Daniel 8

Hindsight is 20/20. We get to read the 8th chapter of Daniel and it reads kind of like a history lesson. I think in order to really get what was going on when Daniel wrote this (about 530 BC), we need to remember that the Babylonian empire has recently fallen to the Persian empire- the most powerful army in the world.

The vision that Daniel has concerning the Ram and the goat leaves Daniel saying 'what the heck are you talkin' about Lord'. The Medo-Persian empire is represented by the ram with two horns, the first being the median empire and the higher horn representing the more powerful Persian empire. The Lord tells us that the goat is representative of the kingdom of Greece (8:21). This is where I forget precisely how accurate and wonderful God's prophetic Word is. We've all read about world empires as we went to school, but when Daniel was writing this Greece was a literal speck on the map...and God was foretelling that this tiny country would displace the most powerful empire in the world! Can you imagine if God gave us a prophetic vision showing Venezuela conquering the United States? Absurd...well, I'm sure readers of Daniel's vision thought that too.

Another historical accuracy is fulfilled in verses 21-22: "And the male goat is the kingdom of Greece. The large horn that is between its eyes is the first king. As for the broken horn and the four that stood up in its place, four kingdoms shall arise out of that nation, but not with its power." Who was the first king of the Greecian empire? None other than Alexander the Great. Once again, the accuracy of the Lord is displayed in verse 8: "but when he became strong, the large horn was broken, and in place of it four notable ones came up toward the four winds of heaven." Alexander the Great was at the height of power at age 32 when he died...a young age even then. Four generals then took control of separate parts of the empire, one of which was Antiochus Epiphanes.

Verses 23-26 describe the antichrist and we'll get a further look at that in Daniel 9. He'll rise with a program of peace and deceive the world, only to exalt himself in the newly completed Third Temple. I'm not sure there is a correlation, but I found it interesting that God placed the vision of Alexander the Great's exploits with an interpretation of 'the latter time of the kingdom'. One prophecy he fulfilled to the letter and the other yet to come...but for any doubters about the literalness of prophecy, Daniel's vision was quite explicit.