Terrible but Temporary

Sermon Transcript

Do you believe there’s real evil? It may be a favorite pastime of the proverbial philosophy undergrad to wax on about how all morality is relative and notions of good and evil are just another way the ruling class exerts its power, but have you ever seen or witnessed something and been overcome with a sense that it is truly evil, no matter how someone might try to explain or rationalize it? I remember that feeling in 2006 when I heard the story of the man who murdered 6 Amish school girls between the ages of 6 and 13 in Lancaster County, just miles from where we are gathered today. More recently many were shocked with a sense of evil at the very public murder of conservative pundit Charlie Kirk at the age of 32, leaving behind a wife and two young children, a murder former President Obama called horrific and despicable. We might think even more recently of Kada Scott, the 23-year-old woman whose body was found here in Philadelphia a week or so ago and whose death was just ruled a homicide. More examples could easily be multiplied from just the past month.

 

Is there any hope for the future in the presence of such evil? Like, not just wishful thinking, but real hope? As we come to Daniel chapter 8 today, Daniel shares with us a vision God gave him, and the interpretation of the vision. We’re told in the interpretation that the vision concerns “The time of the end” (v. 17), and that it “refers to many days from now” (v. 26), from the time it was given in the 500s B.C. The vision is about the future, and we could say that much of what the vision predicts about the future is brutally realistic. In it, we will see evil grow and prosper, just like we see in our world today. But in it we will also see a real hope for the future, a real hope that speaks to the real world in which you and I live, because the vision also reveals that evil has an end date fixed by our God. Our God will end whatever evil he allows against his people. To see that we’ll look first at evil’s prosperity, and then at evil’s end.

 

Evil’s Prosperity

 

The vision recorded in this chapter takes place in the third year of the reign of Belshazzar, a Babylonian king. In this vision Daniel was in Susa the citadel, a fortified area of the Babylonian empire, located in the area we now know as Iran. From a canal there he sees a ram standing on the bank of the canal, and it had two horns, which seem to be growing in real time. One grew larger than the other, and the one that grew larger was the second of the two horns. Then, as rams are known to do, the ram starts charging: Westward, northward, and southward, and no other animal nor person could stop him. So verse 4 concludes: He did as he pleased and became great.

 

Now when Daniel first sees this vision, he doesn’t understand it, nor could we if it was all we had. In fact, even after Daniel receives the interpretation of the vision, by the end of the chapter he still says he doesn’t understand it. So also for us exhaustive understanding of every detail is probably beyond us, but we do have the interpretation of the vision from the angel Gabriel beginning in verse 19. There we read that the ram with the two horns is Medo-Persia, and the two horns are the kings of Media and Persia. Media was the regional power first, but it was then conquered by the Persian king Cyrus, combining to form what we now know as the Medo-Persian empire, and it became even greater under Cyrus, hence the larger size of the later horn, representing Persia. The Persians conquered most of the known world east of the Mediterranean—they did as they pleased, and became great.

 

But then in the vision Daniel sees another animal, what verse 5 describes as a male goat. And here you should think less of a petting zoo goat and more of an ibex with big horns that can run fast and wreck shop. This goat came from the west across the face of the whole earth without even touching the ground, like a Spike Lee joint. In the interpretation we learn that the goat represents Greece, and the fact that it doesn’t even touch the ground represents the speed with which Greece conquered much of the known world when it rose to power. This goat is unique not only in his speed, though—he’s a unicorn goat, with one big horn between his eyes, representing the one great king of Greece who conquered the Persians and even more of the world, who we now know as Alexander the Great. Great as the Persians were in their own day, they never conquered Greece, and eventually this Greek king arose who conquered them. So we read in verse 6 that despite the greatness of this ram, this unicorn ibex ran right at him in his wrath, struck the ram, and broke both his horns. Then he threw the ram down to the ground and trampled all over him, and there was no one who could rescue from his power. Verse 8 tells us that goat became exceedingly great, even greater than the ram, but when he was strong, the great horn was broken, and instead of it there came up four conspicuous horns toward the four winds of heaven. And we know from history that Alexander the Great died at the height of his power, at a mere 32 years of age, and his kingdom was divided four ways between four successors.

