All right, well, lesson two is entitled Defending God and Country. And we're going to tackle chapter one verse one all the way through 922, which will correspond to the Greek Persecutions under Antiochus IV. We'll actually begin with Alexander the Great really briefly. The Persecutions under Antiochus IV Epiphanes or Epimonese, we'll talk about that in the leadership of Judas Maccabaeus.
So remember, we're going to tackle this first book in two lessons and second Maccabees also in two lessons for a total of five. Okay, so with that then, if we look at chapter one verse one, we see the beginning of the explanation of Alexander's rise and his fall. Now, it's so interesting about that. I decided what I want to do instead of jumping straight into chapter one verse one.
I want to take you backwards to Daniel chapter eight. Give or take 400 years prior to these events. You have a prophecy of these events by the prophet Daniel in Daniel eight. This is so interesting because Daniel is one of the most interesting prophets because he has so many visions.
He's kind of like a new Joseph character, honestly. He has so many different visions while he's in exile in Babylon. And one of them is precisely on the rise of Greece and what happens afterwards. So I thought, what the heck, let's just spend some time together on this.
And then we'll go back to first Maccabees chapter one. We'll see it being described here. So if you open up your Bible, if you had your Bible or Daniel chapter eight, kind of a long gets trapped, you're not too bad. I'm going to read the two main halves of this.
And then you're going to see that all of these historical moments described in what we call apocalyptic language. And you find this a lot in the prophets and the book of Revelation, of course, where big historical events and people, characters are depicted in animal form. And part of the reason why that's the case, I should tell you right now. I don't know how this theory is circulating around there.
But the way I see it, the way I understand it is a lot of these apocalyptic figures are enemies of Jesus Christ. And so when you're straight to the prophet, Daniel, a lot of the empires, these world superpowers are depicted as these really grotesque, scary, intimidating beasts. Part of that is because it symbolizes the mark of the beast, the fact that these animals as opponents of God's kingdom are beastly. And that's the number of the beast, the number of evil is number six, because against the backup, you're even a little bit more.
Man was created on the sixth day, but created for the seventh day that they have Sabbath rest with God. If man rejects the seventh day, rejects intimacy and friendship and covenant with God, then he remains on the day of the beast, the day number six. So that's why six is the number of evil, rebellion. And so that's why these particular world superpowers who fight against God's people are depicted as these peacefully grotesque figures.
So that's a little bit of a parenthetical explanation because we're going to see that happening right now in this apocalyptic vision of a ram and a goat and what it symbolizes. All right, so it didn't want to get too much of the weeds there, but let's go to chapter eight verse one of the prophet Daniel. Well, actually let's look at verse three, because it just says where he was using the capital of Susan, the reign of King Bill, she's our, whatever. Chapter eight verse three actually.
He says, I raised my eyes and saw and behold a ram standing on the bank of a river. It had two horns and both horns were high, but one was higher than the other. And the higher one came up last. I saw the ram charging westward and northward and southward, no beast could stand before him and there was no one who could rescue him from his power.
He did as he pleased and magnified himself. And as I was considering, behold a he goat came from the west across the face of the whole earth without touching the ground. The goat had a conspicuous horn between his eyes. He came to the ram with two horns, which I had seen standing on the bank of the river, and he ran at him in his mighty wrath.
I saw him come close to the ram and he was enraged against him, instruct the ram and broke his two horns. And the ram had no power to stand before him, but he cast them down to the ground and trampled upon him. And there was no one who could rescue the ram from his power. And then the he goat magnified himself exceedingly, but when he was strong the great horn was broken, and instead of it there came up four conspicuous horns toward the four winds of heaven.
One of them came forth a little horn which grew exceedingly great towards the south, the east, and the glorious land. It grew great even to the host of heaven and some of the host of the stars that cast down to the ground and trampled upon them. It magnified itself even up to the prince of the host, and the continual burn offering was taken away from him, and the place of the sanctuary was overthrown. And the host was given over to it together with the continual burn offering through the transgression, and the truth was cast down to the ground and the horn acted in prosper.
