Antichrists Far, Near, and Right in Front of You

Well, hello, my name is JD, and I am not the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. And all God's people said, amen, amen. I will tell you that serving in that role the last three years was one of the greatest privileges of my life.

It was only supposed to be for two years, but I got a bonus year because of COVID and lockdown. But to be able to serve in that capacity for those three years, to be able to support and stand behind our missionaries, just like the ones we commissioned here a moment ago at our Capitol Hills campus, support our church planters, to be able to serve them and many others around the country in that way was one of the greatest privileges of my life those last three years. But I will say it has been a long 30 years, those past three years, and it is great now to jump in with renewed vigor back to my favorite ministry role outside of, of course, husband and daddy, my favorite ministry role being your pastor.

I never stopped being your pastor, of course, but now I can do so without as much distraction. And so anyway, I'm very excited to dive back into the book of Daniel. So if you've got your Bible this weekend, and I hope you do open it to Daniel chapter seven and eight, I know some of you thought that we were just going to kind of fade out of Daniel after chapter six, because you figured I was just too scared to deal with all the weird stuff that Daniel gets into in these chapters. And I will admit to you that the second half of the book of Daniel is a bit bizarre, and it can be a little intimidating. Daniel has these dreams about beasts and dragons and the Antichrist and end times. And I know, let's just be honest, I know some of you really, really love that stuff.

Am I right? Let's just be honest. Who in here is really, really excited to get into all the prophecies? Raise your hand. Okay. All right. All right. Safe space, safe space.

Who wishes we just stopped at chapter six? Just put your hand up. You will notice my hand went up both times.

Okay. I've told you that in the church that I grew up in, we capital L loved end times prophecy. Our annual prophecy conference was our best attended event of the year. And our pastor made rapture jokes like there was no tomorrow. There you go. We had charts.

We had charts in Sunday school classrooms that showed us, you know, what world leaders represented by different beasts, which one was FDR, which one was Jimmy Carter and, and all these kinds of things. Y'all I've heard that there are two surefire ways to fill up a church. One is to preach a series on sex and the other is to preach a series on the end times. It makes me wonder if I preach the message on the question, will there be sex in the end times?

What might happen then? That might be something worth considering, but today we're not going to talk about that. We're going to talk about Daniel seven and eight. Let me encourage you in case you end up just a little overwhelmed over the next bit next week or two. Let me encourage you to persevere in this. Listen, 25% of your Bible is prophecy.

25%. For every one mention of Christ first coming, there are more than eight about his second. So this is very important. There's a lot of Bible space devoted to it. And I think it's going to be helpful.

And I think it's going to be good. I want you to recall how the book of Daniel is set up. Remember the first half of the book, chapters one through six, chronicle the adventures of four Hebrew immigrant teenage boys seeking to live faithfully in the midst of a hostile culture of Babylon where they had been taken captive.

And Daniel shows us how it is possible to not only survive in such an environment, he shows us how we can thrive. Those first chapters I pointed out to you are written mostly not in Hebrew, but they're written in Aramaic. Hebrew was the language of Israel. Aramaic was the language of Babylon. And Daniel wrote those chapters in Aramaic because the focus is on shining out there in Babylon. Well, chapter seven is going to shift back to the Hebrew language because these prophecies are specifically given to God's people to prepare them for the future.

They're not so much messages for people out there as they are for us in here. In fact, you will notice that up until now, the dreams in the book of Daniel have been given to pagan kings, and Daniel has been the interpreter. Now Daniel himself is the dreamer, and Gabriel the angel is going to be the interpreter. These prophecies are for God's people, for you and for me, to teach us how to look at the future if we are going to shine in the present. Let me just ask, you just consider, okay, which of these two words best characterizes your attitude toward the future right now, this morning?

Would it be stressful or peaceful? Are you the kind of person who is just always depressed about what's going on? You are addicted to cable news. You are cussing at the anchor person. You are always griping to everybody, your small group, your family, your kids, about how the world is going to hail in a handbasket and always depressed about the world that we're leaving to our kids, right?

Or how about this? Are you the kind of person who finds themselves hating, I mean, hating those who voted the other way, particularly if they call themselves Christians? I mean, you're like, how could anybody be so dumb? You're always trolling them and leaving them nasty messages. I know some of you listening to our podcast are like, I do that to you. Yes, I know that you do, okay? And I love you for it. But are you the kind of person that does that?

Because it's just so obsessive in your heart. Or are you the kind of person who, while you're concerned about the future, you certainly should be, that you still have a sense of optimism about what God is doing. And get this, you can even love those who voted the other way.

