Podcasts about ptolemies

4. Mercenaries, War Elephants, and the Seeds of Dynastic Decay The Ptolemies maintained their vast empire through wealth-funded mercenary armies and a unique arms race involving battle elephants. While their rivals, the Seleucids, used Indian elephants, the Ptolemies relied on harder-to-train African species. Despite military successes like the Battle of Raphia, the dynasty eventually began to decline due to the staggering costs of constant warfare and high taxation on Egyptian farmers. This economic strain, coupled with the rise of child kings and internal court factionalism, destabilized the government and left the kingdom vulnerable to its rivals and the emerging power of Rome. (4)CRETE

  8. The Tragic End of the Ptolemies and the Roman Conquest After their defeat at the Battle of Actium, the saga of Antony and Cleopatra reached its tragic conclusion in Alexandria. Mark Antony died in Cleopatra's arms after being mortally wounded, a scene confirmed by historical records. Realizing Octavian could not be seduced and refusing to be paraded as a captive in Rome, Cleopatra took her own life. Her death marked the end of the Ptolemaic dynasty. Octavian, dismissive of Egyptian traditions, transformed the kingdom into a conquered province. Egypt became the essential "breadbasket" of the Roman Empire, its vast grain reserves used to feed and pacify the Roman populace. (8)CARTHAGE

PREVIEW THE PTOLEMAIC ARMS RACE: WAR ELEPHANTS AS ANCIENT BATTLE TANKS Colleague Professor Toby Wilkinson. Professor Wilkinson details the military "arms race" between the Ptolemies and Seleucidsinvolving war elephants, the "battle tanks" of the ancient world. He explains how the Ptolemies utilized flighty Africanelephants against their rivals' Indian elephants, creating a strange but critical competition to amass military power.

Professor Toby Wilkinson. The Ptolemies leveraged Egypt's grain and gold to build a prosperous economy. They constructed the Lighthouse of Alexandria and the Museum, which attracted scholars like Archimedes. Zenodotus, the first head librarian, invented bibliography to organize the Library's massive collection of scrolls. 1856 CLEOPATRA NEEDLE

Professor Toby Wilkinson. Egypt's wealth allowed the Ptolemies to hire mercenaries and engage in arms races involving African war elephants against Seleucid Indian elephants. Despite early military successes like the Battle of Raphia, the dynasty began to decline with the accession of child kings like Ptolemy V, leading to internal factionalism. 1846

Professor Toby Wilkinson. The Ptolemies practiced sibling marriage, creating complex family rivalries. Powerful queens like Cleopatra I and III emerged as capable rulers who navigated civil wars and stabilized the kingdom. Cleopatra III, in particular, was a formidable strategist who managed conflicting dynastic ambitions through force of personality. 1845

Pastor Russell Johnson concluded the Daniel series by exploring Daniel 11-12, using the powerful image of WaterWorld's wave pool to illustrate the relentless nature of human history: "the waves didn't stop. They kept coming, bigger, harder, closer together." Pastor Russell walked through the stunning prophetic accuracy of Daniel 11:1-35, where specific historical figures from Persian and Greek empires are described centuries before they lived, declaring "hitting a bullet with a bullet idea. Here we are again, and again, and again!" He demonstrated how wave after wave of kingdoms rose and fell—Ptolemies, Seleucids, and ultimately Antiochus IV Epiphanes—all crashing through Israel with deception, violence, and persecution. Pastor Russell taught that behind this chaos stands God's sovereignty: "God determines even the terms of tyrannies, and they are restrained to the dates on God's calendar." He concluded with God's assurance to Daniel and to us: "Your duty is clear: go your way to the end; and your future is settled: you will enter into rest and rise again," reminding us that we have "an allotted place, an assigned space, designated for you in the resurrection age at the end of the days."

#top .av-special-heading.av-gs9o3p-a443d9b06c7f20b971d6f355b070045a{ padding-bottom:10px; } body .av-special-heading.av-gs9o3p-a443d9b06c7f20b971d6f355b070045a .av-special-heading-tag .heading-char{ font-size:25px; } .av-special-heading.av-gs9o3p-a443d9b06c7f20b971d6f355b070045a .av-subheading{ font-size:15px; } Through My Bible Yr 02 – December 17Daniel 11:2-20 LISTEN HERE Through My Bible – December 17 Daniel 11:2-20 (EHV) https://wels2.blob.core.windows.net/tmb-ehv/02-1217db.mp3 See series: Through My Bible Daniel 11 The Messenger Reveals Future Battles [1] Xerxes of Persia [2] 2 Now I will tell you the truth: Look, three more kings will arise for Persia. Then the fourth one will gain great riches, more than anyone else. As he becomes strong through his riches, he will stir everyone up against the kingdom of Greece. Alexander the Great [3] 3 A warrior king will arise. He will rule a great dominion and will do as he pleases. 4 But as he rises, his kingdom will be broken and be divided to the four winds of heaven, but it will not be passed on to his descendants. It will not be ruled with the same ruling power with which he ruled, because his kingdom will be uprooted and given to others besides these. The Ptolemies Versus the Seleucids [4] 5 The King of the South will become strong, but one of his commanders will become stronger than he and rule a dominion greater than his. [5] 6 After some years, they will make an alliance. The daughter of the King of the South will come to the King of the North and make a fair agreement. However, she will not keep the strength of her arm, and he and his arm [6] will not endure. She will be given up—she and those who brought her, the one who fathered her, [7] and the one who strengthened her during these times. [8] 7 But one who is a branch from her root will arise in his place. [9] He will come against the army and come into the fortress of the King of the North. He will make war with them and win. 8 He will also take their gods captive to Egypt with their cast images and with their valuable silver and gold vessels. For some years he will leave the King of the North alone. 9 But the King of the North will come into the kingdom of the King of the South. Then he will return to his own land. 10 His sons [10] will stir themselves up and will gather a huge force of many armies, which will keep coming like an overflowing flood. They will stir themselves up again as far as his fortress. [11] 11 The King of the South will be enraged. He will go out and fight with the King of the North. The King of the North will raise up a great army, but the army will be handed over to the King of the South. 12 When the King of the North's army is swept away, and the King of the South becomes arrogant, though he will cause tens of thousands to fall, he will not win. [12] Antiochus the Great 13 The King of the North will again raise an army, which will be greater than the first army, and after some years he will keep coming with a great army and many supplies. 14 In those times, many will rise up against the King of the South. Violent men from your own people will lift themselves up in fulfillment of this vision, but they will fail. 15 The King of the North will come and build siege works and capture a fortified city. The forces of the south will not stand, not even its best troops, because they will have no strength to stand. 16 The one who comes against him [13] will do as he pleases, and no one will stand in his way. He will stand in the beautiful land, [14] and it will be completely in his power. 17 He will be determined to come with the power of his entire kingdom and to bring a treaty with him, which he will enforce. He will give his daughter to the King of the South in marriage in order to destroy the southern kingdom. But his plan will not succeed or turn out to his advantage. 18 He will focus his attack on the coastlands and capture many. However, a commander will put an end to his insolence. Moreover, he will make him pay for his insolence. 19 Then the King of the North will turn his face toward the fortresses of his land. He will stumble and fall and not be found. [15] 20 Then one will arise in his place who will send an oppressive tax collector for the glory of his kingdom. However, in a few days he will be broken, but not in anger or battle. Footnotes Daniel 11:2 This prophecy, which continues into chapter 12, extends from Daniel's time till the end of the world. Understanding this chapter requires considerable knowledge of history, so the EHV includes more footnotes here than it usually does. For more information, consult commentaries and study Bibles. Daniel 11:2 Esther's husband Xerxes led a huge expedition against Greece that ended in failure in 480 bc. Daniel 11:3 Alexander of Macedon very quickly built up a great empire that stretched from Greece to India, about 330 years before Christ. Daniel 11:5 This is both one of the most amazing prophecies and one of the most difficult. Daniel, who lived in the 6th century bc, foretells in great detail events that happen from about 330 bc to 150 bc. The Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids of Syria were two of the dynasties that succeeded Alexander. The Jews got caught in the middle of the conflict between them, and this led to a great persecution of the Jews. Consult commentaries and study Bibles for more details on this very complicated history. Daniel 11:5 The King of the South is Ptolemy of Egypt and his successors. The King of the North is Seleucus, a subordinate of Ptolemy who gained power in Syria, and his successors. Daniel 11:6 Variant seed, that is, descendant. The words for arm and seed look very much alike in Hebrew. Daniel 11:6 Variant her child Daniel 11:6 The kings are Ptolemy II and Antiochus II. The daughter of Ptolemy is Bernice, who was married to Antiochus. Antiochus eventually divorced Bernice and remarried his former wife Laodice, who then poisoned Antiochus, killed Bernice, and installed her own son as Seleucus II. Daniel 11:7 Bernice's brother, Ptolemy III, warred against Seleucus II. Daniel 11:10 The sons of Seleucus II were Seleucus III and Antiochus III the Great. They fought against the Ptolemies. Daniel 11:10 The line of thought in this verse is difficult to follow. Daniel 11:12 This King of the South is Ptolemy IV. Daniel 11:16 That is, the King of the North, who comes against the King of the South Daniel 11:16 That is, Israel Daniel 11:19 Antiochus the Great had success against both Egypt and Greece, but his plans were frustrated by the intervention of the Romans. It was at this time that Israel, which was between Syria and Egypt, got caught up in the conflict. #top .hr.hr-invisible.av-aocsdx-89cb4ca21532423cf697fc393b6fcee0{ height:10px; } The Holy Bible, Evangelical Heritage Version®, EHV®, © 2019 Wartburg Project, Inc. All rights reserved. #top .hr.hr-invisible.av-4vzadh-3f04b370105df1fd314a2a9d83e55b26{ height:50px; } Share this entryShare on FacebookShare on LinkedInShare by MailLink to FlickrLink to InstagramLink to Vimeo

Daniel 11 remains one of the most historically verifiable and textually complex prophecies in the entire Bible. This episode examines the remarkable precision of biblical prophecy through the lens of ancient history — tracing the rise and fall of empires such as Egypt, Syria, and Rome, and how their geopolitical movements were foretold centuries in advance.Drawing from ancient historical records, archaeology, and scriptural analysis, this in-depth study situates Daniel 11 within the larger context of Near Eastern history. From the rival dynasties of the Ptolemies and Seleucids to the imperial ascent of Rome, this discussion reveals how the Book of Daniel captures the unfolding of world events with astonishing historical accuracy.This lecture-style exploration bridges theology, history, and prophecy — uncovering how divine sovereignty and human ambition converge across centuries of recorded history.For those interested in biblical prophecy, historical evidence, or the academic study of Scripture, this episode offers a rigorous and intellectually grounded examination of Daniel 11 and the empires it predicted.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

All you Marrou fans out there may have been wondering, "Where did that fabulous Frenchmen go"? After all, this little podcast has not covered H.I.'s theme since April 1 of the current year. Fitting date? Don't be fooled, Jeff and Dave have not given up on all things ancient education, and this week the guys return to Part II, Chapter IX. In this portion of the larger section, Classical Education in the Hellenistic Age, Marrou is dealing with what he entitles "Lesser Forms". How was the ephebia structured, and how did the architectural forms change to match this? What did the typical syllabus contain, and what of the formation of a canon? What is the connection between thinking great thoughts and walking? Should you look out for roving hygienists in your neighborhood, and can you earn a certificate or award for φιλοπονία (love of industry)? The disscussion next moves on to the "birdcage" center of ancient learning, the Museum (Alexandria, et alia), where MacArthur Fellowship recipients complained about the sluggish wifi and were feted by the Ptolemies. But we digress. Stick around for the closing bit on medicine and vo. tech, and think about sending us your own reflections for episode 200!

There's so much info to share about Canopus that it needed a second episode!In this episode, we take a look at some of the myths and deities associated with Canopus as well as earlier finds that have provided us with important details about the city.According to myth, the city began a the site where a Homeric hero met a gruesome end. It grew to become the main trade hub connecting Mediterranean routes to the Nile, a sacred city of several deities, and an internationally famous center of healing.Under the Ptolemies, Canopus became the site of the Mysteries of Osiris, blending Greek and Egyptian rituals of death and rebirth in order to gain sacred knowledge. We'll explore all we know about this mysterious annual ritual and others that were held here.TranscriptsFor transcripts of this episode head over to: https://archpodnet.com/tpm/23LinksSee photos related to episode topics on InstagramLoving the macabre lore? Treat your host to a coffee!Info on Canopus and Other Underwater Archaeology Projects in Alexandria from Lead Archaeologist Franck GoddioAncient recipes for cyprinum, a perfume made from henna grown at CanopusText of Canopus DecreeText of Nicander's TheriacaWorks CitedAbdel-Rahman, R. 2018. Recent Underwater Excavations at Thonis-Heracleion and Canopus. Annales Du Service Des Antiquités de l'Égypte (ASAE) 92:233–258.Buraselis, K., M. Stefanou, and D. J. Thompson. 2013. The Ptolemies, the Sea and the Nile. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Egypt Museum. Canopus & Heracleion: Sunkencities.Fraser, P. M. 1972. Ptolemaic Alexandria. Oxford University Press, Oxford.Goddio, F., and A. Masson-Berghoff. 2016. Sunken Cities: Egypt's Lost Worlds. Thames & Hudson / British Museum, London.Goddio, Franck. Projects: Sunken Civilizations: Canopus.Lavan, L., and M. Mulryan (editors). 2011. The Archaeology of Late Antique Paganism. Brill, Leiden.MacDonald, W. L., and J. A. Pinto. 1995. Hadrian's Villa and Its Legacy. Yale University Press, New Haven.Marriner, N., C. Morhange, and C. Flaux. 2017. Geoarchaeology of the Canopic Region: A Reconstruction of the Holocene Palaeo-Landscapes. Méditerranée 128:51–64.PAThs-ERC. East Canopus: Sacri Lapides Aegypti.Sidebotham, S. E. 2011. Berenike and the Ancient Maritime Spice Route. University of California Press, Berkeley.Sidebotham, S. E. 2019. Ports of the Red Sea and the Nile Delta: Trade and Cultural Exchange. In The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy, edited by W. Scheidel. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.ArchPodNetAPN Website: https://www.archpodnet.comAPN on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/archpodnetAPN on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/archpodnetAPN on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/archpodnetAPN ShopAffiliatesMotion Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

At the end of August, archaeologists announced extraordinary new finds from the sunken city of Canopus, located off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt. For the first time in 25 years, artifacts were raised from the seabed, including a sphinx inscribed with Ramses II's name, statues from the Ptolemaic and Roman eras, and shipwreck remains.In this episode, we'll explore both these latest underwater discoveries and geological surveys that are helping researchers understand what caused Canopus to sink, because understanding how people of the past adapted to disasters could help us find solutions for today's climate-threatened coastal cities.Listen now to learn about the artifacts, myths, and history of Canopus.TranscriptsFor transcripts of this episode head over to: https://archpodnet.com/tpm/22Links and ReferencesSee photos related to episode topics on InstagramLoving the macabre lore? Treat your host to a coffee!Info on Canopus and Other Underwater Archaeology Projects in Alexandria from Lead Archaeologist Franck GoddioAncient recipes for cyprinum, a perfume made from henna grown at CanopusText of Canopus DecreeText of Nicander's TheriacaAbdel-Rahman, R. 2018. Recent Underwater Excavations at Thonis-Heracleion and Canopus. Annales Du Service Des Antiquités de l'Égypte (ASAE) 92:233–258.Buraselis, K., M. Stefanou, and D. J. Thompson. 2013. The Ptolemies, the Sea and the Nile. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Egypt Museum. Canopus & Heracleion: Sunkencities.Fraser, P. M. 1972. Ptolemaic Alexandria. Oxford University Press, Oxford.Goddio, F., and A. Masson-Berghoff. 2016. Sunken Cities: Egypt's Lost Worlds. Thames & Hudson / British Museum, London.Goddio, Franck. Projects: Sunken Civilizations: Canopus.Lavan, L., and M. Mulryan (editors). 2011. The Archaeology of Late Antique Paganism. Brill, Leiden.MacDonald, W. L., and J. A. Pinto. 1995. Hadrian's Villa and Its Legacy. Yale University Press, New Haven.Marriner, N., C. Morhange, and C. Flaux. 2017. Geoarchaeology of the Canopic Region: A Reconstruction of the Holocene Palaeo-Landscapes. Méditerranée 128:51–64.PAThs-ERC. East Canopus: Sacri Lapides Aegypti.Sidebotham, S. E. 2011. Berenike and the Ancient Maritime Spice Route. University of California Press, Berkeley.Sidebotham, S. E. 2019. Ports of the Red Sea and the Nile Delta: Trade and Cultural Exchange. In The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy, edited by W. Scheidel. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.ArchPodNetAPN Website: https://www.archpodnet.comAPN on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/archpodnetAPN on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/archpodnetAPN on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/archpodnetAPN ShopAffiliatesMotion Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Natalie is joined by Professors Islam Issa and Edith Hall to tell the story of the great library of Alexandria. It was included in Alexander the Great's original design for his city, located in the Nile Delta. Alexandria was to be a city of knowledge. The founders of the library were ambitious: they wanted nothing less than to collect all the books in the world. They were willing to pay huge sums, but they were also ruthless and unscrupulous. The Ptolemies would write to fellow rulers and wealthy friends and ask to borrow their priceless texts. Then the library would copy the scrolls, and return the copies. Or alternatively they'd just steal them. Handily, papyrus, the principal reading material of the era, grew in great abundance around Alexandria. So there was plenty of it for those copies. Less fortunately, it's extremely flammable. So in 48 BCE, when Julius Caesar's besieged army set fire to ships in the harbour in order to block the invading fleet, the fire spread and destroyed a significant part of the library.'Rockstar mythologist' Natalie Haynes is the best-selling author of 'Divine Might', 'Stone Blind', and 'A Thousand Ships' as well as a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about Ancient Greek and Rome.Islam Issa is Professor of Literature and History at Birmingham City University. His book 'Alexandria, the City that Changed the World' is the Winner of the Runciman Award and The Times, Sunday Times, TLS, Booklist, Epoch Times and Waterstones Book of the Year.Edith Hall is Professor of Classics at Durham University, specialising in ancient Greek literature. She has written over thirty books and is a Fellow of the British Academy.Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery

5/8: The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra Hardcover – April 8, 2025 by  Toby Wilkinson  (Author) PTOLEMY MAP OF EGYPT https://www.amazon.com/Last-Dynasty-Ancient-Alexander-Cleopatra/dp/1324052031 Alexander the Great and Cleopatra may be two of the most famous figures from the ancient world, but the Egyptian era bookended by their lives―the Ptolemaic period (305–30 BC)―is little known. In The Last Dynasty, New York Times best-selling author Toby Wilkinson unravels the incredible story of this turbulent era, bringing to life three centuries' worth of extraordinary moments and charismatic figures. Macedonian in origin and Greek-speaking, the Ptolemies presided over the final flourishing of pharaonic civilization. Wilkinson describes the extraordinary cultural reach displayed at the height of their power: how they founded new cities, including Alexandria, their great seaside residence and commercial capital; mined gold in the furthest reaches of Nubia; built spectacular new temples that are among the foremost architectural wonders of the Nile Valley; and created a dazzling civilization that produced astonishing works of sculpture, architecture, and literature. Stunningly, he also shows how such expansionist ambitions led to the era's downfall. The Ptolemaic period was a time when ancient Egypt turned its gaze westward―in the process becoming the unwitting handmaid to the inexorable rise of Rome and the consequent loss of Egyptian independence. Featuring a superb blend of first-rate scholarship and evocative narrative history, The Last Dynastyprovides fresh insights into this overlooked period of history and its legacy in shaping the world as we know it.

