16 August 2026

Daniel and the Cowboy Apocalypse

Daniel 7:1-8

Our scripture this morning comes from Daniel chapter 7, verses 1-8

7 In the first year of King Belshazzar of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head as he lay in bed. Then he wrote down the dream: 2I, Daniel, saw in my vision by night the four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea, 3and four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another. 4The first was like a lion and had eagles’ wings. Then, as I watched, its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a human being; and a human mind was given to it. 5Another beast appeared, a second one, that looked like a bear. It was raised up on one side, had three tusks in its mouth among its teeth and was told, ‘Arise, devour many bodies!’ 6After this, as I watched, another appeared, like a leopard. The beast had four wings of a bird on its back and four heads; and dominion was given to it. 7After this I saw in the visions by night a fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth and was devouring, breaking in pieces, and stamping what was left with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that preceded it, and it had ten horns. 8I was considering the horns, when another horn appeared, a little one coming up among them; to make room for it, three of the earlier horns were plucked up by the roots. There were eyes like human eyes in this horn, and a mouth speaking arrogantly.

The Medo-Persian Empire that conquered Babylon lasted for almost two hundred years, but no empire lasts forever. In the 4th century before Christ, the Greek armies of Alexander the Great swept through Persia, crushing all beneath it, claiming lands from Egypt in the south to India in the East. And then, suddenly, Alexander died, and his empire was divided between his generals. Only two of these concern us today: Ptolemy, who got Egypt, and Seleucus, who got Syria. And they concern us because Jerusalem, which had been rebuilt under Persian rule, sat right between the two, on a main road: a bone for two big dogs to growl and scuffle over. Over the next century, Jerusalem traded hands many times, but by the second century, it fell to the Seleucid king Antiochus IV, who modestly referred to himself as “God Manifest.” Antiochus might actually have been loony tunes enough to believe it, too. Among other things Antiochus didn’t like Jews and their stubborn insistence on only worshiping their god. He set out to destroy their offensive faith. He stripped their temple of all its treasure, burned all their scrolls, placed an idol (probably a statue of himself) on their altar and offered sacrifices to it. Some say the sacrifices were pigs. He made laws banning Jewish practices like Sabbath observance and circumcision. Then he sent emissaries around with an image of himself, requiring every Jewish villager to bow down to it. It was history’s first Jewish pogrom. 

The Jews rose in revolt. A priest named Mattathias in the town of Modein refused to worship the king’s image and killed the king’s messenger. Then Mattathias’s sons went to the hills and raised an army. One of them – called Judas the Hammer, or Judas Maccabeus – proved to be a great guerrilla leader and won some remarkable victories. You can read about them in the book of 1 Maccabees in the Apocrypha. Anyway, some three and a half years after Antiochus had set his idol on the temple altar – which had come to be called “the abomination of desolation” – Judas recaptured Jerusalem and cleansed the temple. That rededication continues to be celebrated today at Hanukkah.

Why do I tell you all this? Because this is the background of the vision of Daniel 7, which we just read. The four beasts from the sea are four successive empires: the Babylonians, the Medes, the Persians, and last of all the Greek empire of Alexander. Let me read a bit more from that chapter now. This is from the part where an angel explains the vision to Daniel:

 23This is what he said: ‘As for the fourth beast,
there shall be a fourth kingdom on earth
   that shall be different from all the other kingdoms;
it shall devour the whole earth,
   and trample it down, and break it to pieces.
24 As for the ten horns, out of this kingdom ten kings shall arise,
   and another shall arise after them.
This one shall be different from the former ones,
   and shall put down three kings.
25 He shall speak words against the Most High,
   shall wear out the holy ones of the Most High,
   and shall attempt to change the sacred seasons and the law;
and they shall be given into his power
   for a time, two times, and half a time.

This final horn, the king who speaks against God and tries to change God’s laws, is Antiochus IV, and he will continue persecuting the Jews for a time, two times, and half a time. Ah, three and a half years. After that, the vision tells us, God will establish his kingdom on earth, an eternal kingdom of peace. Like the parallel vision we talked about last week from Daniel 2, this story is intended to bring hope and encouragement to persecuted Jews and to urge them to trust God to bring everything right in the end.
Okay. Enough about the original meaning of the book of Daniel. Now let’s talk about what’s happened with this book since then. When it came out, Daniel was what we would call today a smash hit. It spawned a whole library of other books that followed its pattern, books that claimed to reveal some long-hidden mystery – usually about the coming end times, when God would step in and establish an earthly kingdom. There was 1 Enoch, 4 Esdras, 2 Baruch, The Testament of Abraham, The Ascension of Moses. Today these books are called “apocalyptic” books, from the Greek word for “revelation,” and they were still being read in New Testament times – Jesus himself quotes Daniel, and the book of Jude refers to The Ascension of Moses. And, of course, we have one apocalyptic book in our own New Testament, Revelation, which has all the Daniel trimmings: visions, angelic interpreters, beasts that come out of the sea. Daniel’s word of comfort to Jews persecuted under Antiochus got adapted to become a word of comfort for Christians persecuted under Emperor Domitian. Apocalypses can do that. Because they consist largely of symbols, they’re flexible.

