Daniel 11 • Footsteps in the Future
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Let me ask that you would look in your bibles at Daniel chapter 10.
Daniel chapter 11, actually, not 10.
Daniel chapter 11.
In all candor, one of the more difficult chapters in all of scripture because of its length and its complexity.
Lots of allusions to kings and queens and battles and chariots long ago.
And also a future still to come.
As we consider both of those things, the roadmap of the past and the bridge to the future, we understand that what God is doing is giving us assurance of His care in all times, which is our cause for thanksgiving.
Let's stand as we'll read this portion of God's Word, Daniel 11, first verses 1-4.
The man in white linen that began this vision in chapter 10 now continues speaking in chapter 11.
"'And as for me, in the first year of Darius the Mede, I stood up to confirm and strengthen him.
And now I will show you the truth.
Behold, three more kings shall arise in Persia, and a fourth shall be far richer than all of them.
And when he has become strong through his riches, he shall stir up all against the kingdom of Greece.
Then a mighty king shall arise, who shall rule with great dominion and do as he wills.
And as soon as he has arisen, his kingdom shall be broken and divided toward the four winds of heaven, but not to his posper--, posterity, nor according to the authority with which he ruled, for his kingdom shall be plucked up and go to others besides these.'"
Now, after this initial, there are centuries of history future to Daniel that are discussed in remaining verses.
Let's go on toward the end and look at verse 40, what happens at the end of all of that.
Verse 40, "'At the time of the end, the king of the south shall attack him, but the king of the north shall rush upon him like a whirlwind, with chariots and horsemen, and with many ships.
And he shall come into countries and shall overflow and pass through.
He shall come into the glorious land.
And tens of thousands shall fall, but these shall be delivered out of his hand: Edom and Moab and the main part of the Ammonites.'"
More battling is discussed.
Then verse 45, "'And he shall pitch his palatial tents between the sea and the glorious holy mountain.
Yet he shall come to his end, with none to help him.'"
Now, remember, Daniel 10, 11, and 12 are all one vision.
And to see where this is going, we need just the first couple of verses out of chapter 12.
"'At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people.
And there shall be a time of trouble, such as has never been since there was a nation till that time.
But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book.
And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.'"
Let's pray together.
>>> Father, these words are hard for us just to even absorb, much less to understand.
And, yet, You give them not only to tell us about a past but to alert us to a future and to have us give thanks for a God who lives in both.
Help us, we pray, Father, to be a people who would, knowing the past, would live for the future in Jesus' name.
We ask this in the name of our Savior.
Amen.
>>> Please be seated.
Some years ago, a friend of mine went camping along the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest.
He arrived at the campground after dark.
So setting up the tent and getting all the pegs in the ground was not much fun, but the terror was yet to come.
A huge storm hit the campground, hit the tent.
This is certainly a week in Peoria to be talking about winds and storms, right?
Whipping the tent, pulling up the pegs, but worse than the wind, worse than the rain, was the thunder.
It was incessant.
So heavy was the thunder it seemed to shake the ground.
And it did not stop.
It continued all night long.
As the friend of mine was in his tent kind of wondering, "What is this crashing that shakes the earth and will not stop?"
Because the tent was flimsy, his imagination began to run away with him.
Was this an earthquake?
Trees crashing, mud slides, tornadoes, Tyrannosaurus rex
You know.
[Laughter]
What was creating this earth shaking thundering?
In the early light, he saw.
And what he saw gave him not only explanation but peace.
For in the river, having broken loose from their moorings in the storm, were huge logs six feet in diameter and more that were crashing into one another.
And as the storm drove them, the crashing made the thunder that was so terrifying in the night.
But peace came, not only when he saw the huge instruments of the noise but the realization that they were constrained within the banks of the river and could not hurt him.
What Daniel is doing in Daniel chapter 11 is telling us of the crashing of nations, one after another, according to the appointment of God.
And as much as it might threaten and terrorize the people of God through centuries, God is saying at the same time, "But these events are within the banks of the river of the plan of God."
