2022 09 25 But Not By Human Power. Message and teaching by Pastor Rabbi Rod.

Tuesday, August 25, 2026

4:56 PM

THE BOOK OF DANIEL

A Sermon Series by Pastor Rod Meyers

 

BEYOND THE SERMON

Message Four — But Not by Human Power (Daniel 8)

1. How to Use This Guide

Daniel 8 returns to Hebrew after five chapters of Aramaic and zooms in from the sweeping four-empire visions of chapters 2 and 7 to a single, brutal chapter of history. This guide goes past Sunday's message into the historical detail behind the vision and what it previews for the future. All Scripture is quoted from the New International Version (NIV) unless otherwise noted.

2. The Sermon in Brief

Two years after the vision of the four beasts, Daniel sees a two-horned ram — one horn longer than the other, growing later — charging west, north, and south, unstoppable until a shaggy goat with a single great horn between its eyes comes from the west so fast it doesn't touch the ground. The goat shatters the ram, but at the height of its power, the great horn snaps and four horns rise in its place.

Out of one of these four horns comes a small horn that grows extraordinarily toward the Beautiful Land — Israel. It exalts itself against “the Prince of the host,” halts the daily sacrifice, throws truth to the ground, and prospers in everything it does. Gabriel identifies the ram as the kings of Media and Persia and the goat as the king of Greece, whose great horn is “the first king” — and the chapter closes with the sober promise that this arrogant power, for all its success, “will be broken, but not by human power.”

3. Word Studies

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Historical Background — The Man Behind the Small Horn

After Alexander's death in 323 BC at just thirty-two, his empire split among four generals — exactly as pictured by the goat's broken horn giving way to four (8:8, 22). Out of the Seleucid dynasty that took Syria and the east came Antiochus IV, who ruled 175-164 BC and gave himself the title Epiphanes, “God Manifest.” His enemies mocked it as Epimanes — “the madman.”

In 167 BC, after a failed campaign in Egypt, Antiochus took his frustration out on Jerusalem: he looted the temple treasury, erected a statue of Zeus in the sanctuary, sacrificed a pig on the altar, and outlawed Jewish worship, circumcision, and Sabbath-keeping on pain of death. It was this atrocity that triggered the Maccabean Revolt — a Jewish guerrilla uprising that, against enormous odds, eventually retook and rededicated the temple. Daniel 8 was written centuries before any of this happened, and the historical bullseye is exact enough that it has driven much of the modern academic debate over the book's date of composition.

5. Antiochus as a Preview

Antiochus IV fulfills Daniel 8 historically — but the sermon (and much of the church's reading of the whole book) treats him as more than a closed chapter. His pattern — self-exaltation, temple desecration, persecution of the faithful, and an arrogance that ultimately meets a decisive, non-human end — becomes the template Scripture reaches for again when describing a still-future opponent of God's people.

 

 

 

6. Reflection Questions

The small horn “prospered in everything it did” (8:12) right up until it was broken. Where might worldly success be masking a spiritual problem in your own life or culture?

 

 

Antiochus's desecration triggered faithful resistance rather than despair among the Maccabees. What does costly faithfulness look like for you when compromise would be so much easier?

 

 

The chapter's final promise is that this power will be broken “not by human power” (8:25). Where are you currently trying to fix, by your own strength, something only God can ultimately resolve?

 

 

Daniel was “appalled by the vision” and “ill for several days” afterward (8:27), yet still got up and went back to the king's business. What does faithful obedience look like on the days a burden doesn't lift right away?

 

 

7. Further Study

Passages that widen the picture beyond Daniel 8, for study on your own this week: