Daniel 11:3-4

 Daniel 11

Alexander's conquests; his kingdom is divided

Daniel 11:3-4

Do you think it's possible to be a "woke" Christian?

In Mark 13:22 we read, 

"For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect"

This warning of Our Lord Jesus Christ has been largely neglected in the history of the church. And it has happened because many Christians have not exercised their God's given spiritual gift of "discernment". The simplest kind of discernment comes down to a simple question: Does the message I'm hearing come from God or from Satan? 

"Woke culture" is the outcome of identity politics. For those who are not Americans and/or are not acquainted with this term, it is the last world vision embracing every anti-Christian and antibiblical precept which is fighting the truth in these last times. The Bible says God created male and female; wokeness says there are dozens of genders. The Bible says you will not covet anything which belongs to your neighbor; wokeness says that you are supossed to fight to reclaim from the rich "oppressors" what they "took from you". The Bible says that in Christ there is "neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus"; wokeness says you are supossed to build up your life on some group's "identity", not in the Word of God, which is the same for blacks and whites, men and women, rich and poor. The Bible says that God will never destroy the earth again; wokeness says the world is coming to a catastrophic end on 12 years if we continue using fossil fuels. 

God says that the people who divide you are following mere natural instincts, and that they don't have the Spirit of God. God says also that anyone who doesn't have the Spirit of God doesn't belong to Him. Identity politics is the epitome of division. It has become the ultimate tool for division in the US, taking away the focus from "E pluribus unum" and putting it in all of the historical feuds among the "pluribus". By so doing, identity politics takes away from all "oppressed groups" their responsibility about building up their lives as anyone else does, and establishes demands on the "oppressors" - those who are doing well - because of the alleged "oppression". It has become the last and most revolting mutation of the anti-Christian, anti-democratic, anti-capitalist virus called "Communism". 

Division is one of Satan's favorite tools. He's been using it from the beginning of the world. The Bible says that "everything that was written in the past was written to teach us". Let's read about a particular case that brought disastrous consequences for one of the world's oldest and greatest cultures: Ancient Greece. Today's passage is found in Daniel 11:3-4, NIV:

"Then a mighty king will arise, who will rule with great power and do as he pleases. After he has arisen, his empire will be broken up and parceled out toward the four winds of heaven. It will not go to his descendants, nor will it have the power he exercised, because his empire will be uprooted and given to others"

The original Hebrew is this: 

ועמד מלך גבור ומשל ממשל רב ועשה כרצונו וכעמדו תשבר מלכותו ותחץ לארבע רוחות השמים ולא לאחריתו ולא כמשלו אשר משל - כי תנתש מלכותו ולאחרים מלבד אלה

And it sounds like this: 

Veamád mélex gibór, umashál mimshál rav, veasá kirtsonó. Uxeamdó tishavér malxutó, vetexáts learbá ruxót hashamáyim, veló leaxaritó, veló kemashló asher-mashál. Ki tinatésh malxutó, velaaxerím milevád éle. 

The translation of the Hebrew verses to English is a very good one. "Then" - meaning after the last Persian king prophesied before - is to be understood a century later (Alexander the Great was born circa 100 years after the death of Xerxes the Great) Xerxes' defeat established Greece as the new superpower, but it is Alexander who turned the tables on Persia. 

Let's take a look to the prophecy Daniel received about the rise of Alexander: 

1. He would be a mighty king, ruling with great power and doing his will. 

2. His empire would be broken and distributed among others.

3. This distribution would not include his descendants.

4. The recipients of the different parts of Alexander's kingdom would not retain it, because they wouldn't govern as he did. Alexander's Empire would be given to others. 

In the message corresponding to Daniel 8:8 - the parallel verse to Dn 11:3-4 - we can read the fulfillment of this prophecy in a most detailed way (you can read about it there) Alexander's "great power" can be seen in his successful and fast conquests, and in the extension of his Empire, from Greece to India, and from Babylonia (Iraq) to Egypt and Libya. Because he had no descendants, strong rivalries arose after his death in order to name a successor, and the Empire was divided in an European part called Macedonia, a Turkish one called Thrace, an African one called Egypt and the Asian - and largest - part, the Seleucid Empire. 

 

These four kingdoms were the four horns Daniel saw in the vision of chapter eight, coming from the goat after the first "large horn was broken off". Two of them, the Seleucid and Ptolemaic Empires (yellow and green in the map) were fighting each other for years, for the control of Syria and Israel, in what the secular history calls the "Syrian Wars" - six in total. The Syrian wars are the theme of the prophecy in Daniel 11:5-35. Because Alexander's successors didn't govern "with the power he exercised", their kingdoms got caught in wars that weakened them and made them easy targets for Rome, that conquered them all. 

There is a reason the NT came to us in Greek, being a history between Jews and Romans, taking place in the Roman Empire. Even on the cross, when Pilate wrote "King of the Jews", the inscription was in Hebrew, Latin and Greek. The reason is that at the time, Greek was the lingua franca in most of the known world, as English is today. And Greek culture was everywhere. 

When we study today the work of Epicurus, Diogenes, Aristotle, Plato, Zeno of Citium, Archimedes, Euclid, Eratosthenes, Hipparchus or Aristarchos of Samos, we have to remember that all not of them were born in the Greece we know now, but in a greater Greek empire. Diogenes was born in today's Turkey, Archimedes in Sicily and Eratosthenes in Libya. In the empire Alexander conquered and his successors were not able to keep, Greek culture was at the head of the world by that time. The divisions and wars of the diadochi - especially with each other - weakened them and made them easy targets for Rome, a relatively smaller empire at the time which hadn't reached the heights of Ancient Greece's culture.  

That story would be repeated in Rome. The unified Roman Empire in times of the NT would have never lost an inch to the Arab Muslim conquerors that attacked Bizantium 500 years later. They couldn't be a match for the Roman legions that had conquered half Europe, Turkey, Syria and Israel and all of north Africa. But the division of the Empire between West-East (Rome and Bizantium) weakened Rome, and the constant wars - after Western Rome's fall - between Bizantium and the Sassanian Persians, Bizantium and northern invaders (slavs and avars) or Bizantium and the Visigoths in Spain - weakened also the Eastern Roman Empire and made it impossible for them to defeat the Muslims, who conquered Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Egypt (at the time, those lands had been Roman and Christian territories for centuries) Once again, an underdog in any possible sense conquered a stronger adversary because of its division. 

We began talking about divisions in the Western world, especially in America. There are ideas, policies, concepts, programs - you name it - that have made America the greatest world power, and there are other ones - especially all the "woke" ones - dividing the people and making the nation weaker, by trying to destroy all the pillars of society. The question at the beginning could be answered, "it could be possible to be a woke Christian... if it's possible to be a Christian working for Satan". If you want to serve God, it is in the power of the Holy Spirit, it is basing everything in God's Word, and it is in unity. 

If you have not yet received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, don't wait any longer! We are living in the last times and we don't know the day or the hour when He will come back and snatch up his chosen ones, and the Antichrist will begin his satanical regime on earth. Pray to Jesus, confess your sins, repent, ask for forgiveness and start living with Him! He has promised that whoever comes to him, He will never drive away.

In the love of Jesus, your brother

Israel Leonard

PS. Jesus is coming soon!