And nothing shall happen apart from His appointment and beyond His intention.
What is God telling us through Daniel and particularly the man in white linen who's explaining the vision to Daniel in this passage?
First, peace comes simply when we know that God knows.
He is not looking at the events of history past or future and saying, "Oops.
Oh, I didn't know that was going to happen."
Rather, He sees the big picture from a long time ago.
The events that are being explained in this eleventh chapter of Daniel were future to Daniel, but we can even look back in secular histories and see what is being explained.
In verse 2, we are told that after Cyrus, the King of Persia, who is letting the Israelites return, there will come even a greater king who will begin to threaten Greece and call upon them to ultimately attack this nation.
That we know to be Artaxerxes the last of the kings who would begin to let the people of Israel go from captivity back to the Promised Land.
In verse 3 and 4, that king from Greece will come.
He will be great but will not rule long.
Rather, his kingdom will be undone and divided among four.
We know this to be Alexander the Great who conquered the known civilized world of these people before he was age 30, then died.
Then his four generals divided up the empire.
Then we read further in verses 5 and 6 that one of those generals would grow great in power, but one of his princes, one of his successors, would even grow stronger in a northern kingdom.
And we know that that rise to power is Antiochus Epiphanes, the one who would exert such cruelty upon the people of Israel from Syria in that day and age.
Here we see kingdoms rising, falling, being superseded by another.
It's terrifying to God's people but not beyond God's purpose.
If you could just let your eyes look at verse 2; there are key words that appear there that will be repeated over and over again through this chapter.
Verse 2, "'Now I show you the truth.
Behold, three more kings shall arise.'"
The end of that verse, "'And when one has become strong through his riches, he shall stir up all against the kingdom.'"
One shall arise.
He shall become strong.
And then verse 4, "'His kingdom shall be broken.'"
It is said over and over and over again, as successive kingdoms are identified.
They shall arise; they shall grow strong; they shall be broken.
They shall arise; they shall grow strong; they shall be broken.
Until we get to the final kingdom where we are told one shall arise but shall not be broken, and his kingdom is eternal.
We are told of what God will ultimately do for and through His people.
I remember the Gaither Band used to sing a song once upon a time, "Kings and kingdoms shall all pass away, but there is something about that Name."
That Name is O King Eternal, and He shall not pass away.
And that is the big picture that Daniel is explaining to us, and it helps us to some extent to know that God knows the big picture.
But, of course, the question for any individual living through troubled times is, "But does He know my details?
Does He know enough to care about and deal with what's happening in a more intimate part of His creation like my world?"
And for that reason, Daniel 11 is not just telling us about the big picture but is telling us about intimate details in such multiplicity, in such detailed ways that it's hard even to believe that this is in scriptures as they are.
One commentator that I consulted simply said it this way: "Nowhere else in scripture is prediction so detailed and specific."
Now, we can't go through all these details, but let me give you a few examples.
Verse 8 predicts an event in which the ruler of the southern kingdom, we know that to be Egypt, under the Ptolemies, the pharaohs of a particular time, would go to the northern kingdom, that's Syria, and would take metal gods back to Egypt.
Now, we even know from the secular histories this is Ptolemy the Third, who would invade Syria and would claim Egyptian gods who had been stolen by the Syrians 300 years earlier and then would claim the treasury of Syria and take that back to Egypt as well.
Pretty specific details centuries after Daniel is writing these words.
It's even more specific than that.
Verse 17 predicts that a northern king will try to arrange a peace by trying to get his daughter to marry a southern king.
This was one of the Seleucid rulers of Syria who decided that the way to control Egypt was to get his daughter to marry an Egyptian pharaoh who was a young boy at the time and by marrying a younger boy to actually take control of Egypt for the north.
Great plan.
One problem: The Syrian daughter was named Cleopatra, not the one you're thinking about with the diamond in her bellybutton and looking like Elizabeth Taylor.
[Laughter]
See, some of you are old enough to know what that's about.
[Laughter]
But another Cleopatra.
The problem was, she fell in love with the Egyptian prince and therefore served Egypt rather than her father, the serit--, Syrian king.
As Daniel says in verse 17, the plan failed for the king of the north.
But the greater details are in verse 21 and much of the rest of the chapter.
In verse 21 and following, we are told about a culminating ruler of the north who is a contemptible person who takes control of the kingdom by flatteries and manipulation.
And then we read details we have heard in previous chapter.
Verse 31, "'This contemptible person will profane the temple, take away the regular burnt offerings, and set up the abomination that makes desolate.'"
This we heard about earlier in Daniel chapter 7 and 8 and now we're getting more detail.
What we recognize is Antiochus Epiphanes.
He was the Syrian ruler who now wanted to take over the civilized world as he knew it.
And one of his major objects was to take control of Egypt.
And so he went down through Israel to invade Egypt and was met there by a Roman general of the rising Roman Empire.
And one of the most interesting details of all secular history: The Roman general stood next to Antiochus Epiphanes and drew a line in the sand around Antiochus.
I did this in the snow last night, thinking about what I was going to be preaching.
He drew a circle around him and said, "If you move out of the si--, circle toward Egypt, you are an enemy of Roma.
But if you move out of the circle to the north, going back your home way, then you have no fight with Rome."
And Antiochus Epiphanes, recognizing the rising rule of Rome, turned away from Egypt into Israel.
In embarrassment and rage, he declares himself to be god.
And do you remember?
For any mom in Israel who would have or allow her son to be circumcised, not only would the mom be put in slavery: Her child would be hung outside the door of the house where that child had been dedicated to God.
Antiochus Epiphanes put Zeus in the Holy of Holies, the abomination of desolation, and a pig upon the altar of the Most High God.
This was the most terrible ruler that Israel had ever faced.
And God simply says to His people, "Heads up; it's coming."
And it's not just a large picture: It is in amazingly small detail.
But God is not only saying He knows the big picture and the details: He is saying He knows the grand design of it all.
And for that reason, I'm going to ask you to look in your bibles particularly at the verses around Daniel 11:36, because something amazing and special happens there beyond even the big picture of history and beyond the details as God is not just explaining to Daniel what's going to happen a few centuries ahead of him but what is going to happen even future to us in our reality now.
Verse 35, Daniel is writing down what the man in white linen is telling him will happen through Antiochus Epiphanes.
He says, "'And some of the wise,'" that is those who have trusted in God, "'shall stumble.'"
Now, the word "stumble" there has already been explained in verse 33.
Those who have trusted in God, some will suffer and die.
Under Antiochus Epiphanes, "'Some of the wise shall stumble so that they may be refined, purified, and made white by their trials until the time of the end, for it still awaits the appointed time.'"
Now, most commentators look at that particular verse and say it's almost as though Daniel has put a drawstring on the bag of human events to that point and drawn it to a close.
That he has said, "This is what will happen.
You have it now explained to you until the end of time, which still awaits its appointment."
As though that set of human events has now bookended and we're going to start something else.
That begins in verse 36.
"'And the king,'" now a new king, "'shall do as he wills.
He shall exalt himself and magnify himself above every god.'"
Who is this?
When is this?
Verse 40, "'At the time of the end, the king of the south shall attack him, but the king of the north shall rush upon him like a whirlwind.'"
When is that?
When is there going to be a new battle among the nations?
When is there going to be some great conflagration where the world itself seems to be at war north and south?
Verse 45, "'One shall come who places his palatial tents between the sea and the glorious holy mountain.
Yet he shall come to his end, with none to help him.'"
There is going to be one who comes and we are told through Daniel: He will destroy many in the glorious land.
And he will ultimately put his tents on the land that is between the sea and the holy mountain.
The sea almost everyone believes it the Mediterranean and the holy mountain either Sinai or Mount Carmel where Elijah met the prophets of Baal.
And that area is what we know as Armageddon, the plain in which a great battle shall be fought at the end.