 

Bear in mind as we go that Daniel wrote these words in the third year of Belshazzar, hundreds of years before Alexander the Great was even born, decades before the Persians even had significant strife with the Greeks, and we now have the benefit of seeing that the history played out just as the vision predicted it would.

 

Next we read in verse 9 that out of the four horns came a little horn, which grew exceedingly great toward the south, toward the east, and toward the glorious land. Now the vision is getting even closer to home for Daniel—now a horn arises that doesn’t just conquer other peoples like the ones before it, but one who goes to the glorious land, Daniel’s homeland, the land of Israel. He too becomes great, verse 10 says, but now his greatness is described in cosmic terms: He grows great even to the host of heaven, the angels, and some of the host and some of the stars it threw down to the ground and trampled on them. So he’s not just trampling another beast—he’s trampling the angels and the stars. Verse 11 goes so far as to say he became as great as the Prince of the host, there probably a reference to God himself. Of course, that doesn’t mean the little horn became eternal, unchangeable, omnipresent, and so on, but he did appear as great as God himself—after all, he took away the burnt offering that was offered to our God, verse 11 goes on to say, and overthrew his sanctuary. The battle here is not merely a battle on earth, but a spiritual battle between spiritual forces that are connected to the earthly battle.

 

That’s not the kind of thing you would have been able to see if you just read the headlines in the newspaper as these wars were happening. Chapters 7-12 of the book of Daniel are an example of the literary genre we call “apocalyptic,” which comes from a word meaning revelation. In other words, apocalyptic literature reveals the unseen reality behind what we see through the use of imagery like a ram with two horns and a goat with one horn charging at him and trampling him. The goat and the ram obviously aren’t literal, and the angel who explains the vision says as much: The ram represents Medo-Persia, the goat Greece. But they reveal something true! And so here, there won’t be a literal horn that rises up and brings down stars, but those images convey an unseen reality, a reality described in verse 23 as a king of bold face, who will arise with great power, though not by his own power—behind his power is a spiritual power, the power of darkness, and what does he destroy according to verse 24? Mighty men and the people who are the saints, God’s people. By his cunning he shall make deceit prosper under his hand, and in his own mind he shall become great. Without warning he shall destroy many, and he shall even rise up against the Prince of princes, and that is our God.

 

We now know the name of the Greek king, Alexander the Great, and we now know the name of this mighty ruler who will destroy mighty men and the saints, and rise up against our God: Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the king of the Seleucid Empire, one of the four empires that descended from Alexander the Great, who reigned from 175-164 BC. When it comes to brutal tyrants who oppressed Israel in their ancient history, Antiochus’ name is right up there with Pharaoh of Egypt. Antiochus went into the glorious land of Israel, desecrated the temple, slaughtered many of the Jews, and rededicated the temple to be a temple to the false Greek god Zeus. Reports are that he slaughtered 40,000 Jews in three days and took another 40,000 into slavery. He slaughtered a pig, an unclean animal, and splattered its blood on the altar and inside the temple. He put out the lamp that was supposed to stay perpetually lit in the temple. Then he forced the high priest and other Jews to eat the flesh of pigs, which God’s law forbade them from doing. Where previous Seleucid kings had, much like the Persians, tolerated Jewish religion, this was a desecration, an evil, such as the Jews of the time had never seen before.

 

But the point of this vision is not to spell out all the details of what Antiochus would do; as you can see, it doesn’t do that. The point of this vision is to reveal to us the spiritual reality of what would happen when Antiochus did these horrific evils. Antiochus wasn’t just raising up against Israel or squashing a rebellion as the Wikipedia version of the story might suggest. Antiochus was rising up against our God, and behind Antiochus was another spiritual power, the power of Satan himself, rising up against our God, and against his people. And what this vision is telling us is that he will succeed for a time!

