Daniel 11:1-2

 Daniel 11

Prophecy about the last Persian kings

The Greco-Persian wars: Daniel 11:1-2

What do you think about prophecies?

The WordWeb dictionary defines "prophecy" as:

1) "Knowledge of the future 

     (usually said to be obtained from a divine source)"

2) "A prediction uttered under divine inspiration"

Most of mankind understand these definitions - I would say all of us but atheists - and its link with the word "divine", recognizing that prophecies are supernatural. The biblical prophecy is much more than that, and encompasses also the past and the present. But it certainly includes these two meanings and, especially in this end part of the book of Daniel (Dn 11:2-12:13) the knowledge of the future and the predictive prophecy are at the core of all of these prophecies. The fulfilment of biblical prophecies is one of the strongest proofs of God's Word's trustworthiness, matched only by the excellence of its moral guidelines for life and by the testimony of the millions of lives the scriptures have changed for centuries. 

The Bible commands us very sternly to not "treat prophecies with contempt" - a verse that we Christians are familiar with - but let's take a look to the context in which this command appears (1 Thessalonians 5:19-22)

"Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil"

There is a strong connection between the Holy Spirit (God's life in us) and the Word of God. Our Lord Jesus Christ said about the Spirit, "He will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you" (John 14:26) The Spirit of God reminds us most specially the Word of God, and teaches us all things - as in the passage of 1 Thessalonians, to test words, hold to the good ones and reject the evil ones. 

There is a strong controversy in the USA about a filthy rag pompously called "The 1619 Project" which is no more than an attempt to rewrite American history, making it all about slavery. Interestingly, none of the defenders of this satanical tergiversation - that goes in our days together with other "narratives" as a substitute for history - would make the whole history of Germany about Nazism, the whole history of Spain and Portugal about the Inquisition or the whole history of France about the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. There are dark sides in the past of every country, and in the past of every person. We all sinned. But our history is not the history of our sins. Besides, America is not remarkable for slavery - which has been historically universal - but for a bloody Civil War where the Republicans with President Lincoln as their leader fought the Democrats trying to secede in order to keep their slaves, and many thousands died to free those slaves. Besides, in 1619 slavery had been common in Latin America for a century. The idea that it is USA's invention and that it is at the core of America's birth is a preposterous one. There were no USA in 1619 to begin with, and slavery wasn't something they want to preserve when the USA were born 1776, but a painful reality they had to cope with in order to keep the Union together. 

Beware of "narratives"! Fiction is absolutely OK to write novels, tales, epos etc. but totally unacceptable to rewrite history and even worse, to base actual policies on a spurious history, fabricated through lies and tergiversations. In our previous message (under the title Daniel 10:20-21) we spoke about Israel's real history, and presented some facts about the "palestinian people", that goes with a similar "narrative" trying to show the existence of a Palestinian country that never existed. 

How can we know the truth? In Daniel chapters 11-12 the history of Israel and its neighbors for more than 300 years is presented, and when we read about the historical figures and their deeds, prophesied there, we find a perfect correlation between the two. If you want to know more about this, I strongly recommend history books or enciclopedias 20 years old or more. There is a current satanical activity to rewrite history - or human biology, or climate science for that matter - in the academic world in order to fabricate bases for political agendas, a monstrous travesty from which the "1619 project" and the history of "Palestine" are just the tip of the iceberg. 

God's word is The Truth, with capitals. Only in the Scriptures we find eternal truth that is not depending on current trends, especially when those trends are openly false, satanical. Let's read the prophecy God gave Daniel concerning the Empires he knew about from the prophet's previous visions, interpretations and prophecies. This is Daniel 11:1-2 in the NIV:

"And in the first year of Darius the Mede, I took my stand to support and protect him"

"Now then, I tell you the truth: Three more kings will arise in Persia, and then a fourth, who will be far richer than all the others. When he has gained power by his wealth, he will stir up everyone against the kingdom of Greece"

The original Hebrew text of these verses is:

ואני בשנת אחת לדריוש המדי - עמדי למחזיק ולמעוז לו 

 ועתה אמת אגיד לך הנה עוד שלשה מלכים עמדים לפרס והרביעי יעשיר עשר גדול מכל וכחזקתו בעשרו יעיר הכל את מלכות יון

And this is the pronunciation:

