Gentile Background

[00:00:00] Book of Daniel and chapter two. Now, it is a very remarkable thing that the 400 years that we're going to deal with in these evenings are in the Bible. [00:00:11] Daniel prophesied, predicted exactly what would happen during those years, hundreds of years before it happened. So remarkable were Daniel's predictions, so detailed were they, especially later on in his vision of the he goat that many liberal scholars 100 years ago were dogmatic, quite convinced and dogmatically stated that these visions of Daniel were undoubtedly post christians. Otherwise, post Christ, they must have been added in at the time of Christ, put into the Book of Daniel, because they could not understand how so detailed visions could be given hundreds of years before the thing happened. Now, we won't be dealing exactly with that this evening. We're going to deal with the gentile background of the New Testament as we find it forming during these 400 years. But we've got it in Daniel chapter two. [00:01:29] Now we shall read from verse 31. [00:01:33] Thou, o king, sawest, and behold a great image. This image, which was mighty and whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee, and the aspect thereof was terrible. As for this image, its head was of fine gold, its breast and its arms of silver, its belly and its thighs of brass, its legs of iron, its feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon its feet that were of iron clay and brake them in pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver and the gold broken in pieces together and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors. And the wind carried them away so that no place was found for them. And the stone that smote the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. [00:02:32] That word mountain, if you look in your modern version or in the margin, you will see, became a great rock. [00:02:41] Verse 36. This is the dream, and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king. [00:02:48] Thou, o king, art king of king, unto whom the God of heaven hath given the kingdom, the power and the strength and the glory, and wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the buds of the heavens hath he given into thy hand and hath made thee to rule over them all. Thou art the head of the gold that is Babylon, and after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth, that is Persia and Greece. [00:03:25] And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron. [00:03:31] Forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things. And as iron that crusheth all these shall it break in pieces and crush. And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes part of potter's clay and part of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom, but there shall be in it the strength of the iron. Forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay, and as the toes of the feet were part of iron and part of clay, so the kingdoms will be part as strong and partly brittle. And whereas thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men, but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron doth not mingle with clay. And in the days of those kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, nor shall the sovereignty thereof be left to another people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. Forasmuch as thou sawest that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it break in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver and the gold, the great God hath made known to the king what will come to pass hereafter. The dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure. [00:04:55] Then the king Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face and worshipped Daniel and commanded that they should offer an ablation of sweet odors unto him. The king answered unto Daniel and said of a truth. Your God is the God of gods and the lord of kings and a revealer of secrets, seeing thou has been able to reveal this secret. Then the king made Daniel great and gave him many great gifts, and made him to rule over the whole province of Babylon and to be chief governor over all the wise men Babylon. And Daniel requested of the king, and he appointed Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego over the affairs of the province of Babylon. But Daniel was in the gate of the king. [00:05:48] Now the period between the end of the Old Testament canon, that is, Malachi, and the beginning of the New Testament, has been called again and again. The 400 silent years. You will find it. [00:06:11] You will find that phrase again and again when we come to what we call the inter Testament period, the time between the two Testaments. [00:06:21] And it is a rather descriptive title, the 400 silent years. [00:06:31] They may indeed have been silent insofar as there was no great prophetic voice when Malachi finished, fulfilled his ministry, there was no great prophetic voice until John the Baptist's voice was heard crying in the desert. Make straight the way of the Lord, and we can also say that we can call it the 400 silent years, not only because there was no prophetic voice in those years, but because there was no divinely inspired scripture given from the book of Malachi. Afterward. After that time, we have got a number of what we call apocryphal books. But these books have always been recognized, both by the jewish church, the rabbis, and later on by the early fathers of the church, and then, of course, by the reformers, recognized again and again as not being of the same standard as what we call the Old Testament. [00:07:54] We shall deal with that, I trust, in one of these evenings this whole matter of what we call apocryphal literature. [00:08:03] So you can, in fact call these years the 400 silent years if you're looking for a prophetic voice during that time or for some divinely inspired scripture. [00:08:21] But if you are thinking of divine activity, you cannot possibly call these 400 years silently. For, in fact, this period, these four centuries were anything but silent. [00:08:46] Tremendous and far reaching changes took place in every sphere of human life. It doesn't matter where you looked in the ancient world. In these four centuries, tremendous changes took place. [00:09:07] Great world empires disappeared and new ones appeared. The jewish people were scattered throughout the inhabited earth. Some even reached China and settled in China. And although they died out, there is still shown today the synagogue of the chinese Jews. Many people have always wanted to see a chinese jew, but in fact, there were chinese Jews. [00:09:38] They reached as far afield as China, right over on the eastern seaboard of China. [00:09:49] This was the period when the Jews were dispersed throughout the inhabited earth. And wherever they went, they began to gather together as the people of God. And they began to study the word, the scriptures, the Old Testament scriptures. They began to pray, and they began to worship. And they became, quite unconsciously, in the midst of a gentile World, the testimony to the one true living, yet invisible God. And when you think, of course, today, we don't find that very thrilling. But in those days, when there was pantheism on every side and idolatry was the order of the day, it was the most remarkable thing to find in the midst of any given community, a group of people who were essentially different, in whose homes no idols were found, who did not believe in propitiating somehow or other evil spirits, who didn't somehow or other feel that they were bound up with the fertility rites and cults to keep the whole wheel of nature going. Here were an essentially different people. [00:11:04] They worshipped the one almighty, infinite, yet invisible God. And their life was marked, generally speaking, by a morality which was quite remarkable and was all the more