless nothingness. These words were recorded for us. In the end, as Chapter 12:2 tells us, ‘Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.’
God’s purposes for Persia and Greece and later Rome were fulfilled. History can testify that all the predictions of this chapter came true. And since God’s rule has been fully vindicated in the past, it will be vindicated again in the future. He sent his Son Jesus Christ into the middle of the Roman world to establish a brand new kingdom, the kingdom of God. That kingdom continues to advance today. It is not a kingdom devoted to endless cycles of nothing at all, but a kingdom devoted to saving people and finally renewing the whole universe!
What he has purposed will happen! The whole universe will be transformed one day. Where will you be?
Do not get stuck under the sun. Live life above the sun. Embrace Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour. Live your life for him.
God has made you as a human being to rule this world on his behalf; you were made for great things! But not to rule like a human king, in endless, pointless accumulation of power and goods and the trappings of life apart from God. Rather, you were made for rule on God’s behalf, rule that is going somewhere, rule that has a final eternal purpose. Do not allow yourself to be ripped off by the world, do not get stuck in the endless cycles of nothingness, do not settle for what is finally a big fat zero.
Make your life worth something eternally. Join with us in serving the living God. Your labour in the Lord will not be in vain!
Amen.