"Va-aní bishnát axát le-Dareyávesh ha-Madáy omdí lemaxazík ulemaóz lo"

"Veatá emét agíd lexá: Hiné od shalósh malaxím omdín le-Farás, veharevií yaasír óser-gadól mikól. Ukexezkató beaseró, yaír hakól el-malxút Yaván"

The New International Version has a perfect and literal translation for the Hebrew original of Daniel 11:1-2. In verse one we learn that the Lord helped also Darius the Mede, and in verse two, that He would reveal the truth to Daniel about the future: three kings would rise in Persia, and a fourth one who would become richer, and who tried to conquer Greece. "The truth" Jesus reveals is not only about these last Persian kings, but many years forward to the rise and fall of Alexander the Great, the divisions in the Greek Empire he created by his conquests, the wars between those divided Empires, the rise of Rome and the last times. 

Chapter 11 is the largest one in the book, and besides, it is to be read together with chapter 12, that is just its continuation. But of course we don't have to understand more than two millennia of prophecy in one day. There are several divisions in this chapter that we can make, in order to pay attention to separate episodes of Israel's history, including the Middle East, North Africa and Europe (all of them are included in this prophecy) And we better divide it properly. For instance, the NIV introduces a title between verses 1 and 2 that belongs between verses 4 and 5, "The Kings of the South and the North". It should head the story from verse 5, because those kings are the Seleucid and Ptolemaic ones - later in the prophecy, the empire of the Antichrist and the Muslim world - and the prophecies about those kings begin in verse five. Neither the Persian kings nor Alexander are "kings of the north and the south". 

 

There are four crucial issues we need to know to receive the prophetical revelation of this passage:

1. Who is Darius the Mede?

2. What is the truth Daniel was about to hear?

3. Who are the three kings of Persia?

4. Who is the fourth king of Persia that fought against Greece?

1 - In the message corresponding to Daniel 5:29-31 we have some information about Darius the Mede - name that the Bible gives to Gubaru, the commander of Cyrus the Great appointed by him as king of Babylonia. The amazing fulfilment of Daniel's prophecy in that chapter took place in the same day king Belshazzar saw the writing on the wall. The Lord supported and protected Darius the Mede because he would need God's help to govern, and because it was in God's plan to substitute the Babylonians, who took the Jews as prisoners, with the Persians, who let them go back and rebuild the temple and the city of Jerusalem. 

2 - In the previous message, corresponding to Daniel 10:20-21, we read that the Lord says to Daniel, "I will tell you what is written in the Book of Truth". The whole prophecy that begins in Daniel 11:2 and closes the book at the end of chapter 12 is the truth Daniel was about to hear, and that we nowadays know as fulfilled prophecy (more than a half of it) or prophecies related to the Second Coming of Jesus (from Daniel 11:36 to the end of the book) The knowledge of fulfilled prophecy is a good reason to believe that the rest of it is about to be fulfilled in time also. 

3 - The prophecy begins with three Persian kings that would succeed Cyrus the Great. When we remember that this vision was given to Daniel in "the third year of Cyrus king of Persia" and that Cyrus reigned 559-530 BC, it is evident that the first of these kings is Cyrus' successor, his son Cambyses who extended the Persian Empire by conquering Egypt. Cambyses reigned 530-522 BC, which means that this prophecy's fulfilment took place most probably after Daniel's death (it happened 75 years after his deportation to Babylonia, when he was already a young man) Cambyses successor is Smerdis, who reigned only several months in 522 and was replaced by Darius Hystaspes, who reigned 522-486. This third king, also called Darius I the Great, fought against Ionia (a Greek territory in western Turkey) to crash the Ionian Revolt, a rebellion against the Persian governors that Cyrus had appointed there. Darius fought also against Athens and Eretria, that had supported the Ionians, and conquered some territories in Greece. His war against Greece is known as the first Greco-Persian war. The battle of Marathon in 490 BC, from which the long distance race take its name, was a Greek victory against him. 