remarkable when it was set against the background of gentile immorality. Now, this all happened in these 400 years. The word of God, the very revelation of the living God himself, was for the first time, to the horror of some of the more conservative amongst the people of God. Translated into a heathen tongue, it was translated from Hebrew, the very language of God, into that vulgar language, Greek. [00:12:05] And that meant that for the first time in centuries, the oracles of God were open to millions of people who never before knew anything about them. Not only were there, scattered all over the inhabited earth, these communities of law abiding and deeply religious people who worship the living God as the. They called him Jehovah, the living God, but also now the book in which they said was given to them. The revelation of this living God was now in a language that the Gentiles could understand. [00:12:54] Palestine itself was prepared. Great changes took place in the actual country, the promise land, as in fact, also all the surrounding nations were prepared. Culturally, they were prepared for the coming of the Messiah. Politically, they were prepared for the coming Messiah. Religiously, they were prepared for the coming Messiah. Now, my dear, dear children of God, do you realize that God is the God of history? [00:13:29] And do you, in fact realize that God is not, as some people think, like Jonah, that he is only concerned within very narrow and restricted limits? [00:13:45] God is working his purpose out. [00:13:48] And in these 400 years, we find that God is the God of history, far away from his own covenant and chosen people. He is preparing vast empires. He is preparing the minds almost of men, of philosophers, of greek philosophers, of roman thinkers and writers, all of whom are preparing a gentile world for the coming messiah. He is putting into the hearts and minds of men unbelievable ideas that even today we consider engineering feats in order that an administration or road system could spread over thousands upon thousands of miles just so that the gospel could reach as quickly as possible to the ends of that empire and establish the church. [00:14:49] Now, all this we find in these 400 years. We find within these 400 years that the canon of the Old Testament was not only concluded, but finally recognized as the divinely inspired scriptures of God, the law, the prophets and the writings. [00:15:15] Now, then, all that happened in these four centuries, and I believe it has a great lesson for us because we also are at the end of another age. And sometimes for us, it might seem as if with the close of the New Testament canon, that somehow or other, these are the silent centuries until the last great things before the coming again of the Lord Jesus. When the prophetic gift will again break forth. I'm not thinking of it as it is known today in some circles, but in a much more unique way even than that, that at the end, before the coming of the Lord, there will be a new divine outburst, a new divine, as it were, expression, radiation of the word of God. Of course, it is not extra to what we have in scripture that I must just make clear. We feel, however, that in this intervening period, we are in what we could call the silent centuries. But, my dear friends, things are happening and happening fast moving in our day. And, you know, there is a sense in which empires are disappearing. New empires are coming up. One great ideology after another rears its ugly head, and stage after stage, we see the progress of a tremendous stream that is flowing on to the end of this. You and I are in that we are seeing even now the preparing of the tables, the preparing of the stage for the coming of Antichrist, the preparing of the stage for the coming of the Lord Jesus. We see these great things that are happening everywhere, and we see the moves toward world government and unity. We see these things happening within Christendom, which are going to result in a united but counterfeit church. All these things are, in fact, happening before our eyes. Now, the thing is, if you had been living in the period just previous to the coming of the Lord Jesus, most of you would not, and I myself, most of us, would not have recognized his coming. Oh, yes, just get me clear. We would have all said, we're looking for the messiah. We are the covenant people of God. We're looking for the messiah. But I'm sure if we can learn the lesson which we, I trust we will from these four centuries, that at the end, in spite of the fact that the living oracles of God was there, in spite of the fact that the spirit of God was present, in spite of the fact that all these amazing predictions had been made and were being fulfilled before their very eyes, only a tiny handful were aware that the messiah was just about to appear. [00:18:41] And that tiny handful were quite, on the whole, quite ordinary people. Now, that has a very big lesson for you and me. Because you see, dear child of God, when you read a book, it seems thrilling. When you read the Bible story, you think, my goodness me, how blind they all were. Why, it's as clear as crystal. It absolutely stares at you. How could they possibly have missed it? But when you're in it, familiarity breeds contempt. And somehow when you're in it, it doesn't seem to be miraculous, and it doesn't really seem as if things are happening. If you could step out of history tonight and just see what's happened in the last 60 years, just the years of this century, you would, I am sure, be overwhelmed. [00:19:33] If you could just stand back and look at it and see a pattern emerging, that every time there has been a period of world strain and economic and political crisis, some tremendous thing has burst out of it. [00:19:50] It is not going too far to say that in the first world war, it seems as if evil engineered that terrible catastrophe. Whilst unbeknown to those world powers locked in mortal combat, communism reared its head, which was to the greatest threat in the 20th century. [00:20:16] And if, and this is fact historically, if the British and the Germans, if the Austro Hungarian Empire and the Kaiser and Britain had not been locked in battle, communism would have been destroyed at its birth. [00:20:34] They would have united to help the tsar and destroy the thing, rightly or wrongly. [00:20:42] But you see, they were locked in battle. 1917, they had lost millions of men on either side. [00:20:50] And when the call came from Russia to help, they sent a little token force of British and the Germans sent a little token force of Germans. They couldn't do anything. [00:21:00] The thing happened. It was born in the midst of. Of great turmoil. Who knew it? Who understood it at the time? Very, very few people. Now people look back on their wise to the event. Or again in 1931, there was a great economic crisis that hit this country and hit America and we call it the Great Depression. And everywhere there was fear. And what happened in the middle of that great strain and which spread over the whole of the western world, a little painter called Adolf Hitler appeared. [00:21:41] And because his country was in such desperate heights and in such desperate need, he seemed to be the answer to the people. And he broke pact after pact and agreement after agreement, and no one felt they could do anything about it, until once again, the thing reared its ugly head. [00:22:03] So you see, these are things that happen now in those four centuries. It is not exaggerating to say that it was this kind of thing that happened. [00:22:15] One great empire gave way to another and that great empire gave way to another. And each time something was being propelled, prepared for the coming of the Christ. [00:22:30] And so we have very great lessons and very solemn lessons to learn from these centuries. Now, I do hope that as we start to deal with the facts, we won't find it too