You might strongly disagree with them, but you find yourself still able to love them. In a word, in a word, what word characterizes your outlook on the future? Would it be stressful or peaceful? The reason I ask that question is because Daniel's prophecy makes the difference between those two attitudes. We left off in Daniel 6 when Daniel was over 80 years old. Now Daniel 7, we're going to jump back a couple decades to Daniel in his mid 60s. Now, let me warn you, there's a lot of detail in these chapters. Daniel's dreams got bears and flying leopards with wings and talking horns and a chariot with wheels of fire. And when you first read all of it, you're concerned that Daniel might need to get drug tested.

You're like, I'm not sure where this came from. But what I want to show you is that running through all these myriad details is a very simple, easy to follow message that just weaves its way through it. So just hang on. And don't get overwhelmed by the details. It's going to be a lot. And at some points today, you're going to be like, what is going on?

Just hang on. And I promise I will make it simple for us at the end. I told our Thursday service that reading these chapters reminded me of that Disney World ride, It's a Small World. That ride is, in many ways, an assault on your senses. Everywhere you look, there are things spinning and individual small scenes and different themes and sounds coming at you from every direction. And you feel like, have I gone to music?

Hell, right? But through it, there's a river that just moves gradually through. And there's one dominant song that's being played the whole time. And if you'll just sit still and not get out of the boat, I promise you you'll make it out.

And guaranteed, you will be singing that song in your head for the rest of the day to the point that you might have to go see a psychiatrist to make it stop, right? That's how Daniel 7 and 8 is. So here we go. Daniel 7, verse 2.

Daniel said, in my vision at night, I was watching. And suddenly the four winds of heaven stirred up the great sea. Four huge beasts came up out of the sea.

Sea is always a metaphor in the Old Testament for the world. And beasts are a metaphor for governments. Four huge beasts came up from the sea, each one different from the other. So we're looking at four world kingdoms represented by these beasts. The first, verse 4, was like a lion, but it had eagle's wings.

I continued watching until its wings were torn off. It was lifted up from the ground, set on its feet like a man, and given a human mind. This is Babylon.

It's Babylon. The wings getting torn off represent God humbling Nebuchadnezzar by making him go insane. Do you remember this?

And eat grass like a cow for seven years, after which seven years he's lifted up off the ground. And he's given a human mind, which represents him coming to his senses and his conversion. We saw all this in Daniel chapter 4.

Remember? Verse 5. Suddenly another beast appeared, a second one that looked like a bear. It was raised up. It was larger on one side. It had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth.

It was told, get up, gorge yourself on flesh. This bear represents the Medo-Persian empire, which conquered Babylon. That's the three ribs there in its mouth. That's what we saw in chapter 5. The fact that the bear is larger on one side than the other represents the fact that Persia, in the Medo-Persian empire, Persia was bigger than the Medes and eventually would take over, and it would just be the Persian empire.

Verse 6. After this, while I was watching, suddenly another beast appeared, a third beast. It was like a leopard with four wings of a bird on its back. It had four heads, and it was given dominion. This third animal represents Greece under the leadership of Alexander the Great.

The fact that it's a leopard with wings is supposed to communicate the speed at which Daniel is prophesying Greece would overtake the world. And by the way, Alexander conquered the world by the time he was 30 years old. He was an incredible warrior.

Maybe, historians say, the greatest conqueror the world has ever known. In fact, in 323, when Alexander conquered Persia, which is prophesied here, he brought with him to Persia only 35,000 soldiers. Persia had a standing army of 100,000. Yet, Alexander won magnificently. Persia in that battle lost 20,000 soldiers, and Alexander only lost 100. And Persia, by the way, was on their home turf.

They were defending, so they had the advantage. The point is Alexander the Great is the leopard with wings. The four wings that become four heads is a prophecy that Alexander's kingdom, after he died, would be divided up between four generals.

And that's what happened, by the way. After Alexander won and he died, there was a bitter power struggle between four of his generals, which we're going to talk about here in a minute. Verse seven. After this, suddenly a fourth beast appeared, frightening and dreadful and incredibly strong, with large iron teeth. It devoured and crushed, and it trampled with its feet whatever was left. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had 10 horns.

This fourth beast is Rome, who would conquer the Greeks. It has iron teeth, which represented Rome's incredible strength. It's got 10 horns. That's kind of weird imagery. What is that all about? Horns in the Bible almost always represent power.

The horn, the ability to do damage, that makes sense, right? I mean, raise your hands. Raise your hands if you have an animal living in your home.

Raise your hand, okay? You've got an animal in your home. What would some of those animals be? Dog, a bunny, a hamster, a fish. Some of you still have cats. I'm not sure why. But anybody, anybody have a pet in their home with a horn?