How do we know it is the end?
We have to go into chapter 12.
Remember?
It's the same vision.
The first two verses, "'At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people.
And there shall be a time of trouble, such as has never been since there was a nation till that time.
But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book.
And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.'"
It is the most clear statement of the resurrection of any Old Testament passage: that there will be a double resurrection at the end.
Some will rise to everlasting life, and some also will rise but to everlasting contempt.
We are immortal beings, and the reality of being immortal being is either heaven or hell is in our future.
And before that day, a great judgment.
There shall be a great battle in the plain of Armageddon, and that battle shall result in God's people being delivered.
But it is out of the hands of a monster who has already accomplished terrible and awful things.
What we understand from Daniel is that there is one that the Bible will ultimately call the antichrist who at the latter day will himself seek to overcome God by all the ways that we have now learned established one to be against the purposes of God.
Antiochus Epiphanes, that great nemesis of ancient Israel, is establishing the pattern by which we will ultimately understand the great enemy of Christ at the end of time.
Do you recognize the pattern?
It's been repeated for us three times now in the book Daniel.
On the world stage will come one who is lawless.
He will make a law unto himself.
He will be arrogant.
He will actually claim to be God.
He will seduce many of the wise.
Even God's people, many of them, will begin to believe he is the one.
Why?
Because he will perform signs and miracles that are false, but he will be ruthless, manipulative, and ultimately destined to defeat.
He shall fall, and none shall support him.
How do we know this is the case?
Because we're not depending upon Daniel alone.
We look at where these events and these descriptions are picked up in the New Testament as well.
Let me just remind you of a couple of places.
Do you remember in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, the apostle Paul says what is coming: "The mystery of lawlessness will be coming from a man of lawlessness who proclaims himself to be God, perfoms--, performs false signs and wonders, and ruthlessly attacks God's people."
It's picked up again by the apostle John in the book of Revelation, the thirteenth chapter.
There we are told that "One will come who will lead astray everyone whose name is not written in the Lamb's book of life."
And that that one will gather his armies on the plain of Armageddon, Revelation 13.
And then Revelation 16 and 17: There will be a great war, but ultimately God will defeat that one.
Now, you know what can just be interesting and curious for us?
Almost everyone wants me now to identify who is the antichrist.
And I'm not going to do it.
Obviously many mistakes have been made in Christian history of people who have kind of overstepped their bounds and identified either Hitler or Genghis Kahn or whatever the latest president is that we don't like, you know.
Who is the antichrist?
I don't think we are meant to know at this time.
I think we are meant to know at the time appointed.
And we shall know because we have learned to recognize him.
The pattern has been established to us.
I think of a time when my children and I when they were young took our first trip to Colorado Springs and went to that area that is known as the rock formation of the Garden of the Gods, down in a valley, an amazing series of rock formations that you drive with your car through.
It's just wonderful to see, but I can remember asking the park ranger as we were kind of descending into the valley.
Kind of, how are we going to find our way back once we get into there?
And he said, "It's not hard."
He said, "Just stay on this road, and when you get to the kissing camels, it will begin to circle back."
Okay, now I got a question: "What do you mean, 'kissing camels'?"
Well, when you get to the place where the road turns and you see the rock formation that looks exactly like camels kissing, you know: I know it when I see it.
We will know the antichrist when we see it: one who is arrogant, claiming to be God, doing false signs and miracles, claiming to deliver God's people by the ways that are not of Christ, so much so that people desiring the things of God will even compromise their faith in order to align with that one.
We are learning to recognize what is necessary but not just for some future day: The very same apostles who warn us about a future antichrist remoin--, remind us to beware today.
Remind you of a few verses.
The apostle Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2 in verse 7 says this: "The mystery of lawlessness is already at work."
That's the apostle Paul writing to those at Thessalonica, even back in his day, saying, "The man of lawlessness is going to come, but the mystery, the ways of lawlessness are already among us."