boring. [00:22:45] As I said, I want to deal this evening with the gentile background of this period. [00:22:54] There are, during this period, three successive world empires, all of which have left their mark and all of which were predicted and foretold by Daniel in his book. [00:23:12] Those three successive world empires of which the scripture says, we are still in the continuation of the last one, are first Persia, followed by Greece and followed by Rome. [00:23:29] Now let's just for a moment think about Persia. Persia, in fact, was a remarkable empire as compared with the. To previous, the Babylonian of which Daniel spoke as the first. [00:23:49] Its system of government was enlightened and humane compared with the Assyrians and compared with the Babylonians. [00:24:00] They had allowed the return of all the deported, captive peoples to their own lands and they had permitted the reconstruction of their life economically and spiritually. Now, this was in fact a very humane and enlightened attitude. On top of that, they not only permitted them to go back and reconstruct their life and their country again, but they gave them a limited form of home rule which was as enlightened as it's possible to be. [00:24:43] The fact that the Persians were, for the most part, Zoroastrians, that is, worshipping one invisible God, spirit, that's Zoroastrianism, the symbol of which is fire, attended by angels, archangels. This was their idea. [00:25:07] The invisible God, whose symbol, whose meant the manifestation of whom was fire. [00:25:16] Now, this had very real, they felt very real kinship with the Jews. Here were another people who believed in the infinite and invisible God, who was spirit and who talked of the Shekinah glory, a great bursting out, as it were, of fire and of light. So the Persians felt, on the whole, a very real kinship with the jew, more so than any of the other nations or tribes around them. And on the whole, treated the jew very fairly and well. [00:26:01] So we can say that the persian kings, the persian emperors on the whole, helped forward the reconstruction and the rebuilding of the land. [00:26:19] You've got that, of course. You've got the first of them mentioned in Isaiah. My servant Cyrus says the lord, he was the founder, the beginning, as it were, of the great persian empire. And he was the one who in particularly was a friend of the jewish people. He helped them forward in their going back to the land under Zerubbabel, and he helped them in the reconstruction of the temple and of the country. [00:26:51] Gradually, however, as time went on, the persian empire was weakened by internal division and rebellion until finally it was swept away by a most remarkable ban called Alexander the Great in 331 BC. [00:27:17] Thus, God used Persia very greatly for the fulfillment of his purpose in the rebuilding of the temple and the city of God, Jerusalem, the reinstitution of the priesthood and the sacrifice, sacrificial system, worship, the repopulation of the land and the study of the scriptures. Now what can we say was the real contribution of the persian empire to the coming of the Messiah? Well now listen carefully. It was. [00:27:58] If there had been no persian empire, there would have been no return to the land. If the babylonian system had continued with their policy and attitude, they would never have permitted a return of deported peoples. Their whole idea was to mix up all the tribes and the peoples of their whole empire until at last they became one great mongrel population that owed loyalty to no one but Babylon. [00:28:30] The Persians had an altogether different attitude. Therefore God brought them to power and used them so that the city of God could be rebuilt and the house of God could be rebuilt. Because before then it had been said by some of the prophets that the Lord would come to his temple and they had to be a Bethlehem. Otherwise the prophet Micah's prophecy could not be fulfilled. Thou Bethlehem Ephrata, that art small, amongst the thousands of out of thee shall come forth him who shall be a ruler in amongst my people Israel, whose goings are from of old, from everlasting. It couldn't be fulfilled. Nor could the prophet Isaiah's prophecy. Thou Galilee of the nations, out of thee a great light coming out of Galilee. How is it possible unless the people went back to the depopulated land of Palestine and rebuilt and reconstructed their life so that these great prophecies of the coming Messiah could in fact be fulfilled. [00:29:45] All this has point. [00:29:47] There would have been no priesthood if the people hadn't gone back under the persian government. For do you realize that the persian government not only paid very largely for the reconstruction of the temple, but also actually was behind the reinstitution of the priesthood and the worship of that temple. Now that is the contribution of Persia. In 334 BC, another great world power arose. And I think we all know a little more about that great world power. It was Greece. [00:30:31] Greece already had a culture and a civilization famed for its brilliance long before this date. [00:30:42] But it was Alexander the Great, one of the most remarkable men in ancient history. In fact, in world history. I've often said I'd like to meet him whenever we shall, but I'd love to meet Alexander the Great. He was undoubtedly one of the most extra and remarkable men that ever lived. This man led Greece to its greatest power in an empire which extended literally from Greece right the way to what we now call West Pakistan, one of the biggest empires the world has ever known. It all began with his father, Philip of Macedon, who united three parts of Greece together, what was called Greece, what was called Thrace and what was called Macedonia. He united these three together, and when he had unified them under his own leadership, he then started an offensive against the Persians, who were holding many of the greek cities. [00:31:59] He started an offensive to reclaim those cities and states from persian domination. [00:32:08] Unfortunately, he was assassinated in 336 and was succeeded by his son, Alexander at 20 years of age. [00:32:21] Alexander came to the head of a united Greece when he was only 20 years of age. Age and showed himself to be a military genius as well as an administrator of the very first order. He led the armies across. We can't go into it all anyway. I'm not qualified to be able to tell you it all fully in the story as it is. He took them right across into Asia, into Turkey, and then started the actual triumph, progress right across Asia to India. In 331, he rounded the persian army and the persian empire fell into his hands. Darius III was murdered when he was fleeing from him. And at 25 years of age, Alexander the Great was the leader of one of the greatest empires in world history. [00:33:27] He died of fever at Babylon in 323 BC at the age of 31. [00:33:40] Surely a most remarkable man. [00:33:43] Everything he accomplished was in his youth. [00:33:48] But the most remarkable thing of all was this. He may have been a very young man, and it may be, as we look at it now, that the unity of his empire, which stretched, as I've said, from Greece to India, did not outlive him for very long. But we have to say this. He imposed upon the whole ancient world in his short life a cultural unity that was to last for 1000 years. Now, think about it. [00:34:27] That young man imposed. [00:34:31] God was behind it, a cultural unity upon the whole of his vast empire that was going to last for over a thousand years from then on, Hellenism, as we call it, permeated every single part of the old empire. Greek became the common and universal language spoken by everyone as a commercial language, as the language of administration, as the general language for all. Rather like in Africa, Hausa is the trade language. Greek became the language everywhere, as later on, Latin was to become