Typically, the answer is no. Now, there might be somebody at our Alamance campus that just raised their hand, but we typically avoid animals with horns. We love you guys, by the way, all right? Now, think of some animals that have horns, a bull, a ram, a rhino, dangerous animals. What happens when an animal without a horn, like your bunny, runs up against an animal with a horn, like a bull? Well, typically, a horn is going to win every single time. So these horned nations represent conquering nations who were able to subdue and bring damage. See?

This is not hard at all. It all makes sense, right? All right. Now, so far, this vision is tracking along with Nebuchadnezzar's vision of the statue in Daniel 2 of the four kingdoms. Do you remember that? The statue with the head of gold and the body of silver and kind of worked our way down? But this vision is tracking right along with that. It's just using animals as the metaphor instead of the different kinds of metal. But then, verse 8, a new detail gets added, all right?

Something new. Verse 8, while I was considering the horns, suddenly another horn, a little horn, came up among them, and three of the first horns were uprooted before it. And suddenly, in this horn, there were eyes like the eyes of a human and a mouth that was speaking arrogantly.

Out of Rome comes a little horn. This is our first prophecy of the Antichrist. Notice, Daniel says that this little horn, the Antichrist, has eyes like the eyes of a human. Like the eyes of a human means they seem human, but when you look into them, you see something different, something darker, something behind those eyes. Think of one of those scenes in a horror movie where you look into the killer's eyes and you see something not human. You see something in their eyes that is demonic. He had eyes that seemed like they were human, but they weren't, and he had a mouth that was speaking arrogantly.

He boasted and blasphemed against God. Now, let's move on to the vision of chapter 8, because it's going to come at the exact same thing. It's just going to come at it from a different angle, and then I want to draw some conclusions for us from both visions, okay?

So hang on. Here we go, chapter 8. This time, the vision is about a two-horned ram and a goat, where basically the ram gets pulverized by the goat, chapter 8, verse 5.

Let me find myself here. There we go. The goat came toward the two-horned ram and rushed at him with savage fury. He struck the ram, and the ram was not strong enough to stand against him.

Now, my research assistant, who is a Duke grad, saw in this a clear prophecy, he said, about UNC's sport demise at the hands of Mike Krzyszewski, because the ram gets pulverized by Coach K, who he said was the goat. I told him I didn't think that was the main point of the passage, though I appreciated his attention to detail. Note, the two-horned ram is the kingdom of the Medes and the Persians, the two horns representing each side of that, and the goat is Alexander the Great, who again was one of the most successful conquerors the world has ever known. Verse 8, then the male goat acted even more arrogantly, but when he became powerful, the large horn was broken, and four conspicuous horns came up in its place, pointing toward the four winds of heaven. From one of them, verse 9, a little horn emerged and grew extensively toward the south and the east and toward the beautiful land.

It's a very important detail we'll come back to, okay, southeast and beautiful land. Verse 16, Daniel said, I heard a human voice calling me, calling, Gabriel, explain the vision to this man. So Gabriel the angel approached where I was standing.

When he came near, I was terrified, and I fell face down. Son of man, he said to me, understand that the vision refers to the time of the end. The shaggy goat represents the king of Greece, and the large horn between his eyes represents the first king, Alexander the Great. Verse 22, the four horns that took the place of the broken horn represent four kingdoms. They will rise from that nation, but without its power. Get this, Alexander, I told you, died in his early 30s, most scholars say of alcoholism.

The large horn was broken. Right when he died, there was a vicious power struggle between his four generals, greatly weakening Greece's power. Greece would never be what it was under Alexander the Great. By the way, Daniel wrote all of this over 200 years before any of it happened. It is amazing in its specificity of prophecy. Verse 23, near the end of their kingdoms, when the rebels have reached the full measure of their sin, a ruthless king, skilled in intrigue, will come to the throne. His power will be great, but it will not be his own. He will cause outrageous destruction and succeed in whatever he does. He will destroy the powerful along with the holy people. He will cause deceit to prosper through his cunning and by his influence, and in his own mind, he will exalt himself. He will destroy many in a time of peace.

He will even stand against the prince of princes, yet he will be broken, just not by human hands. Out of those four horns of Greece, a ruthless small horn would arise who would be especially cunning and violent and especially vicious toward God's people. Well, sure enough, around 170 BC, a couple hundred years after Daniel wrote this, a man named Antiochus Epiphanes arose from one of the four sub-kingdoms of Greece and set out on a violent campaign of conquest for himself. I showed you in verse nine that verse nine prophesied that this little horn would aim his conquest toward the south and the east, which would have been, from Greece's perspective, Egypt and Israel. Israel's the beautiful land that's being referred to, and that's exactly what Antiochus did.