 

Remember that verse 11 tells us that God’s regular burnt offering was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary overthrown. Under the law God gave his people before the coming of Christ, an animal was to be offered every morning and evening to him as part of their worship (that’s the regular burnt offering), but here we read that Antiochus’ desecration of the temple would include the cessation of that offering. The sanctuary itself was overthrown as it was rededicated to Zeus. Verse 12 says people will be given over to it, as we know that many were slaughtered, and truth thrown the ground. Under Antiochus copies of the scriptures were destroyed, and others were sprinkled with broth made from pig flesh. And while this all happened historically, what this vision reveals is the spiritual battle that Antiochus’ actions only made manifest, a spiritual battle that he sure appears to be winning at that point in the passage!

 

And that spiritual battle continues today. In 1 Peter 5:8 we read that our adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. And he still works through people, people driven by a spirit that the New Testament calls the spirit of the antichrist, which it also says is now in the world (1 John 2:18, 22; 4:3; 2 John 1:7). Christians have gotten eggs on our faces for thousands of years when we have tried to pinpoint one particular world leader as the antichrist, followed by a prediction that Jesus would soon be returning: First-century Christians though it was the Roman Emperor Nero, the reformers thought it was the Pope, I heard some politically conservative Christians suggesting it was President Obama when he was in office, and perhaps some politically liberal Christians today think it’s President Trump. But when we recognize that 1 John 2:18 speaks of many antichrists that had already come in the first century, we can stop trying to identify the antichrist and instead try to identify the spirit of the antichrist which shows up in many, so that we will not be led astray by it.

 

Before we ask what we can learn about such a spirit from this passage, though, let’s just stop and recognize that such a spirit does in fact exist and is now in the world. Unless you grew up in a particularly rough Philly neighborhood or a warn-torn nation elsewhere, you are probably not used to thinking of yourself as living in a war zone. Here’s a journal entry from a Ukranian, written February 24, 2022, the first day Russia invaded Ukraine. “I sit at 3am in front of my multi-screen computer set-up, watching several live feeds: a camera near Kharkiv; a broadcast from inside Kyiv; and a couple of news channels. The days leading up to the war have been stressful. Being a news junkie, I’ve been following the build-up in minute detail, checking every video of military equipment and personnel being moved around us, looking at the maps showing troop positioning… This is real. The worst has become reality. I run up the stairs to wake up my grandfather. He’s asleep with an iPad next to him blaring some random Ukrainian radio station. “Wake up, call uncle, Kyiv is being missiled,” I tell him as quietly and calmly as possible, trying not to scare him too much.”

 

Do you know what you were doing between 3-4 am on February 24, 2022? Probably sleeping, just like I was, because we don’t live in an active war zone like that! And Praise God that we don’t, but make no mistake about it: There is another war going on in the unseen realm, and it is very much connected to our lives. When the evil one wants to fight against our God, who does he attack? Verse 24 tells us: The people who are the saints. When you get baptized, when you sign up to be a Christian, you are enlisting in the armies of heaven, and that means the devil and his army are coming after you. Does your life reflect that you are in a battle? Are you like the Ukrainian who sees what is going on and goes to wake up grandpa, or are you grandpa, sleeping while the enemy is attacking? Do you really think that showing up to a church gathering occasionally and shooting up the 30 second prayer before a meal is going to cut it in this battle? It’s an uncomfortable thought to be in a war; we’d all rather not be. But the enemy is not going to stop just because you’d really prefer he would. You have to be able to say like that Ukrainian citizen: “This is real. It’s happening.”