And then I heard a holy one speaking and another holy one said to one that spoke for how long as the vision concerning the continual burn offering, the transgression that makes it desolate, and the giver over of the sanctuary and the host to be trampled under foot. And he said for 2,300 evenings and mornings, then the sanctuary shall be restored to its rightful state. The right will stop right there. It's a long section I have more to read to you.
This is super interesting how in his vision he has a ram with two horns running all over the place west, north, south, everywhere. And then this he goat came from the west to conquer it. He's running really, really fast without even touching the ground. This is symbolism, all this apocalyptic language, imagery, and symbolism is so important.
The fact that he's not touching the ground symbolizes how swift the conquest is. And then he, the he goat, conquers the ram, and the he goat dies and four conspicuous horns come up, and out of them a little horn comes up and he's really evil. He has this. He fights against the host of heaven, and he magnifies itself even to the prince of the host, okay, kind of basically claiming himself to be divine.
He transgresses everything, and there's also this transgression that makes desolate. The abomination of desolation is often called sometimes elsewhere. But anyways, this is really, really strange and interesting. So even Daniel doesn't know what this means.
Like we read it and we're like, oh my gosh, this has to be, you have to be careful, honestly, because I'm tongue-in-cheek a little bit. People reading a lot of these different apocalyptic stories of the prophets and even in the book of Revelation, they're trying to force a modern geopolitical interpretation on it where they start trying to find Russia and Iran and China and America and all these different nations in the year. Well, we're lucky in this instance because we have an explanation. Poor Daniel doesn't know what the heck is going on.
He kind of passes out a couple of different times from fear, and the angel Gabriel says, well, do you know what's going on here? And let's see here. As we're at number 19, he said, behold, I will make known to you what shall be at the latter end of the indignation, where it pertains to the appointed time of the end. So luckily, Gabriel gives an explanation for this entire story, lucky for Daniel, lucky for us.
It goes on to explain, as for the ram which you saw with the two horns, these are the kings of media and Persia, and the he-go is the king of Greece. So that's Alexander the Great. And the great horn between his eyes is the first king, again Alexander. As for the horn, that was broken in place of which four others arose, four kingdoms shall arise from his nation, but not with his power.
And at the latter end of their rule, when the transgressors have reached their full measure, a king of bold countenance, one who understands riddles shall arise. His power shall be great, he shall cause fearful destruction, and shall succeed in what he does and destroy mighty men and the peoples of the saints. So again, persecuting God's holy ones. By his cunning, he shall make the seat prosper under his hand, and in his own mind, he shall magnify himself, even claiming to be divine.
So remember, I shared with you, and I'll say it again, Antiochus called himself a Piphonius, or Piphonius, God manifested. He had a huge divinity complex. He tries to take the place of God. He's got an anti-Christ figure.
And without warning, he shall destroy many, and he shall even rise up against the prince of princes, God himself. But by no human hand, he shall be broken. This vision of the evenings and mornings which have been told is true, but seal up the vision for it pertains to many days hence, and it's going to be approximately roughly 400 years later. So all of these things were full told.
Antiochus is amazing because he can't get into the weeds. It's so tempting to talk more about Daniel. But he has all these different visions of the various kings and superpowers to come. You've got Babalomito, Persia, Greece, and Rome, and the kingdom of the Messiah will come, and it's just great stuff.
But sticking to the topic here, with Daniel chapter 8, he receives this vision and this prophecy of what's going to happen many days hence, 400 years later. And that brings us back to 1st Maccaville's chapter 1, where all of this actually is described in retrospect. So everything came to pass just as the Archangel Gabriel, excuse me, said, so now let's go to 1st Maccaville's chapter 1 verse 1. Let's read through 9.
So reading this with the background of Daniel 8 is pretty cool. After Alexander, the son of Philip, the Macedonian who came from the land of Kedend had defeated Darius, king of the Persians and Medes. He succeeded him as king. He had previously become king of Greece.
He fought many battles, conquered strongholds, and put to death the kings of the earth. He advanced to the ends of the earth and plundered many nations. And when the earth became quiet before him, he was exalted and his heart was lifted up. He gathered a very strong army and ruled over countries, nations, princes, and they became tributary to him.
But after this, he fell sick and perceived that he was dying. So he summoned his most honored officers who had been brought up with him from his youth, his brat buddies, his old buddies, and divided his kingdom among them while he was still alive. After Alexander had reigned 12 years, he died. Then his officers began to rule, each in his own place, they all put on crowns after his death, and so did their sons after them for many years, and they caused many evils on the earth.
That's the description in 1st Maccaville's chapter 1 verses 1 through 9, and you can see all these great references we can spend a lot more time we won't. Drawing the parallels with what we just read in Daniel 8. I think it's cool, I wanted to share with you how prophecy is real. God spoke through his prophets and proclaimed great mysteries, especially the greatest mystery of the coming of Jesus Christ.
Only Jesus, the life of Christ was foretold by the prophets. It's awesome to see prophecy being fulfilled. The highlights here of what's being described, and I review this quickly in lesson 1, Alexander the Great, he is the He-goat, who conquers the Mido-Persian empire in 331, but then he died really quickly after that in 323. When he did, or before he died, he divided the territories of his empire, his great massive kingdom, he conquered the whole known world, he divided that into four territories to his four generals, the buddies that he grew up with.
The Adokoy in Greek means successor, so he's got his four successors, they don't have the same power because as we're going to see it gets consolidated, but those territories are Egypt, Syria, Macedonia, and Asia Minor. What I did give for you at the end of this lesson in the notes here is a map of Alexander the Great's kingdom. It's kind of cool because you can see some of his army's marching direction, where they went, where they conquered a couple of battles that are listed there. You have that, but you also have color-coded those four territories that have been given to the four generals, so Egypt there, Syria, Macedonia, which is basically the whole territory of Greece, and Asia Minor, which is massive.
All right, well, these four territories later on were consolidated through many wars and just different things that happened after a little over a hundred years. The Tulumian power in the south and the Seleucid power in the north, but eventually the Seleucids become the top dogs around 200 BC, which precisely is 198, as scholars will say, but 200 BC under Antiochus III, the Seleucid king Antiochus III. So he's the top dog, he's the king of kings, king of the mountain here, and he's the father of Antiochus IV. Okay, so that I think is going to really set us up for really the Hellenization, we talked about this in the introductory lesson as well.
After Alexander Dias, his four generals began to conquer everything, all the Gentiles and many people love Greece because of the Greek philosophy and culture and sports and athletics and all this kind of stuff, right? So then Antiochus IV is the one, as Daniel 8 was talking about, this great power that magnified itself, this divinity complex, remember I just explained that Piphonius got manifested, he had this terrible divinity complex, and this is when the reign of terror started when he became king and approximately 175 BC. I do have a footnote in here for you from Erika the commentary, talks about a little bit of the complications of the dating system, but broadly speaking, this is pretty accurate. So let's keep reading here in verse 10.
It says, from them, it came forth a sinful root Antiochus Epiphany, a son of Antiochus the king, that's the Antiochus III who became the top dog. He had been hostage in Rome, but he began to reign in 175 BC, basically. Now let's keep reading here of what happens, how many Jews really aligned with him to follow after Greek customs. Verse 11, in those days, lawless men came forth from Israel and misled many, saying, let us go and make a covenant with the Gentiles round about us for since we separated from them, many evils have come upon us.
This proposal pleased them and some of the people eagerly went to the king. He authorized them to observe the ordinances of the Gentiles, so they built a gymnasium in Jerusalem, according to Gentile custom, and removed the marks of circumcision and abandoned the Holy Covenant. They joined with the Gentiles and sold themselves to do evil. All right, so as Hellenization persists in the kingdom, it's about to get extremely violent and bloody and brutal, but many apostate Jews, Jews who had left their faith and left the law, their fathers and the customs culture of the Jewish people, they're called lawless men here in verse 11.