Y'all, the specificity of this prophecy is amazing, and as Daniel prophesied in Daniel 8, this rule was ruthless. Antiochus Epiphanes has been called the Hitler of the Old Testament. He murdered, for example, 80,000 Jews in one day upon entering Jerusalem.

Old women, pregnant women, kids, everybody. He issued coins in Israel with his image on the front of the coin that read, King Antiochus, God in the flesh. And to top it all off, he set up his statue in the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant had been, the holy place of God. He set up his statue and made the Jews worship him right there in the Holy of Holies and eat swine flesh right in the middle of the temple. It is almost impossible to describe the offensiveness of this to the Jews. It was complete and utter blasphemy against God, the lowest, the bottom, the worst thing they could imagine. Scripture calls it the abomination of desolations. And then, out of nowhere, history tells us that Antiochus Epiphanes developed a stomach virus, went insane and died, just like Daniel predicted.

He died not by human hands, but by God's hands. By the way, a lot of these events that I'm telling you are recorded in what we call the Apocrypha, which is that little section of books that Catholics have in their Bibles, which is why their Bible's heavier than yours, between the Old and New Testaments. Those books are not scripture and have never been regarded by the church at large as scripture, right?

It's just that they've got some good history in them. So they're good for history. They're not scripture though, okay? But a lot of these stories are going to be found in that little intertestamental group thing called the Apocrypha. Okay, point is, it is safe to say that Antiochus Epiphanes was the specific fulfillment of this prophecy. But, but, let me show you something really interesting about how later Bible writers, including Jesus, treat this prophecy because it teaches us a couple of very important things about prophecy, what you and I are supposed to do with it, and how it applies to us today in Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, and 21st century America.

Okay? First, even though the events of Daniel 8 were clearly fulfilled by Antiochus Epiphanes, watch this, both Jesus and the apostles, John and Paul, all who lived some 200 or so years after Antiochus Epiphanes, both of them used Daniel 8 to point to something still in the future, namely the rise of the Antichrist. Even though Antiochus Epiphanes clearly fulfilled the prophecy, Jesus, John, and Paul all used Daniel 7 and 8 to point to something that is still yet to come. In fact, you could say that the entire book of revelation is built on the prophecies of Daniel 7 and 8, which leads us to our first point if you're writing things down. Number one, the prophecies about the Antichrist are already not yet fulfilled.

The prophecies about the Antichrist are already not yet fulfilled. For many prophecies in the Bible, there is both a near fulfillment and a far one. And the near fulfillment gives you a picture or a type of the far one. And a lot of times, Old Testament prophets talk about both fulfillments as if they are one, even though when you get closer to them, you see that they were separate.

Think of it like this. If you've ever been to the rocky mountains, you can stand on one peak and look off into the distance at what looks like a faraway mountain with two peaks. But if you were to travel to them, you would see that in between those two peaks that look to you like they were part of one mountain are actually individual mountains whose peaks are separated by a distance of dozens of miles.

From a distance, they look to you like one, but they're actually separated by a great distance. That's what Old Testament prophecy is like. The Bible presents these peaks together, but there is a near fulfillment and a far one. Antiochus Epiphanes was a picture of what the ultimate Antichrist that was coming, what he would be like. Give you just one example of this in scripture. When the apostle Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2 talks about the future Antichrist, listen to how he describes it in terms that are very similar to Daniel 8. It's very obvious what he's borrowing from.

Listen to what he says. Paul, by the way, is answering the charge to the Thessalonians that the end is already common, that the Antichrist has already been here. Verse 3, 2 Thessalonians 2, verse 3.

Don't let anyone deceive you, he says, in any way. The end hasn't come. That day will not come unless the apostasy comes first and the man of lawlessness, that's his name for the Antichrist, is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He, the Antichrist, opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship so that he sits in God's temple proclaiming that he himself is God. The coming of the lawless one, the Antichrist, is based on Satan's working. He has the eyes of a man, but there's actually something else at work there, working every kind of miracle, both signs and wonders that serve the lie. The Lord Jesus will destroy him with the breath of his mouth and will bring him to nothing at the appearance of his coming.

You see that? That is all Daniel 8 imagery. A future Antichrist is coming, Paul says, and he will do all the things that Antiochus Epiphanes did. By the way, what is very interesting is that the temple was destroyed in 70 AD and has not been rebuilt yet.

There's been talk of rebuilding the temple, but there's been no follow through. But passages like this one imply that it will happen eventually and that the Antichrist, when it is rebuilt, the Antichrist will aim for it and seat himself there. My point is that the prophecies of Daniel 7 and 8 are both behind us and before us. Antiochus was the first fulfillment and the Antichrist is the ultimate fulfillment.