 

But the spiritual war is a different kind of war, and the spirit of the antichrist reveals himself in different ways at different times. Sometimes it does look like an Antiochus slaughtering God’s people, desecrating the temple, and devoting it to the worship of a false god. Last week Tyler mentioned our brothers and sisters in Nigeria, for example, where as recently as 2023 7,000 Christians were killed for their profession of faith in Christ. In northern Nigeria terrorist groups like Boko Haram or the Fulani Terrorists are often responsible, though starting in the early 2000s the local governments in northern Nigeria also passed blasphemy laws that have since been used to prosecute Christians and other religious minorities who do not conform to Shia Islam. Let us not forget to pray for our brothers and sisters in Nigeria, and to recognize in their persecution the spirit of the antichrist.

 

But the spirit of the antichrist also has nonviolent ways of attacking God’s people. We see in this passage that his target will not only be God’s people, but God’s sanctuary, and especially the regular burnt offering, one form under which the worship of God was organized at that time. Under the new covenant in Christ there is no sanctuary building, but the people of God still gather for the worship of God on the Lord’s Day (e.g., Acts 20:7, 1 Cor 16:2, Rev 1:10), and one of our enemy’s tactics is to attack that basic institution. In the early years of our existence as a church, I actually led this church to cancel our worship gatherings once, not because weather would have made it unsafe for us to be here or something, but just because we thought attendance might be low and we wanted to give everyone a break. I was wrong to do that. For many years of my Christian life, I would skip church gatherings for the most trivial of reasons, and I now believe I was wrong to do that. Have you ever wondered why it is that we can get motivated to do so many different things in life, but then we wake up on Sunday mornings and just “don’t feel like” going to church? Might there be another spiritual force at work there that doesn’t want you at these gatherings, that doesn’t want these gatherings to happen at all, or if they are going to happen, at least wants to desecrate them so that they become little more than a rock concert with a motivational speech, or a rote repetition of man-made rituals that divert our gaze away from our God?

 

Now maybe you think, “Oh come on, don’t make such a big deal out of something like church attendance,” but that’s a peacetime mentality. That’s why we need apocalyptic literature. What did Antiochus really do that was so bad, after all? No doubt most would look at the slaughtering of 40,000 people as evil, but the text doesn’t mention that explicitly or focus on it. Was offering the wrong kind of animal at the temple really a big deal? What about stopping an animal from being killed at the temple every morning and evening? I mean, it’s not like God or his people need a building anyway, or that God needed those burnt offerings. But what’s the spirit behind his doing this? He’s rising up against the prince of princes. He’s rising up against our God. And would not that same spirit be just as happy today to see God’s people give up the worship of him for their hobbies, their jobs, their kids, their sleep, or just about anything else? Kids I know sometimes it may be hard for you to understand why your parents require you to attend these gatherings, but I want you to see that some of their desire in that is to protect you from the evil spirit that would want to make the worship of the living God seem unimportant to you in comparison to something actually unimportant like playing a game with a ball. And would not the same spirit that desecrated the temple with an unclean animal be just as happy to see the singing of God’s word, the praying of God’s word, the preaching of God’s word, and the visible display of God’s word in the ordinances replaced with entertainment?

 

We see in this vision and its interpretation that Satan attacks God’s people, he attacks God’s worship, and finally we can see that he attacks God’s truth. Verse 12 says he will throw truth to the ground, and verse 25 says that by his cunning he shall make deceit prosper under his hand. Antiochus attacked the scriptures and taught the people to worship Zeus. As early as Genesis 3, what was the first thing the serpent said to Adam and Eve? “Did God really say?” The first thing he goes after is God’s truth, God’s word. So when the New Testament speaks of the spirit of the antichrist, it especially highlights that the spirit of the antichrist produces false teaching. “For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist” (2 John 1:7).

