“The king will do as he pleases, exalting himself and claiming to be greater than every god, even blaspheming the God of gods. He will succeed, but only until the time of wrath is completed. For what has been determined will surely take place.” Daniel 11:36
Beginning in verse 36, Daniel described events that have never been fulfilled historically. Neither Antiochus Epiphanes nor Herod the Great ever sought to “exalt himself and magnify himself above every god.” The individual in view is the still-future Antichrist first described in Daniel 7 better identification of this king, however, is to relate him to the Roman world ruler, the same individual as the little horn of Daniel 7, and the beast out of the sea of Revelation 13:1– 10. We need to point out that Antiochus was merely a foreshadowing of the Antichrist, “Just as the Savior had Solomon and the other saints as types of His advent, so also we should believe that the Antichrist very properly had as a type of himself the utterly wicked king, Antiochus, who persecuted the saints and defiled the Temple.
This is an absolute ruler who “shall do as he wills.” If this is the great tribulation, as intimated in Daniel 12: 1, when the Roman ruler is a world ruler, it is difficult to contemplate any other ruler who could be absolute in authority, especially in an area so close to the center of Roman power as the land of Israel. There can be only one king who does absolutely according to his will in this period, and this must be the world ruler who “shall devour the whole earth, and trample it down, and break it to pieces” (Dan. 7: 23). Although other rulers will be associated with him, such as the ten horns (Rev. 17: 12) and the false prophet (Rev. 13: 11– 18), none of these can be described as” absolute rulers”.