And the first fulfillment, Antiochus, sets some patterns which are going to be fulfilled by the second one, which leads me to our second point, which might be even more important than the first. Number two, in every age, including, maybe even especially ours, the spirit of the Antichrist, that is Satan's spirit, is at work. I want you to notice how the Apostle John talks about the Antichrist in this prophecy. First John 2 18, children, children, it is the last hour.

Now it's the last hour. And as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, even now, many Antichrists have already come. Even though, in other words, the ultimate Antichrist is still coming, the spirit of Antichrist is already here, which means that we can learn from what we see in these chapters, we can learn what to expect in our age. Again, to give you one example of this in scripture, Jesus, Mark 14, Jesus took the prophecies of Daniel 7 and 8 and he applied them to his trial right before he was crucified. Even though Jesus lived hundreds of years after Antiochus and thousands of years before the Antichrist would come, Jesus said to the Pharisees, to the Sanhedrin, you guys are playing the role of the beast and the Antichrist in Daniel 7 and 8 and I'm playing the role of God's people. And he said that, again, even though he was hundreds of years separated from either Antiochus or Antichrist, which means that you and I can take the principles of Daniel 7 and 8 and we can learn about what our enemy is doing in our age.

Does that make sense? And you say, well, what would those things be? I see at least three things these chapters teach you about what Antichrist is up to. Chapter 7, verse 5. Chapter 7, verse 5 says that he aims to devour much flesh.

He aims to devour much flesh. And they all, that's not hard to believe, right? Just look at the last hundred years. The last hundred, how do you look at things like the Holocaust and just chalk all of that up to merely human evil or political maneuver? Adolf Hitler flunked out of art school and developed some nationalistic leanings and coupled with his insecurity, next thing he's marching six million Jews toward a gas chamber. Y'all, there's something in that more than human cruelty, more than political posturing.

It has the eyes of a man, but behind it is something demonic. And if you say that's naive, I would say you're naive. If you think that what is behind that is just people that don't quite know how to live with others, that's not what's going on there. That kind of savagery is something more, the eyes of a human, but there's something behind it. Y'all, the 20th century saw so much moral and technological advancement, did it not? Yet it was still the bloodiest century in history.

It's even ones you don't know about. Like 1915, the Turks in the region of Turkey came to believe that Armenians who were also living in that region, right? They came to believe that they were a problem. And they said April 24th as Armenian liquidation day. And on that day murdered 600,000 Armenians in one day in cold blood. The Japanese declared a Black Friday during World War II when Japanese troops went through Alexandra Hospital in Singapore, bayonetting all the patients, all the doctors, all the nurses, all the kids, everybody. 1932, Joseph Stalin executes over 10 million of his own countrymen and then starves to death another 7 million through enforced grain quotas.

Then you got Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda. All this is within the last 100 years. I mean, don't you see this? It has the eyes of a man, but it is so much more. Can we not see Satan at work today in our own country in the abortion industry or the slave trade that still goes on or the myriad places around the world and some in our own country where oppression is celebrated and religious liberty and basic human dignities are denied. I'm telling you, the spirit of Antichrist, which has the eyes of a man, but is much worse, has as its aim the devouring of flesh in that age and this age and every age to come. So the first thing is he's going to destroy much flesh.

And I would say that's as true today as it's ever been. Second, chapter 8, verse 25, he will cause deceit to prosper through his cunning and by his influence. In other words, he's going to be super good at it. And in his own mind, he will exalt himself. He questions God's word, that's deceit, and he exalts man. Those are his other two agendas.

Devour much flesh, sow deceit, exalt man. That means he is at work everywhere trying to get you to question God's word. He is in university classrooms. He is in entertainment studios. He is in newspaper offices and boardrooms and magazine offices and social media platforms, making people question God's word and puffing up our obsession with ourselves.

He loves social media. Because I'm talking about exalting yourself, that's his, I'm not saying he invented it. I'm just saying that he is loving it. I'm not saying that you should go try to cast a demon out of your professor, your boss, or your phone. I'm not saying any of those things. I'm just saying that there is a supernatural power at work in the world trying to deceive people against God, and you've got to recognize that. He said, no, no, I'm just questioning what the Bible says about sexuality, and I'm trying to find myself.

No, you're not. You're dabbling with hell. You are exalting yourself. You are putting your thoughts above God's thoughts.

There are two paths. There is the path of truth that comes from Jesus, and there is the other path where you do what is right in your own eyes. This is God's word that he gave. It comes down from heaven.