 

As Wayne Grudem asks in his book Bible Doctrine, if you find yourself wanting to disbelieve or disobey something in scripture, who do you think it is who would want you to do that? Who in the spiritual realm would celebrate if you disbelieved or disobeyed something in scripture, and who would be grieved? One of Satan’s tactics in the West in recent centuries has been to not so much make a frontal assault on God’s truth as to simply diminish confidence in any truth, much like the “throwing truth to the ground” we read of in verse 12. So today people speak of you having your truth and me having my truth, as though there were not one truth with authority over us both. Even professing Christians will talk about how the Bible was written thousands of years ago in a different language and culture, with many different plausible interpretations, some of which even sincere Christians disagree on, and so why bother doing the hard, prayerful work of trying to learn and communicate the truth it reveals? Instead, the thinking goes, let’s just focus on doing what Jesus did. Certainly it’s often good to do what Jesus did, though there are also some things he did that were unique to him, like accept peoples’ worship, that we definitely should not do, and in addition to doing what Jesus did, are we not also bound to believe what Jesus taught, and to do not only what he did, but what he commanded us to do (Matt 28:19)? If so, we must answer the thorny question of what is true, even when that truth is disputed.

 

Our battle is not against people; it’s not even ultimately against Antiochus or people like him, but we are in a battle with a real, spiritual enemy, and we must not be ignorant of his devices. He will enjoy a measure of success in this world. That’s what this vision shows. The evil one will and has become powerful. Note that refrain throughout: He did as he pleased and became great (v. 4), then the goat became exceedingly great (v. 8), the little horn grew exceedingly great (v. 9), even as great as the Prince of the host (v. 11), his power shall be great (v. 24), and in his own mind he shall become great (v. 25), and finally, the climax comes in the middle of verse 25: He shall even rise up against the prince of princes. And the application for Daniel and God’s people was not to somehow by their own devices prevent it from happening. The vision makes clear that it is going to happen. And similarly, we know that more evil will come against God’s people, and our job is not to figure out how to eliminate it by our devices. Our job is to stand firm, and not be led astray by it. He will come against God’s people, he will come against God’s worship, he will come against God’s word, and ultimately, he will come against God himself. But then what will happen? Let’s look next at evil’s end.

 

Evil’s end

 

We noted the refrain of nations becoming great throughout, but that’s followed by another refrain. The ram did as he pleased, and became great…until the goat trampled him underfoot. The horn on the goat’s head became exceedingly strong, but when he was strong, the great horn was broken (v. 8). Then even when this little horn rises up against the prince of the host and tramples truth itself underfoot, and verse 12 concludes by saying it will act and prosper, another question comes in verse 13: “For how long is the vision concerning the regular burnt offering, the transgression that makes desolate, and the giving over of the sanctuary and host to be trampled underfoot?” And he said to me in verse 14: “For 2300 evenings and mornings. Then the sanctuary shall be restored to its rightful state.” And in the interpretation, in verse 25, when Antiochus goes so far as to rise up against the Prince of princes, what happens next, toward the end of the verse? He shall be broken—but by no human hand.

 

The first thing we can notice from this is that evil’s prosperity does in fact have an end date that is fixed by our God. In the case of Antiochus, it was 2300 evenings and mornings, which probably means 1150 days, i.e., if you add up the total number of evenings plus the total number of mornings, the number of burnt offerings that should have been offered during that time, the total will come to 2300, which covers about three years, the amount of time we now know from history that the burnt offerings were not offered at the temple in Jerusalem while Antiochus had put an end to them. And though evil continues to prosper now, and though our God hasn’t told us how many more days it has to prosper, we know that our God has fixed an end date to it.

 

Not only has he fixed an end date to it, but verse 14 tells us at the end of those days that the sanctuary will be restored. Of course, at the end of Antiochus’ reign, the temple sanctuary building in Jerusalem was restored, but what that entails is the restoration of all the evil one attacked: God’s people, God’s worship, and God’s word. When our God brings evil to an end, he will also restore his people, his worship, and the clear proclamation of his word. It will be clear to all in that day who the real God is, who his people are, and what his truth is, and all his people will worship him.

