Satan has used his “puppets” throughout history to try to thwart the plan of God. 509 - 7 - 5

God hates pride. Pride was the motive behind Satan’s fall when he sought to rise above God. Satan appealed to Eve in the garden first through doubt and then by appealing to her pride by saying “you could become like God.” There are warning against pride in the Book of Proverbs. Proverbs 13:10 "Only by pride cometh contention: but with the well advised is wisdom" and Proverbs 16:18, "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall."

Lust is another tool in Saran’s toolbox. God called King David “a man after his own heart,” however, 2 Samuel 12:10, “Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house; because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife.”

Murders and betrayals were legion with the descendants of King David. Most notably was the horrific actions around King Jehoram of Judah and his wife Athaliah.    

“2 Chronicles 1:4-6 Judah's fifth king chose to walk in the way of the kings of Israel instead of in the way of David. Jehoram was a murderer and an idolater. He ruthlessly killed all his own brothers to strengthen his hold on the throne. Scripture leaves us in no doubt as to the evil influence that caused Jehoram to act so wickedly: His wife was Ahab's daughter (v. 6). Earlier Jehoshaphat had arranged the marriage between the two kingdoms, and now Judah was infected with the same wickedness that was ruining Israel. Ahab's daughter Athaliah was a tool in Satan's hands to bring judgment on God's people.”

[Believer's Bible Commentary]

After eight years Jehoram died and his son Ahaziah was crowned king. Within one year Ahaziah and his brothers and their sons were murdered. Athaliah became queen and then “destroyed all the royal seed of the house of Judah” except for Joash.

Israel (Northern Kingdom) was defeated by Assyria and the northern tribes exiled and co-mingled with other races losing their Jewish identity. 2 King 17:6, “In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.”

The evil and prideful Haman plotted the massacre the Jews after Mordecai’s refusal to bow to him. Esther 3:6, “And he thought scorn to lay hands on Mordecai alone; for they had shewed him the people of Mordecai: wherefore Haman sought to destroy all the Jews that were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus, even the people of Mordecai”

So many plots against Israel throughout history including:

Antiochus IV (Epiphanes) ransacked Jerusalem, prohibited Torah practice, and set up the “Abomination of Desolation” in the Temple. God raised up the Maccabean who recaptured and rededicated the Temple.

The Roman Catholic Church has long been hostile to the Jewish race. The RCC’s Concordat with Hitler’s Third Reich was pretty much a blessing to exterminate the Jewish race.

Reich Concordat 1933.

"The Reich Concordat was an agreement that was intended to regulate the relationship between the German Reich and the Catholic Church. It was signed by representatives of both entities on July 20, 1933, and ratified on September 10, 1933."

[http://holocaustonline.org/reich-concordat-1933/]

Discuss the significance of the idioms of the Ram and the He-Goat as they relate to whom they represent. 522 - 9-5

A shofar is a curved ram’s horn and the blowing of it incorporated in synagogue services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Blowing the shofar was used to announce the start of a war perhaps best remembered from Joshua 6:4, “And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of rams' horns: and the seventh day ye shall compass the city seven times, and the priests shall blow with the trumpets.” This gave rise to the song goes, “And the walls came tumbling down.”
 
The goat may be used as a sin sacrifice. It also is an idiom for those who will be condemned during the judgment of the sheep and goats.

The Ram and He-Goat vision of Daniel was in the year 554 BC during the reign of King Belshazzar. In his vision, Daniel was at Shushan in the province of Elam by the river of Ulai, many miles from Babylon. In his vision Daniel saw standing before the river a ram which had two horns one being higher than the other. The two-horned ram would be indicative of the kings of Media and Persia, with Persia being represented by the greater of the two horns. This ram was pushing westward and northward and southward and no beast/ country was able to stand before it including Babylon which fell to the Persian Empire without a battle.

Later in Daniel’s vision a he-goat came from the West running so fast it appeared that his hoofs did not even touch the ground. The he-goat had a horn between his eyes, the symbol of the ancient Macedonians. This beast represented Alexander the Great who conquered the Persian Empire. Later the horn of the he-goat was broken into four representing the four successors of Alexander.

Two years earlier Daniel had another dream/ vision which involved four great beasts that came up out of the sea. Two of these beasts were idioms of those in his present vision. The second beast in that vision looked like a bear that was raised up on one of its sides; a ram with unequal horns. The third beast of this vision looked like a leopard with four wings like those of a bird; a he-goat who hoofs seemed not touch the ground. The leopard had four heads; the break-up of Alexander’s empire. The four head and the broken horn woud be Cassander, Lysimacus, Seleucus and Ptolemy.

The horn was an idiom for Antiochus IV who “subjugated the people and land of Israel, desecrated her temple, interrupted her worship, and demanded for himself the authority and worship that belongs to God.” Antiochus IV was a precursor of the Anti-Christ to come in the Last Days.

Prophecy is history written in advance and so Daniel's prophecies involved the so-called 400 silent years between the last book of the Old Testament and the ministry of John the Baptist.

Discuss the evil deeds of Antiochus IV and how he foreshadows the Coming World Leader. 522 - 9-6

Antiochus IV, was the son of Antiochus the Great and became the king of Syria (175-164 B.C) after the murder of his brother, Seleucus IV. He called himself Epiphanes, “the god who appears or reveals himself.” Perhaps Antiochus Epiphanes’ greatest claim to fame was his desecration of the Temple that led to the successful Macabbean revolt and the rededication of the Temple, celebrated as Hanukkah.

Antiochus tried to eradicate the Jewish religion and replace it with Greek polytheism. The observance of Jewish laws and practices were forbidden under the pentality of death. Sacrifices to the pagan deities were to be observed in all cities of Judea. Once a month homes were searched and possessing a copy of the Law or having observed the rite of circumcision was punished by death.

Antiochus’ “Abomination of Desolation” was a bridge too far for the Jewish people. With thanks to CM and his commentary “This Generation? Resolving the Olivet Discourse:”

“In Jerusalem on the 15th of Chislev in December 168 B.C. Antiochus “broke the league that he had made” and a pagan altar was built on the Great Altar of Burnt Sacrifices. On the 25th of Chislev (His birthday) a sacrifice was brought on this altar for the first time (1 Macc 1:54,59). He offered a swine in every village (Josephus, Antiquities, XII v4) and erected an idol to Zeus in the Holy of Holies: “a desolating sacrilege” (1 Macc 1:54). He called it the “Temple of Jupiter Olympius” (2 Macc 6:1-7).”

In speaking of the end times during the Olivet discourse Jesus said that the Jewish people were to flee when the Abomination of Desolation took place. Matthew 24:15-16, “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains.” 
 

The abomination of desolation will be the start of the three and a half year period known as the “Great Tribulation.” Any pretense of his covenant of peace and protection for the Jewish people signed at the start of the tribulation is cast aside and the antichrist will initiate extreme persecution of the Jewish people. The cruelty of Antiochus IV will be minor compared to the cruelty of the antichrist in the last days. Matthew 24:22, “And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.”

As an aside, during 2012 there was attempt to rebrand circumcision as “child abuse” echoes of anti-Semitism after two plus millennium.