They abandoned the faith in their supporting this process of Hellenization from within. I mean, there's got a lot of imposition from the exterior persecution, but from within, it makes it very difficult for people to refuse it. Now, it says here they wanted to make a covenant with the Gentiles. That is very, very bad.
Making a covenant with the Gentiles is forbidden by the law because a covenant is an exchange of persons, which we talk about this in many other Bible studies. A covenant is more than a contract. A covenant makes family bonds by solemn oath, by sacrifice. And so you can't make a covenant with the Gentiles who don't worship the one true God, who have laws of great licentiousness and immorality that's impossible to have a family bond and family ties with such people.
So the Jews are abandoning their own covenant of their own people to form these godless covenants with the Gentiles. Now, we're all going to find out in lesson four. When we get to second Maccabees, there's a lot more details. Because remember as I explained in the introductory lesson, second Maccabees talks, spends more time covering the bulk of Judas' reign, Judas Maccabees.
First Maccabees covers everything, second Maccabees gives more details. So when we get to second Maccabees, we'll find out there's this character named Jason. You're like, whoa, finally there's a name I recognize, right? We have all these crazy Hebrew names or Greek names, Antiaocas and solutions.
All of a sudden it's like Jason. I know Jason, I have three friends named Jason. Well, anyways, Jason is the wicked brother of the righteous godly high priest, Onaius III. And as we're going to see when we get to that lesson with more details, Jason is vicious, he's brutal, he's ugly, he causes a lot of problems.
And he's one of the main instigators for hellenization of the Jewish people. So he's very, very bad. Now, okay, one of the things that they do is build this gymnasium. And you might think, oh, that's not a big deal.
I just went to the gym this morning, worked out to my, you know, buys and tries and my back or whatever. It went on the treadmill, like the gymnasium is just a place to work out. Well, you probably know that in the ancient Greek world, the gymnasium was much more than just pumping iron. A gymnasium was really a center of Greek formation, education.
Of course, there's the games, there's competition and all this kind of stuff. So it was bad because you would get a lot of pagan instruction for the Jewish people there who went, which is awful. But then what was really bad was the games themselves, all the athletic competitions were done in the nude, right? Bucknake, they were doing all this stuff.
So it's going to be very, very easy to recognize who's a Jewish man compared to a Gentile man, right? Because all the Gentiles are uncircumcised, the Jews are circumcised, and there is just what a glance to figure out who's who. Well, the Jews want to be like the Greeks. And so what it says here is they remove the marks of circumcision and abandon the Holy Covenant.
So when they're reversing their circumcision, by the way, that's a process called an epispossum. I have no idea what that means. I never googled it. So I don't necessarily advise that you google it unless you're a doctor or something like that and you're curious about that.
But it's basically making them look circumcised again in some way or trying to get to reverse the circumcision. So that way they appear as if they're uncircumcised. It's got to be a painful process. So they're abandoning the Holy Covenant that God made with Abraham to be a Jewish man is to be circumcised.
And God told Abraham back in Genesis chapter 17, which is reiterated throughout the rest of the Pentateuch, any male who's not circumcised is cut off from the people. That's God's pun, by the way, I did not make up that pun. Puns are very biblical. So this is God's pun.
If you're not circumcised, you're cut off from God's holy people. So this is a very public, a very intentional and painful abdication of the Holy Covenant of Abraham, the foundation of the Jewish people. So you can really appreciate, I hope, just what a big deal this was and how we'll find out Jason is leading them. But there were many quote unquote lawless men and great sinners who really persecuted their fellow countrymen to abandon the Mosaic law and abandon monotheism, worship the other Greek gods, and they're actually going to give you a lot more details about that right now.
Okay, so there's a lot of issues from within, but of course the persecution from without gets really, really ugly too. And this begins in verse 20 and following Antiochus IV, really doubles and triples down on all this stuff. So let's go to verse 20. It says, after subduing Egypt, Antiochus returned in the 143rd year.
He went up against Israel and came to Jerusalem by the strong force. He arrogantly entered the sanctuary, which you're not supposed to do. Only the high priest could do it once a year on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. He's going to do it very, very quickly and get out of there because it's the holiest place.
