Vision of the Ram & Goat (day 1) Daniel 8

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Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C. At 21 years old, he was called the most powerful and brilliant military genius of all time. He was a remarkable specimen of strength. But the interesting thing is that he had a drinking problem. And history records that he died of alcoholism. Drunk. Broken. No record here of any war that damaged him. No other nation coming up to attack him. He was just broken. Isn’t it amazing how the great ones of the world can fall over a simple problem like drinking? Ruined his life.

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Yeah.

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This is Hope for Today with Bible teacher and author, David Hawking. On today’s program, we begin a stunning new study in Daniel chapter 8. It’s David’s message, The Vision of the Ram and the Goat. Daniel, in this chapter, he sees a ram with two powerful horns pushing its way across the earth. And then out of nowhere, a goat comes charging, fast, furious, and unstoppable. It’s strange, it’s symbolic, and it’s not just history, it’s prophecy. What do these beasts mean? What’s really being unfolded in this vision? And why does it matter for you and me today? Stay with us. Day one of The Vision of the Ram and the Goat begins in just a moment. First, a quick word about Hope for Today that David’s shared.

SPEAKER 01 : 2:01

You know, folks, Hope for Today doesn’t have a church or organization behind us. We have no other way to raise funds for this radio ministry than the listeners. And that’s you. And we need your help. We are… not doing well financially, and we’re wanting to stay on this station. And I just pray that God will open up the windows of heaven and lay it on the hearts of His people. We’re partners in this. We do the speaking on the radio, but you support that by your gifts and prayers. Please keep praying for Hope for the Day. It’s now. It’s not next month. It’s right now. We’re just asking the Lord to open the hearts of God’s people. That’s all. And we are not taking any profits from all the resources that we have on our program. And thank you for your help.

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God bless you all. And friend, if you’d like to give, our number is 800-75-BIBLE in the U.S. and 888-75-BIBLE in Canada. Bible by the numbers 24253. You can also support the ministry at davidhawking.org. davidhawking.org, and we’ll have our address later in the program. Well, as promised, here’s David with today’s lesson.

