Recreate Church, Pastor Michael Shockley—Service, Sunday, April 24, 2022

Can We Trust the Bible?

Today, Pastor Michael is continuing his study on Daniel. At this time in history, Daniel is about 70 years old and this about a decade plus before the lion’d den that we know him so well for.  Daniel is praying and has a vision of himself outside a river and he knew well the river (Ulai) and the city (Susa) in his dream.

A ram appears in his dream.  This ram has two, curving horns.  One of these horns starts out smaller but grows bigger than the other horn.  This ram starts a ‘rampage’ and is knocking over animals, everywhere.  Suddenly, from the horizon a goat appears, running so fast his feet don’t even appear to be hitting the ground.

This goat has one horn between its eyes, a ‘goaticorn’, if you will, and he runs right into the ram and smashes right into him, hitting him so hard that both of the ram’s horns are broken off and the goat takes a victory lap on the ram.

The goat, now grows bigger and stronger and seems unstoppable.

Then, without warning, the goat’s horn breaks off and four, little horns, take its place!  Crazy!

We learned in prior studies of Daniel that a horn represents a king or kingdom.  The ram has two horns, representing two kingdoms.  At first, the goat has one, big horn, which must be one, big, undivided kingdom.  Four horns growing out to replace it, become four more kingdoms.

Just when it can’t get any weirder, yet another horn grows out of one of the four horns. Symbolic but weird, but hey, it’s prophesy, so we do have to pay attention to it!

This newest horn, this little sprout of a horn, starts attacking the Holy Land.  Somehow, Daniel the uber-interpreter, is seeing all these strange things going on, takes it in apparent stride, because a figure appears by the river and a loud voice commands, “Gabriel, make this man understand!”.

Gabriel tells Daniel that he has been sent to him to explain what will happen in the end times at the indignation.  

Gabriel goes on to explain to Daniel that the Ram’s two horns represents the Meads and the Persians (in an alliance).  The horns growing dissimilarly represents the actual way the Meads declined and the Persians gained prominence.  

The the goats big horn represents Greece.  When Daniel had this vision it was hundred of years before Greece became the power it would be.  And that large horn breaking off, likely represented Alexander the Great dying, which occurred after his arrival in Jerusalem.

After Alexander the Great died, Greece was divided up into four, divisional kingdoms.  The last horn that grows represents one of the kings of one of those kingdoms, and it may be said to be Antiochus IV Epiphanes.  This is one of the great villains of history and most people don’t even know he existed!

Antiochus loved clashing with the Greece-run side of Egypt.  Antiochus was so frustrated that he couldn’t take over Egypt, so he started persecuting the Jews, as Israel was smack dab in the middle of the two Greek run kingdoms.

Antiochus thus became the first ruler that systematically persecuted the Jewish people.  He made the Jewish religion illegal, essentially.  Eventually Judas Maccabee lead the Jews in a revolt against Antiochus.  They purified the Temple in a holiday still celebrated as Hanukkah.  Antiochus did suffer a bad fate, being struck with intestinal parasites!  Yuck!

How do we know the Bible is true, to get back to our theme?  The Bible can be trusted because prophesy is accurate.  And it has stood the test of time. The Word of God has prophesy and its fulfillment, time and time again.!

All this shows us that the Word of God can be trusted.  

Verses can be found today in Daniel, Chapter 8.