3/8: The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra Hardcover – April 8, 2025 by  Toby Wilkinson  (Author) https://www.amazon.com/Last-Dynasty-Ancient-Alexander-Cleopatra/dp/1324052031 Alexander the Great and Cleopatra may be two of the most famous figures from the ancient world, but the Egyptian era bookended by their lives―the Ptolemaic period (305–30 BC)―is little known. In The Last Dynasty, New York Times best-selling author Toby Wilkinson unravels the incredible story of this turbulent era, bringing to life three centuries' worth of extraordinary moments and charismatic figures. Macedonian in origin and Greek-speaking, the Ptolemies presided over the final flourishing of pharaonic civilization. Wilkinson describes the extraordinary cultural reach displayed at the height of their power: how they founded new cities, including Alexandria, their great seaside residence and commercial capital; mined gold in the furthest reaches of Nubia; built spectacular new temples that are among the foremost architectural wonders of the Nile Valley; and created a dazzling civilization that produced astonishing works of sculpture, architecture, and literature. Stunningly, he also shows how such expansionist ambitions led to the era's downfall. The Ptolemaic period was a time when ancient Egypt turned its gaze westward―in the process becoming the unwitting handmaid to the inexorable rise of Rome and the consequent loss of Egyptian independence. Featuring a superb blend of first-rate scholarship and evocative narrative history, The Last Dynastyprovides fresh insights into this overlooked period of history and its legacy in shaping the world as we know it. 1920 CAIRO

4/8: The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra Hardcover – April 8, 2025 by  Toby Wilkinson  (Author) https://www.amazon.com/Last-Dynasty-Ancient-Alexander-Cleopatra/dp/1324052031 Alexander the Great and Cleopatra may be two of the most famous figures from the ancient world, but the Egyptian era bookended by their lives―the Ptolemaic period (305–30 BC)―is little known. In The Last Dynasty, New York Times best-selling author Toby Wilkinson unravels the incredible story of this turbulent era, bringing to life three centuries' worth of extraordinary moments and charismatic figures. Macedonian in origin and Greek-speaking, the Ptolemies presided over the final flourishing of pharaonic civilization. Wilkinson describes the extraordinary cultural reach displayed at the height of their power: how they founded new cities, including Alexandria, their great seaside residence and commercial capital; mined gold in the furthest reaches of Nubia; built spectacular new temples that are among the foremost architectural wonders of the Nile Valley; and created a dazzling civilization that produced astonishing works of sculpture, architecture, and literature. Stunningly, he also shows how such expansionist ambitions led to the era's downfall. The Ptolemaic period was a time when ancient Egypt turned its gaze westward―in the process becoming the unwitting handmaid to the inexorable rise of Rome and the consequent loss of Egyptian independence. Featuring a superb blend of first-rate scholarship and evocative narrative history, The Last Dynastyprovides fresh insights into this overlooked period of history and its legacy in shaping the world as we know it. 1900 PORT SUEZ

1/8: The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra Hardcover – April 8, 2025 by  Toby Wilkinson  (Author) https://www.amazon.com/Last-Dynasty-Ancient-Alexander-Cleopatra/dp/1324052031 Alexander the Great and Cleopatra may be two of the most famous figures from the ancient world, but the Egyptian era bookended by their lives―the Ptolemaic period (305–30 BC)―is little known. In The Last Dynasty, New York Times best-selling author Toby Wilkinson unravels the incredible story of this turbulent era, bringing to life three centuries' worth of extraordinary moments and charismatic figures. Macedonian in origin and Greek-speaking, the Ptolemies presided over the final flourishing of pharaonic civilization. Wilkinson describes the extraordinary cultural reach displayed at the height of their power: how they founded new cities, including Alexandria, their great seaside residence and commercial capital; mined gold in the furthest reaches of Nubia; built spectacular new temples that are among the foremost architectural wonders of the Nile Valley; and created a dazzling civilization that produced astonishing works of sculpture, architecture, and literature. Stunningly, he also shows how such expansionist ambitions led to the era's downfall. The Ptolemaic period was a time when ancient Egypt turned its gaze westward―in the process becoming the unwitting handmaid to the inexorable rise of Rome and the consequent loss of Egyptian independence. Featuring a superb blend of first-rate scholarship and evocative narrative history, The Last Dynastyprovides fresh insights into this overlooked period of history and its legacy in shaping the world as we know it. 1907

2/8: The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra Hardcover – April 8, 2025 by  Toby Wilkinson  (Author) https://www.amazon.com/Last-Dynasty-Ancient-Alexander-Cleopatra/dp/1324052031 Alexander the Great and Cleopatra may be two of the most famous figures from the ancient world, but the Egyptian era bookended by their lives―the Ptolemaic period (305–30 BC)―is little known. In The Last Dynasty, New York Times best-selling author Toby Wilkinson unravels the incredible story of this turbulent era, bringing to life three centuries' worth of extraordinary moments and charismatic figures. Macedonian in origin and Greek-speaking, the Ptolemies presided over the final flourishing of pharaonic civilization. Wilkinson describes the extraordinary cultural reach displayed at the height of their power: how they founded new cities, including Alexandria, their great seaside residence and commercial capital; mined gold in the furthest reaches of Nubia; built spectacular new temples that are among the foremost architectural wonders of the Nile Valley; and created a dazzling civilization that produced astonishing works of sculpture, architecture, and literature. Stunningly, he also shows how such expansionist ambitions led to the era's downfall. The Ptolemaic period was a time when ancient Egypt turned its gaze westward―in the process becoming the unwitting handmaid to the inexorable rise of Rome and the consequent loss of Egyptian independence. Featuring a superb blend of first-rate scholarship and evocative narrative history, The Last Dynastyprovides fresh insights into this overlooked period of history and its legacy in shaping the world as we know it. 1908

We look at the division of Alexander the Great's empire. Then we discuss how the Jews lived under the Seleucids and Ptolemies.

Guy de la Bédoyère - The Fall of Egypt and the Rise of Rome: A History of the Ptolemies...with TRE's Giles Brown

While the name "Cleopatra" often conjures images of the famed Egyptian queen (Cleopatra VII), we're venturing even further back in time to uncover the captivating story of Cleopatra Syra, Cleopatra I. First, a princess of the vast Seleucid Empire, her life was a tapestry woven with political intrigue, familial strife, and a relentless pursuit of power once she was married off to the Ptolemies as a political pawn. Often overshadowed by her more renowned namesake, Cleopatra Syra's story is an incredible one: resilience, ambition, and the complexities of ruling in a world dominated by men. Join us on this episode of History for Weirdos as we shed light on this enigmatic figure. We'll explore her pivotal role in the Ptolemaic dynasty, her strategic marriages, and the challenges she faced navigating a court rife with conspiracies and betrayals. From her early years as a pawn in political games to her later reign marked by both triumphs and tragedies, Cleopatra Syra's life offers a fascinating glimpse into the often-overlooked corners of Hellenistic Egypt. - Thank you for listening Weirdos! Show the podcast some love by rating & subscribing on whichever platform you use to listen to podcasts. Your support means so much to us. Let's stay in touch

Daniel Chapters 10-12: Final Visions and Prophetic ChaosIn this special Q&A episode of Sacrilegious Discourse, husband and wife team take on the final, bewildering chapters of Daniel—Chapters 10, 11, and 12. Join us as we dive deep into the chaotic visions, historical contexts, and the perplexing prophecies that make up Daniel's final vision. Buckle up for a wild ride through ancient history and apocalyptic predictions!We start by recapping the final vision given to Daniel in Chapter 10, where he mourns for three weeks and encounters a shiny celestial being. We discuss the possible reasons for Daniel's mourning, including the few Jews who returned from exile and the opposition faced in rebuilding the temple. We also delve into the identity of the mysterious man in linen, speculating whether he could be an angel, Jesus, or another divine entity.In Chapter 11, we navigate through the intricate power struggles between the kings of the North (Syria) and the South (Egypt). This chapter is a rollercoaster of alliances, betrayals, and wars, all while the Jews are caught in the middle. We break down the historical context, shedding light on figures like Antiochus Epiphanes and the Ptolemies, and how these prophecies were likely written centuries after the events they supposedly predict.Finally, in Chapter 12, we explore the "time of the end," where Daniel's vision culminates in a resurrection, a final judgment, and the ultimate triumph of God's people. We question the origins of these apocalyptic visions and their impact on modern religious beliefs, from the concept of the Antichrist to the idea of an ineffable divine plan.From discussing the absurdity of forced prophecies to the intriguing yet baffling historical context, we dissect these chapters with our signature blend of skepticism and humor. Whether you're here for the theological critique or just the laughs, this episode has a bit of everything.Visit us at: SACRILEGIOUSDISCOURSE.COM and join us on Discord, where we interact the most AND have live episodes every Wednesday: https://discord.gg/VBnyTYV6nC Join Acast+ to enjoy our podcast adfree! https://plus.acast.com/s/sacrilegiousiscourse. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! The Lighthouse of Alexandria became iconic in both the ancient and medieval worlds. People began to call it ‘The Pharos,” after the island it stood on. It changed drastically over the years—and so has what it represented. It was built during the reign of the Ptolemies in Egypt, and stood for about 1,600 years. In that time it came to represent a beacon of light and learning. But it also represented other, darker things. And looking back at it today—trying to glean its picture—is like looking through a clouded mirror. Join us as we try to unpack the mystery of the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Sponsors and Advertising This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to advertising@airwavemedia.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You know Cleopatra, but do you know all seven of them? Despite the fame of one name, the history of “Cleopatra” crosses three centuries and a long lineage of accomplished women. Frequently taking up power and responsibilities far beyond their more famous husbands (the Ptolemies), the seven Cleopatras of Egypt (and even more in the wider Hellenistic world) are worthy of greater attention and respect. In this interview, Prof. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones of Cardiff University introduces these figures and his new book The Cleopatras: Forgotten Queens of Egypt. Author details: Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, The Cleopatras, 2024. Available in hardback, paperback, ebook, and audiobook (read by the author). See Headline Publishing and all good retailers. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones at Cardiff University and Academia.edu. Rulers discussed in this episode: Cleopatra I Syra: Wikipedia. Cleopatra III: Wikipedia. Cleopatra Thea of the Seleukid Empire: Wikipedia. Cleopatra VI Tryphaena: Wikipedia. Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator: Wikipedia. The History of Egypt Podcast: Website: www.egyptianhistorypodcast.com. Support the show via Patreon www.patreon.com/egyptpodcast. Make a one-time donation via PayPal payments. Music by Michael Levy www.ancientlyre.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Rhabarberbarbara” Daniel 11:2-45 by William Klock On Wednesday a friend at the pool stopped me and asked if I'd watch a video on her phone and tell her what it was about.  It was in German and she didn't understand.  So she hit “play” and two men started singing and I laughed.  I said, “It's ‘Rhabarberbarbara' and they've set it to music.  “Rhabarberbarbara” is a German tongue twister poem.  Imagine “She sell seashells down by the seashore”, but it's all ba…ba…ba sounds, and with each stanza the tongue twisting part gets longer.  Barabara opens a bar to sell her rhubarb cake: Barbaras rhabarberbar”.  But pretty soon bald, bearded barbarians in need of a barber show up.  It's a funny poem and it's hard to say, but these two guys set it to music and sang the whole thing perfectly.  My friend said she liked how catchy it was, but had no idea what it meant.  I laughed, because this is how the Greeks came up with the word “barbarian” for foreigners.  Their languages just sounded like “Bar…bar…bar”.  If you don't know the language, your ear hears the repetitive sounds, but you have no idea what any of it means.  Imagine hearing “She sells seashells down by the sea shore” if you didn't speak English.  It's just rhyming repetitive gibberish. As I was walking away I started thinking how this is a metaphor for how a lot of people might hear Daniel 11, which is what we come to today.  It's the longest chapter in the book and most of it describes a long conflict between the King of the North and the King of the South.  The actual kings are never named.  The places involved aren't named.  It goes on and on, back and forth between north and south.  In this case the language is history, not German, but if you don't know the language it's not that different than my friend listening to that German tongue twister that's all bar…bar…bar.  It's just repetitive gibberish. But if you know the history, Chapter 11 describes the historical events that were whirling around Judah from the time of Daniel in the Sixth Century up to the 160s BC.  If you know the history a story emerges from the Rhubarberbarbara.  That said, knowing all the historical details isn't the important thing you need to take away.  I'll give you the big picture and skip the nitty-gritty.  If you want to know all the details, the actual historical events are well documented and you can look them up in a history book or Wikipedia.  If you've got an ESV Study Bible, it's all there with nifty maps and genealogies and historical outlines. But before we get into that, remember the lesson from Chapter 10.  That was the first part of this vision.  The lesson from that first part is that there's more going on than what we can see.  Daniel was frustrated and discouraged by earthly circumstances and—as we'll see—things weren't going to get any better.  It's easy to lose hope.  But the angel explained to him that the battles he saw being fought by kings on earth corresponded to battles being fought in the heavenlies.  The point of knowing this isn't to burden us with some new responsibility—as if there's something we can do to win those battles in the heavenlies.  Just the opposite.  Those battles in the heavenlies are not our responsibility.  Apart maybe from praying, there's nothing we can do to assist the angels.  God has given us things to do and battles to wage in our sphere and he and his heavenly forces will do battle in their sphere.  And the point is that we should find hope in that.  The battle here may feel hopeless.  But knowing that God fights a battle in the heavenlies that somehow corresponds to the one we fight here and that the outcome in the heavenlies corresponds to the outcome here—that should inspire hope to stand firm, to keep the faith, and to fight the good fight. Knowing that, the vision now continues with a summary of historical events.  Let's start with verses 2-4. “And now I will show you the truth. Behold, three more kings shall arise in Persia, and a fourth shall be far richer than all of them. And when he has become strong through his riches, he shall stir up all against the kingdom of Greece. Then a mighty king shall arise, who shall rule with great dominion and do as he wills. And as soon as he has arisen, his kingdom shall be broken and divided toward the four winds of heaven, but not to his posterity, nor according to the authority with which he ruled, for his kingdom shall be plucked up and go to others besides these.   There were more than four Persian kings following the time of Daniel.  This “three and a fourth” is a Hebrew way of talking about all the things.  We see it in Proverbs: “There are six things the Lord hates and a seventh is an abomination to him.”  The Lord hates more than seven things, but these seven are representative of all the things the Lord hates.  Just so with these four Persian kings.  The point is that the Persian empire will get bigger and bigger, richer and richer, more power and more powerful and eventually—and this is what happened historically—it will go up against Greece and be defeated.  Xerxes I invaded Greek territory.  He was defeated and that started a century of conflict that ended with the defeat of Persia by Alexander the Great.  And mighty Alexander, who like the beasts of earlier chapters rampaged and did what he willed—or so he thought—he fell almost as soon as he arose.  Alexander conquered the known world in fifteen years and suddenly died of a fever at the age of 32.  His generals fought over his empire and eventually divided it up four ways.  Two of those successor kingdoms would have a profound influence on the land of Judah: the Seleucid kingdom based in Syria—the King of the North—and the Ptolemaic kingdom based in Egypt—the King of the South.  That's the setup for the rest of the chapter, which rushes through about 160 years of the history that follows.  The Seleucid kings were Seleucus I-IV followed by Antiochus I-IV.  The Egyptian kings are easy: They were all named Ptolemy—Ptolemy I-VI.  (Actually there eventually thirteen Antiochuses and fifteen Ptolemies, the last being the son of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra VII.) Verses 5 to 20 move quickly through the first five Ptolemies, the first four Seleucuses, and the first three Antiochuses.  Fifteen verses sweep us through history from about 320BC to 175BC.  Here's the text: “Then the king of the south shall be strong, but one of his princes shall be stronger than he and shall rule, and his authority shall be a great authority. After some years they shall make an alliance, and the daughter of the king of the south shall come to the king of the north to make an agreement. But she shall not retain the strength of her arm, and he and his arm shall not endure, but she shall be given up, and her attendants, he who fathered her, and he who supported her in those times.   “And from a branch from her roots one shall arise in his place. He shall come against the army and enter the fortress of the king of the north, and he shall deal with them and shall prevail. He shall also carry off to Egypt their gods with their metal images and their precious vessels of silver and gold, and for some years he shall refrain from attacking the king of the north. Then the latter shall come into the realm of the king of the south but shall return to his own land.   “His sons shall wage war and assemble a multitude of great forces, which shall keep coming and overflow and pass through, and again shall carry the war as far as his fortress. Then the king of the south, moved with rage, shall come out and fight against the king of the north. And he shall raise a great multitude, but it shall be given into his hand. And when the multitude is taken away, his heart shall be exalted, and he shall cast down tens of thousands, but he shall not prevail. For the king of the north shall again raise a multitude, greater than the first. And after some years he shall come on with a great army and abundant supplies.   “In those times many shall rise against the king of the south, and the violent among your own people shall lift themselves up in order to fulfill the vision, but they shall fail. Then the king of the north shall come and throw up siegeworks and take a well-fortified city. And the forces of the south shall not stand, or even his best troops, for there shall be no strength to stand. But he who comes against him shall do as he wills, and none shall stand before him. And he shall stand in the glorious land, with destruction in his hand. He shall set his face to come with the strength of his whole kingdom, and he shall bring terms of an agreement and perform them. He shall give him the daughter of women to destroy the kingdom, but it shall not stand or be to his advantage. Afterward he shall turn his face to the coastlands and shall capture many of them, but a commander shall put an end to his insolence. Indeed, he shall turn his insolence back upon him. Then he shall turn his face back toward the fortresses of his own land, but he shall stumble and fall, and shall not be found.   “Then shall arise in his place one who shall send an exactor of tribute for the glory of the kingdom. But within a few days he shall be broken, neither in anger nor in battle.   If that makes as much sense as “Rhabarberbarbara”, that's okay.  If you know the history this maps right on to it, but if you don't, all you really need to know is that this describes about a century and a half of the kings of Egypt and Syria fighting with each other.  And that's important because of what's right between Egypt and Syria.  Picture a map in your head.  What's between Egypt and Syria?  That's right: Judah.  Judah sat on the crossroads of the ancient world and so it went back and forth between Egypt and Syria and eventually many of the Jews themselves got caught up in the politics and the intrigue.  Some of them thought that by siding with these pagan kings they were fulfilling God's purpose.  Again, when we see things happening in the world around us—the things we can see—it's easy to get caught up in them, it's easy to compromise our faith and our values and what's right.  But Daniel reminds us that there's more going on than what we can see with our eyes.  Things are never truly hopeless for God's people, because God is ultimately in control and because his angels fight for us.  We need to remember that as things get worse, and get worse they did for little Judah, caught in the middle of all this. Verse 20 describes the Syrian King, Seleucus IV Philopater.  He sent a “tax collector”, a man by the name of Heliodorus, to collect the money needed to pay tribute to Rome, which was now involved in the intrigue.  Heliodorus tried to plunder the temple in Jerusalem, but had a nightmare that put him off the idea.  Instead, Heliodorus poisoned the king, Seleucus IV.  That opened the door to the real terror.  Look at verses 21-35: In his place shall arise a contemptible person to whom royal majesty has not been given. He shall come in without warning and obtain the kingdom by flatteries. Armies shall be utterly swept away before him and broken, even the prince of the covenant. And from the time that an alliance is made with him he shall act deceitfully, and he shall become strong with a small people. Without warning he shall come into the richest parts of the province, and he shall do what neither his fathers nor his fathers' fathers have done, scattering among them plunder, spoil, and goods. He shall devise plans against strongholds, but only for a time. And he shall stir up his power and his heart against the king of the south with a great army. And the king of the south shall wage war with an exceedingly great and mighty army, but he shall not stand, for plots shall be devised against him. Even those who eat his food shall break him. His army shall be swept away, and many shall fall down slain. And as for the two kings, their hearts shall be bent on doing evil. They shall speak lies at the same table, but to no avail, for the end is yet to be at the time appointed. And he shall return to his land with great wealth, but his heart shall be set against the holy covenant. And he shall work his will and return to his own land.   “At the time appointed he shall return and come into the south, but it shall not be this time as it was before. For ships of Kittim shall come against him, and he shall be afraid and withdraw, and shall turn back and be enraged and take action against the holy covenant. He shall turn back and pay attention to those who forsake the holy covenant. Forces from him shall appear and profane the temple and fortress, and shall take away the regular burnt offering. And they shall set up the abomination that makes desolate. He shall seduce with flattery those who violate the covenant, but the people who know their God shall stand firm and take action. And the wise among the people shall make many understand, though for some days they shall stumble by sword and flame, by captivity and plunder. When they stumble, they shall receive a little help. And many shall join themselves to them with flattery, and some of the wise shall stumble, so that they may be refined, purified, and made white, until the time of the end, for it still awaits the appointed time.   The other kings were bad, but this new king who arises is truly contemptible.  The heir of Seleucus IV was imprisoned in Rome and Antiochus IV bought and manipulated his way to the throne in his place.  He took the name “Epiphanes” meaning “Manifest One”.  In short, he thought he was God.  And Antiochus Epiphanes did his best to turn Jerusalem into a pagan Greek city.  The passage here refers to him deposing the high priest, Onias III.  His action against the holy covenant refers to his making it illegal to live by torah, his manipulation of Jewish collaborators, and to his defilement of the altar in the temple.  But Antiochus Epiphanes pushed too hard.  It's not that the earlier Greek kings weren't bad or that they, too, hadn't imposed pagan culture on Judah, but none had ever made the effort that this king did.  For the most part, they'd left Judah alone, under the rule of the high priest, as long as he coughed up tribute money every year.  Under the earlier kings, most people didn't feel compelled to make a choice between the Lord and the pagan gods, but under Antiochus Epiphanes, that's just what happened.  No one could sit on the fence anymore.  No one could say that this didn't affect them.  And so the vision tells of the wise in the community standing up and encouraging the people—not all (there were many who collaborated with Antiochus), but still a good many of them—these wise ones encourage them to stand firm.  They prepared the faithful to pay with their lives for doing so.  Those days tested the faith of the people and, in the end, revealed who was seriously committed to the Lord and who was not.  Again, in all this we're reminded that God was at work in the days of Antiochus just like he had been in the exile back in Daniel's day. And this brings the vision up to what was the present day for the author of Daniel, about 167BC.  So far the vision has been relating the history that led up to this point as if it were a prophecy given by Daniel back in the Sixth Century.  With verse 36 the vision transitions.  Now it looks into the future.  But the style changes, too.  Everything becomes more grandiose, but more importantly, the description of how this crisis will reach its climax uses imagery and language from the Prophets, especially Isaiah 10, Ezekiel 38-39, and Psalms 2, 46, 48, and 76.  The Prophets spoke of the “End” and Daniel's vision describes the present crisis as another embodiment of that great “End”. This is the point where evangelical interpreters disagree with each other.  Some see the change in style, the language of the End, and the fact that Antiochus didn't exactly meet his death the way it's described here, some see all this as reason to think that the vision is now turning from the events of the Second Century to events much further in the future.  It's no longer talking about Antiochus IV Epiphanes, but about a future “Antichrist”.  Other evangelical scholars see nothing in the text that justifies that kind of change in subject and timeframe and believe this is still talking about events in the Second Century. Either way, there are difficult problems and anyone who says otherwise simply isn't being honest.  I'll say that Daniel 11:36-12:13 is the most difficult Bible text I've ever wrestled with and every time you think you've made progress untangling the ball of yarn, you discover that you've just turned one big knot into half a dozen smaller ones that are just as tenacious.  If you know me, you know I think it's best to let the text speak for itself even if that makes things difficult.  I can't see anything within the text itself that justifies projecting this part of Daniel into the far future.  The text itself is pretty clear that it's looking to the immediate future—to the three or three-and-a-half years to come, to the death of Antiochus, and to the vindication of the Jews who were faithful in that crisis.  I might be wrong, but either way you end up with some problems that are hard to resolve—I just prefer going the route that lets the biblical text speak most naturally for itself.  So, verses 36-45: “And the king shall do as he wills. He shall exalt himself and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak astonishing things against the God of gods. He shall prosper till the indignation is accomplished; for what is decreed shall be done. He shall pay no attention to the gods of his fathers, or to the one beloved by women. He shall not pay attention to any other god, for he shall magnify himself above all. He shall honor the god of fortresses instead of these. A god whom his fathers did not know he shall honor with gold and silver, with precious stones and costly gifts. He shall deal with the strongest fortresses with the help of a foreign god. Those who acknowledge him he shall load with honor. He shall make them rulers over many and shall divide the land for a price.   Antiochus Epiphanes wasn't unique in making claims of divinity and the description here about his idolatry is grandiose, but there's nothing in the text that suggests at all that this is suddenly about some other king, let alone an Antichrist figure in the distant future.  I think what's going on here is that the vision captures how it felt for the faithful Jews to live under Antiochus, because he was the first of these rulers to deliberately undermine their laws, their faith, their worship and to defile their temple.  We do the same thing in our political discourse all the time, turning bad politicians into over-the-top monsters, and our politicians aren't half the monster that Antiochus was.  It goes on:   “At the time of the end, the king of the south shall attack him, but the king of the north shall rush upon him like a whirlwind, with chariots and horsemen, and with many ships. And he shall come into countries and shall overflow and pass through. He shall come into the glorious land. And tens of thousands shall fall, but these shall be delivered out of his hand: Edom and Moab and the main part of the Ammonites. He shall stretch out his hand against the countries, and the land of Egypt shall not escape. He shall become ruler of the treasures of gold and of silver, and all the precious things of Egypt, and the Libyans and the Cushites shall follow in his train. But news from the east and the north shall alarm him, and he shall go out with great fury to destroy and devote many to destruction. And he shall pitch his palatial tents between the sea and the glorious holy mountain. Yet he shall come to his end, with none to help him.   We don't really know how Antiochus Epiphanes died.  The Greek historian Polybius and the books of 1 and 2 Maccabees give varying accounts of his being driven mad after an attempt to plunder a temple in Persia.  He seems to have died not long after.  1 and 2 Maccabees suggest that there was an element of divine wrath in his affliction and death.  The description here, again, seems grandiose and we know nothing of him pitching his tents between the sea and Mt. Zion.  Whatever we make of the specifics, what the author saw in the Prophets—and I think, too, that he was an astute observer of how the hubris of these Greek kings and their internal intrigues worked out in history—the author understood these things and could say with certainty that the wicked Antiochus Epiphanes would get his divine comeuppance. Whether this vision was actual prophecy or whether it was the author's attempt to exhort the faithful in Judah by working out a sort of pseudo-prophecy based on the visions of Daniel and the writings of Israel's prophets, the Spirit stands behind the text.  I've been wrestling with the difficulties here for months.  Is it prophecy?  Is it pseudo-prophecy?  Was it written in the Sixth Century or the Second?  Did the people who received it think it was written by Daniel hundreds of years before or did they know it was written by one of their own who was suffering under Antiochus just as they were?  These are hard questions and there's no easy solution.  But what I do know and what I keep coming back to is that the Holy Spirit stands behind these words and we know that, because Jesus drew on them as scripture and so did the writers of the New Testament.  I expect I'll get into this idea more next week, Lord willing, but I think Jesus' use of Daniel points us in the right direction, because Jesus used this last vision of Daniel to point to the future vindication and resurrection of his people.  In doing that I think Jesus was doing with Daniel what Daniel had done with the earlier prophets.  As I said a few minutes ago, the Prophets often pointed forward to the “End”—the End with a capital “E”—and it was usually associated with whatever historical events of judgement and vindication they were prophesying.  And those prophecies were fulfilled in history, those times of judgement and vindication came as they had said, but always that great End was still out there, always pointing to a time when there would be a great and final day, at the end of history, on which the wicked will be judged and the faithful will be vindicated and I think that's what's going on in this final vision of Daniel.  Through the judgement of the wicked and vindication of the just in his own day, the author of Daniel points even more emphatically than the prophets of old had, towards that final Day of the Lord.  And this, then, is what Jesus picks up from Daniel and makes his own.  In his death and resurrection, in his ascension and his judgement of faithless Jerusalem and the temple, Jesus is saying that that great eschatological End with a capital “E” is finally here.  The end of history has begun.  And in that he's much like the old Prophets and he's much like Daniel.  There's still time to go.  There are still things to be done on both earth and in the heavenlies before every last enemy has been put under his feet.  And in the meantime God's people—even now empowered by the gospel and the Spirit—God's people, like they always have, need this encouragement to stand firm, to keep the faith, and to fight he good fight—even if it means our death.  Our acclamation as we come to the Lord's Table gives us just this kind of exhortation and if you aren't accustomed to thinking of it that way, try to think of it that way from now on: Christ has died.  Christ has risen.  Christ will come again.  Jesus has fulfilled what the Prophets spoke.  He has inaugurated the End.  And now we live in that in between time—between the beginning of the End and the end of the End.  And that, Brothers and Sisters, is good news.  It is the exhortation we need to stand firm, to keep the faith, and to fight the good fight knowing that our Lord sits enthroned in the heavenlies and has already won the battle and decisively turned the tide of this war. Let's pray: Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the many and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