The apostle John who writes about the antichrist in the battle of Armageddon nonetheless says in 1 John 4:3, "Every spirit that does not acknowledge that Jesus is from God is the spirit of the antichrist."
We're not just to say, "I don't have to worry about antichrist issues until some future day."
The thing that I have to recognize is in my day, in my time, at my school, in my place of work, in my neighborhood, there is the spirit of the antichrist.
There are those things that are working against God that are tempting me to abandon God's way, because supposedly there's a better way that is not of Christ.
And I am preparing for that day by being faithful in this day and recognizing there are always challenges to the people of faith in every day and every day.
Always there is opposition that is going to be present.
Listen, we have to just acknowledge that there are generational differences even among evangelicals.
There was a time in which these discussions of end times were kind of all of the rage, because so many of the details of scripture seemed to echo details of the world in the Cold War era.
And so lots of people were very enamored with all of this discussion.
But there's a later time in which we begin to recognize that create a lot of dissention and there were a lot of false rumors and there were a lot of silly things that were done and a lot of fearful things that were done among God's people, and so now there's a generation that just kind of doesn't want to deal with this.
But the Word of God is here for a purpose, as God is saying to His people, "A church that does not know the end of things does not have the nerve it needs for today's trials."
I need to know that when evil may seem to have its day, when terror comes and we cannot explain it, that that is not the end of the story, that that is not all that God is doing, that God is reminding us: "Do not fear, little flock, for God has chosen to give you the kingdom."
And because I know the big picture and the design of all things, faithfulness is called for, not just in some future day but for in this day where the spirit of lawlessness is already developing and the spirit of antichrist is already present as we are challenged over and over again not to be ready for what God calls us to do in our time and our place.
God is telling us, "I know," and that's meant to comfort us.
But even more, we are to be comforted by the knowledge that God cares about what He knows, and He cares about us as we face all of these trials.
How do we know He cares?
First, He just cares enough to warn.
He's given us the heads up about events narrow and large, future and present.
He cares enough to warn.
And so He would say in verse 29 and 31 to the people of God through Daniel, "There's an evil one who's going to come.
He will put a pig on the altar.
He will provide an abomination of desolation so much so that you can hardly imagine what's going to happen to the temple.
You need to know this is happening."
He will come with a rage.
And the reality is, when he came, Antiochus Epiphanes, 80,000 in Israel would be slain.
Think of that.
I mean, in the last few weeks, we grieve for the hundreds who have been slain by terrorists in three separate nations.
But Daniel was talking about a day in which 80,000 would be slain in Israel alone.
And God's saying, "I need to tell you something very plainly: Faithfulness in a fallen world can be really hard."
Sometimes we fail as a church, because we face people who don't want to be here because they have been burned over by false promises.
If you just trust in Jesus, your marriage will have no trouble.
If you just trust in Jesus, you will have great success in your career.
If you just trust in Jesus, family life is just going to be easy street.
And what the apostles and the prophets have said is, "Following Christ may be one hard, long slog in a fallen world."
And God's people are not faithless because that happens.
I remain faithful, because I know God knows this and I know ultimately He has provided a way out of it.
But to now, for this purpose, He calls me to faithlessness even when the mysteries and the challenges of the antichrist are present right now.
Think of the pilgrims that we will celebrate this week.
They had been persecuted in two nations before they came here.
And then, of the 102 that arrived on the Mayflower, half of them, 51, would die in the first year; 51 celebrated that first Thanksgiving.
Think of how they had to believe: If they were to be that city on the hill, God had to be blessing them beyond their trials.
He had told them that it would be hard to live for Him in a fallen world, and they believed it.
It did not undo their faith: It prepared them for their challenges.
And the slaves who would follow in the United States from the time forward for 240 years, many of them Christians, would live in chains, believing that God would bring it to an end, though it might never be seen in their own lifetime, remaining faithful to God that there was no earthly reason to do so.
And they're not the only ones.
There are Christians today who live in the land where the antichrist of spirit would seem to dominate already: India, China, Syria, Pakistan, Russia, Peoria.
