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God’s Will in Pagan Powers
Episode 61 –God’s Will in Pagan Powers
Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.
Script: (Bible quotes from the God’s Word Translation)
In my visions at night I, Daniel, saw the four winds of heaven stirring up the Mediterranean Sea. Four large animals, each one different from the others, came out of the sea. The first animal was like a lion, but it had wings like an eagle. … I saw a second animal. It looked like a bear. … After this, I saw another animal. It looked like a leopard. On its back it had four wings, like the wings of a bird. The animal also had four heads. ... After this, I saw a fourth animal in my vision during the night. It was terrifying, dreadful, extraordinarily strong, and had large iron teeth. ... It acted differently from all the other animals that I had seen before..
Daniel, Chapter 7, verses 2 through 7, God’s Word Translation
I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns, seven heads, and ten crowns on its horns. ... The beast that I saw was like a leopard. Its feet were like bear's feet. Its mouth was like a lion's mouth. The serpent gave its power, kingdom, and far-reaching authority to the beast. One of the beast's heads looked like it had a fatal wound, but its fatal wound was healed. All the people of the world were amazed and followed the beast.
Revelation, Chapter 13, verses 1 through 3, God’s Word Translation
********
VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m here today with RD Fierro, author and founder of Crystal Sea Books and part time archeologist. Well, at least if you look at some of the stuff that comes out of his desk you’d think that some of it had been in there for a very long time.
RD: You can never tell when you might need an extra-long twist tie or old plastic spoon...
VK: Sure. Or an extra-large cup with a coffee stain. Anyway, let’s set aside your history and return to our discussion of Biblical history. I think you said that today you wanted to talk about why the prophecies in the book of Daniel talked about four specific world empires beginning with the Babylonians empire. Just as a reminder to our audience, the prophet Daniel was himself a Jew who had been taken captive by the Babylonians probably around 605 B. C. He then spent the rest of his very long life in Babylon or in the subsequent Persian empire and through God’s providence he became a very senior court official in both empires.
RD: Exactly. And while he was in Babylon God gave Daniel a series of visions about the empires that would control the Mideast and many of the countries adjacent to the Mideast. In chapters 2, 7, and 8 of Daniel God showed Daniel that four empires starting with the Babylonian empire would come into control of Palestine and would all ultimately make an important contribution to redemptive history. Today we want to sketch out, at a high level, how God used those pagan empires as part of his overall plan to bring His Messiah into the world and make salvation possible.
VK: Sounds like we have a lot of serious material to get to, so how about if we start out on a lighter note. Let’s hear a bit of humor about one of the most famous episodes from Daniel’s life with one of Crystal Seas’ Life Lessons with a Laugh. This one will provide a graphic visual of the first vision of the four empires that Daniel received.
---- Life Lessons – Daniel 5 – Daniel and the Head of Gold
VK: Ok. Now I know why you have all those artifacts in your desk that pertain to fast food or drinks.
RD: ... Remember the Life Lessons are created for fun …
VK: And some people have fun with treats. Got it. Anyway, at least the Life Lesson did reinforce the sequence of empires that Daniel received during his visions from God which were, in order, the Babylonian Empire, the Medo-Persian Empire, the Greek Empire, and the Roman Empire. And you say that the biggest reason that God told Daniel about this sequence of empires was because God was going to use each of them in a particular way to accomplish his plan of redemption.
RD: Exactly, or as I say to Jerry, exactamundo. God raised up each of those empires for a specific purpose which we can now understand from our own position in redemptive history. Remember that Daniel received his visions more than 500 years before Jesus would be born. So, while Daniel had faith in God’s providence and provision he didn’t have the benefit of knowing how God would work out his will in that series of empires. We are on the other side of Christ’s time on this earth so we have the benefit of history to tell us how God did it.
VK: So, how did God work out his will through these pagan empires starting with the Babylonians? The Babylonians were the ones that actually conquered Judah and Jerusalem and took the Jews captive for a period of 70 years. That’s a seven decade period of exile from their homeland. It’s hard to see how that was part of God’s will.
