Pale Horse Rising - An Islamic Caliphate

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Chapter 3

The Ram and the He Goat of Media-Persia and Greece


 In Dan. 8: 3, Daniel sees a ram with two horns and is later told in Dan 8:20 The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia. Media-Persia, which became a huge Empire conquering most of the Middle East.

Vs. 5 introduces a he goat and is later told in Dan 8:21 And the rough goat is the king of Grecia: and the great horn that is between his eyes is the first king . This is Greece, under Alexander the Great and in the next two verses we see that he defeats Media/ Persia.

In Dan 8:6-8 The horn representing Alexander is broken off with his death and four smaller horns come up in it's place. Dan 8:22 Now that being broken, whereas four stood up for it, four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power.

These are 4 of his generals creating the four main kingdoms within the Grecian Empire.

In Dan 8 God was making reference to only the 4 most powerful dynasty's/kingdoms that would emerge out of the empire of Alexander the Great and yet remain Grecian.
 
Dan 8:9 And out of one of them came forth a rather small horn which grew exceedingly great toward the south, toward the east and toward the beautiful land.
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The Beautiful Land was Israel. 
 
This little horn comes out of one of the horns of the Grecian empire.  Now by the process of elimination we can see it is not the south or east horns. It is is in fact Antiochus IV Epiphanes, one of the kings that comes into power toward the end of the of the Seleucus Dynasty, the North horn (yellow on the map) that began attacking the king of the South and East and finally took control over Israel. 



Map:
Greece Splits into Four Empires
Map of Grecian empire
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Dan 8: 10-12 and it will grow up to the host of heaven and cause some of the stars to fall to the earth, and it trampled them down.  It even magnified to be equal with the Commander of hosts; and it removed the regular sacrifice from Him, and the place of His sanctuary was thrown down.  And on account of transgression the host will be given over along with the regular sacrifice; and it will fling truth to the ground and performs its will and prospers.

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Seleucus had captured Jerusalem and held it under Seleucid rule. A Jewish man was trying to bring down Onias the High priest and had failed. He then betrayed his people by going to tell Seleucus IV of the treasures in the temple and Seleucus sent an army to retrieve the treasures, but then God sent angels to defeat them. So the army returned to tell the king. But Seleucus IV had died by the time the army reached him and in his place a despicable man had taken the kingship, Antiochus IV.

 

Antiochus IV was angered when he heard the news and what they said God had done, so he replaced the High Priest, Onias, with Jason, opposing God. He appointed Jason to set up a new constitution and build a Grecian gymnasium in Jerusalem to promote Hellenism.  (We can read more about Antiochus IV in the next vision given to Daniel, called the Kings of the North, Dan 11:21-31.)

 

Note: Some people try to make this little horn, that grew exceedingly great, into an end days antichrist.  They seem to forget that this is a horn on the goat beast, which was Grecian. So, unless they are saying an antichrist will come out of Greece in the end times, then they are misleading people. In the last chapter (Dan 7) it was the leopard beast with 4 heads that was the Grecian empire, and it is the 4th beast, with ten horns, that would produce the little horn of the end times.

 
In Dan 8: 13 the question is asked,

"How long will the vision about the regular sacrifice apply, while the transgression causes horror, so as to allow both the holy place and the host to be trampled?"

He is told,

"For 2,300 evenings and mornings; then the holy place will be properly restored."

The sacrifices being abolished was what took place when Antiochus IV replaced the High Priest, Onias III, (Prince of the covenant) with Jason as High Priest, who began to Hellenize Jerusalem. Stopping the daily sacrifices. Menelaus then bought the bid for high priest and later killed Jason, but Menelaus was of the line of Benjamin not Levi.  This is a false High Priest, an abomination to God. Menelaus desecrated the Temple, ransacking it and taking the sacred vessels. 

Antiochus IV then went to Egypt for two months and the Jews heard he died in a war with Ptolemy and had a great celebration of his death. Antiochus had not died, and when he heard of this he returned and ransacked Jerusalem, and caused pigs to be sacrificed on the altar and the Jews were forced to either eat it or be tortured to death. Many chose death.  This sacrificing of pig on the altar went on for 1290 days, which caused a rebellion among the Jews and it took 3 years for them to defeat Antiochus IV and restore the Temple. The dedication of the Temple became known as Hanukkah. The miracle of the oil.

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 I believe that is why the angel said; "And the vision of the evenings and mornings which has been told to you is true." He knew the Jews would not count it from the time of the false High Priest stopping the sacrifices, but instead would count only from the time pigs were being sacrificed to Zeus. That is just my opinion..

Dan 8:26  And the vision of the evening and the morning which was told is true: wherefore shut thou up the vision; for it shall be for many days.

 Comparing this to the book of Revelation

The Beast of Revelation 13 is made up of body parts of the four beasts of Daniel 7.  He was only shown four great empires and one of them (the leopard) had 4 heads or kingdoms.  This means the four beasts in Daniel's vision had 7 heads altogether.
These seven heads have to be properly identified if we ever hope to truly understand these prophecies.

When reading about the beast of the end days we see that these seven heads are again used to identify where the beast of the end days will emerge from. John is told that 5 have fallen, one is, (in his time) and one is yet to come. For this head that existed at the time of John to be Rome, and the one “yet to come” to be a revived Roman empire then the 7 heads had to be disassociated with the actual 7 heads on Daniel’s four beasts and I don't find that to be historically correct.

drawing

Daniel is told that the Goat is the Grecian empire and it will be divided into four kingdoms. However, at first it was divided into many more than just four kingdoms (satrapies), but in the end the four most powerful did emerge. We have been told by scholars over the centuries that the 4 were; the Seleucus Dynasty in Babylonia, Ptolemy Dynasty in Egypt, Antpater in Greece and the 4th to be Lysimachus in Thrace, but I found this to be incorrect. With this identification of the four horns of the goat, all four of these kingdoms had already fallen by the time of John, the last one fell in 30 BC.
If the truth were known that the four most powerful of the satrapies of the Grecian empire were actually;

Seleucus Dynasty in Babylonia,
Ptolemy Dynasty in Egypt,
Antipatrid-Antigonid dynasties in Macedonia,
And Arsaced Dynasty of Parthia.

Then Parthia becomes the 6th head that was still alive in the time of John, which it was. It was not conquered until 224 AD by the Romans. Way past the time when John was given the Book of Revelation. When Rome conquered the Parthian Empire it is written “The last of the Grecian Empire had fallen”.
With this information then, and only then, do we see perfect harmony between the prophecies of Daniel and those of the Book of Revelation.
The seven heads, or kings/kingdoms of the Beast of Revelation are;

1. The lion-Babylon
2. The Bear-Media-Persia
3, 4, 5 and 6. The leopard of Greece with it’s four kingdoms

And as we will find out in the next vision of Daniel in Chapter 11 that the 7th head is;
7. The last days kingdom- Islamic Empire and revived empire as the 8th who is really one of the 7 come back for round two.

This is only possible to see when Parthia is given it's proper place as one of the 4 horns of the Goat.
Notice that all of these empires stemmed from the Middle East. Rome stemmed from the West not the North.
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God continues to identify the last days, Northern king, in the next vision given to Daniel called the King of the North. In 175 BC Antiochus IV  replaced the High Priest, Onias III, (Prince of the covenant) with Jason as High
Continue to chapter 4
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