The Library of Alexandria was one of the most important and most celebrated buildings of the ancient Mediterranean. It was a great hub of learning and literature and made Alexandria one of the ancient world's foremost centres of knowledge and culture, and the jewel of the Nile Delta. But when was it built? And where did all the books come from?In today's episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes speaks to Dr. Islam Issa about the story behind one of histories greatest libraries. Together they explore why Alexandria's reigning dynasty - the Ptolemies - were so obsessed with acquiring knowledge and uncover whether it really did burn down in a great fire. This episode was produced by Joseph Knight and edited by Aidan Lonergan.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code ANCIENTS - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here.

About the King's Business Daniel 8:1-27 by William Klock The books of 1 and 2 Maccabees in the Apocrypha detail the persecution of the Jews in the mid-160s BC, during the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes.  2 Maccabees 6, for example, tells how “the king sent an Athenian senator to compel the Jews to forsake the laws of their ancestors and no longer to live by the laws of God; also to pollute the temple in Jerusalem and to call it the temple of Olympian Zeus” (6:1-2).  The gentiles used the temple of God for their orgies and drunken banquets.  Antiochus desecrated the alter with the sacrifice of a pig.  On holidays the king's men would round up Jews and force them to participate in his parades and sacrifices.  Those who refused to participate or who were caught living by torah were killed.  Two women, for example, were caught having circumcised their baby boys.  Their babies were tied around their necks as the women were paraded through the streets to the wall of the city and then thrown down it to their deaths.  Faithful Jews who were caught secretly observing the sabbath in a nearby network of caves were burned alive.  2 Maccabees 7 tells the story of seven brothers and their mother, who were threatened with torture to eat pork.  Despite being beaten, they refused. The king fell into a rage, and gave orders to have pans and caldrons heated. These were heated immediately, and he commanded that the tongue of their spokesman be cut out and that they scalp him and cut off his hands and feet, while the rest of the brothers and the mother looked on. When he was utterly helpless, the king ordered them to take him to the fire, still breathing, and to fry him in a pan. The smoke from the pan spread widely, but the brothers and their mother encouraged one another to die nobly, saying, “The Lord God is watching over us and in truth has compassion on us, as Moses declared in his song that bore witness against the people to their faces, when he said, ‘And he will have compassion on his servants.'” (2 Maccabees 7:3-6) The king went on to do the same to the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh brothers who all refused.  We read that: The mother was especially admirable and worthy of honorable memory. Although she saw her seven sons perish within a single day, she bore it with good courage because of her hope in the Lord. She encouraged each of them in the language of their ancestors. Filled with a noble spirit, she reinforced her woman's reasoning with a man's courage, and said to them, “I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you. Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of humankind and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of his laws.” (2 Maccabees s7:20-23) She stood firm—and so did her sons—because they hoped in the Lord.  They knew that he is the Lord of history.  They knew his goodness.  They knew his faithfulness.  They knew their story and how it was interwoven with the story of the faithfulness of the God of Israel, and so even as they were brutally murdered by a mad king, they trusted in him.  Daniel was written for these people.  The stories in the first half of the book show Daniel and his friends standing firm for the Lord during the Babylonian exile, but the dreams and visions in the second are situated right in the middle of those days of violent persecution four centuries later.  That's what we see now as we come to Chapter 8 and to Daniel's second vision.  Let's start with verse 1 and read through to the end. In the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar a vision appeared to me, Daniel, after that which appeared to me at the first. And I saw in the vision; and when I saw, I was in Susa the citadel, which is in the province of Elam. And I saw in the vision, and I was at the Ulai canal. I raised my eyes and saw, and behold, a ram standing on the bank of the canal. 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 from his power. He did as he pleased and became great.   As I was considering, behold, a male goat came from the west across the face of the whole earth, without touching the ground. And the goat had a conspicuous horn between his eyes. He came to the ram with the two horns, which I had seen standing on the bank of the canal, and he ran at him in his powerful wrath. I saw him come close to the ram, and he was enraged against him and struck the ram and broke his two horns. And the ram had no power to stand before him, but he cast him down to the ground and trampled on him. And there was no one who could rescue the ram from his power. Then the goat became exceedingly great, 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.   Out of one of them came a little horn, which grew exceedingly great toward the south, toward the east, and toward the glorious land. It grew great, even to the host of heaven. And some of the host and some of the stars it threw down to the ground and trampled on them. It became great, even as great as the Prince of the host. And the regular burnt offering was taken away from him, and the place of his sanctuary was overthrown. And a host will be given over to it together with the regular burnt offering because of transgression, and it will throw truth to the ground, and it will act and prosper. Then I heard a holy one speaking, and another holy one said to the one who spoke, “For how long is the vision concerning the regular burnt offering, the transgression that makes desolate, and the giving over of the sanctuary and host to be trampled underfoot?” And he said to me, “For 2,300 evenings and mornings. Then the sanctuary shall be restored to its rightful state.”   When I, Daniel, had seen the vision, I sought to understand it. And behold, there stood before me one having the appearance of a man. And I heard a man's voice between the banks of the Ulai, and it called, “Gabriel, make this man understand the vision.” So he came near where I stood. And when he came, I was frightened and fell on my face. But he said to me, “Understand, O son of man, that the vision is for the time of the end.”   And when he had spoken to me, I fell into a deep sleep with my face to the ground. But he touched me and made me stand up. He said, “Behold, I will make known to you what shall be at the latter end of the indignation, for it refers to the appointed time of the end. As for the ram that you saw with the two horns, these are the kings of Media and Persia. And the goat is the king of Greece. And the great horn between his eyes is the first king. 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 kingdom, when the transgressors have reached their limit, a king of bold face, one who understands riddles, shall arise. His power shall be great—but not by his own power; and he shall cause fearful destruction and shall succeed in what he does, and destroy mighty men and the people who are the saints. By his cunning he shall make deceit prosper under his hand, and in his own mind he shall become great. Without warning he shall destroy many. And he shall even rise up against the Prince of princes, and he shall be broken—but by no human hand. The vision of the evenings and the mornings that has been told is true, but seal up the vision, for it refers to many days from now.”   And I, Daniel, was overcome and lay sick for some days. Then I rose and went about the king's business, but I was appalled by the vision and did not understand it.   Another vision during the reign of the blasphemous king Belshazzar.  In his ways, he foreshadows the evils of Antiochus Epiphanes.  But as the first vision revealed, the days of Babylon were soon to be over, so this vision whisks Daniel hundreds of kilometres to the east, to Susa, which would become the capital of the Persian empire.  And there he sees another animal, this time a ram.  This is another clue as to when the book was written.  The ram as a sign of the zodiac was associated with Persia—not in Daniel's day, but in the time of the Greeks. The symbolism of Daniel 7 was difficult and there's a fair bit of disagreement about what it all means, but not so much with Daniel 8.  This vision is simpler and the explanation pretty straightforward.  Most everyone agrees on the major points.  So it begins with a ram representing the combined empire of the Medes and the Persians—those are the two horns, one bigger than the other.  Horns, in ancient imagery, represent strength.  The Medes were strong, but the Persians eventually become stronger and gobbled them up and so Daniel sees the ram, lowering its head, and charging from the east into the north and into the south and into the west—which is exactly what the Persian empire did, until it controlled the known world, even as far as Greece.  Daniel writes that the ram did as it pleased and became strong.  It's the way of human empires. But as the ram reaches the peak of its power, Daniel sees a goat appear in the west.  It helps to know that in the biblical mind, the goat was stronger and more powerful than the ram.  This goat had a single horn and it made its way across the land so fast it might have been flying for all it seemed to touch the earth.  It put its head down and charged the mighty ram and shattered both its powerful horns.  In case the symbolism wasn't already obvious, the angel explains that the goat is Greece.  The jutting horn is Alexander the Great. Alexander was the son of Philip II, King of Macedon.  He was tutored by Aristotle and assumed the throne when his father died in 336 BC.  He was only twenty years old.  By the age of thirty he had conquered the known world, from Greece in the west to India in the East, from Central Asia in the north to Egypt in the south.  And then, in 323 BC, still a young man, Alexander died of a fever in Babylon.  For twenty years his generals fought over his empire, eventually carving it up into four kingdoms, which Daniel sees as four horns.  The two relevant ones for the Jews were that of Seleucus who controlled Syria and the east, and Ptolemy, who controlled Egypt and Palestine. But this is all the background to the most important part of the vision.  Out of those Greek successor kingdoms arises another horn.  He isn't named, but as the details of the first horn obviously point to Alexander, the details of this new horn point very obviously to Antiochus IV Epiphanes.  In the great sweep of history, Antiochus was hardly the greatest of the Greek kings, but when he defeated the Egyptian Ptolemies and took control of Judah he became very important to the Jews.  The Ptolemies had treated the Jews well and allowed them to govern themselves as a sort of religous state as long as the high priest coughed up the annual taxes.  Antiochus, however, wanted to make good Greeks of the Jews and to get his hands on the temple treasury.  Under his rule the priesthood was bought and sold and eventually observance of torah was outlawed and torah scrolls burned.  God's worship in the temple was ended and it was turned into a temple to Olympian Zeus.  And Antiochus murdered faithful Jews by the tens of thousands. In Daniel's vision, Antiochus takes the form of this great horn that rises up against heaven itself.  These verses, especially 12-13, are difficult.  Just when I was glad to leave the Aramaic of chapters 2-7 behind, here come these verses that I can only describe as a Hebrew word salad.  The Hebrew of Daniel is something else that points to it having been written in the Second Century, because it's not written in the great literary Hebrew of Daniel's day, but in a sort of clunky Hebrew that looks a lot like it was written by someone who probably spoke Aramaic as a first language.  But that's okay.  The gist of Daniel's vision is that Antiochus, in going up against the temple and the priesthood, was really shaking his fist at the God of Israel.  This little earthly king who called himself “Epiphanies”—the manifestation of God—was pitting himself against the living God, the Lord of history, the one the Babylonian kings had had the good sense to acknowledge as God Most High.  That never ends well. And yet, for a time, the mad king seems to have won.  Israel's identity was centred on the temple.  That was the place where heaven and earth, where God and man met.  They were the holy people who lived with God in their midst.  And not only did Antiochus do his best to make sure they broke their end of the covenant with God by preventing them from keeping his law, but he suspended the very sacrifices that acknowledged God's presence in the temple.  He wanted the Jews to live like good Greeks and when they insisted on living like Jews, he banished their God from his temple and set up an altar to Zeus.  Judah was now his land.  Their God was gone, so they had no reason to obey his law.  Of course, the Jews knew better.  Like that mother and her seven sons in 2 Maccabees, they knew the faithfulness of the God of the Israel and they knew that no puny human king could blaspheme against him forever.  But, for a time, he would seem to have won the day.  According to Daniel's vision, for 2300 evenings and mornings the temple would be desolate.  That's a reference to the morning and evening sacrifices that were—or were supposed to be—made every day.  The sacrifices that Antiochus suspended.  Depending on how you parse this detail out, it's either about three years and three months or it's about six years and six months.  Most people tend to go with the three years, which corresponds closely to the time when Antiochus had suspended the worship of the Lord in the temple.  But the six-and-a-half years works too, if you count back to when the high priest was deposed.  Either way, we know what the vision represents.  And either way and for whatever reason, it's not an exact number, which means it may also be symbolic—we just can't be sure exactly how.  However we parse out the number, the important point is that the Lord has numbered these evil days. And that's the point I want to close on.  Too often we get fixated on numbers and on fixing dates and end up missing the point.  We do it with books like Daniel.  We do it with books like Revelation.  We do it with the prophets and with the apocalyptic discourses of Jesus.  It's nothing new.  Christians have been setting dates for over a thousand years and whenever we do, we seem to end up distracted from the gospel mission we've been given.  Often it ends with the creation of schismatic sects and cults.  William Miller, for example, worked out from these 2300 evening and mornings that Jesus would return in 1843.  His argument convinced a lot of people (and it helped that he threw in plenty of “God has told mes”).  Of course, it didn't happen so he adjusted his formula, admitted a small error, and corrected the date to 1844.  That didn't happen either.  But his followers had given up everything and then many of them walked away and became jaded.  They called it the “Great Disappointment”.  But, still, to this day Miller has his ardent followers.  They're the Seventh Day Adventists and believe that it really did happen in 1843, and that it wasn't about Jesus returning to the earth, but that Jesus on that date entered the heavenly temple to begin is work of judging souls in anticipation of his return. And many of us remember Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth that became a sensation in the 1970s.  Lindsey made a point of not setting an exact date, but he wasn't shy about saying things like the 1980's would probably be the earth's last decade.  It motivated some people to become missionaries, but it motivated lots of other people to abandon their jobs, their families, and to run up massive credit card debt because they were convinced that in a year or two none of it would matter.  In more recent years we've had similar predictions made about “blood moons” and the like.  Christian bookstores were filled books about the imminent return of Jesus and end of the world.  People were, once again, all worked up about the end of the world and, once again, nothing happened. Again, we too often forget the point of passages like this one in Daniel 8.  Even if we could estimate or even set a date by it, the point is that God is in control and, because of that, we have every reason to stand firm in the midst of trials and persecution, knowing that God will vindicate us in the same way that he has vindicated his people in the past and, especially for us as Christians, in the same way that he vindicated his son when he raised him from death.  Daniel 8—and so many other passages—remind us first and foremost that God is sovereign.  No matter how it seems, history is not random.  No matter how much they may shake their fists at the heavens, no king is outside the sovereign will of God.  No matter how much we may abuse our God-given liberty, every one of us will be held to account.  Sin and evil will not go on forever.  God is judge, one day he will deal with sin and death once and for all, and eventually all of creation will be to rights—including us.  And we know that this will happen, we believe, we have hope, because of the death and resurrection of Jesus.  At the cross God did the hard part needed to set the world to rights.  At the cross Jesus won the decisive battle and one day the war will be over when we, the church, his people, have accomplished the work he has given.  He has equipped us with his own Spirit and sends us out to proclaim the life giving and renewing good news of his death and resurrection.  And for two thousand years, that good news has driven away the false gods of the pagans and brought kings and their people to their knees before Jesus and to give glory to the God of Israel.  Brothers and Sisters, date-setting, goofy predictions, and eschatological paranoia do nothing to witness the sovereignty of the Lord of history.  They do just the opposite and they undermine our witness.  They make Christians look foolish and the scriptures untrustworthy.  Our mission is to proclaim the gospel, because in Jesus and in his death and resurrection, that is where the world meets the living God and knows his faithfulness. And that brings me to the final point.  Look again at verse 27 and Daniel's response.  The vision left him troubled.  He even lay sick in his bed for “some days”.  He was in some sense dismayed because he didn't fully understand it.  But what did he do?  He says that he arose and went about the king's business.  Brothers and Sisters, the prophecies and apocalypses that the Spirit has given us in the scripture were never meant to send us out in a panic or a frenzy, they weren't given to have us abandon our earthly responsibilities because the world is coming to an end.  They were given to us to remind us that God is sovereign, that he will judge the wicked, and that he will vindicate his people for their faithfulness.  So be faithful.  The Lord had placed Daniel in a position of authority in the court of the king of Babylon.  That pagan court was soon to fall.  That pagan king was soon to die.  But the Lord had put Daniel in that position for a reason and so he went faithfully back to his work.  The same goes for each of us.  The Lord has put us where we are for a reason.  Be a faithful husband and father or a faithful wife and mother knowing that the Lord is sovereign.  Be faithful in your vocation, whatever it may be, however mundane it may seem.  Be faithful to your earthly obligations: to your family, to your business, to your school, to your church, to your club, to your friends, to your debts, to your country knowing that the Lord has placed you where you are.  That is, after all, the King's business.  This witness to our trust in the sovereignty of God is the foundation that undergirds our greater witness to Jesus and the gospel.  It is what prepares us to stand firm should the day come when we find ourselves forced to choose between obedience to an earthly king and obedience to our heavenly King.  May we stand firm like the saints of old and declare with the mother of those seven martyred sons, “The Lord God is watching over us and in truth has compassion on us.” Let's pray: Almighty God, look with mercy on your people; that by your great goodness we may be always governed and preserved both in body and soul, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Twenty years of chaos in the Ptolemaic kingdom come to an end during the reign of Ptolemy V Epiphanes (204-180). His marriage to the Seleucid princess Cleopatra I Syra confirmed the loss of Coele Syria to Antiochus III, yet she proved to be a good match and helped secure the future of the dynasty. Haronnophoris and the Great Revolt are finally put down in 186, but the Alexandrian government is forced to give concessions to the Egyptians, as the Ptolemies must now come to terms with their new status as a second-class power in the Mediterranean. We also delve into the history of the Rosetta Stone, the Hellenistic period's most famous document, and its role in the decipherment of Ancient Egyptian. Episode Notes: (https://hellenisticagepodcast.wordpress.com/2024/03/10/095-ptolemaic-egypt-the-two-lands-restored/) Episode Transcript: (https://hellenisticagepodcast.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/095-ptolemaic-egypt-the-two-lands-restored-transcript.pdf) Ptolemy V Family Tree: (https://hellenisticagepodcast.files.wordpress.com/2024/03/reign-of-ptolemy-v.pdf) Autocrat Podcast: Website (http://www.autocratpodcast.wordpress.com/) Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/30Muilr1O66yA4UDcj76SW?si=c6648d9db9b3446c) Social Media: Twitter (https://twitter.com/HellenisticPod) Facebook (www.facebook.com/hellenisticagepodcast/) Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/hellenistic_age_podcast/) Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/hellenisticagepodcast) Show Merchandise: Etsy (https://www.etsy.com/shop/HellenisticAgePod) Redbubble (https://www.redbubble.com/people/HellenisticPod/shop?asc=u) Donations: Patreon (https://patreon.com/TheHellenisticAgePodcast) Ko-Fi (https://ko-fi.com/hellenisticagepodcast) Amazon Book Wish List (https://tinyurl.com/vfw6ask)

