Antiochus IV Epiphanes

The Seleucid king, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, needed complete control of Israel to fortify his region against the rising military threat of the Romans. In doing so, he needed to take control quickly and basically cozied up to the assimilated Hellenized Jews. He had the High Priest murdered, put his own thug in to act as High Priest and bought many of the Sadducees to use their place in positions of power. 

He proceeded with a complete replacement for a direct and absolute apostasy to dominate Israel by outlawing the study of Torah, the keeping of Sabbath and dietary laws of kashrut, being circumcised and all observances of Passover, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and the Feast of Tabernacles.

In fact, since the Jewish calendar is a direct sequencing of the entire Jewish faith, Jewish timing itself was outlawed. He made the High Priest offer swine sacrifices in the Temple and they erected Grecian gods – in particular, an image of Antiochus himself claiming to be Zeus, the king of all gods, god manifest in earth - an obviously satanic copycat of King Jesus. 

Surely we can see the envy of Satan wanting the hijack all titles belonging to God and replace with his own messianic wanna be version. This was repeated throughout every little town and village in Israel. Sever persecution broke out for all faithful and observant Jews, oppressive rule was leveraged upon them by the collaborating Hellenized Jews.

Yes, this was an oppression architected by Antiochus IV, but, by and large, was carried out by Hellenized Jews who had first assimilated themselves with the Grecian mindsets and then justified their complete apostasy for the reward of acceptance from the powerful and popular Hellenizing Grecian powers. Israel experienced civil war while being oppressed by an occupying Grecian government, led by a ruthless antichrist.

A band of five brothers, known as the Maccabees, led an opposition for 25 years resisting and eventually defeating the rule of both the Hellenized Jews and the occupying Grecians. In recapturing the Temple, the first thing they did was begin an extremely thorough cleansing process. While cleaning, they found a vile of purified, pressed olive oil to be used as burning fuel in the light of the Menorah. They only had enough for one day, but it burned miraculously for eight days and the Festival of Lights, Hanukkah, was born. It has been celebrated annually ever since and Jesus Himself celebrated Hanukkah.

We would not be hard pressed to clearly identify that the people of God in the Judeo-Christian faith are still at war with the Grecian ethos and mindset in us today! Our Hellenized or Grecian worldviews have undermined the clarity of God’s Word and divided our allegiance to His cause. We take the same rationale bait that we could do more good and have a greater influence on our generation by compromising with the culture of the day.

Here is a powerful and weighty truth patterned and evident in Israel’s history (and as we will see in Church history), that it was either leadership or the vacuum of godly leadership that allowed assimilation of God’s people and led them into apostasy every time!

It would be another eighty years until the Romans would conquer Israel. The story repeats itself, the Hellenized Jews were funded and found political positions of power collaborating with Roman rulers. Israel would go back around the assimilated path towards apostasy, only this time the price paid would be felt for millennia to come.

It would be wrong to say all Pharisees and Sadducees were godless, because they weren’t. In fact, most of them started out with intent to follow God, some stayed true and some clearly did not. But most found themselves in a power struggle that imposed an expectation of compromise in the world they lived in, not unlike the pressures leveraged against the Judeo-Christian faith today. 

Those who did remain faithful, prior to Jesus’ first coming, encouraged the faithful to follow God in the Spirit of the law, not by the letter, in efforts to revive that once lit fire of love between Israel and God. This was a pre-messianic teaching, not post, although we are most familiar with it as the Apostle Paul echoes this in his teachings. 

No doubt it was first whispered in the ears of those listening to the still, small Voice to prepare for Messiah’s coming!