The Beginnings of the Persian Empire

The Persians emigrated from the great plains of Russia in the 9th century BC.

The Persian kings: Teispes, Cyrus I, Cambyses I, Cyrus the Great, Cambyses II, (Gaumata the usurper), Darius the Great who was the 3rd cousin of Cambyses II, & Xerxes a.k.a. Ahasuerus.

The above mentioned kings, with the exception of Gaumata, were members of the Achaemenid Dynasty.  Nothing is known about Achaemenes, the founder of the dynasty.  Shortly after 700 BC, Teispes captured the city-state of Anshan and established himself as king.  Anshan became an ally of Elam against Assyria, the world power at that time.  In 639 BC, the Assyrians conquered the kingdom of Elam.  To retain Anshan’s independence, Cyrus I sent his eldest son with a tribute to serve as a hostage of Ashurbanipal in the Assyrian capital of Nineveh.  The crown prince perished in 612 BC when the Medes and Chaldeans joined forces to conquer Nineveh.  Thus his younger brother, Cambyses I, became Anshan’s heir apparent.

Cyrus the Great’s accession year was 559 BC.  From his humble beginnings as ruler of the tiny state of Anshan, he conquered Media, Lydia, and Babylon and built the humongous Persian Empire. 

The Conquest of Babylon

 

God's command to Cyrus the Great:  "It is I who says of Cyrus, 'He is My shepherd and he will perform all My desire.'  And he declares of Jerusalem, 'She will be built,' and of the temple, 'your foundation will be laid.'  I have aroused him in righteousness; he will build My city, and will let My exiles go free."

The Medes and the Persians emigrated from the great plains of Russia in the 9th century BC. Shortly after 700 BC, the Persians took control of the city of Anshan.

Cyrus the Great was born about 600 BC, the son of a Persian king and a Median princess. Cyrus ascended the throne of the tiny state of Anshan in 559 BC to begin a reign that lasted 30 years.


In 540 BC, Cyrus set his sights on the conquest of Babylon. During that period, Babylonian morale was at a low ebb. King Nabonidus was more interested in the study of foreign religions and history than in government. Nabonidus took a ten year hiatus in Arabia and left his son Belshazzar at the helm. He returned in 543 BC with the hopes of winning back the favour of his subjects and the priests who preferred a monarch that restricted himself to the established religion of Babylon. Although he brought all the idols from the surrounding cities into Babylon and celebrated the New Year's feast, he was unable to win the approval of his people.


Cyrus was able to convince Gubara, a Median governor, to defect to the Persian side. (The Medes had been allies of the Babylonians since the two defeated Assyria in 612 BC.) After taking the cities of Opis and Sippar, the Persian army moved towards Babylon. The throne city was dissected by the Euphrates River and its tributary canals. The dry season coupled with an annual shortage of precipitation caused the river to reach its lowest level in years. Furthermore, this was the time of a great Babylonian festival when the entire city of Babylon was accustomed to revelling all night long.


That night, while the inebriated Babylonians celebrated, Gubara diverted the flow of the Euphrates and entered Babylon's impregnable walls through a water channel. On October 12, 539 BC, Gubara captured Babylon without a battle. On October 29, he opened the city’s gates and welcomed his benefactor, Cyrus, king of Persia. Cyrus entered Babylon peacefully and was hailed by its inhabitants as a liberator. Belshazzar was slain, Nabonidus exiled, and Gubara, a.k.a. Darius the Mede, was made king of Babylon to act as a vassal under Cyrus the Great.


In 538 BC, Cyrus released Judeans from their captivity in Babylon. His proclamation was recorded by Ezra the scribe:


“Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, ‘The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and He has appointed me to build Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah.
‘Whoever there is among you of all His people, may his God be with him! Let him go up to Jerusalem which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel; He is the God who is in Jerusalem.'"

Babylon's seventy year mandate had expired and an assembly of 42,360 survivors of the Babylonian captivity, accompanied by their servants, arrived in Judah in April, 537 BC, under the leadership of Zerubbabel, to rebuild their temple.