in the Middle Ages in Europe, and after that, French. So Greek became the universal and common language of all the various parts of the greek empire. [00:35:29] It was not only that, but the semitic languages, Chalde and Hebrew, Egyptian and many others, just simply fell into disuse as people came to use Greek more and more, not only in business and in study, but in their homes. [00:35:49] Greek thought, greek customs, greek traditions were everywhere adopted. Upper class society became hellenized. In fact, if you weren't greek, in your ways and Greek in your ideas. [00:36:07] You were not sort of. You. [00:36:11] You were rather sort of. You were none. You. [00:36:16] You just weren't with it. Everyone who was anything was Greek in their ideas and Greek in their thought in every single way. And we can also, I think, say that great changes came in the fields of art, which, of course, are with us to this day of art and of philosophy and science and religion. Greek thought, greek tradition, greek custom, left an indelible imprint on the ancient world, which has been carried right down to till this day. Great cities arose. Great cities arose, rather like Alexandria. Alexandria took its name from Alexander the Great. [00:37:14] And these great cities arose around the Mediterranean that were great centers of greek learning and greek culture, magnificent in their proportions and in their architecture, which even today in their rUins, thrill people again and again as TheY LoOK at them. Alexandria's seaport and harbor became the talk of the whole inhabited world, with its great lighthouse that could be seen for miles, at least, so we are told. [00:37:49] It became one of the greatest intellectual centers of the world. [00:37:56] It had public libraries, public zoos, public museums, public gardens, all of which added to its fame. This was the kind of thing in the great flowering of the Greek period that captured the imagination of the whole world. [00:38:20] It was here in Alexandria that greek speaking jews, to the horror of aramaic speaking jews, found their natural center. And from then on, Hellenists were opposed to Hebrews. So Paul says, I am a Hebrew. Of the Hebrew, Stephen was a hellenist, Apollos was an alexandrian hellenist of all things. So you can imagine that in Corinth, some of the christians found it very difficult indeed. Oh, that man from Alexandria, you see your brother, you know, these things go deep. These are the things that lie behind so much in the New Testament. [00:39:07] It was from Alexandria that I think the one greatest single factor in the preparation for the coming of the Messiah took place. And that was what I have already mentioned, the translation of the Old Testament scriptures into Greek. Now, believe me, no one in Judea would have done that. Even if they'd like to have done it. They would have probably been stifled. But in Alexandria, because it had a very go ahead policy, its attitude was greek. It was liberal, generous, broad minded. Go ahead. [00:39:52] They conceived this tremendous idea of taking the oracles of God and putting them into the language of the ordinary people. I can hear some of the dear old people of God sort of saying, why? Why? [00:40:05] What's it got to do with them? [00:40:08] I mean, keep it in Hebrew for us. [00:40:12] We all speak Hebrew for these, we can all send our sons to be taught Hebrew. But I mean, fancy just throwing pearls before swine. I mean, just sort of put it into the vulgar language of the common people and these Gentiles. It was a tremendous break with tradition and into the language of the common people. The Old Testament scriptures went. And that single thing, that single work has had more effect on the course of christian history than anything else. [00:40:45] For it was to the New Testament church they had been. They didn't read Hebrew. The New Testament church looked at the Old Testament in its greek translation, and therefore all kinds of things began to make sense. The word church, ecclesia, unfortunately, we've lost the continuation because in the Old Testament we read the congregation of the people. But in the Greek it says the ecclesia of the people. And then when they come to the new testament, they went, the Lord said, upon this rock I will build dioklesia. [00:41:20] And so they saw a wonderful continuation from the old covenant to the new covenant. It was that kind of thing that had such tremendous effect upon the people. Now you see, this matter of gentile background is not just history. [00:41:38] Some people might think that it hasn't got much for them, for me, and I think for others, if you go away and think to it's thrilling want for it shows God is behind even gentile and godless history, if you like, hidden, veiled. There he is, working his purpose out, and he's got a great objective. If you and I had been there, we would have wondered perhaps what quite what this objective was. We would have thought, well, it's rather an amazing thing, these scriptures in the greek tongue. We might have thought it's rather remarkable, all these Jews everywhere, all speaking Greek and being able to converse with their neighbors about the things of God in a language that the people can understand. And now they've got the scriptures also in this language. It was remarkable. There were great greek philosophers, and I wish we could spend time just there, but I'm afraid I'm not so well versed in them to be able to talk for long about them. But there were great greek thinkers, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno and these others, all of whom prepared the ancient world in their own way for the coming of Christ. There were new ideas abroad, new philosophies, new explanations for the universe, new reaching out after some answer to human life. All somehow or other, were dissatisfied with what they got and longed for, an answer to human life. And in some way they prepared the people, the gentile world, I mean, for the coming of the desire of all nations. We could say so much more. Alongside all that was good and commendable, hellenistic society developed a corruption and an immorality and a pursuit of pleasure, which has become proverbial. [00:43:42] It was during this period, toward the end of this period in the second century, roughly before Christ, that one of the darkest and most sinister characters predicted in scripture appeared. Now I intend by God's grace to take the career of this man separately, because I feel it's so very important for us all to an understanding of what the scripture teaches about Antichrist. [00:44:16] But it was one of jury's darkest hours up to that point. [00:44:24] In fact, at one point during those dark years, seven years, one point, it seemed as if palestinian jury was on the brink of extermination. [00:44:41] That man was called Antiochus Epiphany. [00:44:46] He took the very title of God epiphanes. Outshining, he meant. Yeah, he was the outshining of deity. [00:44:56] His whole object, which we shall talk about another evening, was to somehow hellenize the temple. He felt that until July was really hellenized. They couldn't do much about it. Here, in the midst of. Of their society, were a people who ruggedly and dogmatically tenaciously hung to their scriptures and hung to their way of life. They wouldn't let go. And so he evolved this idea of hellenising the temple. He wanted to put in a few idols in the courts and within the temple in itself. [00:45:38] And of course, to his annoyance, he found the priesthood barred his entry. So began those terrible days when finally he got in and he slew a pig, scattered its blood upon the altar, which, of course, was called inscription, the abomination of desolation upon the altar. That was what Daniel Pope said, when you see the abomination of desolation upon the altar, to the jew, to the child of God, the pig was the most fearful creature, the most unclean of all the species. And I