The prophecy concerning the Ptolemies and the Seleucids. Daniel 11-5-10. -Remake of 2002 series-

The Ptolemaic dynasty, sometimes referred to as the Lagid dynasty, was a Macedonian Greek royal dynasty which ruled the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Ancient Egypt during the Hellenistic period. Their rule lasted for 275 years, from 305 to 30 BC. The Ptolemaic was the last dynasty of ancient Egypt. Help us out by filling out this survey Travel to Japan With Me here Bonus episodes as well as ad-free episodes on Patreon. Find us on Instagram. Join us on Discord. Submit your relatives on our website Join the Book Club on http://chirpbooks.com/history Get some delicious COFFEE Podcast Youtube Channel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Egyptian city of Alexandria was one of the greatest cities of the ancient Mediterranean world. Founded by Alexander the Great himself in 323BC, the metropolis was nurtured by his successors in Egypt, the Ptolemies, and flourished throughout the Late Hellenistic and Roman Imperial periods. Its famed lighthouse was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the lost tombs of Alexander and even Cleopatra are believed to be there. The legacy endures to this day, but a significant portion of the ancient city is now underwater, lying beneath the eastern harbour of modern Alexandria.In this episode, Tristan is joined by leading expert on the sunken city of Alexandria, Franck Goddio to discuss this dramatic period of history. As an underwater archaeologist who has excavated the submerged city for many years, Franck shares his immense knowledge of the site. Revealing what some of his team's incredible finds have shown about this underwater metropolis, and trying to separate fact from fiction, just what do we know about this sunken city?The Senior Producer was Elena GuthrieThe Assistant Producer was Annie ColoeMixed & edited by Aidan LonerganFor more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - enter promo code ANCIENTS for a free trial, plus 50% off your first three months' subscription. To download, go to Android > or Apple store > Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Everything is on fire, there's only one Seleucid left and it's eighteen-year-old Antiochus III, but he has a plan. He just needs to fight meddling regents, the East, the Ptolemies, and the West. Oh, and the Roman wolf is about to devour Carthage... You can find all the images on our website! https://soyouthinkyoucanrulepersia.wordpress.com/2023/02/12/26-antiochus-iii-the-great/

So Antiochus II left a right mess and now his three sons are going to have to figure out who gets to succeed. Follow Seleucus II as he balances the concerns of his own family with the Ptolemies while the thundering of hoofs makes itself heard in the east. You can find all the images on our website! https://soyouthinkyoucanrulepersia.wordpress.com/2023/01/29/24-seleucus-ii-callinicus/

He wasn't meant to be king in the first place but there aren't many options left so it'll have to be Antiochus II. How will he deal with the Ptolemies? Will plan a better succession than his father? Tune in to find out. You can find all the images on our website! https://soyouthinkyoucanrulepersia.wordpress.com/2023/01/22/23-antiochus-ii-theos/

The second half can get pretty trippy if you don't realize what all the metaphors mean. Join Clay and Ross and they shed some light on this apocalyptic text.

The entrance of Alexander the Great into Egypt was not the "liberation" the native Egyptians expected. The conqueror and his successors, the Ptolemies, Hellenized Egypt's culture, people, and government. Episode links: For help making your podcast sound as good as this one, contact Nicholas Allaire at nicholasjallaire@gmail.com

Last time we spoke, the Qing Dynasty faced the last real death throes of the Ming Dynasty. What is known as the Revolt of three Feudatories resulted in a war against Wu Sangui, Geng Jingzhong & Shang Zhixin. One by one each warlord fell to the Qing dynasty's vast armies and with each defeat brought more territory and populace under the Qing yolk. However one last major enemy loomed, the Kingdom of Taiwan established by Koxinga. Koxinga's descendent Zheng Keshuang would eventually be defeated and with his submission it seemed the Qing Dynasty would have eternal peace. However, the Qing' enemies remained within and outside its borders at all times. Holding the new empire together would not be easy. The Qing empire, much like the great wall of China could be destroyed, brick by brick and only time would tell how that wall would hold.    This episode is the White Lotus Rebellion   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on the history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. The revolt of the 3 feudatories had ended, Wu Sangui, Geng Jingzhong & Shang Zhixin were all defeated. The grandson of Koxinga, Zheng Keshuang was defeated, Taiwan was conquered and brought under the fold of the Qing dynasty. The Qing also managed to defend its borders from the external threat of the Tsardom of Russia. The Russians had ventured into border skirmishes around the Amur River valley, first in 1658 with the Battle of Hutong, in which a force of Manchu and Koreans overwhelmed a force of 500 Cossacks aboard 11 ships, sending them fleeing to Albazin. Albazin was a Russian settlement on the Amur River right along the Qing Dynasty's border and it remained a point of conflict in the late 17th century. Since their defeat at the battle of Hutong, the Russians began a campaign of persuading nearby populaces to their cause rather than the Qing which became such a nuisance by 1685 that the Qing sent a force to lay siege to the settlement. In just one day the settlement garrisoned by 450 men surrendered, however a year later the Russians would return to the settlement looking to re-establish themselves. The Qing yet again besieged the settlement in 1686, however this time it was much bloodier. The Qing threw around 3000 men at Albazin which was garrisoned by 800, by the end of the ordeal it is said just 24 men survived within Albazin and the Qing lost perhaps 1500 casualties. In the greater scheme of things, it was just a small border clash, but the result was rather significant. The Russians had been acting rather boldly, because of all the strife going on between the Qing and Ming, but now that the Qing had consolidated their new empire they were more than capable of defending any encroachments, especially those in Manchuria,their native homelands. After defeating the Russians again at the Siege of Albazin, the Qing government sent letters to the Tsar suggesting they sign a peace treaty, because for quite a long time now, the Qing were dealing with an age old enemy, the Mongols, to be precise the Dzungar Mongols. Emperor Kangxi wished to rid the Russian nuisance from the Amur area which was the northern border so he could focus his army on the north-western problem that was the Dzungar Mongols. The Russians knew they could not hope to defend outposts as far as the Amur region and the idea of peace talks perked their interests as trade would be far more beneficial to them then border skirmishes. A treaty would be signed called the Treaty of Nerchinsk, which established trade between the 2 empires and relative peace for quite a long time. This was also the first treaty between the Tsardom of Russia and the Qing dynasty, so a bit of legitimizing for the new-ish regime.   The Qing would have a hell of a time with the Dzungar Mongols which accumulated into what is known as the Dzungar-Qing war which almost went on for a hundred years. By the time the Qing would effectively end the wars with the Dzungar mongols, and all culminated in what is known as the Dzungar genocide. By the end of the wars in the 1750's it is estimated that around 80% of the Dzungar population, something like 500-800 thousand people were killed. During the early 18th century, the Qianlong Emperor gave a directive stating “"Show no mercy at all to these rebels. Only the old and weak should be saved. Our previous military campaigns were too lenient. If we act as before, our troops will withdraw, and further trouble will occur. If a rebel is captured and his followers wish to surrender, he must personally come to the garrison, prostrate himself before the commander, and request surrender. If he only sends someone to request submission, it is undoubtedly a trick. Tell Tsengünjav to massacre these crafty Zunghars. Do not believe what they say."”. As you can imagine such directives led to the massacres of countless people. On Top of the killings, the remaining Dzungar peoples were forcefully relocated to places all over China. Reports from a QING scholar named Wei Yuan who lived almost 100 years after the events state that 30% of the Dzungar people were killed by the Qing military, 40% died of disease such as a smallpox epidemic, 20% fled to other places like Russia and modern day Kazakhstan. There are quite a few historians who argue the Qianlong Emperor simply engaged in a genocidal campaign. Regardless after this rather horrible and bloody ordeal, for the most part the Qing dynasty undergoes a period of relative peace, and I mean the word peace should be taken with a grain of salt, for all Chinese history I don't think there is a single year some revolt or rebellion is not occurring.    When Emperor Kangxi took the throne from 1661-1722 this began what is called the Qing Golden Age. His successor Emperor Yongzheng continued the golden age from 1723-1735 and was further succeeded by Emperor Qianlong who would rule from 1735-1796 which is seen as the peak of the Golden age. During this period China annexed most of Mongolia, northeast China, Xinjiang, Tibet and Taiwan, aside from Taiwan, its basically the borders of the very China we know today. China at this time amounted to over 32% of the worlds industrial output, its population soared past 100 million for the first time in history and soon grew to an enormous 300 million, hell I live in Canada and we barely have 38 million right now! Despite being such a colossus, China for the most part was quite isolated in its market. China allowed foreign trade through places like Macau, but it was quite limited in scope. Eventually it would be expanded upon.   When the Qianlong Emperor took the throne he began numerous projects including the Ten Great Campaigns, which was a series of military campaigns that enlarged the empire to the extent I had mentioned previously. He put together the largest collection of books in Chinese history to that point known as the Siku Quanshu, “complete repository of the Four branches of Literature”. The exploration of the new world also brought riches in the form of new foods to China. The potato and peanut dramatically improved food supplies allowing for China's population to boom.    Now the upcoming episodes are going to specifically look at the emergence of European powers mingling with China. But this episode is going to be directed at an internal story, and one that is not often talked about. Stating that I will be glossing over some very very important events such as the journey of James Flint and the mission of Lord George Macartney, but rest assured those stories will be the very forefront after this one.   In the spring of 1794, the HMS Lion departed from Macau for its long voyage back home to England and a rumor spread amongst its crew that in the mountainous counties of Shanxi province, that a “true master” had appeared. This so-called Master was said to be marked with the character for the sun upon his left hand and the character of the moon on his right. Together these characters formed the character “Ming”, dun dun dunnnn. According to another rumor, a giant boulder in the village of where this master was born had suddenly split open revealing a hidden scripture inside thar read:  “A black wind will blow for a day and a night. It will destroy men beyond number. White bones will be piled into mountains, and Blood will flow to become an ocean”    It was the telling of an apocalypse, and rumors sprang all through China that the only way to escape the destruction was to memorize that scripture from the boulder and to chant it. Oh and to begin stockpiling guns and other weapons and be ready to support the great master's uprising against the Qing. It was said the “black wind” would hit in the spring of 1796 and it would destroy the world and usher in a new age. Zhang Zhengmo, a peasant living in Hubei province was one of many who believed the prophecy. At 32 years of age he had heard it told to him by a sect leader named Bai who explained to Zhang and many others that the True Master's doctrine was part of the White Lotus teachings.    The White Lotus sect had been around for hundreds of years, it was something like a marriage between Buddhism and Daoism. For the most part, the White Lotus sects amounted to nothing more than harmless people practicing a faith based on healing and protection from misfortune. The founder of the Ming dynasty Zhu Yuanzhang, joined a White Lotus Revolution that took shape in 1352 in Guangzhou. The revolution saw him taking firm control over the head of a rebellious army and he would go on to conquer Nanjing and take the title of Emperor Hongwu ushering in a new age. His title also held religious sentiment of the White Lotus. This religion however like many others held a prediction of an apocalypse and its followers believed that with it would come the second coming of Buddha who would return in the form of a bodhisattva named Maitreya to rid the world of corruption and suffering. Maitreya would destroy the corrupt government and the non believers and a utopia would be formed for those who helped bring upon the apocalypse.    So put yourself in the shoes of the Manchu rulers of the new Qing dynasty. You hear these rumors going around and see the potential rebellion you might be seeing from this religious group. White Lotus groups had sprung uprisings countless times in history and hell the dynasty you just defeated was made by one of those uprisings! Back to Zhang Zhengmo, well he was a recent convert and Bai who was a traveling sect leader became his teacher who indoctrinated him in the True Master's doctrine. Zhang donated money to the cause, not much, he was a peasant after all, but enough to start hoarding weapons. He then began to recruit other followers to become his students…you can see where this is going, think of a good old fashion MLM scam of today like herbalife or scientology haha except instead of toxic shakes or alien stories its people hoarding weapons to begin an apocalypse. So you can sort of get the picture, you become a follower, in the process you pay money to hoard weapons. Then you recruit other followers, rinse and repeat, soon you got yourself a rebellion cooking.    Zhang Zhengmo lived in a part of China considered to be an internal frontier, wide mountain ranges along the points where Hubei, Shaanxi and Sichuan pressed against another, same types of places all the bandit armies would run up into when the Qing came after them. This particular region was known as the Han River Highlands, which fed into the Yangzi river, not a very hospitable area and thus less developed. It was dense with forest, hills and such, perfect for bandits to hang out in. The reason I am describing this area is to emphasize something that is going on in China. I mentioned the population boom, from 100-300 million, it was enormous. With so many people, the necessity for agricultural expansion was enormous as well. Most of the southern and eastern parts of China were being cleared out for crops, literally everywhere was getting gulped up by farms. More and more people were forced to move into areas like the Han River Highlands and all of this culminated in more and more competition between settlers over natural resources. Like with most frontier societies, this got violent very fast. The Han River Highlands were a pretty scary place to live in the late 18th century, there was just about no security because the government officials were all in other areas. Thus without much intervention, who could step in to marshall such places? The White Lotus thats who.   The White Lotus promised safety for all of its followers and were more than happy to accept any settlers. By 1794 the Qing administration warily watched as regions such as the Han River Highlands had sects such as the White Lotus grow. Provincial authorities saw the potential risk of insurrection and began to work at dismantling such cells before they could cause trouble. A crackdown came in 1794 targeting groups based out of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Hubei. Emperor Qianlong made an edict in September ordering all captured sectarians to be punished according to the nature of their guilt. So for example, spiritual leaders would be executed by being cut into pieces, wozzors. Those who spread the White Lotus teachings would be beheaded. Mere followers, would be arrested and deported to Manchuria as slaves. All in all not a very subtle edict.    So the local Qing officials set to work, first it was village headmen who organized forces to round up White Lotus members. Within a few months time they had arrested 20 teachers and over a hundred followers, and as you can imagine their methodology was brutal and would intensify the situation. There was not enough forces to get the job done so the local officials began to hire local thugs to go house to house. As you can imagine the thugs began to run amok, many began to threaten to arrest people if they didn't pay them off. So those who paid them off or somehow managed to prove they were not White Lotus members received placards that they could put on their doors marking them as “decent people”. Everyone else were open targets for abuse as they were suspected White Lotus members. When Zhang Zhengmo heard the officials going house to house he quickly abandoned his home and fled before inspectors could get him. He returned to his native county in the same province where he continued his mission to recruit more followers. By the late winter of 1796, it is estimated that Zhang had more than 1000 followers. Only 2 months before the planned date for the apocalypse or better called uprising, Zhang found out that local officials were mounting a new crackdown now in his native county. Fearing his arrest, Zhang prepared for their arrival, calling upon his followers and telling him the time had come.   Zhang's followers took to the roads where they joined up with other cells that other recruiters had grown. In only a few days more than 10,000 White Lotus members converged under the leadership of Zhang Zhengmo. They brought with them, swords, guns, gunpowder and other supplies necessary for waging a rebellion. They plundered villages for supplies and began conscripting the local populace, coercing them with food. This all mattered not to the White Lotus believers who were taught that non believers would all be destroyed when Buddha returned regardless, so who cares if they harm any of these people in the meantime. The worshipers and their indentured conscripts soon swelled to 20,000 and they began to create blockades along the roads and pathways and made their way to the hills. Zhang Zhengmo's first HQ was to be a mountain estate of a very wealthy believer, but Zhang worried it was to undefendable and thus brought his force further into the mountains where he knew they could hold up better. A campment was built with thousands of shacks, white banners were spread out and the force began to adopt white headbands to identify themselves as legitimate rebels. Their weaponry was mostly swords, knives, though they did have 300 matchlock rifles and 6 chestnut wood cannons. They also had a ton of crossbows and a lot of poison tipped bolts. The defense of the mountain was typical guerilla stuff seen to this day, booby trapped paths, watch towers, makeshift landmines and people hidden around every nook and cranny.    Despite all the preparation, Zhang Zhengmo was quite reluctant to take his newfound rebel army down the mountain side, fearing they would all be slaughtered by the Qing army who must surely be awaiting them. So they all dug in for months, only sending the occasional raiding party down to gather supplies. July came and Zhang received word the Qing were slowly closing in on the mountain. He had burned his name in the registers hoping that he might be able to make an escape and some of his followers began to see he was not the leader they thought him to be. They had  been told he had met the True master, but many found out this was a lie. They looked to him for guidance, but all he could provide were cheap parlor tricks. When Zhang had called for the uprising he thought all of the White Lotus followers from miles all around would heed the cause. Yet after the first 10,000 flocked to him none others were found, he assumed everyone had been arrested and killed. They were trapped on this mountain, there was nowhere to escape to, there was no help coming. They held out another 2 months, but then in September the Qing broke their perimeter and arrested the lot of them. Zhang was to be executed, but before the deed a Qing interrogator demanded to know why he and his followers rebelled. “You are all peasants, you receive the blessings of the emperor. He relieves you of taxes and tribute grain. He relieves your debts. When there is a flood or a drought he gives you aid. You have a human heart, and you should feel gratitude and abide by the laws. So why, under the banner of these evil teachings, did you start a rebellion? In the end, what was it you wanted?”.  Zhang replied “We have indeed received blessings from the emperor. We had warm clothes and could eat our fill. We were peasants, and we were grateful. It was at a time when I was ignorant, that I first began to practice this religion. It was only because I wanted to encourage people to do good deeds and to avoid misfortune. But then the investigations and arrests intensified, and I saw that when people who practiced our religion were captured, all of them were charged with heavy crimes. So I became afraid”. So he was nothing more than a peasant, who ignorantly was led astray and when the crackdown occurred he did what he did out of fear. It is the excuse given by countless peasant uprisings, reckless bursts of defiance towards an perceived malevolent empire, nothing too remarkable. Zhang's force of 20,000 were brushed aside….and little did they know what had occurred all over China.    The “black wind” uprising spread like wildfire. The vast range and appeal of the apocalyptic rumors that had pushed Zhang and his followers had only increased exponentially. From word of mouth through the province, uprisings began to all explode spontaneously through the hill countries of the Han River Highlands. Zhang had no idea, but it was his movement that became the spark to see the entire forest ablaze. By the time the Qing officials had dealt with Zhang Zhengmo's camp, all of Hubei was engulfed in a wave of rebellion, and soon it spread to the neighboring provinces of Sichuan and Shaanxi. On february 9th of 1796, the first day of the lunar new year and just 6 days before Zhang Zhengmo began his uprising, Emperor Qianlong gave up the throne. The abdication had been planned for a very long time, all the way back to 1735 when Qianlong had given an edict that he planned to rule as long as high grandfather had. Emperor Kangxi had reigned for 61 years and Qianlong wanted to keep his word, but not entirely. While on the surface he did quote en quote abdicate on his 60th year as emperor, giving the throne to his son Jiaqing, in reality all he did was install a puppet. The calendars record the new year as Jiaqing Year 1, but within the capital it was truly Qianlong year 61. 2 calendars were kept, 2 sets of imperial annals with one referring to the supreme retired emperor Qianlong, who would continue to rule while his son kept the throne warm.   It probably would have been better for China if Emperor Qianlong really did abdicate, for while his reign was impressive, his effectiveness was deteriorating with his age. A Korean diplomat in 1794 reported to his superiors that Emperor Qianlong had acted in a bizarre manner. He stated that the Emperor ordered breakfast immediately after eating breakfast on some occasions. Thus the implication here was that the Emperor was going senile. Later in 1797 a different Korean envoy reported that the Emperor seemed to be unable to remember what occurred during the morning of their meeting nor what they had done the day prior. With the emperor in a weakened state, factions within his court began to vie for power. One of Emperor Qianlong's closest court officials a man named Heshen began to act out in the emperors name. The more the Emperors mental health declined the more Heshen would speak on his behalf. As observed by the western George Staunton in 1790 “Heshen enjoyed, almost exclusivity, the confidence of the emperor. He might be said to possess, in fact, under the emperor, the whole power of the empire”. It just so happens, Heshen was one of the most corrupt officials in Chinese history during a particularly corrupt ridden time in Chinese history. Heshen treated large amounts of the Qing governments bureaucracy as his own personal patronage network. For example, he began to appoint officials into positions and expected them to pay him handsomely for such appointments. This led the officials to embezzle money to pay him back. In one example he appointed a man to the Yellow River Conservancy, which controlled the funding for flood control over China's second longest river and the man embezzled over 6 million tales of silver each year to pay back Heshen. That money of course was required to help prevent the Yellow River from flooding and by the end of the 18th century about 1/10th of the government funds were actually used for flood prevention. As Heshen and others sucked up the money, the peasants on the floodplain suffered tremendously as the appointed official at the Yellow River Conservancy found it was in the best interests of everyone to allow the river to breach its dikes periodically, just to make sure the government funds kept pouring in. Heshen's corruption was widely apparent to the court, but to make any accusations against him was a death sentence as he had the mouth of the emperor.    Now back to the White Lotus rebellion, it was spreading as I said with great speed and this was greatly aided by government corruption. With the rampant corruption came a huge lack of government forces to respond to the initial uprisings. Skeleton garrisons in key locations such as Hubei allowed for the uprisings to spread like wildfire. The officials were caught off guard and massively unprepared. Across Hubei overwhelmed government forces tried to resist the rebels with whatever weapons they could muster, but soon began pleading other provinces for reinforcement. With such a lack of governmental forces to protect the common people, landowners resorted to raising private militias called “Xiangyong” (means local braves) which in turn began to simply plunder areas. As one witness reported “the so called militia soldiers just continued the work of stealing everything the refugees had left behind in their houses. There wasn't an empty hand anywhere…if the White Lotus rebels are like an ordinary comb, the private militia are the fine-toothed one”. These militias killed, robbed and caused further havoc. To the government all of them were rebels and in turn this caused all the rebels to find common cause. The slogan “the officials oppress, and the people rebel” spread across multiple rebel groups, and at the forefront was the White Lotus. The Qing government began a cycle of violence, redoubled its efforts to extinguish the White Lotus sects, only to give justification to them to increase their rebellious activity.    It is interesting to note the hiring of these militia's will play a crucial role in the downfall of the Qing dynasty. Many scholars attribute the adoption of hired militia's by the Qing government to being something like cutting off your limbs and eating them during starvation. The idea being that while the Qing could raise such militia's to try and stamp out the endless rebellions that will occur during their dynasty's reign, these were short term solutions and only hurt them in the long run. Hiring civilians in war showcased how the Qing standing armies were losing their fighting capability and greatly hurt the Qing treasuries. Regardless this will all be showcased much more in the future.   Emperor Qianlong saw the uprisings as a local issue that should be dealt with by local forces. His focus was on internal unrest, not the problems of the frontier lands and so he denied requests for military aid. He kept telling provincial officials to use the resources they had to deal with the uprisings even though he held ample elite troops that could have swept in to restore the peace. What Emperor Qianlong did do however was send funds to the province to help as the government treasury was jam packed with silver during this age. Without the capitals troops to reinforce them, provincial officials began to follow the lead of the militia rebels and armed peasants to fight off the rebels. At the beginning of the uprising most frontier territories had government militias of just a few hundred, luckier ones perhaps a few thousand. But as the rebellion spread into neighboring provinces and the funds from Beijing poured in, the militia armies grew exponentially. By 1798, Hubei had nearly 400,000 militiamen registered on its books and Sichuan and Shaanxi each had comparably large militia forces. In the concert of the war against the rebels, the 3 provinces reported a total of 100,000 government soldiers and upto a possible million militiamen.    The militiamen strategy proved to be very ineffective against the rebels, in fact the militias did more harm than good. Militiamen came from all walks of life, from farmers, to unemployed city folk to ruthless criminals. If you were a bandit, it was actually far more beneficial to join the militia which paid a salary about the same as a government soldier. These militiamen had no real allegiance beyond the salary they were paid so as the White Lotus watched the government hiring all of these people they simply offered them the same salary or more. By the later years of the uprising it turned out nearly half the White Lotus armies were made up of former militiamen! And if you were wondering what else than money could persuade these militiamen to join the White Lotus hear this. The governor general of Sichuan province reported with disgust that whenever government troops went into battle they simply quote “sent the militia to charge in ahead of them as they hung back where it was safe. If the militiamen got turned back by the rebels and started to run away, the government soldiers just ran after them”. On top of this, tons of false victories over the rebel armies were being reported when in reality, the government troops would just pretend to engage the rebels and continuously move their camps around. There was even reports that government forces would murder refugees from nearby villages and set up their mutilated bodies at their camps to make it look like they had caught rebels. The fact the government forces were really not engaging the rebel armies very much was so apparent one witness said “where the rebels are, there are no government forces; and where the government forces are, there are no rebels”.    With the declining mental health of Emperor Qianlong growing worse, the campaign against the White Lotus fell into the hands of Heshen who was too busy using the opportunity to enrich himself. As emperor Qianlong obsessed over the reports of the rebel war, apparently barely sleeping while he read them day and night according to accounts from his son, well Heshen was doing his best to control which reports came to the emperor. Heshen made sure all the reports were fake victory stories making it seem that the entire campaign was going off without a hitch. Heshen had appointed his own personal goons to be in key military positions who in turn fed falsified victory reports for money or military honors in return. This went further to whitewash massacres done to the civilian population by the government armies. And of course the funds for the military were going to the goons who in turn paid tribute right back to Heshen, making sure they kept their positions regardless of how incompetent they were. For the first 3 years of the war, Heshen effectively controlled the central government's military funding. It would also turn out that the registry of over 300,000 militia soldiers recruited to fight the White Lotus did not exist and it was an embezzlement scheme. It gets even worse. Those militia soldiers who did exist and who died fighting the rebels, well the corrupt officials would embezzle their death benefits, so a ton of mourning families got nothing and this had the disgusting side effect of creating an incentive for corrupt officers to have more of their soldiers die on the battlefield. The Militia related expenses would claim at least half the war effort funding according to Jiaqing who discovered the racket. A scholar in Hubei said this of the situation    “At first they nibbled away like worms, gradually taking more and more until they were gulping like whales. In the beginning, their embezzlements could be reckoned in hundreds and thousands of taels, but presently nothing less than ten thousand would attract notice. Soon amounts ran to scores of thousands, then to hundreds of thousands, then to millions.” Emperor Qianlong expected an easy victory over the White Lotus, but the war was not ending. After reading so many countless reports of victories over the rebels, Qianlong because frustrated and confused as to why the White Lotus rebels did not submit. By 1799, the cost of the war was reaching nearly 100 million taels of silver, an unbelievable sum that had completely exhausted the treasury surplus and there still was no end in sight. Emperor Qianlong spent his last years of life losing his mind to the rebellion and died in a position of helplessness with the treasury emptied. Jiaqing did not have an enviable start to his reign. He was a broad, fat man with a talent for archery and was left with a clean up job that was simply immense. He had been forced to suffer the indemnity of being enthroned in 1796 only to find out he was a puppet and that his father was not even in charge, it was Heshen. He was in his 40's and quite powerless as long as his father remained alive. The day after Emperor Qianlong died in 1799, one of Jiaqings first major acts was to order the arrest of Heshen, boom. There was a swift and very publicized trial where the board of punishments found Heshen to be guilty of a long list of corruption related charges and the sentence would be death. Because Heshen held one of the highest ranks in the court he was allowed to strangle himself with a silk cord, a privilege considered more honorable than having your head cut off. Although the execution of Heshen was symbolically cathartic, it did little to stop the rot of corruption within the government. Heshen was blamed for just about all the sins of the time, as if he alone dragged the empire down…though one could argue he certainly provided a helping hand. All Heshens misdeeds were laid to bare and his enormous wealth was unimaginable.    Heshen had a sprawling mansion of over 730 rooms. In his secondary residence there were 620 rooms. He held landholdings of over 120,000 acres of productive farmland. All the stories you can imagine were there, he had golden chopsticks, silver place settings for banquets, entire rooms filled with jewels, jade and other riches. He owned 10 banks, 10 pawnshops and millions upon millions of taels of silver hoarded into them. Apparently one wall in his main residence turned out to be filled with 5000 pounds of gold bullion if its to be believed. One extremely overexaggerated estimate his sum worth was around 800 million taels of silver, thats around  1.5 billion at the time, around 4 times the entire gross domestic product of the United States of America. More conservative estimates are at around 80 million taels of silver, which was more than the entire treasury surplus that preceded the White Lotus war and enough to make Heshen as wealthy as the Emperor!   After dealing with Heshen, Jiaqing began a campaign against the corruption in the government. However, Jiaqing understood how an anti corruption campaign could fall into chaos and become a general purge, so he allowed it to peter out pretty quick. What did happen, was the Qing government saw a lot of old scores settled and factionalism rose amongst officials. The first order of business after dealing with Heshen was obviously the White Lotus war. The day after Qianlong's death, Jiaqing issued an edict naming the suppression of antigovernment religious sects as the dynasty's most urgent priority. Jiaqing rallied against the corrupt military officers accusing them of dragging out the war in order to fill their pockets. He laid blame for the insurrection upon the civil servants who extorted the peasants. “The peasants enjoy few fruits from their labor. So how can they possibly supply such insatiable demands? It is the local officials who provoked these rebellions”.    Emperor Jiaqing began removing corrupt and incompetent military officials to try and replace them with better men, but the reality at the time was quite thin pickings. Most of the Manchu generals of his father or grandfathers generation were dead or far too old to lead. The younger generation were not born into the same world as their parents. If you've ever listened to Dan Carlin's podcast and yes I am nothing but a mere fanboy, he often makes the analogy of how empires go soft. The old quasi proverb of old wooden shoes going up the stairs and soft silken sandals going down them. This new generation of Manchu did not live the hardened lifestyle of their ancestors, they were living in a world of luxury now. A ton of the younger generation were also tainted by the Heshen click. Yet there was a minority of great warriors and some of the old guard so to say that had won Emperor Qianlong some victories back in the day. The very best of them was a physically enduring Manchu named Eldemboo. At 51 years old in the year of 1799 he was selected to lead the White Lotus suppression. He was quite old, but experienced, ruthless and said to be incorruptible.    Elemboo's had been part of campaigns in the 1770's to bring parts of the frontiers under the Qing Yolk. He fought the Burmese in southern Yunnan. He fought during the Tibetan rebellion in the1770's, during a muslim uprising in Gansu in 1784, helped put down a rebellion in Taiwan in 1787 and served in the far west against the Gurkhas in Tibet and Nepal in the 1790s. By 1797 he was a Lt-general who had just succeeded in suppressing a Miao ethnic uprising in Hunan province. The campaign against the White Lotus faced a crucial problem, that of mobility. The rebels required little in terms of weaponry and could get pretty much anything on the go from just about any village. They did not construct elaborate camps, they were accustomed to the mountains and forests and could carry out guerilla warfare at a moments notice. The Qing military was another beast altogether. It required enormous logistical operations to move its food, matchlock muskets, ammunition, powder, bows and arrows, this all required carts and beasts of burden. Usually these logistics were not a problem, but for mountains and forest regions it was a nightmare. The rebels understood the advantage and made sure to take up positions in the worst possible places for such logistics.    Because of these logistical problems the Qing forces had been simply setting up stations in fixed positions hoping to cast a net around rebel pockets. Many commanders simply did not have the stomach to march into forests or up mountain sides to chase an enemy that would use every obstacle against them. Eldemboo unlike his predecessor commanders not only was willing to venture into the forests and mountains, but was perfectly willing to endure the hardship of such ventures alongside his men. A new approach was necessary for the campaign. Eldemboo called for “jianbi qingye” “fortify the walls and clear the countryside”. The idea was two fold, first to separate the good peasants from those who would support the White Lotus, by concentrating them in places of safety ie, behind fortified encampments known as baozhai. In these Baozhai, some peasants would be trained as militia to defend their respective camps. The second idea was to clear the countryside, by moving all the grain harvest and food stores away and into the Baozhai where all the good peasants would be taking refuge. The hope was the rebels would eventually be unable to scavenge food from the emptied countryside and would be forced to come out of their hiding and fight the government forces on their terms.   Under the command of Eldemboo, the jianbi qingye strategy was implemented throughout the war zone. Hundreds of fortified camps were in the wartorn provinces. The fortified camps held strong walls and deep moats. The militiamen would defend them and not be taken out on campaigns that earlier had caused so much havoc upon the populace. The new role of the militiamen was to protect their own families, neighbors and such and thus they were far less likely to fall into banditry. While the quote “good” population concentrated in their Baozhai, defended by their good militiamen, Eldemboo's manchu and Han troops were now free to campaign at will through any wartorn province. Soon Eldemboo began producing a string of victories over the weakened rebel forces. By early 1803, Eldemboo's campaign had moved into its final phase, a brutal mop up operation. The remnants of the broken rebels needed to be crushed and the demilitarization of all the militiamen needed to gradually begin.  Emperor Jiaqing warned his generals not to relax in their campaigns prematurely. “Though the main disease is cured, there are boils and sores that remain. If even a single rebel is left alive, it would be enough for them to keep spreading and growing”. Emperor Jiaqing's generals heeded his words and continued to ruthlessly crush the remnants of the rebels. A systematic program of pacification was enacted. The “good” populace was continuously resettled into the fortified cities, while the Qing forces pursued and exterminated the rebel guerrilla bands, though it should be noted they did give amnesty to many rebels who deserted. It was the combination of military and social policies that were winning the day. Qing administrators seized and destroyed all White Lotus scriptures they could find in the warzones.  By the late summer of 1803, some of Jiaqing's commanders reported back to him that after 8 years of extermination efforts against the White Lotus in the 3 provinces, it seemed for all intensive purposes the job was complete. In early 1804, Eldemboo traveled back to Beijing and returned his carved seal of authority to the Emperor, signifying that the war was over. It would be the last great victory of Eldemboo's very long career. The next year at the age of 57 Eldemboo died and with him the last of that hardened generation. In 1805, Emperor Jiaqing was able to address the empire without the ongoing drain of resources due to the White Lotus War.   It was a very bitter victory, most rebellions are. A chinese scholar wrote a few decades later that it was estimated that several hundred thousand rebels had been killed during the war. For the governmental forces, militiamen and countless civilians who died of war and starvation the scholar simply stated it could not be calculated. There was also no way to differentiate the White Lotus from the rebels as there were countless groups rebelling for differing reasons.   A major problem with the White Lotus Rebellion aside from the death and horror was the loss of prestige for the Qing military. There was a sort of myth of invincibility for the Manchu warriors, hell they had conquered the Ming Dynasty afterall. But the scale of damage caused by the White Lotus Rebellion was eye opening, it took the Qing 8 years to quell it! And quell it is a strong word, for the White Lotus were not truly gone or anything, there would be sporadic revolts throughout the early 19th century, just not on the same scale as the 8 year war. The Manchu army of the early 19th century was not the same generation that once conquered the Ming. The wooden shoes were being cast off and silky slippers were starting to become the norm so to say for you Dan Carlin fans. To make everything much worse, the adoption of training and hiring militia's would have a devastating effect on the Qing dynasty until its demise in the 20th century. This was not a unique problem for China, many empires fell for this same reason. Take example the Egyptian empire under the Ptolemy's. Under the reign of Ptolemy IV Philophater the military was forced to hire local native Egyptians in large numbers for the first time to deal with the 4th Syrian war of 219-217BC. Prior to this war, the Ptolemiac empire had a military consisted mostly of Greeks and for a very important reason, they did not want to train or arm the native population who did not like them very much. When their backs were against the wall they trained around 30,000 native egyptians as Phalangites and hell it paid off during the battle of Raphia when they smashed the army of Antiochus III. The Ptolemies had finally ended what was an ongoing manpower problem. Oh and then the trained and armed Egyptians rebelled and created a separate kingdom that lasted 20 years. It was an enormous turning point in Ptolemaic history and a bitter lesson.  For the Qing the hiring of militia armies will occur on countless occasions for countless reasons, but one thing is for sure it is part of a long list of reasons as to why the great dynasty will crumble.    I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  The once mighty Qing have proven to be not so mighty anymore. The 8 year White Lotus Rebellion was quelled, but at what cost to the empire? With the death of Eldemboo came also the deaths of a generation of strong warriors. And while this rebellion was going on, something else was afoot, this time not an internal issue, but a growing external one. 