4 - The fourth king who would become richer than all of the others and start a second war to conquer Greece is Xerxes the Great, known as Ahasuerus in the book of Esther. In the first chapter of Esther we can read about his Empire's extension and his huge riches. The war he started against Greece is known as the second Greco-Persian war, beginning in 480 BC with the Battle of Thermopylae (the one depicted in the films "The 300 Spartans", 1962, and "300", 2006) This war included the Battle of Salamis in the same year (one of the most studied naval battles in the history of naval warfare, which caused the Persians to lose 1/3 of their fleet) and ended with the Greek victories in Plataea and Mycale, 479 BC. The Persians lost the rest of their fleet in Mycale and many soldiers in both battles, which determined not only the end of this Greco-Persian war but the shift of power from Persia to Greece. That's why this prophecy ignores the third Greco-Persian war started by Artaxerxes, Xerxes son, and even the rest of the Persian kings. After the defeat of Xerxes, Greece was established as the new invencible world power. 

The wars of Xerxes, Darius and Artaxerxes against Greece didn't succeed, and that's why the Persians couldn't conquer Europe, not only because of the bravery of the Greeks but also of their superior military equipment and skills. Some decades after the death of Artaxerxes, the reign of Alexander the Great would begin. He united the Greeks and conquered the Persian Empire, all the way to India. The failure of the Persians in conquering Greece is the reason that the bear in Daniel's prophecy, chapter 7, which represents Persia, had only "three ribs in its mouth between its teeth", meaning Lydia, Babylonia and Egypt (which we know now as Turkey, Irak and Egypt) Persia is prophesied about also in Daniel 8, where it is the "ram with two horns" which "charged toward the west and the north and the south". 

The Persian Empire didn't gave the Jews their land back, but kept it as a part of its territory. However, the Persian kings helped the Jews to go back to Jerusalem - those who wanted - and to rebuild the temple and the city (especially its walls) That's the history Ezra and Nehemiah tells, and it was in those times when Haggai and Zechariah prophesied. We can read about the good influence of some Persian kings on the Jewish people: Cyrus the Great ordered to let them go back to Jerusalem and restore the city with the temple, and both Darius Hystaspes and Artaxerxes reinforced that decree (Ezra 6:14) Xerxes is related to another Bible book, Esther. He protected the Jews from being obliterated by Haman, killed him (Esther 8:9-10) and let Mordecai the Jew to write a decree that allowed the Jews to defend themselves from anyone wanting to kill them or seize their properties (Ester 9) This history is the reason of the Purim feast, celebrated every year in Israel. 

In Romans 15:4 we read, "For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope". "Endurance" in this verse comes from Greek υπομονη (upomoné) which means "steadfastness, constancy, endurance, patience, longanimity". Observe that we are not talking about the kind of patience we need in a traffic jam. Daniel had to have patience until his death without seeing those prophecies fulfilled, and those who have seen prophecies fulfilled, as Joseph in Egypt or Abraham, waited patiently many years. 

"Encouragement" in Ro 15:4 comes from Greek παρακλησις (paráklesis) which means "exhortation, admonition, encouragement, consolation, comfort, solace". From the same root comes the verb παρακαλεω (parakaléo, "to exhort, encourage, comfort, cheer up") and one of the names of God, the παρακλητος (parákletos) which means an "advocate, intercessor, comforter, helper". This is the word that describes Jesus Christ Our Lord in 1 John 2:1, and the Holy Spirit in John 14:26, translated as "advocate", the one who is at your side to help you, comfort you and defend you, the one who has your back. 

Where is your trust? Is it in your riches, in your name, in your ability, in your connections? Or is it in the Advocate, Comforter, Helper and Intercessor Jesus Christ, and His Holy Spirit? Are you stuck because of something money can't buy, or down because your name or ability means nothing, or alone because your connections are only useful for good times, but they abandon ship when it is sinking? Do you find endurance and encouragement in God's Word, or outside it? In the Son of God, or in anyone else? 

Jesus is at your door, and He knocks. If you hear His voice and open the door, He will enter and eat with you. His will is to pardon your sins. He is your perfect advocate because He paid for those sins. When Satan accuses you in the heavenly court, He is the One who defends you, the one who says "he is mine", "she is mine". The only thing you need is to repent and ask Him for forgiveness. He came to justify you, but you have to confess that you need this justification. We all sinned and fell short of God's glory. But the will of God is to have His glory shining in us. 

If you have not yet received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, don't wait any longer! He wants to come to your life and make you whole. He wants you to be victorious and living in the truth, not defeated and trusting lies. All you have to do is to ask Him for forgiveness and to receive Him as your Lord and Savior. He'll do the rest!

In the love of Jesus, your brother

Israel Leonard

PS. Jesus is coming soon!