The Times of the Persians

 

Cyrus the Great was succeeded by his son, Cambyses II.  In his short, eight year reign, Cambyses added the kingdom of Egypt to the vast empire assembled by his father.

In 525 BC, Cambyses defeated Pharaoh Psammetichus III first on the Nile Delta and then at the key city of Memphis.  He continued south destroying the Egyptian temples along the way knowing full well that men were demoralized by the desecration of their gods.

In 522 BC, a sword wound inflicted to Cambyses’ leg became infested with gangrene and he died an untimely death.  That same year Cambyses was succeeded by his third cousin, Darius the Great, who seized control of the Persian throne.

Now the Jews began to rebuild Jerusalem's temple in 536 BC, during the reign of Cyrus the Great.  The reconstruction was halted due to the harassment of the Samarians coupled with their own lack of dedication to the project.  Encouraged by the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, they resumed the temple's reconstruction in the second regnal year of Darius the Great. 

While the Samarians lobbied Darius to prohibit the reconstruction project, the Jews claimed they were working under an edict proclaimed by Cyrus in 538 BC.  

To clarify the issue, Darius searched the archives at the treasury in Babylon but could find no such edict.  After checking the royal itinerary, he discovered that Cyrus left Babylon in 538 BC to summer in Ecbatana.  So he searched the fortress in Ecbatana, in the province of Media, where he found the scroll containing Cyrus' decree.

Then Darius resolved the disagreement with his own decree which was sent to the governor of Samaria:

“Leave this work on the house of God alone; let the governor of the Jews and the elders of the Jews rebuild this house of God on its site.

“And I issued a decree that any man who violates this edict, a timber shall be drawn from his house and he shall be impaled on it and his house shall be made a refuse heap on account of this.

“And may the God, who has caused His name to dwell there, overthrow any king or people who attempts to resist, so as to destroy this house of God in Jerusalem.  I Darius have issued this decree, let it be carried out with all diligence.”

The temple was completed on March 12, 515 BC in the 6^th regnal year of Darius the Great.

The Holy Spirit: An Everlasting Promise

In Old Testament times, the Holy Spirit came upon men of old and then departed.

Samson was chosen by God before he was conceived in the womb, and the Holy Spirit came mightily upon him.  But after he revealed the source of his great strength to Delilah, the Holy Spirit departed from him.

Saul was chosen by lot as the first king of Israel, and the Holy Spirit came mightily upon him.  But after he committed a grave sin of disobedience, the Holy Spirit departed from him.

But in this present age, the Holy Spirit indwells believers “forever”.

Jesus said, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever.”

And Jesus was speaking “of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

“Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this Spirit which you both see and hear.”

And if we grieve the Holy Spirit, He Himself has said, “I will never leave you, nor forsake you.”

Don’t let the devil deceive you.  If we stumble and fall, it’s never too late to pick up the pieces and start all over again.  "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?" 

Crying Wolf for the End Times

Many commentators, including myself, believe that the final week of Daniel's Messianic Prophecy will consist of three and a half years of prosperity followed by three and a half years of extreme suffering, called the Great Tribulation.  The Abomination of Desolation, also called the antichrist or beast, will be at the helm of those seven years.  He will control a global empire, not unlike ancient Rome, Greece, and Persia.

However, let's not raise false alarms about the End Times.  We are not at the end, or even the beginning of the end, but perhaps we are nearing the end of the beginning.  The Holy Scriptures coupled with current events bear this out.

Matthew was a tax collector when Jesus called him to be an Apostle.  He was an eyewitness to Christ’s earthly ministry which he recorded in his Gospel.  In Matthew 24, he quoted the very words of Jesus Christ who stated emphatically that wars and rumours of wars, famines, and earthquakes are not the end but merely the beginning.

Despite third party peace efforts, the wars continue between Russia and the Ukraine, Israel and Hamas.