RD: I agree that it does take wisdom to understand that sometimes God works out His will through circumstances that look pretty bleak from a human standpoint, but He does. In the case of the Babylonian captivity God used the Babylonians to purge idolatry from His chosen people. Before the Jews became captives in Babylon idolatry was a continuous problem in Israel starting with Joshua’s failure to completely remove the Canaanite peoples who had occupied Palestine before the Exodus. As you may recall God had commanded Joshua and the Israelites to complete remove the previous occupants from the land. In today’s politically correct times that seems extreme but, as a part of worshipping their idols, the Canaanites practiced child sacrifice, ritual prostitution, and a number of other abominable practices that were inconsistent with God having a holy people for Himself.
VK: But, as successful as Joshua was in helping the Jews resettle Israel he didn’t completely fulfill God’s command. And as a result for the next 800 years the Jews frequently flirted, in one way or another, with the idolatrous practices they picked up from their neighbors. But all that ended after the Babylonian captivity, didn’t it?
RD: Yes. The books of the Old Testament that were written after the Jews returned to their homeland after the Babylonian exile contain no criticism of the Jews for idolatry. There’s plenty of criticism for other sins – intermarriage with pagans, failure to repair the temple, failure to pay tithes and offerings, etc. But there’s no criticism for practicing idolatry. The exile was a drastic measure on God’s part but it purified God’s chosen people, at least insofar as their practice of idolatry was concerned.
VK: Well, that’s certainly a sobering lesson for how seriously God takes our worship practices isn’t it? Yikes. All right. What about the Medo-Persian Empire? What purpose did it serve in redemptive history?
RD: Well, at a minimum, it did three big things. First, the Persian emperor Cyrus began the process of returning the Jews to Palestine. In 538 B.C. he issued the decree that allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild their temple. So, just as Jeremiah had prophesied the Jews were in exile for about 70 years and just as Isaiah prophesied a king named Cyrus came to their aid. Second, a later Persian king named Artaxerxes issued the decree that started the time clock ticking for what I think is the most amazing illustration of prophecy in the entire Bible. We’re going to talk about that in our next episode of Anchored by Truth.
VK: And third?
RD: And third, when the Persian emperor Darius attempted his invasions of Greece he stirred up the Greek anger just as prophesied in Daniel chapter 8. This ultimately led to Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian Empire leading to the inauguration of the third of the four empires, the Greek Empire.
VK: Alexander the Great conquered Persia in 334 B.C. This means that the Babylonian Empire had lasted about 70 years and the Persian Empire lasted about 200 years. The Greek Empire would control Palestine until 63 B.C. when the Roman general, Pompey, conquered Jerusalem. So the Greek Empire lasted a little less than 300 years. Each empire lasted a little longer and occupied a larger territory. But what was the Greek Empire’s specific contribution to God’s plan of redemption?
RD: Language.
VK: Language?
RD: Yep. Language. There were other impacts of course, but primarily the Greeks spread their language and culture throughout their conquered territories and because their empire lasted longer than their two predecessors their language and culture had a more lasting impact. And this impact is more important than it might seem on the surface.
VK: I think you might need to amplify this a bit.
RD: Well, this is jumping ahead a little but let’s remember that the language that was spoken most widely, even during the period of the Roman Empire, was the Greek language. Of course in Italy and Rome the primary language was Latin, but throughout the vast majority of the Roman empire, the international language – the lingua franca if you will - was Greek. Of course there were still local languages used among the people of a particular country or region, like Hebrew was used in Palestine, but when people from different nations and cultures communicated with one another overwhelmingly the language used was Greek.
VK: So what you’re saying is that after Jesus’s life, death, and most importantly resurrection, when the Apostles and disciples started spreading out and telling others about Jesus the language they were speaking was Greek? And that was because the Greek language and culture had become so widespread before the Romans took over that even when the Romans controlled the government the language being spoken by travelers like the Apostles and early church leaders was Greek.
RD: Again, exactamundo. But the Greek language was important in another way. Remember that the books of the Bible we would call the Old Testament were already in existence before Jesus was born. And those books contained the prophecies that were going to be used to prove that Jesus was the Messiah. Well, of course the Old Testament had been written largely in Hebrew, and after the Babylonian exile Aramaic, but neither one of those languages was widely spoken outside Palestine. Well because the Greek language was being so widely used an Egyptian ruler who was descended from one of Alexander’s commanders asked a group of 70 Jewish scholars in the 3rd B.C. to prepare a Greek version of the Torah called the Septuagint. Septuagint means literally 70. Eventually, the Septuagint came to include all of the books of the Old Testament not just the first 5 which were included in the Torah.
