In Daniel’s vision the fourth beast is also said to have ten horns. “While I was thinking about the horns, there before me was another horn, a little one, which came up among them; and three of the first horns were uprooted before it. This horn had eyes like the eyes of a human being and a mouth that spoke boastfully.”1 When he requests further explanation of the meaning of that fourth beast2 he hears that the king who will bring the three other kings down will speak ‘words’ against the Most High and ‘oppress the people’ of the Most High; he will purpose to try to change the set times and the laws. The ‘holy people’ will be delivered into his hands for a time, times and half a time.3 For three and a half years, that is, 42 months or 1,260 days the anti-Christ denounces the Father and the Son.4 John says of the anti-Christ and his followers and their times: “They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.”5 So it seems to be the case that the anti-Christ comes from within Christianity. His roots lie in the Jewish- Christian traditions. That is his spiritual birthplace. And the downfall of that which is best, often in reaction to it sometimes develops into the worst. For instance sons and daughters of Christian clergy or good Christian homes and families when rejecting their Christian upbringing can in reaction develop into strong anti-christian types of people. People can turn fanatically and angrily against the Christian faith and culture. Instead of indifference or disinterest as in the case of many others who were not brought up in the Christian faith. They can become fierce, fanatical opponents, who sometimes spout hatred from their eyes and through the words of their mouths. They seem to be generally speaking very friendly and tolerant, but may suddenly turn rabidly intolerant if you start to talk about sin and grace, faith and conversion, or about God’s Commandments for your personal life and society. They hate it when you say what the Bible teaches about abortion and euthanasia, getting married instead of living together, pornography and free sexual morals. The Bible is not against the pleasures of sex but it gives the guidelines for true joy of the physical experience of love, by limiting it within the framework of marriage. When the ‘spirit of anti-Christ’ is on the rise, those who reject the Bible and the Christian faith will turn their hatred and fury against Bible believing Christians and observing Jews. Black becomes white and white becomes black. The followers of the spirit of anti-Christ become increasingly convinced that such “old-fashioned believers” are the true enemies of the State and they are blocking the way to the bright future of the New World Order of peace and prosperity! Hence, the prevalent idea will be that such people should either adapt to the ‘new way of thinking’ or they simply will have to be removed. Such people block the way to real progress, they say. Conservatives!
Daniel also says this concerning the ‘anti-Christ’: “He will show no regard for the gods of his ancestors.”6 He rejects that tradition. He also rejects the women’s idols, those popular and ‘soft’ forms of superstition and idols. Daniel 11:37 can also be interpreted that he has no desire for women as in Greek civilisation the love between two men was considered to be of a higher order than the love between a man and a woman. He will worship the’ god of fortresses’. The ‘god of fortresses” is the personification of ‘war’, meaning he will regard no other god, but only ‘war’, violence, revolution for gaining power; the ‘taking of fortresses’ he will make his ‘god’. Hungry for power to be reached by violence and continuous revolution and ‘war’. No soft compromises. And he will worship this ‘god’ above all as the means of his gaining world-power. He lives by violence, by himself, considering himself to be ‘divine’ in the depths of his being. Read the biographies of such leaders like Alexander the Great, Hitler, Stalin, Napoleon, Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong, and so forth. They had this sense of ‘divine calling’ upon their lives – totally believing in themselves – that would make them invincible.
“I have come in My Father’s name,” says Jesus, “and you do not accept Me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him.”7 People want to be able to worship an idol, to be a devoted ‘fan’ – derived from the word ‘fanatic’. People look to each other. What ‘they’ think is what I think as well. I do not want to be an outsider. I will follow the ‘leaders’ and the current fads and fashions.
The anti-Christ’s system of government directs itself against ‘the saints’ during the tribulation – Israel and the Jewish people and also all those who hold God high, and His Name – and will ‘defeat’ them.8 So this is not only against Israel and the Jewish people, but also against all those who hold God high, and His Name, as He has revealed that Name in Christ. It is against God’s tent (Tabernacle) and against those who ‘dwell’ in Heaven, who have their citizenship in Heaven9: the ‘multitude no one can count’, the ‘woman’, the ‘hundred and forty-four thousand’, the ‘worshippers in the Temple’. Yet – as always over the centuries when the ‘people of God’ were suffering under minor ‘antichrists’ – also enjoyed divine protection, even though many of them will die as martyrs during the trials and tribulations, and the ‘great tribulation’.10 They all were and are expecting Jesus, who will transform their lowly bodies to become like His glorious body. He will dry their tears. They were under God’s tent on earth. They will also be under His tent, then perfect in Heaven. The ‘anti-Christ’ causes the falling away,11 blasphemes God,12 declares God’s Law to be invalid,13 breaks the Law,14 deifies himself15 and defeats the saints.16 But he will end up in the lake of burning sulphur, the ‘lake of fire’, Revelation 19:20; 20:10 and 14; Matthew 25:41.
• According to some expositors the ‘god of the fortresses’ refers historically to the Greek god, Zeus, who was worshipped by Antioch IV Epiphanes who is a type of anti-Christ from the time of the Maccabees. It was to Zeus that he wanted to consecrate the Temple in Jerusalem, so that pigs could be slaughtered there. There is no greater abomination imaginable as far as the Jews are concerned. And this was why the Maccabees’ rebellion started.
• The Maccabees overthrew the Greeks and re-consecrated and rededicated the Temple in 165 BC. This glorious event is still commemorated every year at the Jewish Hanukkah festival annually.
• The ‘one desired by women’ according to some is probably the god Tammuz (Canaan), Adonis (Greece), Osiris (Egypt), who is grieved for annually because he dies, but who also rises again immortally. Compare Ezekiel 8:14.
Bible References:
1.Daniel 7:8 NIV 2.Daniel 7:19–22 3.Daniel 7:25 4.1 John 2:22–23 5.1 John 2:19 6.Daniel 11:36–37 NIV 7.John 5:43 8.Daniel 7:21 9.Philippians 3:20–21 10.Revelation 7:13–17, 11:1–5, 12:16–17 11.Daniel 11:32 12.Daniel 7:25, 11:36 13.Daniel 7:25 14.Daniel 8:12 15.Daniel 9:27, 11:31 and 36, 12:11 16.Daniel 7:25, 11:33–35
