Chapter 8 Daniel

Chapter 8 opens with the words the third year of king Belshazzar, this would be three years after chapter 7 of Daniel. Belshazzar began ruling Babylon as a vassal king in 550 B.C. (Before Christ).
The date of this vision would be 547 B.C.; remember the dates count down toward Our Lord's Birth, and count up after His Birth. You can find this date on the time line at the bottom of the handout (Head of Gold ) I gave you lower bottom right hand corner. Daniel is not in Babylon in his vision, but beside the Ulai Canal in the citadel of Susa in the province of Elam. This is to be the place that the Mede part of the Medo-Persian kingdom was to rule from. Daniel had never been there, and the Medo-Persian kingdom had not yet come to power. If you look at the top of the handout I gave you, the Head of Gold, you will notice that Babylon reigns from 626 B.C to 539 B.C.
Chapter 5 of Daniel takes place in 539 B.C., the end of the Babylon Kingdom.

Going back to the vision, Daniel is there at the canal and now sees a ram with two horns standing beside the canal, and the horns are long, but one is longer than the other one. This is the same type of vision Daniel saw in chapter 7, with the bear standing on two of his four paws. One part of this kingdom will become more powerful than the other. This ram could charge wherever it wanted to the west, north and south. No one could oppose it. It became great.
Suddenly a goat with a prominent horn between his eyes came from the west crossing the whole earth without touching the ground. This is the same Kingdom Daniel saw in chapter 7 as the Leopard with 4 Bird like wings. The goat came toward the two horned ram and charged at him in great rage, shattering his horns. This means that the goat was more powerful than the ram and destroyed it. The goat became very great and at the height of its power the great horn was broken off and four horns grew in its place. If you look at the Belly and Thighs of Bronze handout you will notice that the Kingdom of Greece doesn't start until 332 B.C. and reigns until 63 B.C. Daniel not only foresees the great horn - Alexander the Great, but when he dies, the kingdom will be divided between 4 of his generals. Ptolemy rules Egypt, Seleucus rules Syria and Persia, Antigonus rules Macedonia and Greece, and Attalids rules Pergamum.
The third kingdom also has a little horn that grows. This little horn grows out of an existing horn. This little horn started off small but grew in power to the south and to the east and to the Beautiful Land. Beautiful Land here means Israel. This little horn will set itself up as equal as the Prince of the host. This is to say that this horn will say that he is equal with Jesus or God. He will take away the daily sacrifice and the place of His sanctuary will be brought low. The holy ones are asking how long will this go on? It will take 2,300 evenings was the reply. If you divide 2,300 by 360 (which is the number of prophecy years) you will get 6.389 years. This is different from the normal time, times and half a time; we usually see. Remember this is the little horn of the third kingdom, not the little horn of the end times. We will study this anti-christ further in our up coming studies. We are just looking at the visions and trying to discover their meanings.
Daniel is talking to more than one heavenly being at this time. This is all he has told us about. We will have to wait until two weeks from last Sunday to get further information from Daniel.