On March 28th, Myanmar (Burma) was struck by a 7.7 magnitude earthquake.  To put that in perspective, the 1960 Chilean earthquake had a magnitude of 9.5, the greatest magnitude ever recorded.

Christ went on to say that there will be martyrdom, apostasy (falling away from the faith), false prophets, and an increase in lawlessness.  People's love will grow cold and the Gospel will be preached throughout the entire world, “and then the end shall come”.

And then Jesus said, "Therefore when you see the Abomination of Desolation which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place...then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever shall."

The Apostle Paul relayed the same message.  He said that the day of the Lord will not come unless the apostasy (abandoning the faith) comes first "and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God".

The “holy place” mentioned by Christ and the “temple of God” mentioned by the Apostle Paul are references to Jerusalem’s Temple.  But, at the present time, there is no Temple in Jerusalem.  And of course, a Temple is crucial to the fulfillment of the aforementioned prophecies. 

Solomon’s Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC.  It was rebuilt by Zerubbabel during the reign of the Persian emperor Darius the Great.  Zerubbabel’s Temple didn’t approached the magnificence of Solomon’s Temple.  However, it was renovated by Herod the Great with such lavish splendour that it became one of the wonders of the Roman Empire.  Herod’s Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.  There has never been a Third Temple in Jerusalem.  In fact, Temple Mount a.k.a. Mount Moriah is now the site of Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, two Muslim holy places.

Observant Jews would never share the Temple Mount with Muslims.  The building of Jerusalem’s Third Temple would require removal of the two Islamic sanctuaries followed by the cleansing of Temple Mount by qualified Levitical priests.

The construction of Jerusalem’s Third Temple will be a sign that the end is near.  The building of the Third Temple will occur prior to the final week of  Daniel’s Messianic prophecy.  Exactly when they will break ground, nobody knows.  But one thing for certain.  When Jews start construction on the Third Temple, it will be the time for Christians to stand up and take notice.  And that will be the moment to sound the alarm for the End Times.

“For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah.  For in those days which were before the flood they were eating and drinking, they were marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be.”

Will Believers Be Judged?

Will "believers" or, more precisely, "the righteous in Christ" be judged?  The answer is no; not with respect to their salvation.  And what is salvation?  Spiritual rescue from the consequences of sin; to be saved from eternal damnation.

Make no mistake about it.  We are justified by faith in Jesus Christ.  God says it; I believe it; that settles it.

My statement of faith is described in the article entitled "Justification By Faith”.  A short synopsis:  "Only the act of justification by faith in Christ can save a man's soul.  That is, the righteousness bestowed by God through faith in Christ by whom a sinner is freed from the penalty due for his sins."

The Apostle Paul says:

"I may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith."

According to civil law, if a man is convicted of a crime, he is sentenced by the courts to pay a debt to society.  That could result in a prison term or even capital punishment.  In much the same way, according to God's Law, a sinner owes a debt to God because of his sins.

And again, the Apostle Paul says:

"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

And once again:

"He has cancelled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross."

And let's not forget the Apostle John:

"He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God."

Now believers will stand before the judgement seat (2 Corinthians 5:10) and some have said that their works will be judged.  However, the word "judged" can be confusing, especially to babes in Christ.  More correctly, their works will be "put to the proof”.  The NAS uses the word "test," the KJ the word "try," and the Douay the word "assay" and this is by fire.  The Apostle Paul gives a vivid description in 1 Corinthians 3:12-15:

"The fire itself will test the quality of each man's work.  If any man's work which he has built upon the foundation remains, he shall receive a reward.  If any man's work is burned up, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as through fire."

Translations of the Old Testament Canon

"Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of God."  Romans 10:17

The remarkable Holy Scriptures of Judaism: written by the sacred writers who were legends in their own time and for generations beyond; inspired by Almighty God, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, in whose hand is our very life's breath; culminating with the unfolding of Jesus the Christ from its sacred pages by which the prophetic mystery was concealed and then revealed at the fulness of time.

