SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/3/2014
10:17 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Prophecies
about Greece
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Daniel
11:3-4
Message of the
verses: There is a very interesting
chart in Warren Wiersbe’s commentary on this section that we will look at to
better help us understand this section.
“3 “Then a mighty king will rise to power who will rule with great
authority and accomplish everything he sets out to do. 4 But at the height of his power,
his kingdom will be broken
apart and divided into four parts. It will not be ruled by the king’s descendants, nor will the kingdom hold the authority it once had.
For his empire will be uprooted and given to others.”
When I was preparing to do these Spiritual Diaries for
the eleventh chapter of Daniel I listened to a message by John MacArthur who
has two lessons on the eleventh chapter of Daniel, and he stated that he had
trouble finding an outline for this chapter until he broke the chapter up with
names of the different prominent kings that would come out of this chapter, and
all of these kings began with the letter “A.”
Of course there is no debate about who the king is in these two verses,
for it is Alexander the Great.
I remember when I first looked at this chapter right
after I got saved in Jan. of 1974 and I was listening to a sermon on tape by
Hal Lindsey on this section. He made a
statement in his sermon that I still remember to this day and the statement had
to do with a Jewish Priest and Alexander the Great. Lindsey said that the priest had told
Alexander that what he was accomplishing was prophesied by Daniel many years
earlier and showed him from a scroll of Daniel and it was said that Alexander
the Great prostrated himself before the priest after reading about himself in
the scroll of Daniel. We will now take a
look at the chart from Dr. Wiersbe’s commentary.
“From the previous visions,
Daniel already knew the sequence of the great empires.
The image Vision Vision
(Chapter 2) (Chapter 7) (Chapter 8)
Babylon—head of Gold lion
Medo-Persia arms &
chest of silver bear lion
Greece-Bell & thigh of
bronze leopard goat
Rome—legs of iron, feet of
clay terrible beast”
We
already learned in our SD that King Xerxes invaded Greece, but failed to
conquer it, and this made the young Alexander upset so he decided to fight against
the Persian Empire. We see from the
chart that the Greek Empire was seen as a leopard, and leopards mover very fast,
and Alexander moved very fast with his new military way of fighting called the
phalanx system. I remember another part
of the sermon by Hal Lindsey from 1974 and he said that it was Alexander the
Great who took the best parts of all of the different Greek dialogues and made
them into one language which is called “Common Greek.” The reason was so that when he gave orders to
his generals that there was no way that they could misunderstand what he was
saying. Common Greek is the language
that the New Testament was written in and is not spoken any longer.
“Philip II spent much of his youth as a
hostage at Thebes, where he studied under the renowned general Epaminondas, whose reforms
were the basis for the phalanx. Phalangites were professional soldiers, and were among the first troops
ever to be drilled, thereby allowing them to execute complex maneuvers well
beyond the reach of most other armies. They fought packed in a close
rectangular formation, typically eight men deep, with a leader at the head of
each column and a secondary leader in the middle, so that the back rows could
move off to the sides if more frontage was needed.” (From Wikipedia) (Philip II was Alexander’s father)
Dr. Wiersbe concludes his commentary with the
following: “Once again, Alexander’s
incredible conquests were part of the sovereign plan of God. The spread of the Greek language and Greek
culture assisted the eventual spread of the Gospel and the Greek New Testament. Alexander’s goal was not just to conquer
territory but to bring people together in a ‘united empire.’ His soldiers married women from the conquered
nations, and Alexander’s empire became a ‘melting pot’ for all peoples. This too assisted in the spread of the Gospel
centuries later.”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: God not only sees
the big picture, but He also sees the individuals who help make up the big
picture. It is my goal in life to
accomplish the things that the Lord has planned for me to accomplish so that my
life will bring glory to the Lord.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Proverbs 3:5-6.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
Question: “Stephen Langton about A.D.
1228.” I have done a little bit of study
on this man and it is most interesting.
Today’s Bible
Question: “What were going up and down
on Jacob’s ladder?”
Answer in our next SD.
1/3/2014 10:59 AM
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