Friday, 1 July 2022   Now an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, “Arise and go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” This is desert. Acts 8:26   With the account concerning Peter and John completed, the narrative now returns to Philip, beginning with, “Now an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip.” As always, the word “angel” signifies a messenger. Nothing more is said to further define its meaning at this time, but in both 8:29 and 8:39, the Spirit is mentioned as communicating with or physically transporting him.   As this is the case, it may be that the “messenger” of the Lord is a dream, a vision, or by direct communication from the Spirit. But because that is not explicitly mentioned, this is only speculation. Regardless of this, Philip is given a direct communication from the Lord through a messenger, “saying, ‘Arise.'”   It is a way of indicating that he must now take action according to the word of the Lord. The last time he was mentioned was in Acts 8:13. What is being instructed now is probably while he is still in Samaria. With the apostles there or having left (depending on when this call to him is made), he now has a new charge set before him. One can assume that because of his faithfulness in evangelizing, he is being personally selected to continue on with the Lord's unfolding of the redemptive narrative.   As such, the messenger continues with, “and go toward the south.” As he is in Samaria, it would be to the south of that. The specific directions are being given for a specific purpose which will be revealed in the coming verses. What occurs will bring about a conversion that fits a pattern that goes all the way back to the early Genesis narrative. The Lord is purposefully directing Philip to represent this pattern for the New Testament.   In order to do so, Philip is to go toward the south “along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” Here, a word is introduced that is found only one more time, in Acts 22:6, mesémbria, and which is translated as “south.” It is a compound word coming from mesos, meaning “middle,” and hémera, meaning “day.” Hence, it means “mid-day.”    All translations say “south” because it is where the sun is at mid-day. However, it could just as easily be that Philip is being told, “Rise up and go toward mid-day to the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” The reason for this is that people would not want to travel in such a hot place at a time like this. Instead, it would be much less taxing to go early in the morning when it was cool.   Gaza, or Azzah, means “Strong,” or “Strong Place.” It was granted to Israel as a part of their inheritance when the borders were originally defined in Numbers 34. It was then assigned to Judah in Joshua 15:47. For a historical view of the location, Charles Ellicott provides the following:   “The history of the city so named (appearing at times in the English version—Deuteronomy 2:23; 1Kings 4:24; Jeremiah 25:20—as Azzah) goes even as far back as that of Damascus, in the early records of Israel. It was the southernmost or border-city of the early Canaanites (Genesis 10:19), and was occupied first by the Avim, and then by the Caphtorim (Deuteronomy 2:23). Joshua was unable to conquer it (Joshua 10:41; Joshua 11:22). The tribe of Judah held it for a short time (Judges 1:18), but it soon fell into the hands of the Philistines (Judges 3:3; Judges 13:1), and though attacked by Samson, was held by them during the times of Samuel, Saul, and David (1Samuel 6:17; 1Samuel 14:52; 2Samuel 21:15). Solomon (1Kings 4:24), and later on Hezekiah (2Kings 18:8), attacked it. It resisted Alexander the Great during a siege of five months, and was an important military position, the very key of the country, during the struggles between the Ptolemies and the Seleucidæ, and in the wars of the Maccabees (1 Maccabees 11:61).”   The reason for the specificity concerning what to do (and/or when to do it) is explained by Vincent's Word Studies –   “There were several roads from Jerusalem to Gaza. One is mentioned by the way of Bethlehem to Hebron, and thence through a region actually called a desert.”   In order to ensure that the divinely planned meeting that is intended to happen comes about, Philip is given exacting instruction. As such, it could be that he is being told to take the south road, or if “mid-day” is intended, the correct road to take would still be known based on the final words of the verse, which say, “This is desert.”   If “south” is meant, then these words now may be Luke's explaining the directions of the messenger. If “mid-day” is meant, then this is the messenger's explanation of which of the two roads to take. Either way, it is known by Philip to go on a particular road down to Gaza, and it very well may be at a particular time of day. The latter seems quite possible based on the events that will come about in the verses ahead.   Life application: The events taking place in Acts are often given with very specific instructions to those who are to carry them out. A plan is being worked out, and patterns and parallels to other parts of the Bible are being completed now in Acts. Only in referring to the Old Testament can these be understood.   God is revealing to us the redemption of man. But man isn't just one line of people, even if all people descend from one man. Rather, there are records of who various people groups are, and we are seeing the divinely unfolding plan of God for those groups of people. Some were to be exterminated for His sovereign reasons. And yet, even in the extermination of those people groups, there are those who are spared. One example is seen in the instructions to Israel –   “But of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, 17 but you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the Lord your God has commanded you, 18 lest they teach you to do according to all their abominations which they have done for their gods, and you sin against the Lord your God.” Deuteronomy 20:16-18   Among those in this group who Israel failed to exterminate are several people who became key figures in the redemptive narrative, such as Rahab the harlot, Uriah the Hittite whose wife was Bathsheba, and Araunah the Jebusite. Jesus descends from both Rahab and Bathsheba, and He holds the title to real estate because of the record of a purchase made from Araunah that is found in 2 Samuel. None of these things occurred by accident, even if Israel failed to do as they were instructed.   If you feel you are either unimportant or that your role in God's plans and designs is insignificant, you are incorrect. These people probably felt just the same way. And yet, they became central figures in what God was doing. And you will be a central part of what God is doing as well. Metaphors are used concerning believers such as “living stones” or “pillars” in the temple that the Lord is building.   A temple cannot stand without proper support. As such, it cannot stand without you. God has figured you in as a most important part of what He is creating. Be pleased to know this.   Lord God, thank You that we are counted as important parts of what You are doing. You hold all of the power of the universe, and more, in Your hands, and yet You have determined that we are useful in the temple You are building where we will dwell with You forever. Thank You that You have such care, even of us. Amen.  