mean, for them to just take a creature they didn't even like to touch, or he certainly never eat. To take that creature and put its blood and dung upon the altar and pray, take it into the holy of holies and scatter it upon the mercy seat was something that simply went to the heart of every God fearing jew. And this man set himself up more or less as God and commanded the allegiance of all. Even worse was the fact that the high priest, he got hold of the high priest, got him so compromised that finally he became his mouthpiece and in fact, did help forward the policies of Antiochus. Now, that's all a period that we shall have to just talk about a bit later because it's all predicted in Daniel, in detail. And it all came to pass. And he has become Antiochus epiphanes, has become the arch type of the Antichrist. In other words, from that point onward, this man has become the symbol of the coming Antichrist, so that from him we can learn the Antichrist's character and methods and policy. All very interesting. [00:47:22] Well, we must leave that. What was Greece's contribution to the coming of Christ? What was it? Well, it was undoubtedly in the cultural unity it established over such a large area. It was not only that from Greece itself to Pakistan, a unity was assigned, established in culture, so that greek ideas, greek ways, greek designs, were accepted as the sort of modern with it thing to do, but far further afield west, greek ideas and customs traveled far beyond the actual confines of their own empire. Now, this was of tremendous importance. You see, before, if before it had been left so that the Lord Jesus had appeared in the babylonian period or there or in the persian period, you would have had an empire which, whilst it was united in one sense, was wholly disunited in another. Everyone was speaking their own tribal or national or local language or dialect. Everyone was following more or less their own local culture or national culture. They were completely divided in that sense. The Greeks weren't very interested in the Jews, and the Persians weren't. The Medes weren't particularly interested in the Jews, Egyptians weren't particularly interested in the Jews. But now there was a common culture and everyone felt they belonged to an entity. They were, of course, Egyptians or Arabians or they were Jews or they were Greeks, actual Greeks, Macedonians or they were Romans or Italians or. But they somehow felt some kind of link. They understood each other in a way they could never understood each other before. They would. Their minds were meeting. Their minds were meeting because upon this vast area, a kind of cultural unity had been imposed and established. This was one of the great and vital contributions of the greek empire. [00:49:57] Then, too, I think we have to say that another great contribution of the greek empire was the liberalizing attitude and tendency of greek thought and culture. Now, this is very, very important before. Then again, it harks back to the first point I've made of cultural unity. Before then, people were more or less bound by their own definition, distinctive culture and their own distinctive thought. But after this, they not only had a cultural unity, but greek thought and culture was liberalizing. It had a gloriously open aspect. It was new. You know, it was said of the Athenians in the book of acts that they always wanted to hear something new. Now, that is typically greek. [00:50:51] It is, as it were in one sentence, the whole of greek thought and culture condensed. They were wide open to new things. It wasn't just the back, the past history that interested them. They were forward looking. And because they were forward looking, they were broad minded. Now, this was tremendous for even the Jew, unfortunately, because come backward looking, back to the past glories of David, back to the past glories of Moses back to the past glories of Solomon. All the way back, back. Now, they thought, we are in an occupied country. We're a vassal state. We're a satellite of another power. They looked back, but here came the liberalizing tendency of greek thought and culture. And all the greek speaking Jews were marked, as opposed to their hebrew counterparts, by this fact that they were forward looking. So it is a most interesting fact that when we come to the New Testament, as we shall, we find all the great leaders in the forward move of the church were Hellenists. There is only one who stands out who isn't. And that saul of Tarsus, he's a Hebrew, of the Hebrews. But he speaks Greek, and he was born in Tarsus, and he was a Jew of the dispersion, although belonging to the Hebrews. Isn't that interesting? But Stephen was the first man to begin to see clearly the difference between the new covenant and the old. And he lost his life for it, for preaching that great sermon. He was a Hellenist, Philip. See, they've all got greek names. No good jew would have a Greek. [00:52:37] These were Hellenists, you see, they were so forward looking, their parents gave them greek names. And so they've got these many names that somehow all looked forward to the future. And this is another great factor of Greek that the greek empire created or produced in the preparation for the coming of the Messiah. It is a very interesting thing that you will find if you look into church history, that those with a traditional hebrew background were the conservatives. James, Peter, even Peter kept on going back. You know, Paul had to stand up and tell him off because he wouldn't eat with Gentiles. He suddenly got afraid and ran back over it and so on. But you'll find that the Hellenists of the people with the forward looking people, you see, they saw much more clearly than their hebrew counterparts, this glorious new covenant that was theirs. And the fact that it was for Gentile Jew, and Gentile Jew first and then Gentile. Now, that's all very wonderful, isn't it? So these are the two great factors that were contributed by the greek empire to the coming of Christ. But there's a third, an even greater, if it was a cultural unity that was imposed and if it was this liberalizing tendency of greek thought and culture. The third thing was, and the supreme factor that was contributed by the greek empire was its language. [00:54:17] So simple. [00:54:20] But you see, the greek empire gave its language, and even when the Romans came, Greek continued as the common popular language of most of the Mediterranean. [00:54:37] It is an interesting fact. Therefore, when the Lord Jesus came, although he spoke Aramaic, yet the language that was going to carry that gospel to the ends of the earth was this, Greek. And you see, there was no need in those days when there was no printing and when there were no great publishing houses and when there was no great system for translation. Just imagine what it would have been like if it had been given in Aramaic and then it had to be translated into egyptian and into libyan and into Greek and into Latin and into all the other things, Saxon, all the rest of them, all the other items, bits and pieces. It would have been a tremendous job. Do you understand? You see, you take it for granted. I take it for granted. We think, oh, what is all this about? Why does he talk about this? It's not really so thrilling, but it is thrilling. It's absolutely thrilling, because, you see, as though if Greek had not been the common language of the popular people, not just the educated classes, but the ordinary people, you see, well, the gospel just couldn't have spread. There was no printing. There was no great system of publishing houses. There was no way of somehow getting this obscure gospel from someone in Palestine out to the ends of the inhabited earth. But Greek was now the established language of the man in the street, right the way across the old persian empire and right the way to Rome. So here we go into Greek. We've already got the old Testament