 

Evil’s end is fixed, with its end will come the restoration of God’s people, God’s worship, and God’s word, and finally, we can say that all this will happen by the power of our God himself, and not by any human activity. Did you see that in verse 25? When the evil one rises up against the Prince of Princes, he shall be broken—but by no human hand. This is why we as God’s people don’t take up arms against flesh and blood, and why the ongoing realization of evil’s prosperity in our world shouldn’t lead us to despair. It’s why we aren’t told to ultimately defeat the forces of evil, but to stand firm in the face of them (e.g., Eph 6:10-20), because in the end, it is actually our God who will defeat the forces of evil. We don’t usher in God’s kingdom by our activity; we wait for our God to usher in his kingdom by his activity.

 

And just as we can now look back and see this prophecy fulfilled in Antiochus, so we can look back and see that our God has dealt evil the decisive blow already. At the appointed time, our God sent his prince, God the Son, to become human, and to defeat the evil one. In his time on earth, Jesus Christ showed his power over the evil one when he cast out demons. Though those demons were part of Satan’s army, even they had to begrudgingly obey the commands of Christ. And though on the cross Satan mounted his greatest attack against the Prince of Princes, going so far as to put him to death, reaching the height of evil’s prosperity, appearing even greater than the Prince of heaven, it was Satan who was broken. By driving the nails into Christ’s hands, he was unwittingly securing the redemption of God’s people, as Jesus by his death paid for our sins and brought us out of the domain of darkness, into the kingdom of light, over which he reigns as king.

 

You see, the evil with which we must contend is not just an evil out there, but an evil native to all our hearts, and no human hand could save us from that evil. For that we needed God the Son to come and die the death that evil inside us deserved, and then, when the days for that were ended, to rise again, victorious over all evil, which he did just days after he died. Now though the evil one continues to rage against God’s people, God’s worship, and God’s word, he fights as a defeated foe, like a boxer who’s already been knocked out, declared the loser, but who is still wandering around swinging madly, refusing to accept his defeat.

 

And the day is coming when his defeat will be final. Evil’s end date is set, and Jesus will come again to cast Satan and all his army into the lake of fire, never to torment God’s people again, and in that day, God’s people will be restored. Not only will we be purified of sin; we’ll even be raised from the tombs, to live with him in resurrected bodies forever. And the worship of God will be restored. Speaking of that day, Revelation 22:3 says, “No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him.” And God’s Word will be restored. There will be no more debates in that day, no more falsehoods uttered—the truth of God will be plain for all, and we will rejoice in it.

 

If you are with us today and you are not a Christian, can I ask you to honestly consider, when you look ahead to the future, what gives you hope? Do you really think good and evil are all relative, or do you believe there is a real evil in the world? And if there is a real evil in the world, what hope do you have that it will be defeated? And if it will one day be defeated, how will you and I fare in that day, who have so much of that evil in our hearts? Do you see what is offered to you in Jesus Christ? Forgiveness for the evil you’ve done, cleansing from the evil inside you, and a final end to all evil at his return. Embrace him, trust him, and you will have real hope, a real reason, to look forward to evil’s end in the future.

 

To my brothers and sisters who are trusting in Christ today, have you lost sight of this ultimate future? Does the future of your job, your health, your family, your country, or even of this particular church, feel like the biggest deal to you? Let this apocalyptic revelation of the unseen realm wake you up. There’s a much bigger battle going on than the battle for your job, your health, your family, your country, or even the growth of this particular church. It’s the battle of the evil one against our God as he attacks his people, his worship, and his word. Don’t lose sight of that battle. If you are facing adversity, don’t just ask how to end the adversity; ask what the evil one would want to use that adversity in your life to do, and fight against that! Stand firm, whatever your external circumstances are, and don’t lose heart in that battle. Love God’s people, don’t give up meeting with God’s people, and hold firm to God’s word. The people of God, the worship of God, and the word of God will be struck down to varying degrees in this life, but the day is coming when they will be restored. When you are fighting for those things, you are fighting a winning battle. When you are striving to build up the church, to sing God’s praises, and to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints, it will wear you out and discourage you at times, but lift your eyes and look ahead. The end is sure. Our God will end whatever evil he allows against his people, and the sanctuary shall be restored to its rightful state.