I think you’ll agree that this is a fascinating account of how God used Daniel the Prophet, Jeduah the High Priest, and Alexander, King of Greece, to prepare the world to receive the Gospel, beginning over 500 years before the fact.

Alexander The Great was born in 356 BC to Philip, King of Macedonia, and Olympias, his wife. As a boy he saw how his Macedonian countrymen, a loose knit group of autonomous tribes, experienced impossible difficulties in uniting together into a strong cohesive force. Because of this the Persians, rulers of the known world, kept them under subjugation. Alexander was particularly incensed when the Persians defeated and humiliated his father, treating his people cruelly.

He determined that their problems were due primarily to an inability to communicate clearly with one another due to the many individual dialects they had developed. This caused misunderstanding and distrust, which resulted in a reluctance to fully commit to one another.

With the help of his father Phillip, Alexander crafted a new language, later called common Greek or Koinonia, taught it to the tribal chieftains, and convinced them to use it when communicating with each other. Soon their disagreements were resolved and their mutual trust restored. What had been a rag-tag mob of self-interested tribal factions was on the road to becoming a powerful army.

When Phillip was killed through the treachery of the Persians, Alexander at age 20 became king of the now unified Greece, and vowed revenge. Bringing his newly trained army onto the battlefield at Issus, Alexander first defeated the Persians in 333 BC. Two years later he crushed the 100 thousand strong Persian army with just 40 thousand of his own men, giving him access to all of Asia Minor or what we would call the Middle East. This fulfilled a prophecy in Daniel 8:5-7

Before his death, King Phillip had told his son that Macedonia was too small for him, and that he should set his sights on Persia and then the entire world.

Having defeated the Persians, Alexander set about accomplishing the rest of his goal. He quickly gobbled up Antioch, Damascus and Sidon and found himself outside Tyre, a formidable target that great generals of the past had been unable to subdue. To fortify itself this mainland Phoenician city had literally been dismantled and rebuilt on a small island offshore. The Phoenicians (modern Lebanese) were accomplished sailors and had no trouble defending themselves from the weaker navies of their would be attackers. Replenishing themselves by sea, they could endure endless siege from land forces as well. The Assyrians had spent 5 years in a failing effort to defeat them, and even the Great Nebuchadnezzar gave up after a 13 year siege. (Ezek. 29:17-20 says that as a reward for his noble effort, the LORD gave Nebuchadnezzar all of Egypt.)

So powerful and rich had the city of Tyre become that its King presumed himself to be the personification of the Phoenician god Melkarth, ruler of the seas. This so angered the LORD that He declared destruction on Tyre (Ezek. 28:1-10) and chose the Greeks as His instrument. Alexander scraped up the remains of the dismantled mainland city and began building a causeway out to the island. Within 7 months he had completed his land bridge and defeated the island fortress in fulfillment of Zechariah 9. The Philistine coastal cities in the south fared no better.

Tyre has built herself a stronghold; she has heaped up silver like dust, and gold like the dirt of the streets.  But the Lord will take away her possessions and destroy her power on the sea, and she will be consumed by fire.  Ashkelon will see it and fear; Gaza will writhe in agony, and Ekron too, for her hope will wither. Gaza will lose her king and Ashkelon will be deserted.  A mongrel people will occupy Ashdod, and I will put an end to the pride of the Philistines. (Zech. 9:3-6)

Now Alexander set his sights on Jerusalem. The High Priest Jeduah had refused his earlier demand for provisions and men to help him conquer Tyre claiming that a treaty with Persiaprevented Israel from helping the Greeks. Alexander was now intent upon showing the Jews who they should have made treaties with.  According to Josephus, Jeduah and all of Jerusalemsought the LORD in terror, with prayer and sacrifice. The Lord told Jeduah not to worry, but for him and the priests to get dressed in all their finery, open the gates and go out to greet Alexander when he arrived.

They did just that. In all their white linen, purple robes and golden headdresses the priests gathered behind Jeduah, threw open the gates to the city, and went out to meet Alexander. Stunned by this greeting, Alexander dismounted and bowed down before Jeduah. The Jews couldn’t believe their eyes! When he was asked about it, Alexander replied, “I didn’t pay homage to him (Jeduah), but to the God Who made him His High Priest.”

Then he explained that one night several years previously when he couldn’t sleep for thinking about how he might defeat the Persians he had a vision in which he saw Jeduah and all his priests dressed and gathered before him just as he had seen them that day. In his vision Jeduah had told him that the LORD would guide his armies and would lead him to victory against all his enemies including the Persians. Jeduah had urged him not to delay but to proceed immediately. A short time later  Alexander defeated the Persians and on that day outside Jerusalem the vision became reality.  Then he went up to the Temple and made sacrifice to the LORD, sparing the city.