The Story of God's People Stuck in the Middle of a Mess They Didn't Make! Today, Pastor Michael is continuing his study on Daniel and today we're in Chapter 11. Even if you've been reading the Bible a long time, Daniel 11 is one of those complicated chapters.  Thankfully, Michael starts out with prairie dogs and that has to be a good thing.  His prairie dogs are living happy in their prairie dog home, only to find a herd of Bison to the north and south of their home.  They are seriously hoping these buffaloes move along.  A humungous bull buffalo steps out from each side and have a huge fight.  Big problem for the prairie dogs!  This fight is taking place right in the middle of their prairie dog town! So, this fight, goes on for years.  Whenever one buffalo dies, another one replaces him.  So, the buffaloes and prairie dogs are in a generational issue; why on earth didn't the prairie dogs just leave?   They didn't leave because there were buffaloes everywhere!  No matter where they went, they'd run into more buffalo.  No where to go.  Plus they're little prairie dogs; what can they do to big buffaloes?  In the end, they were ‘getting by'.   One day, a big buffalo from the northern side comes into the fight and finally notices the prairie dogs.  And he starts stepping on the prairie dogs!  Andy, is the big, mean buffalo and he is the worst!  The prairie dogs finally band together, band up, and for a little while, Andy is gone.  But there is a story, in prairie dog lore that there will be a new, meaner buffalo that will be forthcoming, some day. This, in a nutshell, is the story of Daniel 11.  But without the prairie dogs. In the analogy, however, the prairie dogs are God's people, trying to make a life.  The buffaloes are the two kingdoms of Greece, always fighting in the Promised Land, wreaking all kinds of havoc to the Jews.  Who were stuck in the middle of a situation that was mostly out of their control. (CSB Baker Illustrated Bible Study Notes) 11:2–20. The detailed description of the interrelationship between the kings of the south and the kings of the north in Dn 11 has long challenged biblical scholars. The angel reveals to Daniel that three more kings (Cambyses, Smerdis, Darius Hystaspis?) will rule over Persia. The fourth (Xerxes I?) will try to incorporate Greece into the Persian Empire. Upon the death of Alexander the Great of Greece (“a warrior king,” 11:3), his kingdom was divided into four parts: Macedonia, Thrace, Syria (“the king of the North,” or the Seleucids), and Egypt (“the king of the South,” or the Ptolemies). Daniel 11:5–20 relates the rivalry and wars between the Ptolemies and Seleucids until the appearance of Antiochus Epiphanes. The heart of this story, is everyday people.   As people today, we also find ourselves in situations we didn't create and that we have to live in.  We can be stuck in struggles that we didn't cause, decisions made by people unattached to us.  The lesson here is pertinent to us today, just as it was to the Jews so many millennia ago. And everyday people can take heart in the fact that struggles and trials do not destroy faith.  It only destroys what we think is faith.   Verses can be found today in Daniel 11 and Romans 8: 28. Scripture quotations marked CSB have been taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible® and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.

Daniel 11 Part 3: Antichrist Future | There is nothing else anywhere - not in any other holy book, not in any history books, not even anywhere else in the Bible - quite like Daniel 11. In one chapter, we have 135 specific and detailed prophecies covering 375 years of future history.Journey 3 | Foundations. Our third journey brings us to back to the foundations of the faith, and delivers some of the greatest stories and characters in the Bible. Genesis recounts the back story for all mankind and begins God's plan for redemption. Daniel presents phenomenal prophecies and the big picture of God's Kingdom, and Romans lays out the heart of the gospel with powerful answers to tough questions. This is Foundations. (84 days)Teacher: Kris LanghamAbout TTW: When the Bible is confusing, Through the Word explains it with clear and concise audio guides for every chapter. The TTW Podcast follows 19 Journeys covering every book and chapter in the Bible. Each journey is an epic adventure through several Bible books, as your favorite pastors explain each chapter with clear explanation and insightful application. Understand the Bible in just ten minutes a day, and join us for all 19 Journeys on the TTW podcast or TTW app!Get the App: https://throughtheword.orgContact: https://throughtheword.org/contactDonate: https://throughtheword.org/givingDaniel 11 Themes: History, Greece, Rome, Prophecy, AntichristDaniel 11 Tags: history, Persia, Greece, Alexander the Great, Seleucids, Ptolemies, ptolemy, Egypt, Damascus, King of North, King of South, Antiochus Epiphanes, Antichrist, Jerusalem, temple, abomination, desolation, end timesKey Verses: Quotes: Audio & Text © 2011-2021 Through the Word™ Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.Bible Quotes: The Holy Bible New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission of Biblica, Inc.® All rights reserved worldwide.

Daniel 11 Part 2: Antichrist Past | There is nothing else anywhere - not in any other holy book, not in any history books, not even anywhere else in the Bible - quite like Daniel 11. In one chapter, we have 135 specific and detailed prophecies covering 375 years of future history.Journey 3 | Foundations. Our third journey brings us to back to the foundations of the faith, and delivers some of the greatest stories and characters in the Bible. Genesis recounts the back story for all mankind and begins God's plan for redemption. Daniel presents phenomenal prophecies and the big picture of God's Kingdom, and Romans lays out the heart of the gospel with powerful answers to tough questions. This is Foundations. (84 days)Teacher: Kris LanghamAbout TTW: When the Bible is confusing, Through the Word explains it with clear and concise audio guides for every chapter. The TTW Podcast follows 19 Journeys covering every book and chapter in the Bible. Each journey is an epic adventure through several Bible books, as your favorite pastors explain each chapter with clear explanation and insightful application. Understand the Bible in just ten minutes a day, and join us for all 19 Journeys on the TTW podcast or TTW app!Get the App: https://throughtheword.orgContact: https://throughtheword.org/contactDonate: https://throughtheword.org/givingDaniel 11 Themes: History, Greece, Rome, Prophecy, AntichristDaniel 11 Tags: history, Persia, Greece, Alexander the Great, Seleucids, Ptolemies, ptolemy, Egypt, Damascus, King of North, King of South, Antiochus Epiphanes, Antichrist, Jerusalem, temple, abomination, desolation, end timesKey Verses: Quotes: Audio & Text © 2011-2021 Through the Word™ Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.Bible Quotes: The Holy Bible New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission of Biblica, Inc.® All rights reserved worldwide.

Daniel 11 Part 1: Prophecy with Precision | There is nothing else anywhere - not in any other holy book, not in any history books, not even anywhere else in the Bible - quite like Daniel 11. In one chapter, we have 135 specific and detailed prophecies covering 375 years of future history.Journey 3 | Foundations. Our third journey brings us to back to the foundations of the faith, and delivers some of the greatest stories and characters in the Bible. Genesis recounts the back story for all mankind and begins God's plan for redemption. Daniel presents phenomenal prophecies and the big picture of God's Kingdom, and Romans lays out the heart of the gospel with powerful answers to tough questions. This is Foundations. (84 days)Teacher: Kris LanghamAbout TTW: When the Bible is confusing, Through the Word explains it with clear and concise audio guides for every chapter. The TTW Podcast follows 19 Journeys covering every book and chapter in the Bible. Each journey is an epic adventure through several Bible books, as your favorite pastors explain each chapter with clear explanation and insightful application. Understand the Bible in just ten minutes a day, and join us for all 19 Journeys on the TTW podcast or TTW app!Get the App: https://throughtheword.orgContact: https://throughtheword.org/contactDonate: https://throughtheword.org/givingDaniel 11 Themes: History, Greece, Rome, ProphecyDaniel 11 Tags: history, Persia, Greece, Alexander the Great, Seleucids, Ptolemies, ptolemy, Egypt, Damascus, King of North, King of SouthKey Verses: Quotes: Audio & Text © 2011-2021 Through the Word™ Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.Bible Quotes: The Holy Bible New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission of Biblica, Inc.® All rights reserved worldwide.