VK: And the Septuagint was the version of the scriptures that was most widely circulated when Jesus was actually alive and when the Apostles first began spreading the gospel, the good news, of Jesus’s death and resurrection. So, in the Book of Acts, when Luke writes that the noble Bereans searched the scriptures every day to see if what the Apostle Paul said was true, the scriptures they were searching was probably the Septuagint. Wow. Alexander the Great’s conquest of Palestine, in effect, was instrumental in the Bereans who lived well outside Palestine to not only hear the gospel but to verify Paul’s claims about Jesus when he began preaching to them. That’s a pretty amazing thought.
RD: Yes it is. And that’s part of the reason we’re having this discussion on Anchored by Truth. Jesus didn’t just drop into history at some stray point in history. God had been painstakingly preparing the world for the arrival of that Messiah using this sequence of world empires as part of his preparation. Of course the final empire of Rome was an essential concluding step for this part of the process.
VK: Well we mentioned last time that one of the things that Rome did in the process of redemptive history, sadly, was to crucify Jesus. And you’ve said that oddly – strangely – that part of their role has some dimensions people rarely think about.
RD: Sadly, it does. For instance, for salvation to be possible the death of the Messiah was necessary. That’s what the sacrificial system in the Old Testament pointed to. So, when the time came it was necessary for there to be no doubt that the death of the Messiah had occurred. Well, as crazy as it sounds one thing the Romans were really good at was killing people. So when Jesus rose on Easter no one at the time doubted that He had really been put to death. Today, one of the criticisms sometimes leveled at the resurrection was that Jesus didn’t really die. He “swooned.” It someone had tried to claim that in 1st century Palestine they would have been ridiculed unmercifully. The Romans assigned a detail to ensure that Jesus and the two criminals were put to death. The detail was overseen by a centurion. Jesus’s death was reported specifically to the Roman Governor. Roman soldiers were used to death. They knew what it looked like and how to cause it. We can be sure Jesus died because the Romans were the ones who killed him. So when we claim that Jesus rose from the dead there is zero room for doubt that he did die before he was laid in the tomb.
VK: That’s not something we usually think about is it? But for the resurrection to be real, Jesus’s death also had to be real. Well, we don’t have much time left but are there other reasons that it was so important for Rome to be the 4th empire.
RD: There are lots but since we’re just about out of time let me just mention one supremely important. By the time Jesus arrived on earth Rome had conquered not only Palestine, but also most of Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa. There empire stretched far and wide they wanted to make sure trade and commerce could be carried on anywhere within their empire. They were not only a very pragmatic group but also very adept builders. Some Roman roads and aqueducts are still used today. They were also fanatics about ensuring that they kept trouble throughout the empire down to a minimum and that travel throughout the empire was safe. The Romans even stationed garrisons at strategic locations along major travel routes to ensure that they could quickly respond to potential troublemakers or thieves. Moreover, from 25 B. C. or so until the late second century A.D. there was a period in history often called the Pax Romana when there was an absence of major conflicts or wars across the Roman Empire. This was exactly the period in history when God introduced His Messiah in the world. This meant that when the Apostles began to evangelize their world they had the best conditions in history, up to that time, to travel and preach. In God’s providence, the Romans not only ensured that claims about Jesus’s death could not be disputed, but the good news about his resurrection could be spread widely and rapidly.
VK: All this proves that all history really is HIS STORY – God’s history. He not only governs the affairs of men but also of nations and even of empires. Sounds like a great time for a prayer. Today let’s pray for our first responders - the men and women within our own society who help to ensure our safety and safe travels.
---- PRAYER FOR FIRST RESPONDERS
VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.”
If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not famous but our Boss is!”
(Bible Quotes from the God’s Word Translation)
Daniel, Chapter 7, verses 2 through 7, God’s Word Translation
https://www.adefenceofthebible.com/2018/10/14/alexander-the-great-conquered-the-known-world-but-he-spared-jerusalem-why/
https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/1293/the-arrival-of-the-king
View all episodes
By R.D.Fierro
5
11 ratings
Episode 61 –God’s Will in Pagan Powers
Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.