Well, he entered the Holy Sanctuary, took the golden altar, the lamp stand for the light, all its utensils. It basically describes him plundering it. He took the table for the bread of the presents, cups for the drink offerings, the bowls, the golden censors, he stripped everything, the gold, the silver, the coffee, the vessels, well, everything. So the first thing that he does, after conquering Egypt, I mean his father did it, he pretty much solidifies the power there.
He entered the Holy of Holies, he plundered the temple of everything. But then it goes worse, it gets worse. In verse 29 and following, he orders the occupation of Jerusalem. There's a lament song that's being described here.
It describes how sinful, lawless men supported him and all this stuff. In the verse 41, I want to take you there. In verse 41, the Hellenization becomes violent. All right, chapter one, verse 41.
The king wrote to his whole kingdom that all should be one people. That's forced Hellenization right there. That each should give up his customs. All the Gentiles accepted the command of the king, many even from Israel gladly adopted his religion.
They sacrificed to idols and profaned to Sabbath, and the king sent letters by messengers to Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, and he directed them to follow customs strange to the land, to forbid burnt offerings and sacrifices and drink offerings in the sanctuary, to profane, Sabbaths and feasts, to defile the sanctuary and the priests. You get in the picture here, it's really doing everything contrary to the law, not allowing people to follow any aspect of the law. He goes on to build altars and sacred precincts and shrines for idols, to sacrifice swine and also to eat it, and other unclean animals, to leave their sons uncircumcised. They were to make themselves abominable by everything unclean and profane so that they should forget the law and change all the ordinances, and whoever did not obey the command of the king shall die.
This is really, really intense. Everything that made you a Jew was forbidden by the law. Everything. Then you would die if you didn't follow along.
You couldn't have any sacrifices, any prayers, you couldn't have any copy of the sacred scriptures. You could nothing, everything was denied to in every single way. But it gets even worse than that. Verse 54, skip down a little bit more.
Verse 54, on the 15th day of Shislav in the 145th year, that's 167 BC if you're counting, they erected a desolating sacrilege upon the altar of burnt offering. They also built altars in the surrounding cities of Judah and burned incense at the doors of the houses and in the streets. The books of the law, which they had found, they tore to pieces and burned with fire, where the book of the covenant was found in the possession of anyone or if anyone adhered to the law, the decree of the king condemned him to death. They kept using violence against Israel and against those found month after month in the cities.
On the 25th day of the month, they offered sacrifice on the altar, which was upon the altar of burnt offering. According to the decree, they put to death the women who had their children circumcised, and their families and those who circumcised them, and they hung the infants from their mother's necks. Oh my gosh, it's brutal. You find this in other places as well.
So if a mother did circumcise their eight-day-old boy and it was found out, they would kill the infants, hang it from their mother's necks, and then kill the women often on a public display to dissuade anyone else from following the law of circumcision. It's found out, I mean, it's hard to imagine persecution like this in American and America, but it could happen. You never know. Things could get really, really bad.
They have been bad in many other places in the world, even to this day. It's very, very common. Satan hates God's people, who do everything that he can to persecute them. By God's people, now I mean the church, Jew and Gentile together form God's people.
Satan wants to stop this, and so it said that there are more martyrs in the 21st century than all centuries combined. I don't know how he could ever fact check that, but it said a lot. This is really ugly. Now, what he does here is he performs this desolating sacrilege, or the abomination of desolation is called.
We actually saw this in Daniel 8, if you remember. So what is this? What is this desolating sacrilege spoken of by Daniel 8, 9, 11, 12? It's kind of talked about in various parts of Daniel.
But let me read a quote here for you from your Catholic study bible, where it explains that this is also known as the abomination of desolation, which I've said. It refers to an act of Antiochus IV that desecrated the Jerusalem temple, possibly the erection of a statue of the Greek god Zeus, or a pagan altar within the sanctuary precincts. Second act of these chapters, chapter 6, where it's two records that the temple is dedicated to Olympian Zeus, which Antiochus may have assumed to be the Greek name for the Jewish god, thus conforming Israelite worship to Greek worship. The author is careful to give the exact date, which is December 6, 167 BC, by modern dating, with sacrifice given upon it 10 days later.