The Protestant Old Testament is identical to the Holy Scriptures of Judaism.  It consists of the 39 protocanonical books.  The Catholic Old Testament includes seven additional books as well as additions to Esther and Daniel.  Catholics call them the deuterocanonical books or second canon.  Protestants call them the apocrypha, meaning of doubtful authenticity or authorship.  However, Protestants recognize the historical value of some of the apocryphal books because they fill the 420 year gap between the prophet Malachi and the Gospel of Matthew.

The two most noteworthy translations of the Holy Scriptures of Judaism are the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate.

When Alexander the Great conquered Egypt, he built the city of Alexandria to showcase the superiority of the Greek culture.  The Diaspora was encouraged to settle there and Alexandria became a haven for Hellenists—Jews who adopted the Greek culture.

By the time Ptolemy II took the throne, the Jews in Alexandria spoke Greek rather than Hebrew.  Because there was a need for a Greek translation of the Holy Scriptures of Judaism, Ptolemy II commissioned 70 Palestinian Jews to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek in the third century BC.  In recognition of their work, the translation was dubbed the Septuagint (from the Latin, septuaginta, meaning seventy).

Fast forward to the fourth century AD and the Golden Age of the Church Fathers.  A scholar named Jerome was one of the most able Fathers in the early Christian Church.  A superb translator and commentator, he was fluent in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.  He was a contemporary of Augustine who was an extraordinary theologian, perhaps second only to the Apostle Paul.  Augustine praised Jerome’s talents by remarking, “What Jerome is ignorant of, no mortal man has ever known.”

Jerome's greatest accomplishment was a Latin translation of the Bible known as the Vulgate.  The New Testament was his revision of the old Latin versions which were translated from the Greek.  About 390 AD, he began his work on the Old Testament.  However, he went beyond the Greek Septuagint version of the Old Testament and created a new Latin version translated directly from the Hebrew Scriptures.  It was completed about 405 AD.

The Douay Bible is the English translation of Jerome's Latin Vulgate.  The New Testament was published in 1582; the Old Testament was published in two volumes, the first in 1609 and the second in 1610.  It was the only official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church until well into the twentieth century.

The King James Bible was published in 1611.  It was authorized by King James I of England.  Twenty-five gifted translators were involved in the creation of its Old Testament.  That translation was based on  the Masoretic Text, abbreviated MT.

The MT is the official Hebrew version of the Holy Scriptures of Judaism.  It was copied, edited, and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between the 8^th and 11^th centuries AD.  Codex Leningrad is the oldest copy of  the MT.  It is dated to 1000 AD.

The King James Bible is probably the most widely read Bible in the English-speaking Protestant world.  For a few decades, it has been available in modern English as the New King James Bible.

"All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness."  2 Timothy 3:16    

Cherry Picking God's Word

How can the pastor of a prominent Toronto church claim there is no Hell?  Did she not attend a seminary before being ordained as a minister?  Is the cross displayed on her church not a symbol of Christ's crucifixion?  For if there is neither sin nor punishment for sin, then Christ died needlessly.  While believers are freed from the penalty due for their sins through faith in Jesus Christ, unbelievers will be judged according to their deeds.  Because all men are sinners and Christ's crucifixion is the only sacrifice that atones for sinful deeds, how shall unbelievers escape if they ignore so great a salvation?

Orthodoxy declares that the Bible is the word of God; liberals believe that the Bible contains the word of God, a dangerous philosophy indeed.

"For a time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires; and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths." 

Liberals are tailoring the Bible to their own liking; cherry picking the word of God; rejecting those parts of the Bible that aren’t compatible with their lifestyle.

"Holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied it's power; and avoid such men as these.  Always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth."

We must remain "all in" with the Lord.  We can't be deceived by the devil or those who distort the Gospel.  We must fight the good fight, finish the course, keep the faith.

How Was The New Testament Canon Created?