Script: (Bible quotes from the God’s Word Translation)
In my visions at night I, Daniel, saw the four winds of heaven stirring up the Mediterranean Sea. Four large animals, each one different from the others, came out of the sea. The first animal was like a lion, but it had wings like an eagle. … I saw a second animal. It looked like a bear. … After this, I saw another animal. It looked like a leopard. On its back it had four wings, like the wings of a bird. The animal also had four heads. ... After this, I saw a fourth animal in my vision during the night. It was terrifying, dreadful, extraordinarily strong, and had large iron teeth. ... It acted differently from all the other animals that I had seen before..
Daniel, Chapter 7, verses 2 through 7, God’s Word Translation
I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns, seven heads, and ten crowns on its horns. ... The beast that I saw was like a leopard. Its feet were like bear's feet. Its mouth was like a lion's mouth. The serpent gave its power, kingdom, and far-reaching authority to the beast. One of the beast's heads looked like it had a fatal wound, but its fatal wound was healed. All the people of the world were amazed and followed the beast.
Revelation, Chapter 13, verses 1 through 3, God’s Word Translation
********
VK: Hi! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m here today with RD Fierro, author and founder of Crystal Sea Books and part time archeologist. Well, at least if you look at some of the stuff that comes out of his desk you’d think that some of it had been in there for a very long time.
RD: You can never tell when you might need an extra-long twist tie or old plastic spoon...
VK: Sure. Or an extra-large cup with a coffee stain. Anyway, let’s set aside your history and return to our discussion of Biblical history. I think you said that today you wanted to talk about why the prophecies in the book of Daniel talked about four specific world empires beginning with the Babylonians empire. Just as a reminder to our audience, the prophet Daniel was himself a Jew who had been taken captive by the Babylonians probably around 605 B. C. He then spent the rest of his very long life in Babylon or in the subsequent Persian empire and through God’s providence he became a very senior court official in both empires.
RD: Exactly. And while he was in Babylon God gave Daniel a series of visions about the empires that would control the Mideast and many of the countries adjacent to the Mideast. In chapters 2, 7, and 8 of Daniel God showed Daniel that four empires starting with the Babylonian empire would come into control of Palestine and would all ultimately make an important contribution to redemptive history. Today we want to sketch out, at a high level, how God used those pagan empires as part of his overall plan to bring His Messiah into the world and make salvation possible.
VK: Sounds like we have a lot of serious material to get to, so how about if we start out on a lighter note. Let’s hear a bit of humor about one of the most famous episodes from Daniel’s life with one of Crystal Seas’ Life Lessons with a Laugh. This one will provide a graphic visual of the first vision of the four empires that Daniel received.
---- Life Lessons – Daniel 5 – Daniel and the Head of Gold
VK: Ok. Now I know why you have all those artifacts in your desk that pertain to fast food or drinks.
RD: ... Remember the Life Lessons are created for fun …
VK: And some people have fun with treats. Got it. Anyway, at least the Life Lesson did reinforce the sequence of empires that Daniel received during his visions from God which were, in order, the Babylonian Empire, the Medo-Persian Empire, the Greek Empire, and the Roman Empire. And you say that the biggest reason that God told Daniel about this sequence of empires was because God was going to use each of them in a particular way to accomplish his plan of redemption.
RD: Exactly, or as I say to Jerry, exactamundo. God raised up each of those empires for a specific purpose which we can now understand from our own position in redemptive history. Remember that Daniel received his visions more than 500 years before Jesus would be born. So, while Daniel had faith in God’s providence and provision he didn’t have the benefit of knowing how God would work out his will in that series of empires. We are on the other side of Christ’s time on this earth so we have the benefit of history to tell us how God did it.
VK: So, how did God work out his will through these pagan empires starting with the Babylonians? The Babylonians were the ones that actually conquered Judah and Jerusalem and took the Jews captive for a period of 70 years. That’s a seven decade period of exile from their homeland. It’s hard to see how that was part of God’s will.