scriptures in Greek. They've already been translated, dictated at least 150 years before Christ. Now we've got the basis. So Matthew starts to sit down and scrawls out his gospel, and then Mark puts it, and probably Peter dictated it to him, and then he wrote out his gospel. And then doctor Luke sits down and scrawls out his all under divine inspiration. And so these gospels begin to go in Greek and they're put alongside the old Testament in Greek. And now they begin to say, here is the great foretelling of themselves, here is the fulfillment. And then Doctor Luke said, I must add another volume. So he writes acts and acts, becomes next to me and now we get the story of the ancient church, the early church. And then Paul sits down in white anger. He's heard about people that have gone around the churches that he brought into being in Galatia, and they're doing all kinds of terrible things to them, unsettling them. And he gets so angry, he storms into his study, sits down, and in white hot heat, he writes a letter. I would to God that they would cut themselves off, mutilate themselves, he says. [00:57:23] So we get the letter to the Galatians and then a bit later, we find there he is with a chain on one on his wrist, and there it drapes and drools across the room. And there's a soldier on the other end of the chain, and there's the apostle Paul dictating to someone who's scrawling it all out. Work. It's the letters of the Ephesians, the letter of the Colossians. Later on, we hear him writing his last letters to Timothy. He's on the end of a chain, soon to be executed, soon to be a martyr for the faith. But he's writing in Greek. [00:58:01] He's writing in Greek. [00:58:03] He's not writing in Hebrew or even Aramaic. He's writing in Greek. [00:58:09] And so those letters could go right into Caesar's household. They could go to the highest in the land and the lowest in the land. They could go to the ends of the empire. [00:58:19] Everywhere people could understand this aged, poor, old, half blind apostle. [00:58:27] Here, they've got this before them. There's John the apostle. [00:58:35] He writes the book of Revelation. He doesn't in one sense write, of course he writes it, but, I mean, it's by divine inspiration. He sees these visions and he sits down and writes them. He's in a kind of forced labor camp on the isle of Patmos. They're trying to work him to death. That was the way they tried to get rid of political prisoners. That's quite a modern idea, actually. And they thought, work him to death on a little bit of food and we'll finish him. But there he sees the most glorious visions, looking right down through the centuries of time to us and beyond us to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he writes it. And the Lord will forgive me for saying this, I know, because it's absolutely true in the most fearful Greek. [00:59:19] Now, that's a strange thing. Everyone agrees on this. [00:59:23] John the Greek in the book of revelation is fearful. [00:59:28] But you see, he says, it's no good writing it in Aramaic, I'll write it in Greek. So there he is. He's not too good at Greek, but he's on his way writing it in Greek in order to get it over to the people. You see, we must get this vision of the coming of the Lord. But you know, the strange thing is it's been greek to a lot of people ever since we couldn't understand it. Now, the point is. The point is that John wrote his book of revelation under symbolic forms in great, what we call apocalyptic symbols. Why? Because he knew very well that if he wrote and boldly stated who he was talking about, he would have lost his head right there and then. [01:00:13] So the Lord shows him these great visions and he puts them all down. He writes it in Greek so that everyone can read, but they need the Holy Spirit to understand what is read written. [01:00:24] It's as simple as that. But there is the value of the language, Greek. Well, now we have just a few more moments and we'll deal with the last of the empires, Rome, when we come to Rome. Of course, I think most of you are more acquainted with the history and character of the roman empire than probably any of the other periods. [01:00:47] BC the last great world empire rose to its zenith. [01:00:54] For some centuries, Rome's sun had been slowly rising quite a number of centuries under the leadership of a general called Pompey in the eastern Mediterranean and under the leadership of another military genius in the west, in Gaul and in these little islands, a man called Julius Caesar. [01:01:19] Rome reached its climax and came to supreme power. Pompey was murdered and Julius Caesar took supreme leadership. [01:01:35] Now it is in fact very interesting, all this because Rome was different to any of the empires that preceded it, Babylon, Persia and even Greece. And it was different in this that it had a democratic form of government already, it's true, known in what we call the greek city states like Athens and some of the others, they had already from time and memorial known something of this democratic form of government, so called. It needs qualifying. But, but this is not the place I can't go into every little detail does need qualify. But it was a form of democratic government, certainly by standards in those days, it was democratic. [01:02:24] It's genius lay in its, in the way bound territory after territory to itself by bilateral agreement. It didn't just conquer huge areas, say now you've all got to do what we say. But it took this territory, often by cunning, made an agreement with it and by a bilateral agreement between the two and then another bilateral agreement there, another there and another here. It gradually bounced state after state, city after city, area after area, territory after territory to Rome, all somehow compromised. [01:03:03] If they really wanted a living economy, then they had got to keep the peace with Rome. [01:03:12] And so Rome gradually brought these territories under her wing, giving them, wisely, much local independence, but at the same time holding an overall responsibility, responsibility for the area or state administratively and military. [01:03:37] So, in other words, Rome had an overall administrative responsibility and an overall military responsibility, whilst it let them get on with their own local customs and worship the gods they wanted to worship. And if they wanted to have a festival on this day, they could have it, and so on and so on. It allowed that local independence. This was Rome. Now, whilst in theory the government was democratic, in practice, it very soon became autocratic, the emperor being looked upon as divine. [01:04:11] Now, this was the point of great conflict between the Christian and the jew, and the roman empire. At the beginning, it wasn't there, but as time went on and more and more, the emperor claimed his divinity and demanded that people confess him as God. So the Christian could not do it and was martyred. [01:04:35] Thousands and thousands of Christians died in the arenas because they would not offer incense to Caesar as God. This happened in the last war in Japan. Just the same way the japanese emperor is looked upon as God, the son of God. And every person had to offer incense and bow before the photo in every college, in every military academy, on every parade ground. And if a Christian stood erect, he was taken away, judged and executed. It was as simple as that. So there was the terrible choice in the latter years of the roman empire for every Christian, thousands compromised in order to keep their lives, and thousands of others laid down their lives just because they would not confess the Caesar as God and lord. [01:05:28] Well, there we are. In fact, we have to also to say this, that the emperor became so autocratic, such a dictator in the end, that it was the army and its allegiance to the Caesar that was the factor in the Roman Empire at its greatest point. At its