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Hebrews 4:12

The creation of the New Testament canon was a slow process largely completed by 175 AD.  Admission of a book to the canon was based on three criteria:  Was it written by an Apostle or a person who was a close associate of the Apostles; Did the words of the book have the power of edification when read before a congregation; Was the book in agreement with the established doctrines of faith?

"The historical verification of apostolic authorship or influence and the universal consciousness of the church, guided by the Holy Spirit, resulted in the final decision concerning what books should be considered canonical and worthy of inclusion in what we know as the New Testament."

The Epistles of the Apostle Paul were the first books collected for the canon. They were gathered together by the elders of the Ephesian church.

Paul's Epistles were followed by a collection of the Gospels sometime after 100 AD:

Matthew was a tax collector at Capernaum when Jesus called him to become a disciple and later an Apostle.  Hence, he was an eyewitness to the events described in his Gospel.

Mark was a convert of the Apostle Peter and a companion of the Apostle Paul.  His mother Mary had a house in Jerusalem that was a gathering place for Christians.  Mark finally settled in Rome where he documented the memories of the Apostle Peter.  Both Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome. 

Luke was a physician who never actually saw Jesus.  A pagan by birth, he was an early convert who became a companion and co-worker of the Apostle Paul.  He wrote his Gospel for Theophilus who was a cultured Greek.  Therefore, Luke carefully examined the evidence and assigned  precise dates to the events which occurred in his Gospel.  Luke was also the author of Acts of the Apostles.

John was at first a disciple of John the Baptist.  He was the Apostle most loved by Jesus and an eyewitness to the events described in his Gospel.  John also wrote three Epistles and then the book of Revelation while exiled on the barren Isle of Patmos in the Aegean Sea.  After the death of the Roman emperor Domitian, John was allowed to return to Ephesus where he died at an advanced age.

In 180 AD, the so-called Muratorian Canon contained 22 New Testament books.

About 324 AD, Eusebius the Father of Church History determined that at least 20 books were worthy of inclusion in the New Testament canon.  The books of Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John, Jude, and Revelation were still under consideration because of authorship uncertainty.

Finally, in 367 AD, Athanasius the bishop of Alexandria listed as canonical the same 27 New Testament books that we have today.  That same Athanasius was the champion of the orthodox view when it was challenged about 325 AD.  He believed that Christ was coeternal, coequal, and consubstantial with God the Father, a belief for which he was exiled five times when he was a young man.

While some have thought the New Testament canon was a product of the Roman Catholic church, that was not the case.  About 170 AD, the church was calling itself the "catholic" or universal church.  The term was coined by Ignatius, an early church father who was arrested because of his Christian testimony and sent to Rome where he was killed by beasts in the imperial games.

According to historians, the Old Catholic Imperial church existed between 100 and 590 AD.  As that period ended, the Old Catholic Imperial church virtually became the Roman Catholic church.                         

Inspiration Incompatible With Error

Can faith in the Holy Scriptures be restored in the third millennium since the beginning of the Christian era?  Is it possible to re-establish the belief that the 39 traditional books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament are inerrant in their original manuscripts as left by the hagiographers?

There are two schools of thought: those who believe the Bible is the word of God and those who believe the Bible contains the word of God.  The former believe that the sacred writers were inspired by Almighty God and that divine inspiration is incompatible with error.

Augustine was a Church Father who was esteemed by Catholics and Protestants alike.  If he came across an apparent discrepancy in Scripture, he didn't attribute it to the sacred writers.  Instead, he concluded that it was a copying error, a translation error, or that he himself had failed to understand the passage in question.

Augustine as quoted by Leo XIII:  "On my own part I confess to your charity that it is only to those books of Scripture which are now called canonical that I have learned to pay such honor and reverence as to believe most firmly that none of their writers has fallen into any error.  And if in these books I meet anything which seems contrary to truth, I shall not hesitate to conclude either that the text is faulty, or that the translator has not expressed the meaning of the passage, or that I myself do not understand."