SPEAKER 02 : 3:33

Take your Bibles and turn to Daniel chapter 8, please. Daniel chapter 8, the vision of the ram and goat. Not a football game, but one of the most interesting prophecies in the book of Daniel, and once again, very controversial as people try to interpret it in the light of our times. Lots of disagreement here. I’d like you to notice five things about this chapter if you like to keep your thoughts organized, and hopefully you do. In the opening two verses, we have the importance of the place and the time of the vision. And I guess what I would mention to you is that the passage says that it was in the third year of Belshazzar. Well, Babylon’s still in power. Babylon didn’t fall yet. That was recorded in chapter 5, but the vision obviously precedes the fall of Babylon. The reason that’s important is because he says he was in Shushan the citadel. in Elam, which is Iran, a portion of Iran, and by a river Uli, which is really a canal that had yet to be organized the way the Bible describes it. What it is saying is that Daniel saw a vision about a time that was to follow the time that he was in, and there’s no doubt about it. The truth of the matter, those opening two verses are powerful. It’s dated the third year of Belshazzar. Babylon’s in power. Medo-Persia has not come to power yet. But Shushan, the citadel, was in fact destined to become the capital in the Persian Empire, not the Babylonian. So we have a prediction, a prophecy, even locating the capital before it was in existence as the capital. And the River Uli is a canal, which deals with two other rivers who came together at Shushan, and it also was constructed by the Medo-Persians. So we have here a tremendous evidence to Bible prophecy that was unfulfilled at the time the vision came to him, he gives the date, but fulfilled after his time. Now, secondly, we want to look at the identity of this conflict in verses 3 to 8. And I want you to see just a few things here. One, in verses 3 to 4, the prominence of the ram is brought to our attention. The prominence of the ram. Whereas in verses 5 to 7, we have the power of the goat. And finally, in verse 8, the punishment of the goat, which sets up the prophecy for us. Now, in looking at the prominence of the ram in verse 3 and 4… we’re told several interesting things. First of all, there’s an unusual characteristic of this ram. This ram has two horns, but one is higher than the other one, and the higher one came up last. Persia was greater than Media, but Persia came after Media in terms of power and conquest. Media was the first one on the scene. The Medes originally were doing the conquering. But the Persian and Mede Empire had Persia as the stronger one, and it came up last. So the details here are kind of interesting. Also, the conquest of this ram, according to verse 4, is also accurate according to history. By the way, we have a lot of history in detail of these events. It says the ram pushed westward, northward, and southward. It does not mention eastward. And that’s exactly what happened in ancient Persia. They never went east. The order here is exactly the order that Persia operated in conquering the world. Exactly. Right on target. Here’s another interesting thing. We know in this passage what these represent. Verse 20, the ram are the kings of Media and Persia. Verse 21, the male goat is the kingdom of Greece. Now hang on to your hats. The guardian spirit of the Persian Empire appears in history under the form of a ram with clean feet and sharp pointed horns. As a matter of fact, the Persian king, when he stood at the head of his army, bore the head of a ram instead of a diadem or a crown. Oh, the story gets more interesting. We know under the ancient Persian system and religion of Zoroastrianism, which is kind of a dualism between light and darkness, that the current popular astrological chart we know as the Zodiac came out of Persia. Well, you’ll find this interesting. Under the signs of the Zodiac, Persia was under the sign of Ares, which is the ram, and Greece was under the sign of Capricorn, which is the goat. How interesting. I’m not saying that astrology gave that to the book of Daniel at all. I’m simply saying that it’s fascinating to me that the book of Daniel gives the symbols of those two empires exactly the way they were known in history. That leads me to say that the Bible doesn’t want to be tricky with us. The Bible doesn’t want to give us an animal that can’t easily be identified with that nation. And here’s a clear example. There’s no doubt about it. By the way, the word Capricorn If you’re into astrology, and you definitely should not be, but if you are into astrology, Capricorn is from two words, caper, which refers to goat, and cornu, which refers to the horn. And many believe that some of the teaching of the zodiac symbol actually is rooted in Bible teaching. that some of its thoughts come from that. One of the most amazing discoveries in the land of Israel has been discovered in the valley of the Jordan River. If I hadn’t seen this for myself, I wouldn’t believe it if you would have told me. For they found the ruins of an ancient synagogue from the time of Christ, and in that synagogue, in the floor of the synagogue, in a beautiful mosaic, are the signs of the Zodiac in a Jewish synagogue. Hard to believe. But it shows you the impact. And you remember also that at the birth of our Lord, we had who coming from the east? Wise men, astrologers from the east came. There was great influence from the east in regards to all the religious systems of the Middle East. But anyway, I find it interesting that there’s no doubt about Persia being the ram and Greece being the goat. Now let’s look at the power of the goat in verse 5 to 7, which represents Greece. I’d point out four things. The Bible, again, very accurate. It says the male goat came from the West, which is exactly correct. That is the source of this attack. And that’s exactly what was true of history. The male goat represented the Grecian Empire. Philip of Macedon really didn’t do those kind of conquests, but his son Alexander the Great sure did. And we believe that that horn on the male goat refers to Alexander the Great. The source of his attack is from the West. Notice the scope of his power. It says in verse 5, “…across the surface of the whole earth.” And how amazing that is, because as you know, if you’ve studied your ancient history, it was my pleasure to sit in an entire course on the subject of Greece, ancient Grecian history. So I studied and had to memorize and have tests on the whole subject of Alexander the Great, and especially the breakup of his empire. And it amazed me as I looked at the Bible. I guess I shouldn’t be amazed, but I am amazed as I look and realize that Daniel prophesied at the time of Babylon about events that are going to happen some 400 years later in And he did it to the T. I mean, right on the mark. Every single statement. Alexander the Great was the first to conquer the whole then known inhabited earth. He kept asking from all the peoples he conquered whether there was any more people known in any place near them. He kept conquering everybody. He had this insatiable desire to make sure that every person on the planet was under his domination and control. We know now that he probably got all the way to India and maybe into China. He was just unstoppable and he did this rapidly and he was vicious in the way he conquered. By the way, a little interesting thing about the Bible’s description of the ram and the goat, or the goat with the horn that attacks the ram. It was Alexander the Great who gave us a strategy in warfare that the Roman Empire used. If you’ve ever seen an old movie or read Roman history, you know that the Romans used the wedge. It was Alexander the Great who developed that. The wedge would be a line of men, only