Afterward, Jeduah brought out the scroll of Daniel and pointed to the portion we would call chapter 8 in which Daniel’s vision of a one-horned goat defeating a ram represents a king from Greece defeating the Persians. (This vision had come to Daniel over 200 years earlier in 551 BC, and the angel Gabriel had personally interpreted it as such in Daniel 8:20-21.)  Alexander understood that he was the king of whom Gabriel had spoken (Antiquities of the Jews, Book XI, chapter VIII Part 5).

From that time forward Alexander gave the Jews great privilege in his kingdom allowing them to keep to their own laws and traditions, not only in Jerusalem but in the rest of the kingdom as well.  Other cities, having heard what happened in Jerusalem, flung open their gates just as the LORD had commanded Jeduah, hoping for similar favor. And so Alexander conquered many of them without a fight.

Remembering the success he had in unifying the Greek tribes with a common language, Alexander enforced the use of his common Greek wherever he went. It was his way of assuring peace in his kingdom. Within a short span of time all of the known world could read and speak Greek no matter what their native tongue. It was the world’s official language even during Roman times several hundred years later.

And so it was that when the Gospels were first written and circulated, and when the Apostle Paul wrote and spoke to audiences from northern Africa around the Eastern end of the Mediterranean and all the way up into middle Europe, the language in which the Good News was shared and understood was Alexander’s common Greek.

The Prophet Daniel had foretold it, the Priest Jeduah had enacted it, and the King Alexander had fulfilled it. But long before the foundations of the world were laid, the One Who is all three, Prophet, Priest, and King, had decreed it.

All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast-all whose names have not been written in the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.(Rev. 13:8)

There’s a lot of interest these days in the role of Islam in the End Times. And from what I’m reading, a lot of misunderstanding, too. Recent surveys are shedding some light on the subject.

It’s clear that followers of Islam are increasing in number faster than any other religious group in the world. Their current growth rate is said to be four times faster than that of Christians.  According to a recent survey by The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, those who practice Islam now make up nearly one-fourth of the world’s population at 1.57 billion members, second only to Christianity.  This is revolutionary in nature and even though it’s happening right before our eyes, most Western Christians haven’t even noticed.  And not only are Moslems the fastest growing religious group in the world, they also hold that distinction in the United States, Canada and Europe, with Europe perhaps being the model of where Canada and then the US are headed.

Comparing the current birth rates of native Europeans with Europe’s Moslem immigrant population leads us to one very clear and surprising conclusion: the Europe we have known is very quickly changing into what some already refer to as Eurabia, and will soon find itself under the power and control of Islam. Today there are more Moslems in Germany than there are in Lebanon. France’s Moslem population, while fewer in number than Germany’s, represents a greater percentage of French citizenry, and given the current rate at which church buildings are being converted there will soon be more mosques in England than functioning churches.

Following the rapture of the Church, Islam will be the most populous religious system on Earth by a wide margin. Whether you believe that Islam is a religion of peace or not, it’s pretty obvious that they’re not going to just go away after the rapture and abandon their long held dream of becoming the world’s dominant religion just at the point of realizing it.

What About Ezekiel 38?

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Islam will no longer be a viable religious force after the Battle of Ezekiel 38 either.  According to The Pew Forum report, the countries who will unite against Israel and be defeated there are a small percentage of the total Islamic population. For example, the four largest Islamic countries by population aren’t even involved. In fact, two thirds of all the world’s Moslems live in 10 countries and of those only Turkey (5) and Iran (6) are named by Ezekiel. Rough estimates indicate that as little as 15% of the Islamic world will be represented by the forces aligned against Israel, and remember it’s only their soldiers who die in battle, not their total populations. And given their dismal past performance in battles against Israel, it’s unlikely that the followers of Islam will desert their religion because of one more defeat at the hands of the Jews.

And then there’s the fact that the end times leaders called the King of the North and the King of the South will both came from places that are decidedly Moslem today.  Just because they emerged from the Greek Empire doesn’t make them Western European. The first King of the North built his capital city, Seleucia, on the Tigris River in modern Iraq and the first King of the South lived in Egypt. Daniel 11:40 tells us the end times personifications of these two kings will still be contending for world dominance just prior to the beginning of the Great Tribulation.

Compare that to what will likely happen to the 2.2 billion strong “Christian” world in the Rapture and it’s not hard to see that Islam will be the strongest religious force on Earth as Daniel’s 70th Week begins. (After all, none of them will be raptured.)  Islam would be the obvious choice for a man who wants to use a religious system to gain control of the world.