greatest point, the roman empire stretched from the British Isles in the north, from, not England. We can't include Scotland. They were too much for the Romans. But from northern England right the way down to the african desert, to the. [01:06:09] The cataracts of the Nile, the Nile cataracts to the arabian desert in the south, and from the river Euphrates here in the east, to Spain in the west, the Atlantic, really in the west, the Roman Empire spread. Only Germany, who also was too much for the Romans, was outside of it in the north. And of course, the Vikings, who were so primitive that the Romans felt that there was no real point in even trying to get them. And in the east there was the Parthians. [01:06:54] They were the only ones that stayed outside of the Roman Empire. Now, when you think of that, it is remarkable. Such a vast area under the control of one government under the control of one administration with all those boundaries guarded by one great imperial army. It is absolutely remarkable. [01:07:24] It was governed. The way it was governed was by. By being divided into provinces. And these provinces were divided into two classes. The first class were responsible to the roman senate. [01:07:39] Now, if you read your New Testament very carefully you'll get all these things. It'll fail you if you really listen carefully and read your New Testament with this in mind. You see, wherever you hear of a pro consul or a governor mentioned you know that it's a province of the first class which is responsible to the roman senate. And the governor was appointed or proconsul was appointed for one year only. [01:08:07] And then he was recalled. Normally, sometimes it went on. But it was. That was the understanding. The other class were what were called imperial provinces. And these were always in more trouble spots like Spain or Syria and elsewhere where it was an imperial province. And that province was directly responsible to the emperor himself who delegated someone called a legate or a procurator to be in charge. So when you read carefully, if you see in your margin procurator you know, that is a province that had a lot of rebellion or the. The emperor was a bit worried about and it was responsible to himself directly. After a while, the emperors were very clever. All the new provinces they made, they made responsible to themselves so that they felt they could control the empire more. So less and less became responsible to the senate more and more responsible to the Caesar or Kaiser himself. [01:09:08] Roman citizenship was something that everyone loved. It was a tremendous thing. Do you know that at one point, although Rome only numbered 400,000 in the beginning of the great power of Rome there were 4 million registered roman citizens. [01:09:33] Now, this was the way Rome claimed loyalty. She granted citizenship to certain people knowing full well that once they got this longed for citizenship which made them a free citizen of the Roman Commonwealth then somehow or other their loyalty, they felt, was one. Now, you remember, Paul got very angry at one point when he was being beaten and asked to see the guard, the centurion. And did you know, I'm a roman fiction? And this man said when he took him to the governor the governor said, did you buy it? No, Sir Paul, I was born. I had it by birth, you see, because Paul lived in Tarsus and Tarsus was one of the cities granted roman citizenship. Anyone who was born in Tarsus of a certain class became a roman citizen. Now, there were two kinds of. Of way in which you could get roman citizenship in a corporate way. One was if you were in one of the colonies. Now, there were colonies all over this vast area, first nearer to Rome, and then gradually, the Romans colonized the whole of their empire. What they did was this. They had a great surplus of population in Rome, so they moved a whole group of generally. Exactly, soldiers, old war veterans, with their families, and asked them if they would settle in such and such a place. Philippi is a colony. Probably it was settled by a lot of old war veterans. That's how it started. And a lot of other places like that all over the roman empire that were colonists. [01:11:14] They had a special sense of loyalty to Rome because they were miniature Romes. They were literally miniature Romes, little colonies of Rome built on the same method and system of government. The other way was that Rome, in its political interest, granted certain cities roman citizenship. Athens was one. If you were born in Athens of a certain family, certain class of people, you immediately became a roman citizen. [01:11:42] And there were many others too. Like that, you could buy your roman citizenship, but it cost you something, quite a big sum of money to obtain your roman citizenship by that way. [01:11:56] Well, now, by these means, anyway, Rome insured itself or sought to ensure itself against rebellion. Now, Rome gave to the world justice. [01:12:12] It gave to the world the rule of law. Now, you've often heard of that concerning the old british empire, which I'm afraid has vanished. [01:12:21] We spoke of it as the rule of law. [01:12:25] Every decent, law abiding citizen understood what the rule of law was. That is, it wasn't a person's personality or whims or fancies, but a man had absolute justice guaranteed to him by law. It was the rule not of a personality or just of a man's ideas of interpretation, but by the law itself. Now, this is what Rome gave to the world, and it was a new thing. The world knew nothing about justice. And although roman justice broke down all over the place, nevertheless, it did a tremendous thing in giving to the world justice, the rule of law. [01:13:08] In many ways, of course, it has become the basis of justice in every civilized counTry. British law is based more or less on roman law, and there are many other countries just the same. Their law was so remarkable that it has given to the whole of the succeeding centuries their character. [01:13:32] It created Rome. It created an administrative machine from BAbylon, almost to Scotland, unequalled in world history. [01:13:44] Whilst its roads, its public buildings and works have become world famous. If you've ever seen the aqueduct taking water for miles and miles and miles away, built by roman engineers carrying water, water all the way to a city never heard of before, really. [01:14:04] And many other schemes. I was reading only today that Nero had a mad scheme. At least everyone thought it was mad at the time of cutting a canal, canal right through rock in Greece. The strange thing was, a little later in the 20th century, it was done, and they followed the exact plan of Nero, cut it right through and did it. Roman building was something remarkable. Well, you all know, we all talk about roman roads. If we see a road that's really straight and we can stand and look at it, and we go as straight, just straight, as straight as can be, we say, that's a roman road. But, you know, that's unheard of in those days. Roads could be laid in that way. They laid roads over the whole of their empire and connected end to, to end with a vast network of what was, relatively speaking, first class roads. And today, those roads still exist. [01:15:09] Most remarkable thing, all these centuries later, those roads they built existed. But this is even more remarkable. In John Wesley's day, he had to pray every day that he be kept from robbers and highwaymen. [01:15:22] But in the roman day, they policed their roads so wonderfully that they almost freed the roman empire from piracy and brigands. [01:15:33] That's a remarkable thing. [01:15:36] It was because roman justice, when it came to the pirate and the brigand, was very rough indeed. But they freed the Romes of fear so that people on the whole could travel along them and know that they were safe. Now Rome combined military might and strength with justice and public order. Its