Today's passage: Daniel 8:15-27
Helpful thoughts:
- It seems in this passage that God instructs Gabriel the angel to give Daniel the interpretation.
- The ram and its horns are for the Medes and Persians.
- The goat is Greece.
- The first horn was Alexander the Great.
- The four that came up after were for the four divisions of Greece which came to be after Alexander's death.
- Many believe the horn that grew out of one of the four horns is the Greek leader Antiochus IV, who set up a statue of Zeus in the Temple in 167 B.C.
- This leader became great:
- “Not by his own power.” (Vs. 24)
- “in his own mind.” (Vs. 25)
- And, the leader was “broken – by no human hand.” (Vs. 25)
- Antiochus died without being touched by any aggressor. He was told of losing a battle to the Jews while he was in Persia, and supposedly died of grief.
- This leader became great:
Questions to consider:
- How should the fact that each of these prophecies has already been fulfilled give us confidence in the Bible?
- Is there anything that God does not know? Did the Greeks, the Romans, or anyone else ever accomplish anything without God knowing about it and sovereignly orchestrating it?
- Does the Bible's accuracy and God's sovereignty mean that we will never have to endure anything hard? What can we be sure of when we are suffering? What is the longest our suffering could possibly last? How long will eternity with Christ be?