It exalts God. Humble yourself before it because the only other path is the path of the antichrist where you decide what's right for you, and you exalt yourself. So in our age, we can expect to encounter the spirit of antichrist, and those are the three things I'm telling you that he's going to be doing, he always has been doing, and will do ultimately in fulfillment in the antichrist himself. And here's the bad news. You can expect those things until the end of history. It's not going to get any better. You know, if anything, it's going to get worse. He said, well, that's depressing. I'm so excited. I came out to this church this week for this awesome sermon. Yeah.

But I got some really, really good news too. Okay. Number three. Number three, even in the age of antichrist, the ancient of days still rules. Even in the age of antichrist, the ancient of days still rules. Let me take you back to Daniel 7 and show you what Daniel says in the midst of all these prophecies, Jesus. All these prophecies of darkness and chaos and judgment.

Look at this. Verse nine, chapter seven. As I kept watching, thrones were set in place and the ancient of days took his seat. His clothing was white like snow and the hair of his head like whitest wool. His throne was flaming fire.

Its wheels were blazing fire. A river of fire was flowing coming out from his presence. Thousands upon thousands served him. 10,000 times 10,000 stood before him. The court was convened and the books were open. Here is God in the midst of all this chaos and darkness calmly coming to take his place as judge.

By the way, I love that name, the ancient of days. I feel like I'm gonna start singing here in a minute. It reminds me of a phrase that we parents use on our kids when they try to pull something over on us. You parents will know what I'm talking about, right? One of my teenage girls comes up to me and says, dad, dad, say, just for illustration purposes, is there a way to get a dent out of the front fender of a car? And I say, what did you do?

And they say, well, I never said I wrecked the car. And I say, kid, what do I say parents? I wasn't born yesterday.

And what do I mean by that? I mean, I've been around the block for a while and I know how these things go and I can see through your ruse. We tell our kids, I wasn't born yesterday. God leans into the back seat of human history and says to Daniel, I wasn't born at all. Nothing gets by him. Nothing surprises him. He never learns anything. He never misunderstands anything. Nothing ever catches him off guard, right? Has it ever dawned on you that nothing's ever dawned on God?

There has never been a time that he was not fully in charge. His hair is white like snow, which means he carries the authority and the wisdom of the ages. His clothes are white like wool, the purest wool, which means that he in his heart is pure. He is wise and righteous altogether without the slightest blot of imperfection. His throne blazes in fire, which means it consumes all before it. He alone is worthy to judge the nations, and that's what he's about to do.

So sit down, little horns. Greatness is in the room. There's no great Game of Thrones going on here, right?

Game of Thrones might make for trashy TV, but it's not what's happening in human history. God is in the room and the judge is about to speak. By the way, God's throne has wheels, and they're on fire. How cool is that?

I'm like, is this like a big tricked-out monster truck looking sort of thing? Maybe, maybe, but what that's communicating, listen, is that the ancient of days is not stationary. He's not uninvolved in things on earth, separated from us by a great distance. No, his throne has wheels.

He goes to where his people are, and he doesn't have to leave his throne or authority to get there. It is interesting to look at how all the events that Daniel predicted here in Daniel 7 and 8, which again seems so dark and so chaotic at the time, how we can see now how they all worked out perfectly for the advancement of God's purposes. I mean, imagine how dark it was to live through these chapters as these kingdoms conquered and all the things you're seeing, and you had to look up if you're in Israel and just say, God, have you forgotten us forever? And God, what is going on?

And God, we're going to be extinguished. But did you know that when Persia took over Babylon, did you know Persia actually rebuilt Jerusalem and the Jewish temple? Paid for it entirely, something that Jews at the time thought would never happen again. Cyrus paid for Jerusalem, the rebuilding of the temple, and Jerusalem and the temple would be crucial for Jesus's ministry. Then God raised up Greece, and Greece united the world under one trade language, Koine Greek, which made it easier for the gospel to spread rapidly throughout the world through the writings of the apostles because now you had one common language for the first time in history that connected people.

Then God raised up the Romans who would build a system of roads that made it possible to transport the gospel from place to place. Paul summarized all of this in Galatians 4 by saying, when the fullness of time had come, when the fullness of time had come, then God brought forth his son. In other words, in all this mess, God was creating a situation perfect for the coming of the Messiah and perfect for the spread of salvation around the world. The point is God does everything, everything, everything for his purposes.

And more good news, that's true of your life too. What he does in the big picture, he does in the small. The good, the bad, it's all for his glory. He is at work in every disaster, every dark chapter of your life, moving his church forward and moving the gospel forward in your life.

Y'all, I heard a story this week, I read a story this week that reminded me so much of that. It's a story of how a guy named Dawson Trotman started a ministry called the Navigators. Now, a bunch of y'all haven't heard about the Navigators, but it had a big impact on me and it's had a big impact on this church.