single file, sometimes too deep. And all the rest of the soldiers were lined up behind it with all the armaments. And in the wedge, they would come and fight against the sun, which would definitely confuse the barbaric hordes that they were attacking and other armies who weren’t used to this. Well, they had shields, and they would do what the later Romans decided was definitely a fabulous tactic. They would shine those shields. only they would turn them away so that the shiny part was not hitting the sun yet. So as they came close to the army, the wedge, and behind it was all the military men and all their armaments marching, and the wedge was coming towards them. Right at the last minute, just about ready to do hand-to-hand combat, they’d all flip those shields, brightly shining, to the sun. So the sun would hit the shield and blind the men that they were attacking, and they’d cut them down like flies. Rome used that to great advantage, but it was started by Alexander the Great. So even the picture of a horn and a goat attacking the ram, it’s very interesting. I don’t want to make too much of that, which I already have done. But I find it fascinating and somebody has to listen to all that I studied in the past. So please be kind, will you? All right. Now I also read in verse 5 about his speed of victory. It says, after going across the surface of the whole earth, he did it without touching the ground. A Hebrew idiom to say this man is moving rapidly. How rapidly? He conquered the Medo-Persian Empire, the largest empire up until that time, who literally thought they had the whole world under their control with 120 provinces, with a military army they could field of over a million soldiers. Sound familiar? Sometimes we think these armies were just a few thousand. There was over a million foot soldiers in the Persian army. But Alexander the Great conquered them from 334 to 331 B.C., just a little bit under three years. He had the entire empire under his control. The speed of victory. It was as though he wasn’t even touching the ground. Also, the strength of the goat against the ram. we’re told that he literally collides with furious power, verse 6. Verse 7, he moved with rage, attacked the ram, broke his two horns. There was no power in the ram to withstand him. He cast him to the ground and trampled him, and there was no one that could deliver the ram from his hand. I read that and realize that Daniel saw this vision at the time of Babylon before Medo-Persia was ever in power, or Greece, or Alexander the Great. And it astounds me because that’s like a summary statement of what you read in history of the tactics of Alexander the Great. He was so vicious and furious. It stunned, it shocked the Persian Empire and their armies. They couldn’t believe it. He just devastated them. It wasn’t a matter of getting the victory and negotiating the win. He just literally destroyed. He devastated them until there was no hope. And the fear of Alexander the Great spread all over the empire. Many, many villages and army units literally just laid down in front of him, begging him for mercy when they heard that he was coming rather than even take him on. So devastating was his attack. So again, the scripture is very pointed and very powerful and quite interesting. The punishment of the goat, verse 8. Therefore the male goat grew very great, but when he became strong, the large horn was broken, and in place of it, four notable ones came up toward the four winds of heaven. Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C., He usually is thought of as being 33 years old, but actually, if we’re accurate, he wasn’t quite hitting his 33rd birthday. He was 32 years old. At 21 years old, he was called the most powerful and brilliant military genius of all time. At 21 years old. He was a remarkable specimen of strength. He was literally like a Greek god. In fact, most of the people of Greece thought Alexander came from the gods. And he was powerful, and he himself would stand at the front of that wedge. He had no fear whatsoever. And this man was mightily used, I believe, by Satan himself, and then under the overall control of the sovereignty of God, to literally do what the Bible predicts here, in devastation to destroy the entire Medo-Persian empire. But the interesting thing is that he had a drinking problem. And he was drunk, sitting on the river Euphrates, back at Babylon, thinking about what he had done. And he literally had nowhere else to go. He argued several hours with his generals about where to go. There must be somebody else. And they say, we’ve got everybody. We’ve conquered everybody. There is no one else. And he went into deep depression, a drunken state, and history records that he died of alcoholism. Drunk. Broken. No record here of any war that damaged him. No other nation coming up to attack him. He was just broken. Isn’t it amazing how the great ones of the world can fall over a simple problem like drinking? Ruined his life. But it was God’s prophetic plan because four generals took over, four notable ones. His empire was divided into four divisions. If you’d like to know about it, Cassander, who was one of his generals, took over all of Macedonia and Greece. Lysimachus took over all of Asia Minor and Thrace. Seleucus took over all of Syria and Babylonia, and the Seleucan Empire became the king of the north that you’ll read about in Daniel 11. That is north of Israel, Syria, the ancient archenemy of Israel. Ptolemy, of course, went to Egypt, conquered all of Israel, Egypt, and took over the island of Cyprus and Arabia as well. Ptolemy becomes the king of the south, so the Seleucid Empire and the Ptolemaic Empires will now control. By the way, when we took an Israel trip a few years ago, we went down the Nile River in a cruise, and we saw a number of remains from the Ptolemaic period, which is right here in the book of Daniel. And I sat one day in one of these ancient structures built by the Ptolemies of Egypt on the Nile River. I sat there and listened to that tour guide give a lecture. Afterwards, I said to him, I said, you know, it’s interesting. What you just said is predicted in the Bible in Daniel chapter 11. He snapped back at me and said, that would be impossible. And I said, why? He says, because Daniel wasn’t written until the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. I said, oh no. No, Daniel was written at the time the Bible says so. He looked at me and he said, I don’t think I’m going to go any further with this. But I said, sir, you just gave us, without knowing it, a complete rundown of Daniel chapter 11. And I was astonished because I followed you in Daniel 11, and every single verse, blow by blow, was in the order that you said. He said, well, then there’s only one choice. It had to be written after the fact. I said, well, that’s just what I want to tell you. It was not written after the fact. It was written before the fact. He said, well, that couldn’t be. I said, well, it could be if God wrote it, which is, by the way, what we believe. He again decided not to continue the discussion. But that’s thrilling. It’s thrilling to the Bible student. What we’re reading here, folks, is real history. It really happened. And when did Daniel get the vision? In the third year of Belshazzar, which was in the Babylonian Empire, long before this ever happened. We’re talking back in the 500s B.C. But this goes all the way down to the 100s B.C. Incredible. And marvelous, to say the least. Oh, by the way, in case you’re still troubled over that last remark, the Dead Sea Scrolls, we now date them about 150 to 200 B.C., and they contain copies of Daniel. So much for his argument. In case you didn’t follow that, that means they were in existence before the events happened. Amen? If you don’t know, just say amen. You’ll feel better. Okay, all right.