RD: I agree that it does take wisdom to understand that sometimes God works out His will through circumstances that look pretty bleak from a human standpoint, but He does. In the case of the Babylonian captivity God used the Babylonians to purge idolatry from His chosen people. Before the Jews became captives in Babylon idolatry was a continuous problem in Israel starting with Joshua’s failure to completely remove the Canaanite peoples who had occupied Palestine before the Exodus. As you may recall God had commanded Joshua and the Israelites to complete remove the previous occupants from the land. In today’s politically correct times that seems extreme but, as a part of worshipping their idols, the Canaanites practiced child sacrifice, ritual prostitution, and a number of other abominable practices that were inconsistent with God having a holy people for Himself.
VK: But, as successful as Joshua was in helping the Jews resettle Israel he didn’t completely fulfill God’s command. And as a result for the next 800 years the Jews frequently flirted, in one way or another, with the idolatrous practices they picked up from their neighbors. But all that ended after the Babylonian captivity, didn’t it?
RD: Yes. The books of the Old Testament that were written after the Jews returned to their homeland after the Babylonian exile contain no criticism of the Jews for idolatry. There’s plenty of criticism for other sins – intermarriage with pagans, failure to repair the temple, failure to pay tithes and offerings, etc. But there’s no criticism for practicing idolatry. The exile was a drastic measure on God’s part but it purified God’s chosen people, at least insofar as their practice of idolatry was concerned.
VK: Well, that’s certainly a sobering lesson for how seriously God takes our worship practices isn’t it? Yikes. All right. What about the Medo-Persian Empire? What purpose did it serve in redemptive history?
RD: Well, at a minimum, it did three big things. First, the Persian emperor Cyrus began the process of returning the Jews to Palestine. In 538 B.C. he issued the decree that allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild their temple. So, just as Jeremiah had prophesied the Jews were in exile for about 70 years and just as Isaiah prophesied a king named Cyrus came to their aid. Second, a later Persian king named Artaxerxes issued the decree that started the time clock ticking for what I think is the most amazing illustration of prophecy in the entire Bible. We’re going to talk about that in our next episode of Anchored by Truth.
VK: And third?
RD: And third, when the Persian emperor Darius attempted his invasions of Greece he stirred up the Greek anger just as prophesied in Daniel chapter 8. This ultimately led to Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian Empire leading to the inauguration of the third of the four empires, the Greek Empire.
VK: Alexander the Great conquered Persia in 334 B.C. This means that the Babylonian Empire had lasted about 70 years and the Persian Empire lasted about 200 years. The Greek Empire would control Palestine until 63 B.C. when the Roman general, Pompey, conquered Jerusalem. So the Greek Empire lasted a little less than 300 years. Each empire lasted a little longer and occupied a larger territory. But what was the Greek Empire’s specific contribution to God’s plan of redemption?
RD: Language.
VK: Language?
RD: Yep. Language. There were other impacts of course, but primarily the Greeks spread their language and culture throughout their conquered territories and because their empire lasted longer than their two predecessors their language and culture had a more lasting impact. And this impact is more important than it might seem on the surface.
VK: I think you might need to amplify this a bit.
RD: Well, this is jumping ahead a little but let’s remember that the language that was spoken most widely, even during the period of the Roman Empire, was the Greek language. Of course in Italy and Rome the primary language was Latin, but throughout the vast majority of the Roman empire, the international language – the lingua franca if you will - was Greek. Of course there were still local languages used among the people of a particular country or region, like Hebrew was used in Palestine, but when people from different nations and cultures communicated with one another overwhelmingly the language used was Greek.
VK: So what you’re saying is that after Jesus’s life, death, and most importantly resurrection, when the Apostles and disciples started spreading out and telling others about Jesus the language they were speaking was Greek? And that was because the Greek language and culture had become so widespread before the Romans took over that even when the Romans controlled the government the language being spoken by travelers like the Apostles and early church leaders was Greek.
RD: Again, exactamundo. But the Greek language was important in another way. Remember that the books of the Bible we would call the Old Testament were already in existence before Jesus was born. And those books contained the prophecies that were going to be used to prove that Jesus was the Messiah. Well, of course the Old Testament had been written largely in Hebrew, and after the Babylonian exile Aramaic, but neither one of those languages was widely spoken outside Palestine. Well because the Greek language was being so widely used an Egyptian ruler who was descended from one of Alexander’s commanders asked a group of 70 Jewish scholars in the 3rd B.C. to prepare a Greek version of the Torah called the Septuagint. Septuagint means literally 70. Eventually, the Septuagint came to include all of the books of the Old Testament not just the first 5 which were included in the Torah.