In the late 1930s, Dawson Trotman was working at a Texaco gas station in Lomita, California. He had just escaped going to jail and in the process, he'd gotten saved. He knew almost nothing about the Bible, but he just wanted to start studying it. And so he started ministering to two young sailors who were stationed nearby who frequented his gas station. He explained to them his testimony and he told them that he was convinced that if they would trust God like he did, God could save them just like he saved him. Well, those two sailors called two more sailors and they began to do this little Bible study in the service station garage. At one point, Dawson said, he told them that he believed in his heart that God wanted to use the five of them to change the world.

In his biography, he said, you know, it's just kind of silly. I mean, really, it was just four sailors and me and two of them were there more for the free food than they were for the Bible study anyway. And now I'm talking about how God is going to use them to change the world. Well, eventually the other two get saved and these four sailors say, Dawson, if you will quit your job at the gas station, we will each donate part of our salaries to make you a missionary to our ship. Of course, these are sailors. They didn't have any money either, but come on our ship, they said, because we've talked to our captain and he said that you can start a Bible study on our ship. Well, he does that and six months later, there's been a hundred conversions on that ship and twice that many meeting regularly on the deck of the ship for a Bible study that they called the navigators. The name of that ship was the USS West Virginia. And just a few months after the Bible study really got going, the USS West Virginia was redeployed to a place called Pearl Harbor, where it was sunk on December 7th, 1941 with all those sailors.

Now that sounds like an unbelievable, unspeakable tragedy, right? And it was, but all those sailors in the navigators Bible study who survived that attack got redeployed onto other ships because their ship was sunk. And by the end of the war, there were 800 ships that had Bible studies led by the navigators. Within those young men come back to the United States and under the GI Bill, they were spread out into universities all across the nation. And they began leading Bible studies on campus that were similar to the ones they had learned from Dawson Trotman and the navigators.

And that resulted in the formation of groups like InterVarsity and Campus Crusade. In a presentation years later, Dawson Trotman was talking to an audience about his so-called ministry success, and he said, the need of the hour is just to believe that God is God. And just to believe that he's the ancient of days, that he sits upon the throne, and he will be true to his purposes in all times, in all places, and he'll be true to us if we are true to his will. God's calling to us today, he told this audience, listen, God's calling to us today is just to recognize that our circumstances, that our circumstances as difficult as they may be, as hard as they may be to understand, they do not counteract the eternal truth that our God sits upon the throne and does what he intends to do. Saint, God is doing the same thing in your life.

I'm reading a book right now by a guy named John Piper called Providence. And Dr. Piper demonstrates throughout the Bible, he shows that God in all these situations is up to hundreds and hundreds of things in the lives of the people in the Bible. And at any given point, they are only aware of one or two of them. But he's working in all of them.

He's working in all of them true to his purposes. He's the ancient of days. And even better, even better, Daniel tells us number four, last one. One day, he says, one day the God who rules over the world is going to come to rule in the world. This is how I've heard it said, verse 11.

I watched, I watched then because of the sound of the arrogant words the horn was speaking as I continued watching. And suddenly one like a son of man was coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the ancient of days and was escorted before him. He was given dominion and glory and a kingdom so that those of every people, nation and language should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away and his kingdom is one that can never be destroyed. For in one day, the God who is working in history invisibly will come to assume the throne personally. And in that moment, the power of the Antichrist will literally evaporate in front of him. Paul says in Second Thessalonians, we read earlier that Jesus on that day will destroy the Antichrist with just the breath of his mouth. John in the book of Revelation says he does it with just a word, just a word. All Daniel says about the defeat of the Antichrist is that it happens not by human hands.

Remember that? He was broken, but not by human hands. For Antiochus, it was an invisible stomach virus that killed him. What mighty armies could not do, God accomplished through a microscopic virus.

The defeat of the ultimate Antichrist doesn't happen to a stomach bug, of course. It happens through a dead man walking out of a grave because God spoke down from heaven and says you're dead and all of human ingenuity and all of human technology can't change that, but I can change it in one word, arise. And it happened not by human hands, it happened entirely by God. Jesus was the Messiah who came to the lion and the bear and the ram and the goat of the world's kingdoms with their mighty horns of power. Now here's the irony, he didn't come with a horn of his own, he could have come however he wanted to, right? He could have come as the largest dragon, but instead he came as what?

A lamb. And lamb doesn't have a horn? And he came into the ring and he didn't come with a horn of power, no. He allowed himself to be gored by those vicious animals. But that was happening not because he was weak, he was doing it because he was voluntarily choosing to die for our sin. He was going to be wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. He didn't just have to defeat Satan, he had to defeat sin in us and had to die to forgive us so that we could be redeemed and saved so that when he overcame Satan's power we wouldn't be destroyed along with him. But see through that death and resurrection he broke Satan's power so that the word of the gospel now is mightier than all the horns of oppression and all the chains of captivity they try to put on us.

