(Daniel 9:26-27; 10:1-21; 11:1-31)
In Daniel 9, an angel told Daniel that Satan, “the Ruler of the people to come,” would make a covenant with many.1Dan 9:27 However, Satan, as the “Ruler of the Covenant,” will make his first appearance as the captain of the armies of Rome.
In Chapter 10, Daniel saw a vision of a Glorious Man, the same vision of Christ that John saw in Revelation 1. Daniel was in great distress, wanting to know the meaning of the vision, and after three weeks of prayer and fasting, an angel came to explain the vision to him.
The angel’s explanation began with King Darius in the year 539 B.C. and ended with the appearance of the angel Michael on the Lord’s Day. It is the longest single prophecy in the Bible.
Before explaining the vision, the angel said he needed to return to fight the captain of Persia, and indeed, the captain of the armies of Greece would then come, “but,” he said, “no one upholds me against these except Michael, your captain.”2Dan 10:21 These “captains” were all captains of angels, who fight the conflicts of men.
Then, in Chapter 11, the angel said three more kings would stand up in Persia, and then a mighty king would arise whose dominion would be broken up toward the four winds.3Dan 11:2 We of course know that the mighty king was Alexander the Great and that the four dominions were the four kingdoms of his four generals. From here, the angel prophesied all the conflicts between the Seleucid kings and the kings of Egypt. The angel described this with so much detail that many atheists want to deny that the prophet Daniel even existed! The angel said that Antiochus IV Epiphanes would be a vile person.4Dan 11:21 His wickedness went up to the four spirits of heaven5See also Dan 8:8 in Verse 22, when Satan, the “Ruler of the Covenant,” was swept away by his attack. In Verse 31, Satan became the king of the north, who set up the abomination of desolation and defiled the sanctuary.
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