Where some of you face business decisions or colleagues or friends or family who press and press and press and it feels like it is not worth it.
You wonder, "God, do You know what's going on here?"
And God is saying, "I have told you all along it could be hard."
"In this world you will face tribulation: Do not fear; I have overcome the world," says Jesus.
When we recognize that, we look not just to the warning of God to be heads up about a fallen world.
We recognize God is at the very same moment because of His care giving warning to the wicked.
Verse 45 just ends with, of the antichrist that is being described, "'He shall some to his end, with none to help him.'"
Over and over again, just as we are told in this passage of that repeated series, one will rise, grow strong, and then be broken: A phrase that is repeated even more than that is "at his appointed time."
Kingdoms rise, kingdoms fall, schemes rise, schemes fall apart, evil comes, evil goes at its appointed time, as though God is not just describing the thunder: He is describing the banks of the river.
It is according to what I intend to drive people to dependence upon me, to drive people away from the sin that is so awful, to have people actually understand how difficult it is to live for a spirit of antichrist when it is Christ who is the ultimate Ruler of the world.
And we see it happening, if we have eyes to see, if we will open our eyes, over and over again that there is warning out of love even to the wicked.
He shall be broken, and none shall help him.
And so, in a week, we hear the news reports of a Charlie Sheen and a Lamar Odom for which we should only grieve, but recognize those who have put lifestyle and career and publicity into denying marriage and morality pay a huge price.
And the reality is many following their example think they can do it with impunity.
And God simply warns.
He warns when you see terrorism in Paris or in Lebanon or wherever you see it.
And so many times, those who perform the awful acts do not live out the week afterwards.
And there is God's warning: "He shall come to an end."
This is not the path.
This is not the way.
God warns, but He does so because He also intends to act.
And the act that is described here of salvation is unbelievable and must be believed.
It's incredible just as you think where we are in the sequence of this vision.
If you go back to chapter 11 and verse 1, I reminded you as I began reading that these words are actually Daniel's re--, record of what the man in white is saying.
That man in white who came in chapter 10, we saw, as representative of the Lord Jesus ends the tenth chapter with these words: "'I will tell you what is inscribed in the book of truth: there is none who contends by my side against these except Ma--, Michael, your prince.'"
Do you remember?
There's this kind of not easy for our western ears to hear, our scientific engineering ears to hear, that right with the physical aspects of the geopolitical universe are the spiritual realities of heaven, which are actually the determinative realities of the world that's unfolding.
And in that reality of the spiritual battle that is going on in Persia for Israel and God's people, for reasons we don't entirely understand, the man in white says, "No one came to help me except Michael."
And we struggle with that.
Does that mean that Jesus can't fight the battle that needs to be fought?
And the answer is actually at the beginning of chapter 11 in verse 1.
Remember the man in white is still talking.
And he says, "'As for me, in the first year of Der--, of Darius the Mede, I stood up to confirm and strengthen him,'" meaning Michael.
If you even look in your bibles, you'll see where the quotation marks are, to say, "This is the man in white talking and saying, 'I came to strengthen Michael.
He came to fight with me and I gave him the strength.'"
We fight with all the power of His might, and apparently the angels do the same.
And now we are being told that God says, "I will rescue, and I will rescue through my angel who I will give power to fight for my people so that ultimately you shall be delivered."
Chapter 12 is closing it out.
And first two verses say what will happen because the Lord has strengthened Michael.
"'At that time shall arise,'" there it is again, that word "arise," but now it's not another kingdom.
"'At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people.'"
"He shall give his angels charge over you to guard you in all your ways," Psalm 91.
"'Now shall arise Michael who has been given charge over you.
And there shall be a time of trouble, such as has never been since there was a nation till that time.
But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name is found,'" where?
"'Written in the book,'" what will be described in Revelation as the Lamb's book of life.
It's the great warning to God's people that we have to identify: There is an end to this age; there is an end to the fight; there is an end to the trouble.