So let me close with two applications. One for the church and then one for those of you who may still not know who Jesus is, or at least you've not surrendered fully to him. For the church, seeing this secret behind history, I've heard it said, may not keep me from pain, but it will keep me from panic.

I might experience fear from time to time, but I never need to feel frantic. Why? Because the ancient of days is on the throne and the God who rules over history promises to one day come and rule in history and he is moving everything in the world, everything in your life, and in my life he's moving everything to that end. So be encouraged friend, be encouraged saint. Every setback is ultimately going to be used for the advancement of his glory. The cancer, the broken marriage, the wandering child, the chronic pain, the frustrating lack of promotion in your job, God's good hand is in all of it. It might look dark to you, it might feel like you've been abandoned, but it is all flowing by the gracious hand of God and when the fullness of time has come in your life you will see that God has brought forth from it his son Jesus. And church we got something to do in the in the meantime in between Antiochus and antichrist and that is we preach the word of the gospel. We're just a dot on this great timeline we live in an age of mercy and light when God he says desires all men everywhere to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth when he promises us that he's given us his spirit and told us that greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world that no weapon formed against us will prosper and all those who rise against us will fall that all authority has been given to him in heaven and on earth therefore we should go and make disciples of all the nations this is the age of the church it is our moment between Antiochus and antichrist it is our moment to spread the gospel it is what we're supposed to be doing it is how our success will be judged were we doing the one thing we were supposed to do and that is letting all nations hear the gospel so that's the application for the church here's one for you who still don't know Jesus personally or maybe you've not submitted fully to him the goal of our enemy through the antichrist and all the little antichrist is to devour flesh and destroy faith and that's what he's been doing with some of you be honest with yourself you've chosen a path because you thought it would bring you happiness but instead it started to devour you it's exactly what he wanted he made it look so good coming just do it just do it you don't want that you don't want what god says no no this is where it's at and it's devouring you and then he's been deceiving you i want you to mark it down the spirit of the antichrist is going to make it progressively harder for you to be a christian the world is going to get a lot worse before it gets better and the lions and the bears of the world with all their cunning and all their deceit are going to oppose you if you are looking for the affirmation of the world you are never going to find it i'm not saying there's not good people and all these different things but you're not going to get it from the academy you're not going to get it from entertainment you're not going to get it from the new york times or cnn again i'm not saying there's no good people that work for those things i'm just saying that the spirit of antichrist is taking the world away from god and if you are trying to get the affirmation of the world that is a fool's errand it's never going to come there is a reckoning that is coming that is going to separate false christians half committed christians from true christians questions where are you going to be where are you going to be because what it means to come to jesus is that you say i don't really pay attention anymore to what everybody else says because i live for an audience of one i know the ancient of days i know that he's the one with the books and so i'm not looking at my friends i'm not looking at people around me i'm looking at him if all this kind of talk of the end scares you i got really good news you can give yourself fully to jesus right now it's not hard you don't have to improve yourself or fix yourself or memorize the bible it just comes from you admitting that you can't save yourself i can't save myself and i need you to do all the saving all the saving and then by submitting yourself fully to his authority and you can do that right right now you can do that lord jesus i need you to save me because i can't save myself and lord jesus i surrender fully to you oh if any man's in christ he's a new creation if we confess our sin he's faithful and just to forgive us our sin the one that is in christ need not fear anything else you could be in christ right now if you choose to surrender to him and receive him if you never have why don't you bow your heads at all of our campuses if you will who am i talking to right now right now right now you need to surrender to jesus it's not magic words it's not a ceremony but if this represents the attitude of your heart pray it with me if you're ready to surrender to jesus say lord jesus i surrender i surrender fully to you i receive you as my savior i know i can't save myself i need you to save me believer who has god put it in your heart right now that needs to hear this maybe this afternoon you need to go have a conversation with them because that's our job that's why we're here maybe you need to look at some chapter of your life where you've been upset at god or wondering what he's doing and say i believe in the darkness of this chapter i believe that you are sovereignly working at the ancient of days to bring it all for your purposes can i just leave you to set for a moment i want to let the holy spirit minister this word in your heart just sit there for a moment let the holy spirit speak to you obey what he says and then in a moment our worship teams will come if you pray to prayer to begin that relationship with jesus just text the word ready r-e-a-d-y to 33933 that's the word ready to 33933 sit here for a few moments and then our worship team will come and they'll lead us they'll lead us from here