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Three Angels Fellowship SDA Church

Garhett Morgan

Antichrist’s Most Wanted

Father in heaven, Lord, I just want to thank you so much for your goodness.

And Father, this church is much bigger than any 1 person, but that you are at the helm of it.

As we open your Word, We pray that we would understand.

Spiritual things are spiritually discerned, and we ask for Your Spirit here this morning.

All right, so if you would, take your Bibles and go to the book of Daniel.

Now, in Revelation seminars, we really do a good job of covering lots of different portions of the book of Daniel and Revelation.

By the way, if you haven't heard about it yet, you will in the upcoming weeks.

We're going to be having a Revelation seminar of our own this fall, which I'm really excited for, so stay tuned for that.

But 1 of the things that we talk about in these Revelation seminars is the work of the Antichrist power that we find throughout the Bible.

You find hints of him in the Old Testament, but you really see this Antichrist power come alive and be prophesied about in the New Testament.

Of course, John talks about the Antichrist power a few places.

He's mentioned in the book of Daniel by a different name.

Revelation continues to talk about the Antichrist's power as the harlot that sits upon a scarlet-colored beast.

There's lots of mysteries in the book of Daniel and Revelation.

And like I mentioned, we talk about a lot of them in our Revelation seminars that I'm sure many of you, if not all of you, have been through and you'll have the opportunity to at the end of 2025 of this year.

However, there's 1 portion of the book of Daniel that we don't cover very often.

We cover the image with the head of gold and all of that.

We cover Daniel 7 usually pretty well as well with all the different beasts like the lion and the bear and the leopard with the 4 different heads.

We cover Daniel 8, verse 14 really well, the 2300-day prophecy.

We cover that specifically because that's where our church was kind of born out of.

But the beginning of Daniel 8, We really don't spend a lot of time on and I find that to be a tragedy because Daniel chapter 8 Really gives the other end of the Antichrist attack specifically towards the church and the people of God So we're gonna be taking a look at that today If you have your Bibles take a look at Daniel chapter 8 We're gonna be looking a lot in the book of Daniel as well as some other places in Scripture, so have your Bibles handy today.

You're going to definitely be in them a lot.

So Daniel chapter 8, we'll start this off, says this.

Daniel 8, 1, in the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar, a vision appeared to me, even me Daniel, after that which appeared to me at the first." So he references Daniel 7.

So he says, after I saw the vision of all the different animals, the lion, the bear, then I saw the second 1 afterwards in a different place, in a different location.

Verse 2, and I saw in a vision, and it came to pass when I saw that I was at Shishun, now depending on your translation it might say Susen, same thing, in the palace, which is in the province of Elam, and I saw in a vision and I was by the river of Uli." So here's a couple of different things about what we've read so far.

The third year of Belshazzar, which is the grandson of King Nebuchadnezzar.

Nebuchadnezzar was away at war and so he left his grandson in charge of the city of Babylon, which is this Belshazzar guy.

It was the third year, which was about 548 BC, so about 550 years before the birth of Jesus this vision takes place.

Babylon is still the nation, the 1 world empire in power, although there's some other nations that are starting to, well, it's starting to give Babylon a run for its money.

Babylon is on the decline, and then there's this other nation called the Persian Empire that Babylon is really starting to worry about.

And as we know, the Persians, with the help of the Medes, eventually conquer Babylon, and Daniel 8 alludes to this.

When it mentions that Daniel is in Shushan, this is a very interesting location.

Shushan is right on the border between Babylon and Persia, and as Babylon and Persia fought back and forth, sometimes Shushan would be in Babylonian captivity, sometimes it would be under Persian control, it would flip-flop back and forth over the course of the next few years.

Every once in a while, it actually was its own independent state.

But really, Babylon and Persia were constantly looking to have this location as its own in its own territory.

So this was a highly contested area right on the border between Babylon and Persia.

And that river that Daniel is looking at, where it says the River of Uli, that is the natural border between Babylon and Persia.

