Rebuilding What Was Lost

The Sanhedrin was Israel’s Supreme Court, the ruling body of religion and government. The Sanhedrin was comprised of the High Priest as  well as both Sadducees and Pharisees. This was the basic religious demographic of Israel during the intermediate time period, but who were the occupying nations during this time?

After the Babylonian Empire fell to the Persians, who funded and commissioned Israel’s return to the land of Israel as well as building the Second Temple, came the mighty Greek, Alexander the Great, who conquered all of the known world.

The Grecian Empire was divided into four regions and taken by four of Alexander’s generals, of which three became dominate. These generals were all on the same team while conquering, but became very competitive as ruling regional leaders later.

To say that the Grecian Empire was a blip on history’s timeline is to miss their extraordinary presence in our world today! The Westernized world is basically the fruit of the seeds pollinated by ancient Greece. The Romans simply repackaged Grecian thought and spread it throughout their conquests. Our government, arts, architecture, aesthetics, competition (sports obsessions) and the emphasis on materialism are all rooted in Grecian thought.

When the Greeks bumped into the Jews, they were fascinated by what they called an entire nation of philosophers! They were completely enamored by their intelligence and judicious organization of law and order – an entire nation devoted to a spiritual expression through a righteous natural order. 

What was particularly unusual to the Grecians was that the Israelis were the ONLY known monotheistic people. All this choreographed effort was for only One God, a personable loving God, whom the Israelis claimed wed them at Mount Sinai and gave them His Torah, the source of all their intriguing intel! This was bizarre to the Grecians, but nonetheless intriguing.

Why? Grecian knowledge, which was extraordinary, was all contingent upon the material and external realm – what they could measure or observe. The Jew's Hebraic mindset, was equally extraordinaire of the natural realm, but was superior in truths that transcended the natural realm altogether, originating in God Himself and His moral purposes. 

Here is the underlying difference: wisdom is the governing why behind knowledge’s what. 

Wisdom is the originating principles in the unseen realm governing the purpose in the seen realm that knowledge simply measures. The bottom line points directly to the authority of God over His creation and all creation being subject to Him. This runs counter to the Grecian mindset.

This contrast hit at the very heart of Grecian society’s motivation and customs. For example, the Greek mindset believed in glorifying the body for self, competing for an external perfect look, believing one’s value and perfection was founded in the Grecian ethos of beauty, bucks and brains. 

The Hebraic mindset believed in glorifying God through their bodies as a finite temple to host the Holy Infinite Presence – which is a much higher and moral purpose than nudity and bulking biceps! Obviously, the superior value being the perfection of His Holy Infinite Presence within, not contingent upon the externals. The brawn of godliness trumps brawny biceps every time!

So when the Sadducees departed from God’s end-time game plan and rationalized away the authority of God as the Supreme Judge Who would bring all nations into account at the end of the ages (raising the righteous in the resurrection), they minimized that with the rationale of other possible universal judicious systems and the door was opened to the next great move of Satan’s doctrine of deception through apostasy and assimilation. Those who espoused to Grecian thought were called Hellenist. It was the Hellenized Jews who were the main reason for the High Priest’ office, and thereby the Temple services becoming corrupt.

Interestingly enough, Daniel prophesied about these ruling Grecian regions while in Babylon, two in particular, the King of the South (the Grecian-Ptolemaic region of Egypt) and the King of the North (the Grecian Seleucid kings of Syria). Daniel chapter 11 describes a series of battles between the King of the South and the King of the North with Israel caught in the middle. Daniel 11 is one of those time-release prophecies that describes two periods of time being described in one prophecy. 

Daniel described the King of the North as the trailer-promo- template for the antichrist that will emerge in the end-times. We will talk more about this later, but for now, our goal is to observe what that template looks like in the pattern of assimilation and apostasy so that we can discern it in our present world its ramifications in the near future.