Episode 101 Let's talk about reincarnation, end times prophecies, and the shapes of our stories today. Kendra helps us to think deeply about how the shape of time informs the shape of our story and the ways that we make meaning in the universe.    Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast   More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/   produced by Zack Jackson music by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis    Transcript  This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.   Zack Jackson 00:04 You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This week our hosts are Zack Jackson, UCC pastor and Reading Pennsylvania and I am most productive when everyone else is asleep at night,   Ian Binns 00:22 Ian Binns Associate Professor of elementary science education at UNC Charlotte, my most productive time of the day, sadly varies. Because of my ADD, I cannot pick a particular time and say that's it. It just says that it happens. And when it does I get really frustrated if people get me out of that moment, because it takes hours to get into it. So, yeah,   Kendra Holt-Moore 00:51 Kendra Holt, more assistant professor of religion at Bethany College in Lindsborg Kansas. And I used to be able to say, I was most productive at night, because I am a night owl, but the older I get, the more that varies. And I also don't feel like there is a particular time that works best if you just let the Spirit lead.   Zack Jackson 01:15 Just tired all the time. Yeah.   Kendra Holt-Moore 01:19 Constant exhaustion, and just snippets of bursts of energy. So why high? You ask?   Zack Jackson 01:38 I was asking, I was asking it very hard in my head. Anticipating that why, why Kendra answer? Why, why?   Kendra Holt-Moore 01:48 Why? Why ever? Why? Well, let me tell you, I have an answer for you. Oh, thank God. So we, we thought that today, we would talk about shapes of time, who. So shapes of time. So just to kind of start out so whenever I teach students, typically it's in like a world religions or an intro to religion class this semester. It was a world religions class, but when I'm having a conversation, in a classroom with students about different, you know, religious traditions, and how, like, what are some of the things that we can compare safely without sort of centralizing religious traditions. And one fun conversation I like to start with somewhere near the beginning of the semester, is to talk about shapes of time. And what I mean by that is, you know, cyclical versus linear conceptions of time, or, you know, some might argue also, like spiral shapes of time. And so the way this looks when I bring it up to my students is I, I typically use for my examples, Hinduism, or Buddhism, and Christianity. And I draw up on the board, just, you know, a simple like circle, and a simple, like, horizontal line, as just like two examples of shapes the circle and this horizontal line. And I talked about how, you know, time is something that we sort of take take for granted, as it's just sort of permeates everything, but we don't, we're not always like thinking about how our understanding of time, you know, like, really impacts us necessarily, or maybe I shouldn't speak for you all, but I don't always think about how time itself is like impacting my day to day, except when I'm trying very hard to get something done. And time is just slipping away that moment, or I become conscious of time, but on a grand scale. It's something that's sort of taken as just the way things are. And the way that we think about time, is I think we kind of it's easy to sort of assume, that are sort of grand notions of time and how time unfolds, that that there's nothing too complicated or like interesting about that necessarily. And, and so when I draw up this like circle and line on the board for my students, one of the conversations that I'm trying to get started is how we across like, religious and cultural traditions, we actually have very different understandings of, of of time. Time and by time I'm not not talking in this moment necessarily about like, scientific like theory of relativity, you know, kind of technical explanations of like space time. But like, cultural and social understandings of like what will happen, what has happened, what is happening and what will happen to us socially and culturally. And, and so, the circle on the board then is what I offer as like a Hindu or Buddhist example of cycles of time with regards to reincarnation and how, you know, the human soul if we're talking about Hinduism, but not not really a soul, if we're talking about Buddhism, but the the person, and the person's existence, moves through a cycle of time that is stuck in this cycle of reincarnation, of, of birth, life, death, rebirth, and that this is, the circle is, is known as samsara, if you're using a Hindu terminology and conceptions of time in samsara, is a cycle that you want to get out of. So samsara is like the way things are, from a Hindu or Buddhist perspective, in terms of thinking about time and how we exist in time, but samsara is not desirable, there are ways that you can build up better karma and be reincarnated in a way that is better or worse, contingent upon, like what kind of karma you built in your current life. But ultimately, the goal in in that version of cyclical time is to get out of the cycle to be released from the cycle. But the cycle can go on and on and on. And you can have, you know, hundreds and hundreds of reincarnations, and there's no like you, you have to there are certain practices and things you have to do in order to be released from the cycle. And, and so, you know, one of the we can put this in the show notes, but there's an article that has like some helpful kind of visuals, but I want to just kind of talk about, like, the way that this cycle of time for Buddhism is represented. And it's the Buddhist wheel of life. And you there are a lot of different I mean, if you just Google that, like, you'll find all kinds of really colorful, vibrant images that come up of this wheel of life. But the wheel of life, you can see like there are different realms, in the Buddhist wheel of life. And those are sort of the possibilities for how you reincarnate into the cycle of samsara. And so you can see like, why now, hopefully, like there's this distinction between like a cycle versus linear time, because there's not, there's not like one specific end goal that is clear to you, from the perspective of your current life, if you have the cyclical notion of time. I mean, yes, like ultimate release from it, you can see that as an end goal, but like the reincarnation cycle, it means that you, you will, again, experience what you have already experienced, you will again, experience birth, which is something that you already have experienced in the past, you will again experience you know, life insofar as you have experienced it, and you know, death will happen again and again. And again, it's not a single kind of destination point until you have achieved the right tools and practices to get out of that cycle. And so you can kind of think about like, how that might inform a person to like navigate through life itself. The other so like the linear line on the board, I uses Christianity, but I think it also applies pretty well to like the Abrahamic traditions in general of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, but I use Christianity in particular, because there's so much that has been written about Christian like apocalyptic. You know, eschatology, which is a fancy word meaning, like, study of in things, or you know, like end of time, and, and another, there are some images that we can also share, I think in the show notes of this version of Christian eschatology called Christian dispensationalism. There are different ways to kind of label this to like you may have heard Christian primo lineal dispensationalism, post millennial dispensationalism, however you slice it, it is a mouthful of a thing to say dispensationalism. But there are images, we can share that kind of show that in this version of Christian eschatology, it's not how everyone sees the end of time. But in this version of Christian eschatology that's popular in, especially some circles of like, Christian, like fundamentalism, types of theology or, you know, like some evangelical theologies, there are seven dispensations of time, and that time moves in a linear fashion. And a dispensation is just like a stage of time, I think that's the way I would describe it more simply because dispensation is also kind of a buzzy word. In this context, but there are, you know, like stages of time, that kind of unfold in this linear fashion, but the point is that we're not moving in a cycle with this conception of time, we're moving towards an end point that is the apocalyptic end of time. And after the end of time, eternity unfolds forever and ever. And it just kind of goes on in this linear, like, one, one way, there's a path a direction, and we move in that direction. And it's kind of inevitable, like, you can't really stop it from unfolding it's going to happen. And, you know, the some of these dispensations for Christian dispensationalism you have, like, the age of innocence, and that's, like, you know, Adam and Eve, you have you go up through like, 234567. But if the, I mean, I could like list all of those, but I'm, kind of move quickly. I'm timing myself this time, so that I'm not going like way over.   Zack Jackson 11:59 So it's like innocence. No innocence. Gods here, Gods there. Now it's Israel. Now. It's now it's Jesus. Now it's Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's also inherently kind of anti semitic. Yeah, in that dispensationalism, leaves Jews behind, but go on.   Kendra Holt-Moore 12:17 So yeah, you have like innocence, stage one, stage two conscience, stage three, human government, stage four, promise, stage five, loss, stage six, Grace, stage seven kingdom age. And there are, you know, specific things that happen in each of those stages that kind of map on to biblical stories, and the stages that map on to like the time of Moses, and, um, you know, just like the time of Abraham. And all of these stages as they unfold, it's like, sort of this like, progression of like God's plan for time. And the way that that ends, is with this seventh dispensation, the kingdom age where Jesus returns and rains on Earth for 1000 years, and, you know, brings peace, and, you know, after that time is kind of over, there's like the final judgment, the white throne judgment, and then time ends and eternity begins. And that, that's kind of the the ending of this, like premillennial dispensationalist. Christian theology again, sorry, for the long buzzy terminology. But the point is that this version of time, is, is is different, like it's, it has that linear shape to it. And one of the things that I think is kind of interesting about this understanding of time, and it's, there's this like piece of inevitability. And it's not the only version of like, like, this is, I think, kind of a common kind of trope in like apocalyptic literature and thought is like, the apocalypse is coming, eventually, like, it's inevitable. And that means that you can't fight it and in some ways, believing in the inevitability of the apocalyptic moment of end of time can make some people sort of lean into that and welcome that end of time moment, if it means that the there sort of conception of time will actually like, ultimately benefit them. So for example, in like this Christian dispensationalist, Premillennialism version of the entire time. Christians who hold this, believe that they'll be gone there'll be sort of taken away by God out of out of the earth out of time so that they don't have to experience the violence and trauma of the apocalypse at Self, and that they will be, you know, held close, near and dear and safe with God and protected from the end of times. And so what this means is you have Christians who hold to this kind of eschatology are, I think more likely to say things like, well, let's just like let it all burn, because we're not going to be here anyway, like, only the unsaved will be sort of judged and condemned, but you know, Christians will be safe. So any violence that happens ultimately, it's, it's not going to affect us in the end and this kind of eternal way. And, and so I think the kind of extreme response through that kind of lens of time is, it can doesn't always have to, but it can lend itself to apathy, and even like a condoning of, you know, destruction and violence. And this is me sort of using that as an example, because there was actually an article that was published very recently in the Atlantic about this language like cautioning against the language of a new civil war that's like impending in the United States. And that the whole article is pretty interesting. But there's this line that caught my eye. And it says, you know, a several paragraphs down. And I'll just kind of like read the couple of sentences for free all that says, quote, There is a very deep strain of apocalyptic fantasy in fundamentalist Christianity, Armageddon may be horrible, but it is not to be feared because it will be the harbinger of eternal bliss for the elect and eternal damnation for their foes, on what used to be referred to as the far right, that perhaps should now simply be called the armed wing of the Republican Party. The imminence of Civil War is a given and quote, and, and that caught my eye because it's really talking about a shape of time. And, you know, like, the question that kind of arises from that, for me is like, what, what are practical implications in our behavior? When we think about, like, what our own shapes of time are? Do we have notions that lead us to an inevitable end? Is that something that we experienced over and over again? And like, is that just sort of philosophy or theological pondering? Or does that kind of impact us on this, like, deep on the ground level? And, and so that, that was, that was kind of where, where my mind was going, when I think about this, the shape of time? That's kind of why I have to start us here. No, well,   Ian Binns 18:09 says while you were talking about it, especially the last part, and I mean, y'all know, I don't have the theological background that you guys do. So a lot of times the words that are used in cotton, what are you talking about, but they may me just all of a sudden just reminded me of the Left Behind series? Yes, that was written the book series, right. And so   Kendra Holt-Moore 18:31 that is a great example, and that you have given us and reminded us that is Christian premillennial dispensationalism. Yeah. So now, translation, aka left behind,   Ian Binns 18:43 right, well, and I find it fascinating. So what's interesting is that I actually got into Reading this series in like 2000, it was when I was in the Peace Corps. And so when I was in the Peace Corps in Jamaica, and the main office in Kingston, I was had a library that we could go and just get books from and blah, blah, take with us back to our home and everything and and so I think that was the time I started getting into this series, because I saw it and I was calling God sounds kind of interesting. And so I started Reading it. And I was not very strong in my faith. Want to take that back. That's actually when I first started a Bible study, but it was a different time in my life, right? So I was 23 years old, 2223 different time of my life, different things going on. And I now that I looked it up, and just looked up left behind again to remind myself some of it and I'll be honest, I did not finish this series because I found it to be this is just my opinion. Some of the writing you know, again, I was not familiar with the language, the terminology that was being used and the description that you just provided Kendra, but there were parts of the books I found as I was going further for the series that I would skip hold sections because it felt like it was Reading the same thing I read in the book before, right? Like these long sermons from a character or whatever. And so it but I, I'm curious how would I approach the series now at this point in my life and at this point in my spiritual journey, right and starting to have a better understanding of time and just religion in general and what the underlying me I mean, I get what the meaning was, but like, talk about dismiss, dismiss, what is the word again? dispensationalism.   Zack Jackson 20:33 There you go. That word can you can approach that book series straight into the recycling bin if you'd like. Yeah,   Ian Binns 20:38 I don't think we have them anymore. I think like I ended up buying several of them and got rid of them.   Zack Jackson 20:42 That's Yes, pre trim these Corinne. Aspen's pre trib, premillennial dispensationalism is what that is essentially, with the millennial in the millennial and the pre millennial post millennial mid millennial that has to do with in Revelation talks about how there will be 1000 year reign of Christ. Before then Satan is allowed to return cause havoc, and then the final judgment. And so then the thought is the question is, when does that happen? So the pre millennial is that that hasn't happened yet. And that there will be this great time and then there'll be blah, blah, blah, then there's post millennial that's like, hey, no, that's where we are. Right now that this this kingdom age? Is is the millennial reign of Christ that the the age of the church or maybe that we're almost there. And then the trim part of that is not the trip. Yeah, the is the trick Great Tribulation, as in tribulation, right? The seven year tribulation that is foretold in Daniel and in Revelation. And at what point would the people of God be raptured out of it, so that only the unrighteous should suffer? There's some interpretations that Oh, before the tribulation, all the elect will be taken out. And that's what left behind is, there's some thought that it's midway through taken from a couple of phrases from Daniel, and then there's some that everyone will have to live through the whole thing only until the end, will then there'll be judgment on it all. And I mean, I was steeped in this stuff, my seventh grade Bible teacher had a timeline on the wall of the n times, with like, how many months in between events would happen, you know, the, the two witnesses would show up here, one of them would die, and then they'd raise and then there'd be, you know, the Antichrist would rise and he would have a mortal wound, and then he'd be healed. And then he'd be like, all along the way. We knew what the mark of the beast was going to be. And when it was going to happen, it was actually supposed to start happening on y2k. But then apparently, enough, people prayed and God delayed God's hand. Or so that's what they told me when it didn't happen. But it's, it's ironic to me that this group of people has latched on to second temple apocalyptic literature, which is this period of time, it's like a 300 year period, during the Second Temple of Jerusalem, where this genre starts to arise. They've taken that and applied it directly to this sort of straight line timeline that you're talking about Kendra, that, you know, this thing hasn't happened yet. But here are the signs to know when it's going to happen and what it's going to look like. And that goes from A to B to C to D onward until the end, it's a straight line. When that is the exact opposite of the way that second temple apocalyptic literature is written and met to be read. If you look at Daniel and parts of Jesus's little Apocalypse on the on the mountain and and the book of Revelation, and you know, all of the ones that didn't make it into the the Hebrew and Christian canons, they're all using coded language for things that are happening in the moment. Now, there's a great, great part in Daniel, in which they're talking about kings of the north, and kings of the south and marriages that between them and wars between them. And it's very clearly talking about the battles between the Seleucids and the Ptolemies. And like, historically, we know this, this is lining up exactly what it is until the desolation of the abomination of desolation. And then there's a straight war and then God comes down with his angels and saves the day. Which we know didn't happen, at least not in any kind of final sort of a way. So then, what do you do with that? Well, that's how all of them are written. They're all written with this great symbolism of things of awful apocalyptic sort of images. And, in the end Godwin's, and I say apocalyptic that word means to reveal to pull back the curtain. And so what that whole genre is doing is it says hey, You see these things happening in real life, but I'm going to pull back the curtain and show you the spiritual realities behind them. So you think Rome is this unstoppable force, but hey, pull back the curtain, and it's actually just this ugly dragon. And the ugly Dragon is going to be thrown into the pit of fire. So these books were meant to be read by people who are currently suffering, so that they can put themselves in the story. And then see that in the end, God rescues them. So in a way, second temple apocalyptic literature is like a green screen, in which generation upon generation upon generation can stand in front of it and put themselves in the story. So the, the beast from Revelation is originally Nero. And then, you know, it might be Domitian. And then it might be valerian. And then it might be Stalin, you know, like, you can put you can make the beast, any number of things, as it has been, I mean, Martin Luther said, that was the pope at one point. And, you know, for all intents and purposes, for him, it was, because that's the point is these, these, these prophetic visions are cycles of things that they're true because they keep happening. And then the point is, you get to put yourself in it, and then you get to see that God is faithful, and that you'll be brought through it at the end. And so to take that kind of genre of literature, and then to take that, that circle down that spiral, and to just stretch it out and say, All right, this is what it means. This is the start. And the end of the end times is just a It's such, it's so dishonest, and disingenuous. And it's it. It does violence to the Scriptures themselves.   Kendra Holt-Moore 26:54 It also sounds a little bit like, I don't know if you necessarily intended it this way back, but like the, it seems like people when they're in the moment, especially with this dislike genre of like apocalyptic literature, being in it. The those like apocalyptic tropes, like they, it feels linear, because it's like, the cycle that you are experiencing, but you don't see it as a cycle. And, you know, obviously, like we've kind of used the premillennial left behind type eschatology is that but like, the, it's kind of easier to identify the genre of literature as a cycle, if you're sort of using hindsight to see that this happens again, and again, and again. Is that Is that how you would characterize   Zack Jackson 27:48 that's a really good insight there. It doesn't feel like a cycle while you're in it. But I think that's the power of once you realize that it is. So then, you know, everything looks bleak right now in the world. It does. And it seems like the cups, the bowls of judgment are being poured out upon us all. So then to be able to keep turning through the book of Revelation to get to the part where death itself, hell itself is thrown into the pit of fire and destroyed. And then every knee boughs and every tongue confesses, and all things are made new, and there's streams of living water and to be able to get to that point. Is there some some comfort in that?   Ian Binns 28:35 Well, it seems like in and I want to go back to that series for a minute. That's right, the Left Behind series that, you know, you talked about zakat being kind of a way, he's I think this is what you were saying a way of it, almost, you know, it seems to me to the way it was written was to help people relate to it, right, and then see that there'll be saved at the end and those types of things. And that's a very generalization, overgeneralization, I guess. But it's interesting while Reading more about the series, the efforts to turn them into films, and how they keep trying to reboot it. And they're actually in the process of doing that now, of redoing the series again, to see if that gets get more attention to it, I guess, and to get more people on board, this particular series, I just find that fascinating of what it is they seem to be trying to do, and I'm part of that part of me will be curious to see how will they try to connect or will they tried to connect it politically? Right in some way that you know, I saw I remember in 2011, or something, I guess it was when Obama was running the second time. I think that was right. Yeah. Chuck Norris and his wife came out talking about that election and that proclaim that if Obama won reelection, it would begin the 1000 years of darkness Oh, yeah.   Kendra Holt-Moore 30:07 This is a political strategy because it works because it's drama. And it's like, you know, the religious affiliation of these stories. They're all encompassing, and it just moves people. And ah, yes, yes. The fact   Zack Jackson 30:24 that people think that this is the worst that humanity has ever been blows my mind like, have you read history? We used to murder people for sport. We're not. Yeah, there's not so bad things are not as bad as you think they are.   Ian Binns 30:39 Yeah. But it's just fascinating how they, they, you know, a percentage of the population kind of latches on to that messaging. And they're a powerful group of people, because especially when you talk about politics, you know, they vote, you know, you get them to vote. And that's how a lot of times, some of the bigger elections they win is because people know that if we can get the more fundamentalist, Christian and evangelical Christians out to vote that most likely they'll vote for the Republican candidate. And, you know, they go out numbers that can help. And so by tying in that argument that they use obviously didn't work because Obama won a second term. But I just found that so interesting that that was a perspective they were trying to use as a way to encourage people to vote is if you don't vote, if you don't vote for Romney, then the 1000 years of darkness will again,   Zack Jackson 31:37 evangelicals going if you don't vote for the Mormon, then that's outside years of darkness. Right? Which, you know, that's not a personal knock against Mormons, but just the those same evangelicals would not consider a Mormon, a Christian normally. But how do you come back from that, by the way, like, once you've gone totally nuclear, that the world is going to end and Satan himself will reign if this man gets elected? Like, how do you then say something about someone else? Like there's no higher? You can't go higher than that you've already gone nuclear. So   Kendra Holt-Moore 32:16 worse than the Antichrist, right?   Ian Binns 32:18 What do we do? Yeah, it's just seems like such an interesting way to live. And as I said, in fact, they're trying to redo this series again. And they're using the actor Kevin Sorbo. Who did, Hercules, right. No,   Zack Jackson 32:37 yes. And then every low budget Christian movie since then.   Ian Binns 32:41 Yep. And so and he is someone the right has, you know, latched on to and he that's he's found his niche. And so he's gonna star and direct in the new movie, I will only   Zack Jackson 32:52 watch it if Lucy Lawless is in it, as well as Xena Warrior Princess, not as anyone else.   Ian Binns 33:00 Yeah. Doubtful. It'll happen without   Zack Jackson 33:03 a man can dream.   Ian Binns 33:15 This right, anyway, sorry. I know, I keep going on tangent. But I just found fascinating.   Kendra Holt-Moore 33:19 I didn't know that I didn't realize that they were trying to like reboot the   Ian Binns 33:24 and this is from last month. Hmm.   Kendra Holt-Moore 33:27 Okay. Well, there you go. So I was, you know, talking, talking through this, you know, the shape shapes of time. And, you know, I kind of our plan for today's recording with my husband, Chad. And he told me of a helpful kind of connection that might be familiar to, to many of you, but there is a piece Well, first of all, there's a writer, he was an American writer, Kurt Vonnegut, who recorded I think it was kind of like a short lecture, but also published in several places about his early writing his like, I think it was his thesis on the shapes of stories. And so I just, I think that's a really interesting kind of connection here, as we're talking about the shapes of time. Like, are we really just talking about the shapes of stories, and Kurt Vonnegut had this whole sort of, like, charting out of different shapes of stories. And so, you know, he was like, writing and publishing has like a lot of novels and was thinking about, like, the structure of a narrative. And I think you can find, you know, his, his lecture online. I think it's like a 30 minute piece, but, you know, he talks through how, you know, when you're talking about like, any kind of job of story, there's like this stair step ladder where you're climbing upward things are going swimmingly. You know, the lovers, they fall in love, and they're like having a grand time. And they're, you know, giving each other flowers and walking, holding hands through the park. And, and then something happens. And this stair step ladder going upwards, suddenly crashes into a, you know, a desolate trough. And that trough, there's this low point, and then you have a low point that requires a creative solution, and then you start moving up on the incline again, and you know, maybe it flattens out, there's a plateau. And then maybe there's like another, a deeper crash, a deeper trough. And then the end of the story can maybe resolve coming again, out of the trough back up into an incline, that just keeps going up and up and up, and you have like your happy ending. And you know, I'm doing some heavy like paraphrasing of this shapes of stories, not something I had seen of his before. But like the point being that you can draw on like the same way that in my classes I draw like the circle and horizontal line to represent time qurbana gets it there's like a bunch of different shapes that you can put up on the board, variations of these shapes to you can have this staircase that goes up and then crashes down and then rises back up again, you can have something that looks more like a wave that bounces up and down, and up and down, and up and down, and up and down and just has, you know, twists and turns. And you can have a story that's just maybe it is a single horizontal line. And it's maybe a boring story where there's just nothing happens. And it's just plateau from beginning to end. And I you know, there are like shapes of stories that we are drawn to, and why are we drawn to those stories? Why would we prefer a story that has the, you know, peaks and valleys versus a story that's just a flat plateau all the way through? Is there you know, an excitement that comes with different shapes of stories? And like, why do we crave certain kinds of resolution at the end of a story. And it just is like, I think a really interesting and kind of perfect, like frame that Vonnegut's sort of offered that I think really maps on to the way that we think about these like big conceptions of time out of our cultural religious lenses, and that it seems that we, like we crave order, we crave orderliness. In the midst of you know, seeming chaos, that we want to feel like we have control, we want to feel a sense of meaning. And, and so, you know, I think like one way to sort of put put these shapes of time or shapes of stories and bring them together is that that's part of what's being offered to us. And you know, for better or worse, because the shapes are different. And they mean different things to different people. But I think the motivation of latching on to certain stories, is that sort of comfort that and like sense of belonging that we derive from particular shapes. So I don't know. I'm curious what what y'all think about that?   Zack Jackson 38:39 Yeah, reminds me of the end of the gospel of Mark. Which, yeah, Mark was written in the style of a Greek epic, which they don't all have perfect, happy endings. And the earliest manuscripts, it ends with, you know, the, the women come to the tomb, they find that it's, it's empty. There's, there's an angel who's like, Hey, check it out. He's not here. He's gone. He risen Hallelujah. And it ends with Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone because they were afraid. And that's how the book ends. But that only lasted like a couple 100 years, because then people added on to the end of it. And so all of the later manuscripts and like the ones that are like King James is based on the Latin Bibles, they all have this other lesson versus that's all like wrapping up the story, you know, the, like the end of the Lord of the Rings, where it's like, alright, well, then he appeared to two more of them. And then he appeared to everyone. And then he said, Go into all the world and preach the gospel. And then he said, I love you. I'm happy. I'll see you later. I left lunch in the fridge and everything got wrapped up in the end, and it was like they could not stand for the story tonight. And on a high note that it had to end there, or else they just felt weird about it.   Kendra Holt-Moore 40:07 I love that as an example, because it's like you go from a story shape that kind of trails off at the end and this sad sort of dangling like downward slope of trembling and fear to like the sharp upward incline of happiness and resolution, very different, very different emotional responses to   Zack Jackson 40:27 the last chapter of Ecclesiastes does the same thing. Where it's like some some later editor was like, this is just this needs, this needs a pick me up at the end, nobody's ever people are going to finish this and just be upset. So we need like, a happy ending, tacked on to the end of the bow on it. Right. And then they did the same thing to I Am Legend. Anybody ever see that? The book, the short story ends totally differently. It ends with this great like Twilight Zone esque reveal. And it's like dark, and it just ends. But Hollywood was like we can't do that we have to have a resolution, we have to have some kind of happy ending, people have to leave the theater feeling good in some way, shape, or form. Like they didn't just Well, anytime   Ian Binns 41:14 you think about with storytelling, you know, as we've already said, that having that nice ending is what people human nature is what we want, right? We want to build a wrap up something type deal. And so, you know, John, my son, John and I are right now watching the Marvel Cinematic Universe, then release order. And so he came, you know, maybe a month or so ago, he was just like, Hey, Dad, I really want to my friend watched Black Widow, I want to see Black Widow. And I said, Okay, that's great, but we're not seeing the others. It's not gonna make you're gonna miss some things. Oh, yeah. So what are you ready to start watching these? And he's like, oh, yeah, absolutely. So we started and we're watching an order of release, not chronological order. And so it makes me think about, you know, he and I were talking the other day, and yesterday, he was kind of trying to make sense of how they're all connected. We've gotten all the way through phase two, we just started Civil War last night. Captain America Civil War, right. And it makes he was talking about how they're all connected and stuff like that. But are they really like Captain America? The second one is really a sequel and what that means and, you know, part one, part two, and it made me think about Avengers. The third and fourth one, right. So Infinity War the way it ends, and then you have in game and and it was kind of pitched as a part one, part two aspect of things because Part One does not end. All happy go lucky as part two does at least the ends were things more wrapped up part one ends with a major cliffhanger. Right. And you think about films like that, like, for example, the last two Harry Potter movies, the four books seven. You know, they're both the Deathly Hallows, but it was part one, part two, part one did not end on a high note as part two debt. And so it ended with something that you're just kind of like, well, what and so but you knew it Part Two was comment. So the story wasn't over yet. Is my point. Right? And we love it for the story to be over and happy, as you said, and I think the two examples you gave from Scripture is just fascinating. I was not quite aware that they did that with Ecclesiastes, but I didn't know that. That's how Mark changed is that here was the original version, then they added on some things too, which I've always found really interesting. And to me, that was take that as a what does that say about the Bible? Right, you know, and those types of things, but anyway,   Zack Jackson 43:51 most people want to believe that things are gonna work out well for them. And when we are in a storyline, we put ourselves in that story. And we, you know, we then want the characters to come out on top, you know, unless you are a person who is just super pessimistic, you know, you know, somebody like, like, I don't know, Adam, who picked out Pan's Labyrinth for his movie early last year. And that movie ends spoiler alert, with like, a dead child. And yeah, it's like, oh, that's an awful ending. You know, something like Requiem for a Dream that just ends with awful tragedy. Some people like that, and I don't know why. Honestly.   Kendra Holt-Moore 44:47 I think it's like I think some, some of those stories can be really cathartic. Like, it's not that they're happy, but they reflect Something that you experience. And I think, like the cathartic experience of watching something that's super, super sad. I think what that gives people to some extent is a feeling that you're not alone and experiencing like deep sadness or trauma and that there's like a path. I mean, I guess if the story ends in, you know, death, I'm not sure that that maybe is a different message. But some of the stories that are really sad, there's still kind of a way forward through healing. And healing is really hard. And not, you know, it's not like a simple, straightforward, like, wrapped up in a bow type of process. And it's just, I think there's something that's comforting in seeing that being reflected in all its like ugliness and darkness, that kind of counter intuitively facilitates a kind of healing or a feeling of being seen. But that's a very different kind of story that I think then, you know, what we've been talking about with the sort of nice resolution that is happy, but it's, yeah, it's a different shape, with a different kind of purpose, I think. And then there's also the kind of, you know, like, storytelling problem, where people don't want the story to end. And so the story just like drags on and on and like, you think of like, a TV show that is, like, 10 seasons too long. And it's like, why didn't you just have a plan to do this? Well, in three seasons, phrase, and on and on, and on, and on, and on, and on and on.   Ian Binns 46:46 We gave that up a long time ago.   Kendra Holt-Moore 46:50 But yeah, like, Why, what's the kind of motivation of that shape, and I think it's, it's like, related to the desire to want things to work out well, in the end. But I think people also want to keep experiencing that, that like, happy moment or resolution until, like, feel part of a story for as long as possible. When, you know, really, like all stories, they do come to an end or they at least change over time. And so there's like, I think, I think we all kind of have an impulse or like motivation to find like permanence in like goodness, or permanence and like stability. And that can like influence the way that we tell stories and sort of drag them on in hopes that we can be part of them for for longer   Ian Binns 47:54 well, and so if I can we talk about in the feeling of happiness, and just feeling good, you know, John and I, in this journey of Washington, these films together and we're having a great time doing it, you know, I mean, he's really getting into it, and we're having a lot of fun. But I remember sometimes he would talk to me about what was your favorite one and your least favorite and Babalon and I had told him that you know, we're not done with civil war yet. We're gonna finish it today. But that when I saw that film, I didn't want to watch it again. Like that even though you know the way it ends it's okay, it was still a you know, for two for what over 12 films or something like that so far up to that point. It's like all the heroes maybe they don't get along at times but they're still kind of on the same side and then all of a sudden you see in this one that wait a minute to the biggest characters are now on opposite sides fighting each other. And I struggled with that I gotta be honest watching that that was tough to watch because it made me sad and like oh, this is something I'm supposed to be able to just escape into and not worry and bola and all sudden this happens and and so that was tough. And so I like how they work with it later. But that is interesting to me. How you know so watching some of it last night I'm glad we're doing it. But even he was describing this morning so what do you think so far? And he's like, I like it. But I mean it's it's really good and the plots interesting but also don't like it because we've not gotten to the big fight yet. We stopped bright for that. And we had to because bedtime fight we had we'd have to watch the rest of the film. Right and so as I said, we'll finish it today. But he just was like, but I don't like the fact that they're they're starting to not really get along because he you know, we both love Iron Man and Captain America alright, and we just but all these characters you get attached to all of them. And so it's just interesting. What that how this all relates Hmm. So   Zack Jackson 50:01 yeah, superhero movies in general, kind of have the same shape as the New Testament. Where it's like, yeah. Which is like he does the shaped Zack. I will, I will paint you a picture auditorially Yes, please. So it begins, they all begin with humble origins, an underdog story of somebody with great promise and potential, who needs to go through a hero's journey in order to find their full potential. They discover their powers, they go up against the powers that be there's some some small successes, there's some small losses. And then there's the final, there's the big confrontation in which they lose. They always have to lose at least somewhat. They need to be beaten into the ground. You know, oh, no, Iron Man is falling out of the sky, because he's all frozen. And you know, Captain America shield is broken like that. You need to be broken in some way. But then, when all hope seems last look on the horizon. And there's no, no, that's Gandalf coming over helm steep, but I was really good to the same kind of deal, right? Then there's this dramatic resurrection. And then boom, there we are. There's the happy ending that death is no more Oh, oh, Death, where is thy staying? Oh, grave, where's the victory? You know that, how we have this final win. And then then the same cycle repeats again, with the early church and the book of Acts. And then we get through these letters. And then the book of Revelation does the exact same story arc of like this humble beginnings, and then these troughs, and then at the end, there's this great victory, and it always ends on a happy note. And all of the stories in the New Testament follow that same underdog hero's journey, sort of story arc.   Kendra Holt-Moore 52:09 Shapes,   Zack Jackson 52:10 which is maybe why, maybe why I like superhero movies? I don't know. Yeah, it all   Kendra Holt-Moore 52:15 comes together.   Ian Binns 52:18 It makes you think about the matrix as well. Right? We're recording this. So less than a week before the fourth Matrix film comes out matrix resurrections. And I think that's gonna be really interesting. I'm actually excited about I really liked the series there had issues with the second and third movie. But I still liked the storyline, and the, you know, what it stood for, and stuff I thought was very interesting. But that's kind of like a superhero. Movie, or series as you just described, right. Um, and also even like the, with Star Wars, and the three separate trilogies. Yeah. Right. They help kind of follow that same, same description that you just gave us about superhero movies. And so yeah, I think it's gonna be very interesting, how they, how they bring all that together in this fourth movie of the matrix. Series. I don't know   Kendra Holt-Moore 53:13 beaking of shapes and superheroes in the Bible. Zack, do you want to tell us about a dead Christian story our How's that for a transition?   Zack Jackson 53:34 That is a wonderful transition. Because I still don't have a theme song.   Kendra Holt-Moore 53:43 Tried it? Let's try to workshop that. Okay. Did Christian Story Hour? Do you want something spooky? Um, or like uplifting? Or like Halloween theme music type of you know, intro I don't know. I'm   Ian Binns 53:58 gonna make me believe   Zack Jackson 54:00 I'm kind of I'm kind of I'm kind of into the the sort of ironic theme music something chipper and cheery like a like a, like a Mattress Company jingle.   Kendra Holt-Moore 54:16 Oh, yeah, that's perfect.   Zack Jackson 54:18 You got 805 80 to 300 M Pa. That kind of Well, welcome to part two of the dead Christian story our a part at the end of every fifth episode, in which I share with you one of my favorite stories from Christian hagiography. What is hagiography you ask? Well, I'll tell you. These are stories of dead Christians. And they are most of the time totally over the top. And I want you to take all of these with a giant grain of salt because they are not historically accurate and they aren't meant to be They are stories of heroes. And so that's what they're just meant to be. So just let them be hero stories, okay, and stop thinking too much about it because it's great. And I love them. This one comes from St. Lawrence. And St. Lawrence is the name of the borough where I live, which is named not at all after the actual St. Lawrence, but after a brand of stockings that the local knitting mill made in the 40s. But St. Lawrence, capitalism, right, it's too bad, because it's a great story. And I actually, this is the only dead Christian. That whose icon I own, I have, I have St. Lawrence in my kitchen, he holds my, my coffee scoops. And I'll tell you why in just a second, because it's great. So I'm going to take you all the way back to the mid to 50s. So this is like 200 years after Jesus. And Christianity is still kind of an underground sort of deal. But Christians in Rome, were starting to get maybe a little bit too powerful, a little bit too influential. You know, the whole thing was just kind of like back to Emperor valerian, he wasn't really having a whole lot of these Christians. So he issued an edict that all Christians in Rome must offer a sacrifice to Roman gods, or else lose their titles and land and standing. And anyone who persisted should be put to death. This was something that Roman emperors did from time to time, because they knew that Christians weren't going to do it, because Christians were stubborn. And they were in those days, kind of countercultural. pacifistic, anarchists, who loved to give the middle finger to the government. If you can imagine such a thing, that's what the church was like back then. And they were not, under any circumstance going to acknowledge of Roman God as any kind of God because they were like, it's Jesus, or nothing. Sorry, I'll die before I'll do that. And so the Romans were like, Great, then we'll kill you. So in 258, the Emperor valerian issued an edict that all of the bishops, priests and deacons of the Roman church should immediately be put to death, and all of their treasures confiscated because obviously, they would not make those sacrifices to Jupiter and such. So they started hunting down all the church leaders. And after they killed the Pope, and some of the most prominent leaders, their prefect of Rome, went after the arch deacon of the church, and demanded that he turn over all the treasures of the church. Now, deacons, for those of you who are not super into churchy stuff are the class of, of officers within the church who are tasked with feeding and taking care of the poor and the widows, the orphans, the lepers, anyone who has who has no social safety net in society. The deacons were the ones who went out and found these people and took care of them and help them so indirectly, they're also the people in charge of whatever finances the church has, which at those times was not a whole lot. But that was their job. And this fella named Lawrence was the first Deacon appointed of this church, and he was kind of in charge. So the Roman prefect went to him. And they were like, hey, Lawrence, so I gotta kill you. And I'm sorry about that, but I got to do it. However, if you turn over all of the treasures of the church to me right now, I might give you a head start. So you can get out of dodge, right? Because the prefect wants to take a cut, before he gives the rest of the Emperor. So he's, you know, he's trying to make it a little sweet for himself. So Lawrence is like, Alright, sure, I'm in, give me three days. At this point. I'm sure the prefect is like wait a second. What are these Christians? They're they're jackasses. So what, why is why is this guy on board, but whatever, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna think too hard about it. I'm gonna get some cash money. So three days later, Lawrence shows up in front of the prefix office. And trailing him is a crowd of the dirtiest people, the widows, the orphans, the lepers, the poor, the crippled the sick, following behind him in this crowd, and he says to the prefect, Behold, the treasures of the church. Yeah, because he had taken those three days and had liquidated all of the church's assets and had then just redistributed them to the poor in Rome. So the church had no money after that. And he said, we are far more wealthy than your Emperor will ever be. So as you can probably Guess the prefect was not a fan. And so instead of beheading him, as they did with the Pope, and everyone else, he's like, I'm gonna make this guy suffer. So we strapped them to a grid iron, and put him over a bed of hot coals to slowly cook him to death. And after a while of excruciating pain, he said to Lawrence, what do you have to say for yourself now? And Lawrence looked at him, and he said, I'm done on this side, turn me over. And for that, they made him the patron saint of cooks. And so the icon I have of him in my kitchen is of him happily standing there with this big smile on his face, holding a big gridiron with like a bunch of garlic and onions in his other hand, as if he was like the church chef, because he's the patron saint of cooks. And somebody told the icon maker, go ahead and make me a picture of St. Lawrence, the patron saint of cooks. And they're like, Yeah, sure, I'll give him a bunch of food and stuff. Because apparently he was a chef. He was not a chef. He was cooked alive on a gridiron. He is also the patron saint of comedians, which feels a lot more appropriate. Because dude was a smartass. And I kind of love him.   Ian Binns 1:01:24 The patron saint of chefs, even though he was cooked alive.   Zack Jackson 1:01:28 Yeah, the patron saint of dentists also got her teeth kicked out. So the people who come up with these things have a sort of sense of cruel irony, I think. Yeah,   Kendra Holt-Moore 1:01:37 very much. So   Ian Binns 1:01:38 I would say so. Yeah. I love that.   Kendra Holt-Moore 1:01:41 Is there a like a closing like, outgoing theme music that that we'll have for the fit too, because I feel like it really needs that. Oh,   Ian Binns 1:01:51 well, maybe something about magical breasts this time though.   Zack Jackson 1:01:55 No magical breast this time. Just a smart Aliki Deacon who got cooked alive and then later turned into the patron saint of yummy garlic and onions.   Ian Binns 1:02:08 Yeah, that was, yeah, amen.   Zack Jackson 1:02:12 Amen. Okay. So the next time you're having a barbecue, pour one out for St. Lawrence, and maybe give the middle finger to the government hits what he was with St.   Ian Binns 1:02:24 Lawrence for being cooked alive. Hey, go. Thank you.