But the end comes with God's blessing upon those who have been wise enough to name Jesus Christ as the Lamb who was slain in their behalf.
Their names are written in the Lamb's book of life.
And what is the consequence of that?
Daniel 12 and verse 2, "'And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.'"
It may not be in the spirit of the age, but the reality of scripture is there is a heaven and there is a hell.
And God is saying to His people, "I will send Michael.
This end--, this earth's end is not simply what is before your eyes.
I am working a grander design.
I am working a greater scheme."
And the reality is these troubles shall end.
Do not be dissuaded.
Do not be distracted.
God is performing a great work as He is turning the dependence of His people upon Himself by the troubles of this world and even turning the wicked from their wickedness by the reality of the end of their, of the end of their own purposes.
God is saying, "I will accomplish My purposes and I will resurrection My people to eternity."
And that reality is meant to give us hope beyond all the difficulties that we would face in any day.
We love the poem about footprints in the sand, remember?
You know, I saw the two footprints where it was easy going.
But when the trail got streep--, steep and the valley got dark, "Lord, I only see one set of footprints."
And the Lord says, "Well, that's where I carried you.
You were never alone."
And we love that sense of resolution.
But do you recognize that's just looking backwards?
What God is doing in Daniel 11 is He is pointing forward too, and He's saying, "There's one set of footprints there, too.
And I carry you all the way into eternity, not by your strength but by my own.
I provide those who will fight for you.
I provide the ultimate victory.
And I provide eternal life for those who trust in Me."
And for that reason, we have this great lesson being taught to us.
Listen, if God has carried me in the past and He's going to carry me in the future, then I'm going to trust Him to carry me today.
And I will live for Him now, even if it does not make sense in the world, even if it does not make sense to my friends or my family.
I will live for Him now, because I know the end of all things, and He shall deliver His people eternally.
And I live for that day.
I think of the wonderful testimony of a woman that Kathy and I met while we lived in St. Louis.
Her experience was not what I would have wanted.
Connie Elder was an African-American mom who began to go to churches to talk about the black genocide, which is abortion in this land.
And she began to say, "If you actually look what is happening in this world, poverty and desperation are driving a race of people to abort their children.
And what you have to recognize is the racism of abortion as one of the reasons to fight it."
And she began to go to church after church after church with her message.
In one week, she went to five different churches.
That was the week that the bullet came into her window.
And she wrote later of her experience after the bullet.
"I am not afraid.
God is good.
Had I been doing the laundry as usual, I would have been in the hallway where the bullet came.
But God had me elsewhere.
And I want to encourage you by that not to quit with whatever God has called you to do, not give up, not cower in fear.
These past weeks of fighting for the children of my race have been great experiences for me.
They have been God awesome days, but now Satan, the loser, wants to take it all away.
He cannot.
Do whatever God has appointed you to do this day.
Don't waste your time.
Time is short.
Get over the anger that you may have at God for the difficulties in your life.
They are a distraction from the reality of His love for you.
Jesus Christ won the victory on the cross.
God is still on His throne.
And it ain't over 'til the angels sing."
[Laughter]
Listen, I don't know what key Michael sings in.
But it is a victory song.
And because it is a victory song, we know the end from this beginning.
God has called us to purposes beyond Himself.
Yes, the trouble can be hard.
The tribulation can come.
The difficulties may seem to push us down.
But He shall deliver His people.
Even if it is from death itself, He shall deliver His people.
And for that reason, we trust Him, because we know this: Regardless of what happens now, it ain't over 'til the angels sing.
And they shall sing victory for King Jesus, my Savior and yours.
>>> Father, would You so teach us the truths of Your Word that courage would rise with danger and faithfulness in the face of whatever challenge You call us to.
Your Word is plain: Do not fear; do not faint, for our labors are not in vain.
We would fight for You, live for You, struggle through for You, God of all creation, because You have shown Yourself faithful in the past and will be faithful in the future so that we can walk with You now.
Lead on, O King Eternal, the faithful one, that we may follow You.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.