He's on Babylonian territory and he's looking towards Persian territory when he sees this dream.

And when he sees this dream, these animals, we're about ready to read, come out of this river or out of this water that he's looking at.

Also interesting to note, just for your curiosity, this is the exact same place that the book of Esther will take place in in about 70 years after this has taken place, right?

So 70 years later, Babylon has fallen, the Persians are up, Xerxes is there in power, and he has that big beauty pageant, and Esther becomes the queen of Persia, right?

This is the same place this takes place, except about 70 years later.

So this is the timeline that we're in, this is where we're at in geography, and Daniel is there and he's having this vision that is very, well, interesting.

By the way, this picture that I have on the screen is interesting.

I just typed into AI, describe Daniel 8, 1 through this, and this is what popped up, which is pretty wild, and we'll talk about it in just a minute.

But anyway, Daniel 8, verse 3 says this, "'Then I lifted up my eyes and saw, And behold, there stood before the river a ram which had 2 horns.

The 2 horns were high, but 1 was higher than the other, and the higher came up at last." Now, if you're familiar with prophecy, this should ring a bell.

So you have this ram, and this ram is coming up out of the river.

Whenever a beast comes up out of the water, it signifies a kingdom in Bible prophecy.

We don't have time to get into that today, but we can in the future.

Now the horns are high, and you can kind of notice it in the picture behind me, but 1 horn is stronger and higher than the other 1.

It's higher on the forehead than its second.

Now this should ring a bell for Bible students.

If you take just a look at Daniel chapter 7, so 1 chapter previous, You find Daniel looking at another vision.

He sees animals coming up out of the water, and he sees a beast in Daniel 7, verse 5.

Now, this isn't a ram, it's not a goat, but it's a bear.

In Daniel 7, verse 5, we see, and behold, another beast, a second like a bear, rose itself up on 1 side, had 3 ribs in its mouth.

By the way, the Persians, which is what this beast represents, conquered 3 nations, which is what the 3 ribs represent.

I believe it's the Lydians, the Egyptians, and the Babylonians, those are the 3 nations.

In its mouth, between the teeth of it, and they said, arise and devour much flesh.

So in Daniel chapter 7, you have a bear, 1 leg is stronger than the other, kind of walks with a limp.

Daniel chapter 8, you find this ram, it has 2 horns, but 1 horn is higher and stronger than the other.

The reason for this is when the Persians were looking at conquering the then known world, Babylon Specifically, they looked at the armies of Babylon, although Persia was really mighty, and they said to themselves, although we're really, really good, we're not strong enough to conquer Babylon.

So what we're going to do is we're going to partner up with the Medes.

The Medes were a tribal nation that weren't super strong.

They had a decent military force, but Persia and the Medes linked up together.

You might remember Cyrus the Mede that conquered Babylon.

The 2 linked, they formed an alliance, and they went after Babylon and the then known world and they won that battle and became the world conquerors.

The reason the Bible talks about 1 leg being stronger on the bear and 1 horn being higher than the other is because the Persians were much, much stronger.

We find that in Daniel chapter 7, we find that in Daniel chapter 8.

Daniel 7 and 8 are parallel chapters, except Daniel 8 gives us far more detail than Daniel 7 does.

There's no guesswork about who this ram is, because in Daniel 8, just take a look at verse 20, and it will tell you verbatim what this ram represents.

There's no guesswork or anything like that.

It tells you specifically who the ram is.

Daniel 8, 20 and 21 are the key to this chapter.

Daniel 8 verse 20 says this, the ram which you saw having 2 horns are the kings of, here it is, the Medes and the Persians.

So very plain, this is what this ram represents, the Medes and the Persians.

Daniel 8, verse 5, and as I was Considering, behold, a he goat came from the west on the face of the whole earth and touched not the ground." Have you ever seen a horse run at full gallop?

Antichrist’s Most Wanted

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