And remember, the anti-Christ won’t be confirming a covenant with Israel for the purpose of helping them. He’ll be doing it to help himself. By means of peace he’ll deceive many, Daniel warned (Daniel 8:25). And with the exception of the fleeing Jewish remnant, the world will be deceived, saying “Peace and safety” just as sudden destruction comes upon them (1 Thes. 5:9). But God will not be deceived. He’s already on the record, calling it a covenant with death (Isaiah 28:15).  Doesn’t this covenant serve God’s purpose, you ask? Well of course everything that happens serves God’s purpose, but that doesn’t mean everything that happens is good for man. The Jews will think they’re getting a guarantee of peace but God will use the covenant to usher in Daniel’s 70th Week, a time when He’ll completely destroy the nations and purify His covenant people. It’ll be anything but peaceful.

Over 5 years ago I first reported on the similarities between Islamic prophecies of al Mahdi and Christian prophecies of the anti-Christ. I noted how both are said to come on the scene during a time of great turmoil on Earth, both come claiming a desire to restore peace, both have a seven year reign, both head a one world religion and one world government, both claim supernatural origins, and in both cases their reign is prophesied to end in a battle between good and evil that brings Earth’s final judgment. It almost sounds as if they’re the same person.

Back then almost all students of prophecy were still convinced that the anti-Christ had to be of Western European origin, aligned somehow with the Roman Catholic Church. But since then I’ve become aware of more and more people who are taking a second look at this traditional view, and are considering the possibility of a world leader coming from the Eastern leg of the Roman Empire, from which Islam sprang.

Another Lesson From Daniel

Our first glimpse of Gentile Dominion, the period of Gentile rule over the Earth, came in the form of a large poly-metallic statue from Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (Daniel 2:31-45) When Daniel had his vision of Gentile Dominion (Daniel 7), it was represented by four great beasts. The first was a lion, symbolizing Babylon. The second was a bear, the Medo-Persians, and the third was a leopard, Greece. Then in Daniel 7:7 he said, “After that, in my vision at night I looked, and there before me was a fourth beast-terrifying and frightening and very powerful. It had large iron teeth; it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left. It was different from all the former beasts, and it had ten horns.” This is a reference to Rome. In animal imagery, the horn stands for authority, and when used symbolically the number 10 denotes the completion of divine order. Comparing this with Daniel 2:44 we can see that this 4th beast would have complete authority over Earth and would never totally relinquish it until the Lord comes to take it by force.

The anti-Christ will make his first Biblical appearance in Rev. 6:2, disguised as the man on the white horse. According to Daniel 8:25 he’ll seem to be a great peacemaker, but his intent will be to conquer the world. His true identity won’t be revealed until Revelation 13:1-2 where it becomes clear that he’s been empowered by Satan. Verses 1- 2 describe him thus. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. He had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority.

Compare Rev. 13:1-2 to Daniel 7:7 and you’ll see that while the 10 horns show that he’ll have all the authority of the fourth gentile kingdom, his identifying characteristics will be more like the first three of Daniel’s beasts. Babylon, Persia, and Greece were all oriented toward the East. Only Rome had a western orientation (which made it different from the other three, as Daniel noted) Could this mean that the anti-Christ will also look first to the East (Isalm) to consolidate his power?

Time will tell. In his interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, Daniel told us how the end times version of the 4th kingdom would be characterized by inner conflict. He said that where it had once been as two strong legs of iron (the Eastern and Western divisions of the Roman Empire) rebuilding it at the end it would be like trying to mix iron and clay. (Daniel 2:40-43) He could have been describing some of the social unrest we’ve witnessed in several European countries since their native populations have not always responded well to Moslem immigration.

My purpose in writing this is not in any way to confirm or endorse the views of some self-proclaimed experts on Islam who’ve burst on the scene recently with all sorts of new interpretations of Christian prophecy. It’s to remind us all to keep our eyes open. Things are happening fast and will continue to challenge our traditional perspective. Daniel was told that as the End of the Age approaches knowledge will increase (Daniel 12:4). That means we’ll be given a clearer understanding of how events will unfold than those who came before us. This will happen through careful observation, actually seeing the pieces of the puzzle fall into place and comparing them to Scripture. But God knows the end from the beginning, so none of this is new to Him. Where we see change, He just sees a closer alignment of Earthly events with Heavenly truth. It’s time to keep an open Bible handy as we watch the headlines because we now have another reason to search the Scriptures daily (Acts 17:11).