I mean that. Really flexible. For two thousand years now, Daniel and Revelation have been taken as prophetic books referring to just about every time believers have been in distress or persecuted. They were huge in the 14th century, during the Black Death and the Hundred Years War. They got reinterpreted again during the Protestant Reformation, where – depending on your perspective – the Beast from the Sea in Revelation was either the Pope or Martin Luther. I had a friend who once got to visit underground Christian churches in the former Soviet Union. He told me that those Christians loved Revelation. I believe that we have these books in our Bible expressly for that purpose: to comfort believers during times of hardship and persecution, by assuring them that God is in control and urging them to put their trust in God and God alone.

So apocalyptic writings have remained popular with the persecuted. You know who else likes them? Americans. And I have no idea why. We are not persecuted for our faith, but for some reason Americans have always loved these cryptic, symbolic books with strange visions, obscure symbols, horrifying beasts, and angels proclaiming the end of the world. In the 19th century, a New York Baptist preacher named William Miller used Daniel and Revelation to figure out that Christ would return in 1843. He and his followers sold their possessions and on the chosen day went up a hill in white robes to await Christ’s coming. That day is now referred to as “The Great Disappointment.” But it didn’t deter other preachers. Miller’s home area of New York came to be known as the “Burnt Over District,” because they had so many revival preachers proclaiming end times. One young man from the Burnt Over District, named Joseph Smith, would go on to found a whole new faith based on writings that he claimed had been given to him in a vision by an angel. Very Daniel, he was. Meanwhile, another American preacher named John Nelson Darby used Daniel and Revelation to come up with a view of history called Dispensationalism, proving that they were in the last age of humanity. Darby’s also the one who cobbled together a few random scriptures and invented something called “The Rapture.” All these 19th century preachers expected Christ’s return in their lifetimes, which didn’t happen.

That tradition continues. Within my own lifetime I have seen several waves of it. There was the Hal Lindsey craze of The Late, Great Planet Earth, that proved that the 1970s were the end times. (Fun fact! Remember that beast with ten horns from Daniel 7? According to Lindsey, those horns represent the ten member nations of the European Common Market in 1970.) Hal Lindsey was replaced by Tim LaHaye and the Left Behind series of books, which identified the early 2000s as definitely the end times. And it continues today with preachers like John Hagee continuing to read the signs of ancient apocalyptic writings like Daniel and Revelation as clear references to our own time. 

Dudes. Just take a breath. Daniel and Revelation were written for people whose very lives were threatened for their faith, encouraging them to trust in God. Our American version consists of bogeyman stories designed to thrill comfortable middle-class Christians. They aren’t biblical interpretation; they’re Bible fan fiction. They offer no comfort, and worst of all, they don’t even call on us to trust in God. Generally, they call on us to resist the antichrist or even fight back. Religion scholar Rachel Wagner calls the American version the “Cowboy Apocalypse,” a mingling of end times prophecy and John Wayne. Biblical apocalyptic writing calls on us to kneel in prayer and trust in God. The Cowboy Apocalypse calls on us to buy guns and become our own saviors. You may safely ignore it all. Let me give you two rules for dealing with modern apocalyptic books and preachers. First, anyone who is getting rich by predicting the end of the world doesn’t really believe it. It’s a grift. Second, any apocalyptic teaching that doesn’t point us to humility and trust in God is not from God. 

I don’t preach Daniel and Revelation much. No apology. Those books weren’t written for us. They were written for Jews persecuted by Antiochus, for Christians persecuted by Nero and Domitian, for Christians worshiping in hiding in Maoist China and Soviet Russia and modern Iran. We need the scriptures that call us to deeper commitment to Christ. Persecuted Christians don’t need that; they’re already risking their lives for their faith. They need books like these to encourage them to just hold on. God speaks to us as we need to hear, thank God. We need to listen the same way.