The Festival of Hanukkah (Night 3) - Daniel 8 & 11 - Antiochus IV & the Antichrist

Shalom, everybody. my name is Chadwick Harvey. You've reached Faithful Performance. Thank you so much for joining us tonight on this third night of the Hanukkah celebration — the Festival of Lights — as we explore Daniel 8 and Daniel 11, which cover Antiochus Epiphanes IV and also the final Antichrist. We'll see how both of those correlate together, viewing it from the end-of-the-age vantage point that the prophet himself provides. This is a very important understanding to have when studying the book of Daniel, and it connects directly to Hanukkah. As we said on the previous two nights, Hanukkah will happen again — it will occur again — and Daniel 8, Daniel 11, and Daniel 12 prove that. But tonight we'll focus on Daniel 8 and Daniel 11. We really appreciate everyone joining us for the third night of this eight-night festival. It is a remarkable season of the Festival of Lights.

Before we begin, a couple of announcements. First, if you would like to join us for a live Shabbat on Zoom, we hold that every Friday night. We have rescheduled things so that this Friday's live Shabbat will go forward. If you are interested in joining, send me an email and I will send you the link. The Shabbat service on Zoom will run from 7:00 p.m. to approximately 8:30 or 8:45 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Then at 9:00 p.m. I will come on the Faithful Performance YouTube channel for the Courts of Heaven prayer. So it will be a Shabbat service on Zoom followed by a prayer service on the channel. Please note that the Courts of Heaven prayer has been moved from tomorrow night to Friday night. The same Zoom link will be used every Shabbat going forward, so just email me once and you will have it for every week.

Now, before we begin the teaching, let us light the Hanukkah candles and say the blessings. This is night number three. To explain how it works: we light the middle candle — the Shamash, the servant candle — and that candle always lights the others. It lights the newest candle first, which tonight is the third, then the second, and then the first.

We light the Shamash candle, which represents Yeshua the Messiah. He is the Servant, and we are his servants. He lights all of our candles. He is the light of the world. So we take this and we light the third candle first — the newest night — then the second candle, and then the first candle. That is how it is done: the servant candle, Yeshua the Messiah, the light of the world, who lights all of our lights. As Hanukkah progresses from the first night to the eighth night, we become more and more illuminated, brighter and brighter with the anointing, as we move into the month of Tevet, which begins Saturday night. We look forward to seeing everyone at the new moon celebration on Saturday night, which is the month of Tevet — a great month and a beautiful transition out of Hanukkah.

Now the blessings for the Hanukkah lighting:

*Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech HaOlam, asher kid'shanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu l'hadlik ner shel Hanukkah.* Blessed are You, Adonai our Elohim, Ruler of the universe, who makes us holy with Your commandments, commanding us to kindle the lights of Hanukkah.

*Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech HaOlam, she'asah nisim la'avoteinu v'imoteinu bayamim hahem bazman hazeh.* Blessed are You, Adonai our Elohim, Ruler of the universe, who performed wondrous deeds for our ancestors in those ancient days at this season of Hanukkah.

This is night number three. Thank you so much for being with us. If you have been here the last two nights, we really appreciate your faithfulness. There are five more nights ahead. Tomorrow night we will go through Daniel 7 with the ten kings as it relates to what is happening in the Middle East. Thursday night we will cover worship in spirit and in truth. Friday night will be the Courts of Heaven prayer followed by the live Shabbat on Zoom. Saturday night is the new moon festival of Tevet. And then the final night of Hanukkah will cover the glory of the New Jerusalem, tying into the eighth day — the Revelation feast.

But tonight, my friends, we focus on the prophet Daniel. Daniel lived around 605 BC. He was taken into captivity in Babylon and became Nebuchadnezzar's right-hand man, as we all know. He interpreted Nebuchadnezzar's statue dream in Daniel 2, and he also received visions of his own in Daniel 7, Daniel 8, Daniel 10, Daniel 11, and forward — all visions concerning the end of the age. What is so beautiful is that the Almighty gave Daniel understanding of prophecy through the kingdoms of his own day — Babylon, Medo-Persia, the Grecian Empire — and declared that those same patterns would come to fruition again at the end of the age. The text itself says, repeatedly, "for the end of the age."

What makes the book of Daniel so remarkable is that it gives us a template. It gives us an understanding of history and what took place in history, but as we all know, history repeats itself, and these things will come true again at the end of the age. That is what we are seeing right now when we look at the Middle East. And this is a critical point, because many people believe that Antiochus Epiphanes IV already fulfilled Daniel 8 and Daniel 11 completely — that it is finished, that it is history, that it has no further application to the end of the age. But the scriptures themselves refute that. Daniel 2 and Daniel 7 both show a timeline stretching to the courts of heaven, where the decree is made at the very end of the sequence of kingdoms. And Daniel 12:4 says explicitly that Daniel's book is sealed for the end of the age. That is not a reference to just one chapter — when Daniel is told to seal his book, it means the entire collection of his visions: Daniel 2, Daniel 7, Daniel 8, Daniel 10, Daniel 11, and Daniel 12. The entire book of Daniel is sealed for the end of the age.

It is therefore essential to read Daniel with that lens, because when we look at the Middle East today, we can see these kingdoms rising and falling exactly as the prophet described. Yes, these things did occur historically with Nebuchadnezzar, with Cyrus, and with Alexander the Great — but they will recur the same way at the end of the age, and we are watching that unfold.

Many people approach Daniel 8 and Daniel 11 from the standpoint of Antiochus Epiphanes IV, and that is understandable — it is actually the heart of the Hanukkah story. The large horn in Daniel 8 is widely identified as Alexander the Great, seen as a foreshadow, and the little horn as Antiochus Epiphanes IV. That is why people conclude that Daniel 8 and Daniel 11 have already been fulfilled. We are going to go through the text very carefully, let the angel himself speak, and then tie all of these things together.

In Daniel's prophetic book, four kingdoms appear consistently throughout every vision. The first is Babylon — think Nebuchadnezzar. The second is Medo-Persia — think Iran. The third is the Grecian Empire — think Alexander the Great and what followed. The fourth is the kingdom of the Antichrist. These four kingdoms are the framework through which all of Daniel's visions operate, and they are the key to understanding what is coming at the end of the age.