VK: And the Septuagint was the version of the scriptures that was most widely circulated when Jesus was actually alive and when the Apostles first began spreading the gospel, the good news, of Jesus’s death and resurrection. So, in the Book of Acts, when Luke writes that the noble Bereans searched the scriptures every day to see if what the Apostle Paul said was true, the scriptures they were searching was probably the Septuagint. Wow. Alexander the Great’s conquest of Palestine, in effect, was instrumental in the Bereans who lived well outside Palestine to not only hear the gospel but to verify Paul’s claims about Jesus when he began preaching to them. That’s a pretty amazing thought.
RD: Yes it is. And that’s part of the reason we’re having this discussion on Anchored by Truth. Jesus didn’t just drop into history at some stray point in history. God had been painstakingly preparing the world for the arrival of that Messiah using this sequence of world empires as part of his preparation. Of course the final empire of Rome was an essential concluding step for this part of the process.
VK: Well we mentioned last time that one of the things that Rome did in the process of redemptive history, sadly, was to crucify Jesus. And you’ve said that oddly – strangely – that part of their role has some dimensions people rarely think about.
RD: Sadly, it does. For instance, for salvation to be possible the death of the Messiah was necessary. That’s what the sacrificial system in the Old Testament pointed to. So, when the time came it was necessary for there to be no doubt that the death of the Messiah had occurred. Well, as crazy as it sounds one thing the Romans were really good at was killing people. So when Jesus rose on Easter no one at the time doubted that He had really been put to death. Today, one of the criticisms sometimes leveled at the resurrection was that Jesus didn’t really die. He “swooned.” It someone had tried to claim that in 1st century Palestine they would have been ridiculed unmercifully. The Romans assigned a detail to ensure that Jesus and the two criminals were put to death. The detail was overseen by a centurion. Jesus’s death was reported specifically to the Roman Governor. Roman soldiers were used to death. They knew what it looked like and how to cause it. We can be sure Jesus died because the Romans were the ones who killed him. So when we claim that Jesus rose from the dead there is zero room for doubt that he did die before he was laid in the tomb.
VK: That’s not something we usually think about is it? But for the resurrection to be real, Jesus’s death also had to be real. Well, we don’t have much time left but are there other reasons that it was so important for Rome to be the 4th empire.
RD: There are lots but since we’re just about out of time let me just mention one supremely important. By the time Jesus arrived on earth Rome had conquered not only Palestine, but also most of Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa. There empire stretched far and wide they wanted to make sure trade and commerce could be carried on anywhere within their empire. They were not only a very pragmatic group but also very adept builders. Some Roman roads and aqueducts are still used today. They were also fanatics about ensuring that they kept trouble throughout the empire down to a minimum and that travel throughout the empire was safe. The Romans even stationed garrisons at strategic locations along major travel routes to ensure that they could quickly respond to potential troublemakers or thieves. Moreover, from 25 B. C. or so until the late second century A.D. there was a period in history often called the Pax Romana when there was an absence of major conflicts or wars across the Roman Empire. This was exactly the period in history when God introduced His Messiah in the world. This meant that when the Apostles began to evangelize their world they had the best conditions in history, up to that time, to travel and preach. In God’s providence, the Romans not only ensured that claims about Jesus’s death could not be disputed, but the good news about his resurrection could be spread widely and rapidly.
VK: All this proves that all history really is HIS STORY – God’s history. He not only governs the affairs of men but also of nations and even of empires. Sounds like a great time for a prayer. Today let’s pray for our first responders - the men and women within our own society who help to ensure our safety and safe travels.
---- PRAYER FOR FIRST RESPONDERS
VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.”
If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not famous but our Boss is!”
(Bible Quotes from the God’s Word Translation)
Daniel, Chapter 7, verses 2 through 7, God’s Word Translation
https://www.adefenceofthebible.com/2018/10/14/alexander-the-great-conquered-the-known-world-but-he-spared-jerusalem-why/
https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/1293/the-arrival-of-the-king