SPEAKER 04 : 20:51

That’s Bible teacher David Hawking, and this is Hope for Today. David’s back in just a moment to close us out with a bit of additional teaching, so stay with us. First though, Matt’s here, and we’re going to share some wonderful Bible study resources with you.

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Talk to me, Matt. What do we have? Hope for today is making our current Daniel radio series available on MP3 or audio CD. Yeah, and this is David’s complete study through Daniel. 17 messages we’re sharing over several weeks on air. On MP3, the complete Daniel series is just $30. Exactly. And on audio CD, it’s just $50. Not only will you purchase, save, and store what you’re learning here on radio, it will Also provide a way for you to share the series with family, friends, or group Bible study. Daniel is so packed with heroic stories of faith.

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The prophetic vision of coming nations in chapter 2. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace.

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That’s in chapter 3. And Nebuchadnezzar’s prideful sprint into insanity and miraculousness. restoration when he acknowledges the almighty God in chapter four. And then there’s the handwriting on the wall that’s in chapter five, Daniel in the lion’s den in chapter six. And then Daniel’s prophetic visions in chapters seven through 12 that work hand in hand with the book of Revelation.

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Again, our featured resource pack for April, David Hawking’s teaching through Daniel, the entire book, our current radio series on MP3 for just $30 or on audio CD for $50. And we also have David’s sermon notes outlines for $10.

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Call us to order 1-800-75-BIBLE. Bible by the numbers is 242-53. In Canada, call 1-888-75-BIBLE or order at davidhawking.org.

SPEAKER 04 : 22:34

We also want to tell you about David’s powerful book, Daniel, Prophecies of the Last Days. This is a clear, straightforward walk through one of the most prophetic books in the Bible. Of course, the book of Daniel. And it’s perfect for personal study or groups. In the book, David breaks down the visions, the symbols. and the end-time implications of Daniel in a way that’s easy to follow and grounded in Scripture. And we have it available right now for just $20. And to order, you can call us at 875-BIBLE in the U.S. or 888-75-BIBLE in Canada. You’ll also find it at davidhawking.org. Now, as David mentioned at the beginning of today’s broadcast, if this ministry is blessing you, if it’s challenging you, helping you stay grounded in God’s Word, Would you prayerfully consider standing with us right now? You can send a gift by mail to Hope for Today, Box 3927, Tustin, California, and Tustin is spelled T-U-S-T-I-N, California, 92781. Or in Canada, write to Hope for Today, Box 15011, RPO, Seven Oaks, Abbotsford, BC, V2S, 8P1. Or you can give online at davidhawking.org. Let’s get back to our study.

SPEAKER 01 : 23:59

Thank you for listening to Hope for Today. I hope you’re enjoying our study of the ram and the goat. You know, if we’re following the text carefully, the importance of this vision, its place, its time, so forth, is before the coming of both the Persian and Greek empires. Shushan the citadel was a prediction destined to become a capital of the Persian Empire, not the Babylonian. We’re looking at 120 miles east of Babylon, 120 miles north of the Persian Gulf. Well, the identity of this conflict is in verses 3 to 8. And the prominence of the ram is mentioned, the Persian king. at the head of his army bore the head of a ram instead of a diadem or a crown. Persia was under zodiac signs and always was represented by the ram. The goat is a sign of Capricorn was really referring to Greece. And there’s an unusual characteristic of this ram in verse 3. One was higher. Persia was greater than Media. The conquest of this ram, according to verse 4… is not eastward, but true to history. We’re going to be right at it again, so plan to be with us for our next broadcast.

SPEAKER 04 : 25:37

Thank you, David. And friend, if you missed any part of today’s broadcast, you can always catch up for a limited time at davidhawking.org. And be sure to share that web address with a friend. On our next broadcast, Daniel’s vision takes a turn that’s not just historic, it’s prophetic. A mysterious king rises from the shadows. He destroys, deceives, and defies the God of heaven. This isn’t just about the past. It’s a critical look into the future. The moves he makes, the power he wields, and the people he persecutes, it’s all laid out. And it just might be closer than we think. If you want to be ready for what’s coming, you can’t miss this. Join us for day two of The Vision of the Ram and the Goat, next time on Hope for Today.