So this is really bad. He takes, well, first off, he enters into the sanctuary. He plunders the sanctuary. Then he forbids all sacrifices.
He consecrates the temple to Olympian Zeus. Even if it's an attempt to say, oh, well, what you Jews call Yahweh, we call Zeus. So we're going to rename it Zeus. It might be that, but it might not.
It could just simply be he thinks he is superior to Yahweh, and he's going to conquer Yahweh's temple and put into Olympian Zeus as the god of the temple there, which is atrocious. So then he sets up the altar, and it says in this quote, sacrifice given upon it 10 days later, well, what would happen is he would sacrifice a pig or swine or unclean animals on it, and then he would try to force Jewish men and women to eat this swine flesh, which for me would be easy. I can't believe these jokes obviously all the time. And if I'd, so I like to eat my bacon smoked, you put that in the trigger for a while.
It's like the best, most electable bacon you're ever going to eat. All right, so it's easy for us to make jokes about how we would like bacon and we like pork chops or whatever. But for them, it was a big deal. If you want to know why, by the way, they're not allowed to eat these unclean animals.
You got to study the book of Leviticus. So check out that Bible study that I have for you in the audio library. Anyways, back to the point here, he would sacrifice swine on the altar to Olympian Zeus. They're in the temple and force people to eat it.
If they didn't, they would be mutilated, tortured and killed, right? So you can, you really cannot imagine how awful this would be. We try to with our, the best powers of our imaginations and faculties. Oh my gosh, what would have been like, we just really, truly can't remember it or imagine it.
Oh, it's brutal. It's hard to even read. Okay, so in December six is when this happened, this desecration, I always think of that easy because it's the St. Nicholas, my patient's saying, like, oh man, that's a bummer.
The feast of St. Nicholas, the very next, I will actually three years on the very same day. So hang tight, that's going to be fine. So we've been talking about all this time, you're almost a half an hour about this persecution, the rise of Antiochus, the torturing, the death, the suppression of the faith, all these bad things.
But there were the faithful remnant who rebelled, and this is verse 62. Many in Israel stood firm and were resolved in their hearts not to eat unclean food. They chose to die rather than to be defiled by the food or profane the holy covenant, and they did die. And a very great wrath came upon Israel.
So you can underline that last verse by the way, verse 64, a very great wrath came upon Israel. I'm going to reference that again in a little while, so keep them in the back of your brain. So there is a faithful remnant. And here's the quick quote from the Novar Bible.
It's very brief. It says, when God allows persecution to happen, he does so to elicit fidelity. This is true for Israel and later for the church. God does allow bad things to happen to good people because he brings about a greater good.
He tests our fidelity and our trust. And suffering becomes a great means of purification of our sins, of penance. There's so many reasons why God allows us to suffer. It's really hard to remember all that stuff in the midst of suffering, but we would be well off if we did that.
So this great wrath comes upon Israel really as we're going to see throughout the story because the leaders, when the leaders are bad and the leaders bring the people to perform bad behaviors and activities, contrary to the law, contrary to God's goodness and justice, then bad things happen. And I think it's really important for any nation to remember, if you put bad leaders into office or bad leaders take that authority, whether you want them to or not, then there's going to be natural consequences for their bad and evil leadership. So there's a lot to reflect there. I could probably go down a political tangent, but I'm going to resist the temptation.
So there's a faithful remnant whose hearts were pure, they resolved to die and to fight back. And that segues in the chapter two, which is the family of Mattathias, an old man who is an old priest who is righteous, who is strong and faithful. Hey, this is Dr. Nick.
Thank you so much for listening to this course sample. If you enjoyed it and want to listen to the entire lesson, please become a student over at scripture and tradition.com where you can listen to this entire course, but also all the other courses that we have available in the S&T audio library where you can listen to them on demand, however, and whenever you want. So thank you so much. God bless you and keep setting your Bible.