system of roads, which we have spoken about, gave to the empire a vast transport system. [01:16:08] The roman army we just mentioned before we close, was another remarkable, remarkable institution. [01:16:15] It was enormous. [01:16:17] And in the Bible, you will meet it again and again. We. Do you remember when that man, that poor man who was possessed, living in the tombs, when he came to the Lord Jesus, the Lord Jesus asked him what his name was, and something from within him said, my name is legion. [01:16:38] Now, legion was the in roman military term for the biggest unit in the army, and it numbered 10,000 men. Roughly 10,000 men was in the legion. And if we are to believe it, then, that there were 10,000 evil spirits in that man named. That's why when they were cast out, they went into a herd of swine numbering many, many hundred, drove them into the sea. Terrible thought, isn't it, legion? And then you know, the Lord Jesus spoke. He said, there's no need to fear about me. If I were to call upon my father, he could send me legions of angels. [01:17:20] Legions of angels. Have you ever thought, I hope you don't think of it as the poppy day legion. You know, when you think of it in scripture, what does legion mean? It means. It means the Lord's thinking of the biggest unit in the army, 10,000 men. Now, that legion was divided into ten cohorts, and each of those cohorts was numbered 480 each. Now, if you are mathematical, you work that out, you'll think, well, how then is the legion 10,000? That was because it had ten cohorts of infantry, a unit of cavalry and another large unit of artillery. [01:18:01] And that's how it was made up with all the auxiliaries as well. It came to something like 10,001 of the key men. Key officers in the roman army was the centurion. And he was just what his name means, a man who commanded 100. Sometimes he commanded more, but it was generally a name for the officer so commanded the 100. Now we meet these men again and again. In the New Testament, it was a cohort that went to arrest the Lord Jesus. Fancy sending 480 men to arrest the Lord Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. It was a cohort that guarded the grave, 480 men on the grave, guarding it against the day of resurrection. And then still people say his body was stolen. It seems quite remarkable. [01:18:47] And then again, there are other things that are remarkable. You get the centurion. You get the centurion by the cross who stood there. He was one of these officers in the roman army. You've got the centurion who went to the Lord Jesus about his servant, which shows a remarkable character in the man. He was bothered about the servant, and he went to the Lord Jesus said, my servant is ill, could you don't come? Just say the word. I know what it means. Just say the word and he'll be killed. And the Lord said the word, and the centurion went back and found that he'd been healed at that moment. And the Lord said, I've not found such great faith. No, not in Israel. Here was a roman centurion. Now, this is all the background. Well, now we must end. What was the contribution of Rome to the purpose of God? How did the Roman Empire prepare for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ? Well, it prepared in this way. [01:19:43] The world was strongly and harmoniously governed in a way that it had not been governed before. [01:19:54] From end to end of its. Of it, of its boundaries, of its area. There were troubles, yes, there were rebellions. But overall, the strength of roman government, government and military might meant there was peace in the Roman Empire when the Lord Jesus was born. And at the beginning are the days of the gospel. Then again, we have to say this. [01:20:22] It gave the rule of law. [01:20:24] And in giving the rule of law, it gave Christianity its birth, because Christianity was protected by roman law. [01:20:36] Until finally, both Jew and Christian were. In Nero's day, an edict was passed that they were illicit religions. And from that moment on, they were persecuted and martyred. But whilst roman law gave its authority to the protestant protection of jew and Christian, because then, at that time, the Christian was looked upon as a sect of jewry, just like the Pharisees or the Sadducees, it was the most wonderful protection. That's why Paul appealed to Caesar. He felt quite sure that he would be protected more by going before Caesar than by any judean court in Palestine. Of course, the other thing that Rome gave to the coming of the Lord Jesus was its network of roads. Now, that may seem to you very, very strange, but in actual fact, it was the network of roads that Rome produced that meant that that gospel in that greek land language, with those greek, both spoken word and written word, could go to the ends of that empire in a very short time. Before, in fact, the emperors woke up to exterminate it. By the time that Nero had decided that they'd got to do something about it, Christianity had spread to the far ends of his empire. It couldn't have done it without those roads. It was the roads that did it. And Paul was a past master in this strategy of evangelism. He went along the great roads, and whenever there was a great strategic center, he stopped there and preached until a church came into being. And he said, now you look after all the country districts around you. I'm off and off he went down the road again and he came to another place and they stopped there and evangelized. And then he went on again to the next place. And it was the roman road did it. He would have been murdered many a times by Wiggins. He speaks of it. But you see, on the whole, roman government policed the roads very wonderfully. And so the gospel could spread from Russia to Spain, from Scotland to Egypt, right along this network of roads, through these colonies, right the way along it went, until the gospel reverberated fight throughout the roman empire. Now, do you not believe that God is the God of history? And if this is the way he prepared the world for the first advent of our Lord Jesus. Do you think that he's asleep tonight? [01:23:23] Do you think that he is not preparing this world for the second advent of the Lord Jesus Christ? [01:23:31] Behind the scenes, behind the counsels of godless and atheist men, behind all their ways and methods and ideologies and techniques, God is working his purpose out. [01:23:45] And the final, the final word will be God. [01:23:51] In fact, in the final thing, the ultimate thing, will be that stone, not cut with hand, will smash into smithereens. This whole world system, with all its wickedness and with all its cruelty, it will be smashed into smithereens by the stone that will become a rock which fills the whole earth. Who is that rock? None other than the rock of ages, the one who Moses. When he said, show me thy glory, the Lord said, stand by me on this rock and I will put thee in the cleft of the rock, and I will put my hand upon thee so that thou shalt not see my face, but thou shalt see my backside. [01:24:51] Thou shalt see my glory hidden in the cleft of the rock under the hand of God. [01:25:03] That's the rock that is going to fill the whole earth, whose glory shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. Shall we pray now, Lord Jesus, thou whose coming was so gloriously prepared by the spirit of God, we pray that in our days thou wilt give us eyes to see and to understand, Lord, that in our day and in our generation, thou art at work in the affairs of men, working out thine own purpose, so that our Lord Jesus, when he comes, shall come back to take his people to be with himself. Lord, we thank you for this glorious hope. We thank the Lord Jesus that thou art that stone not made with hands. Thou art the rock, the cleft rock in which we have found our salvation and are hidden in the presence of the glory of God. We thank thee and we worship thee together in his name. Amen.