In this episode, we watch the Ptolemies and Seleucids battle over control of Israel, follow the intrigue of Jewish elites fighting for the position of High Priest, hear of the brutal Greek repression of Jewish practice, and see the rise of a rebellion.

Welcome to the fifth episode of We Effed Up! In this installment, we examine Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, and how a single eunuch brought down an ancient empire.SourcesFields, Nic. Warlords of Republican Rome: Caesar vs. Pompey. Pen & Sword Military, Barnsley, 2008.Freeman, Philip. Julius Caesar. Simon & Schuster, New York, 2008.Goldsworthy, Adrian. Caesar: Life of a Colossus. Yale U. Press, New Haven, 2006.Graninger, John D. Roman Conquests: Egypt and Judea. Pen & Sword Military, Barnsley, 2013.Manning, J. G. The Last Pharaohs: Egypt Under the Ptolemies, 305-30 BC. Princeton U. Press, Princeton, 2010.Raaflaeb, Kurt A. Ed. (Caesar, Julius). Commentaries on the Civil War. Pantheon, New York, 2017.Schiff, Stacy. Cleopatra: A Life. Little, Brown, & Co., New York, 2010. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Royally Screwed, we're beginning the story of Cleopatra, tracking her life as she goes from princess to pharaoh of Egypt. But first, she'll have to contend with all of her siblings.Subscribe for more episodes as they come.Twitter: @Denim_CreekInstagram: denimcreekproSubscribe to the Channel on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqVkGmgEQTR7KX5GhBV-vkA/featuredMusic:Intro/Outro: “Life O' the Lavish” - Jules Gaia, “Mystery Garden” - Brendon Moeller, “Always There” - Table Etiquette, “Neroli” - Ennio Máno, “Action rock_full” - Radio_Parma, “Glitz at the Ritz” - Jules Gaia, “12th Floor Party” - Jules GaiaCopyright 2021, Denim Creek Productions

The Second Syrian War has begun! However, rather predictably, it will not simply be a contest between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids; the Antigonids are going to get sucked into the hurricane of battle as well. So, this week, we're going to recap the relationship between the Antigonids and the other major powers and discuss the alliance between Antigonus II and Antiochus II against their mutual enemy... Sources for this episode: 1) Bevan, E. (1902) The House of Seleucus (Vol I.). London: Edward Arthur. 2) Grainger, J. D., (2014), The Rise of the Seleukid Empire (323- 223 BCE), Seleukos I to Seleukos III. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Books Ltd. (eBook) [Accessed 04/01/2021]. 3) Heinen, H., Encyclopaedia Britannica (2019), Ptolemy II Philadelphus (online) [Accessed 17/06/2021]. 4) Volkmann, H., Encyclopaedia Britannica (2019), Antigonus II Gonatas (online) [Accessed 15/06/2021]. 5) Author unknown, Wikipedia (date unknown), Antigonus II Gonatas (online) [Accessed 19/06/2021]. 6) Author unknown, Wikipedia (date unknown), Battle of Cos (online) [Accessed 19/06/2021]. 7) Author unknown, Wikipedia (date unknown), Demetrius I of Macedon (online) [Accessed 15/06/2021]. 8) Author unknown, Wikipedia (date unknown), Demetrius the Fair (online) [Accessed 15/06/2021]. 9) Author unknown, Wikipedia (date unknown), Seleucus I Nicator (online) [Accessed 15/06/2021]. 10) Author unknown, Wikipedia (date unknown) Stratonice of Syria (online) [Accessed 15/06/2021]. 11) Author unknown, Wikipedia (date unknown), Syrian wars (online) [Accessed 19/06/2021].

Today, we're going to return to a point we last covered in episode 27. Specifically, it seems that Ptolemy of Telmessus, the son of Lysimachus and Arsinoe II, is unlikely to have been elevated to co-king in Egypt. To find out why, we're going to have to uncover the life of the mysterious elder son of Ptolemy II and older brother of Ptolemy III, who had his shot at power before it all went wrong... Sources for this episode: 1) Bevan, E. R. (1927), The House of Ptolemy, London: Methuen Publishing. Available at: LascusCurtis [Accessed 08/02/2021]. 2) Grainger, J. D., (2014), The Rise of the Seleukid Empire (323- 223 BCE), Seleukos I to Seleukos III. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Books Ltd. (eBook) [Accessed 04/01/2021]. 3) Tunny, J. A. (2000), Ptolemy 'The Son' Reconsidered: Are there too Many Ptolemies? Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik 131: 83-92. 4) Author unknown, Wikipedia (date unknown), 'Ptolemy II Philadelphus' (online) [Accessed 14/05/2021].

This week, we take a step back to discuss what's been going on in Egypt while we've been looking at the Seleucid narrative. To do this, we're going to dive into the infighting, cultural conflicts and rivalries of the Ptolemies... Sources for this episode: 1) Bennett, C., Egyptian Royal Genealogy (date unknown), Berenice I (online) [Accessed 17/06/2021]. 2) Bevan, E. (1902) The House of Seleucus (Vol I.). London: Edward Arthur. 3) Bevan, E. R. (1927), The House of Ptolemy, London: Methuen Publishing. Available at: LascusCurtis [Accessed 08/02/2021]. 4) Heinen, H., Encyclopaedia Britannica (2019), Ptolemy II Philadelphus (online) [Accessed 17/06/2021]. 5) The Editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica (2019), Berenice I (online) [Accessed 28/03/2021]. 6) Pallardy, R., Encyclopaedia Britannica (2020), Arsinoe II (online) [Accessed 28/03/2021]. 7) Author unknown, Wikipedia (date unknown), Antigone of Macedon (online) [Accessed 17/06/2021]. 8) Author unknown, Wikipedia (date unknown), Arsinoe I (online) [Accessed 28/03/2021]. 9) Author unknown, Wikipedia (date unknown), Arsinoe II (online) [Accessed 28/03/2021]. 10) Author unknown, Wikipedia (date unknown), Battle of Cos (online) [Accessed 19/06/2021]. 11) Author unknown, Wikipedia (date unknown), Berenice I of Egypt (online) [Accessed 28/03/2021]. 12) Author unknown, Wikipedia (date unknown), Lagus (online) [Accessed 17/06/2021]. 13) Author unknown, Wikipedia (date unknown), Lysimachus (online) [Accessed 28/03/2021]. 14) Author unknown, Wikipedia (date unknown), Magas of Cyrene (online) [Accessed 28/03/2021]. 15) Author unknown, Wikipedia (date unknown), Menelaus (online) [Accessed 17/06/2021]. 16) Author unknown, Wikipedia (date unknown), Ptolemy II Philadelphus (online) [Accessed 28/03/2021]. 17) Author unknown, Wikipedia (date unknown), Thais (online) [Accessed 17/06/2021]. 18) Author unknown, Wikipedia (date unknown), Theocritus (online) [Accessed 17/06/2021]. 19) Author unknown, Wikipedia (date unknown), Tutankhamun (online) [Accessed 17/06/2021].

Introduction Scripture divides into two great categories — milk and meat. Milk is the simple doctrine of the Bible, the center piece of which is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The milk of the Gospel can be organized into four main categories: God, man, Christ, response. We share this with unbelievers. Workers all over the world have gone abroad to try to explain in culturally understandable ways. First, there is a God who made Heaven and earth, and therefore He has the right to rule as king over everything that He made. As our Ruler, He has given us laws by which we are to live. Those laws are very clear and simple, organized broadly into the Ten Commandments: “You shall have no other gods beside me. You shall not make any idols. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Remember the Sabbath by keeping it holy; do all your work in six days and rest on the seventh, for God made heaven and earth in six days and rested on the seventh. Honor your father and mother. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor.” Jesus taught that though we may not have committed murder physically, if we have murderous hearts we are in danger of the fire of hell. We may not have committed physical adultery, but if we have adulterous hearts, looking at one who is not our spouse lustfully, we are in danger of the fire of hell. He probed the inner workings of the heart, and then organized all of the law in two great commandments: the first and greatest is to “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” We do not keep these Commandments; we break them every day. It is grace from God to know the truth of that. The second great category is man, or the human race. We were created in the image of God to have a relationship with Him, to love and serve and walk with Him, but we fell into sin in Adam, our first father, who ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In him the entire human race fell. We were given a sin nature. When we were able to understand the law, we broke it — we violated the Ten Commandments and the two Commandments; we are all sinners and fall short of the glory of God. As a result, we are threatened with eternal death and hell. We can not save ourselves; we need a Savior. The third category is Christ. God sent his Son into the world, born of the virgin Mary; he lived every single day of his life sinless under the law of God. He obeyed every jot and tittle, every detail perfectly. No one but Jesus has fulfilled the two great Commandments. He loved God with all of his heart; he said, “I always do what pleases him.” Always. And He loved his neighbors as himself, especially by going to the cross for us. Though he had committed no sin and there was no deceit in his mouth, he went to the cross and stood under the fiery wrath of God, who is a consuming fire. He was condemned for us: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God.” He offers the free gift of righteousness and full forgiveness of all sins to us. We are able to access that by repentance (turning from our sins) and faith (trusting in Christ). All of our sins can be forgiven. You may know that you have not crossed over from death to life, that you are not a Christian. You have just heard the Gospel, which is milk — that which a child can understand. If you look to the law and know that you are guilty, that you have sinned, and then look to Christ crucified and resurrected with the eyes of your heart, you will see your Savior. You do not have to move a muscle; if you will trust in Jesus, all of your sins will be forgiven. If you genuinely do that, a whole river of righteous acts will start flowing — a commitment to walk in newness of life. Meat is the harder stuff in the word to understand. Peter said about Paul’s writings in 2 Peter 3:16 that he writes some things “that are hard to understand.” (Ironically, some of the hardest statements in the New Testament are written by Peter.) These are beneficial truths — God wants us to know them, but we need spiritual teeth to chew them and it takes a while to understand. Eschatology, or end time teaching, is meat. Here are six reasons why it is hard to understand. First, eschatology is hard to understand because God intends it to be hard to understand. It is not an accident. We do not demand that he learn to make it simpler. He intends to speak to us in language difficult to understand. He wants only believers to get it. He could have written out an exact chronology with names and dates. Daniel 11 is a most astonishing chapter, displaying God’s ability in detail to predict the future. There are 106 uses of the helping verb “will” in the NIV (1984 version), indicating future events. God is showing off. He can give meticulous details about future events. But he did not intend to do that. Instead, he speaks in such a way that only believers will be able to understand, and not all believers equally, but those who need to understand the most will. Second, God has spoken end-time teaching to us in apocalyptic, prophetic, visionary language that is not easy to understand. He uses symbolism — beasts and horns and oceans and winds It is not immediately clear. It needs interpretation, similar to a parable. Third, he has scattered the salient points and Scriptures in different places, such as Matthew 24, 1 John 2, Daniel 7, and Revelation. It requires the work of theologians to put things together. Fourth, the issue of type and fulfillment is a problem. History is filled with events that act out a type of fulfillment of various prophecies that are dress rehearsals of the final. Many people want to stop there, as though they are the final fulfillment. The destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD was clearly not the end — almost 20 centuries of history have occurred since then. But many godly commentators will claim that Matthew 24 is talking about the prophetic destruction of Jerusalem. As Jesus said, “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man,” we see many prophecies that are acted out in small ways, like dress rehearsals,. Hitler was a dress rehearsal, a type of antichrist, very tragic and difficult, but he died in the bunker and history has continued since his time. He was an antichrist, but not the one final Antichrist. Fifth, we have a story with complex chronology. It is hard to follow, not easy to understand. Sixth, current events and exegesis of Scriptures must be married, lined up simultaneously. Many generations have sought to line these things up, but because of so many misfires and predictions that didn't come true, some would discard the whole thing. We are looking at the big picture of eschatology to help bring context to our study of Revelation. Christianity is a unique religion in the world and this is apologetic material. When you are talking to Muslims, atheists, or Buddhists, this is a weapon of truth you can use. Christianity is the only prophetic religion in the world, ultimately. Judaism had prophecies, but it is derailed by not seeing their fulfillment in Christ. There are some Islamic pseudo-prophecies, but with research, you see they are not true. Buddhism and Hinduism do not care about current events at all. They are trying to escape this evil world by denial, saying it is all an illusion, so they make no attempt to make predictions of the future. Christianity alone does this. God said repeatedly in the book of Isaiah that He is the only one who can do it. Isaiah 46:10 says, “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.’” He is talking about Cyrus the Great and Persia, but it is also a general true principle that He is the only one who knows the future. Isaiah 14:26-27 says, “This is the plan determined for the whole world; this is the hand stretched out over all nations. For the LORD Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart him? His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it back?” God makes a plan, and his sovereign power orchestrates that His plan will certainly take place. Christianity is the only religion that can accomplish His purposes. In Revelation 12, we saw, in apocalyptic visionary writing, a red dragon — the devil, Satan, that ancient serpent who leads the whole world astray. He pursues a glorious, radiant woman, who is best interpreted as Israel because she gives birth to the male child. From the Jews came the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all. Her radiance and glory imply that the children whom the heavenly Zion gives birth are believers in Christ, Jew and Gentile alike. The dragon, Satan, pursues the woman and her children in Revelation 12:17: “Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring — those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.” That rage has been going on for 20 centuries. There has been tribulation in every single century. That recapitulation — as it was so it will be — happens throughout history, but it ramps up at the end such that Jesus said in Matthew 24:21-22, “For then there will be great distress [or great tribulation] unequaled from the beginning of the world until now — and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.” There will be days of tribulation so great nothing like them will have ever been seen in the history of the world. The events of the destruction of Jerusalem in the temple in AD 70 by the Romans do not line up with that pronouncement. The Romans did that all the time. Yes, they killed many Jews, but there remains a far worse future suffering. That section of Revelation 12 ends with the dragon in Revelation 13:1 standing on the shore of the sea, “a beast coming up out of the sea. He had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name.” This culminates in the Antichrist who is coming and whom we seek to understand today. The beast is a wicked worldwide empire culminating in one ruler over it who will enact these great persecutions in the name of the devil, though he does not understand that is what he is doing. The image of a beast, terrifying and powerful, emerging from the sea, who assaults the people of God and in some sense is able to conquer them, comes directly from the book of Daniel. Essential Lessons from the Book of Daniel The Beasts from the Sea and the Little Horn Daniel 7 and Revelation 13 are clearly connected. Revelation 13 begins with Satan the dragon standing at the seashore summoning the beast from the sea, who ultimately is the Antichrist. That image comes directly from Daniel 7 in which Daniel has a dream of four beasts that come up out of the sea. The sea is turbulent, the winds are ripping the ocean, shredding and churning it, and in succession one beast after another emerges from it. In Daniel 7, the beasts are interpreted as kingdoms, not individuals, including the fourth beast. But the horns of the fourth beast refer to the ruler of that wicked kingdom. In the end the potentate of that wicked kingdom is associated with the kingdom itself as in World War II in which Hitler was the enemy, as though killing him would end the whole thing. Everyone knew that there was a whole Nazi war machine, a whole empire, that had to be conquered, but Hitler was the head. It will be even more so in the days of the Antichrist. The supernatural control he will have over the empire will be unparalleled in history. In the end, the beast becomes one person but it starts as an empire. If there is not an empire behind him, there is nothing to fear. He is just a guy on the street corner saying things. But if he has a worldwide police state empire behind him, there is something to fear. The fourth beast is the most terrifying of all. It has 10 horns, like the beast in Revelation 13. In apocalyptic or visionary imagery, the horn is a king, an individual who holds focused power. One of the horns, called the little horn, grows up and supplants the other horns. It has the eyes of a man and speaks boastfully; it ultimately represents the Antichrist. He derives power comes from his mind and his skill and his mouth, not from his own stature. He is a conniver, a deceiver, able to supplant others by assassination and trickery and other devious methods. Methodologically, I can tell the story — what I think will happen going forward — and not cross reference any Scriptures, but I want to teach you to root everything in Scripture and that is what takes time. If nothing else, I want you to understand methodology and what Scriptures to look at and have you put the story together. Daniel 7:8 says, “While I was thinking about the horns, there before me was another horn, a little one, which came up among them; and three of the first horns were uprooted before it. This horn had eyes like the eyes of a man and a mouth that spoke boastfully.” The eyes represent intelligence and the mouth speaks with arrogance and boastfulness. In the middle of the vision, we have a significant prophecy about Jesus in the Old Testament. Jesus refers to it repeatedly when He called himself the Son of Man, His favorite title for himself. In doing so, he seems to be pointing his listeners to this portion of Daniel. The vision of what is happening on earth with the beasts and everything is suddenly interrupted to show what is happening meanwhile up in Heaven. We see a throne with Almighty God, the Ancient of Days, seated on it. This is God the Father, the first person of the Trinity. A river of fire flows from the throne. This is the judgment and wrath of God on empires who will persecute His people and who will not worship Him. This is one of the main lessons of the book of Daniel, which God taught to Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4:25: “…the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone He wishes.” No matter what Satan says, that he rules the whole world, he does not. God does, and He rules actively over everything. He is sovereign. It is comforting to us as Christians to ponder this vision of the throne of God and the river of fire flowing from it. The scene goes back to the horn, speaking arrogantly. Verse 11 says, “Then I continued to watch because of the boastful words the horn was speaking. I kept looking until the beast was slain and its body destroyed and thrown into the blazing fire.” The empire of the horn will be destroyed. It has been destroyed, but that is just a dress rehearsal, and it will be destroyed again with finality. The blazing fire represents Hell, as we see at the end of the book of Revelation. Isaiah 53 contains the most significant prediction of Jesus’ atoning sacrifice; Daniel 7:13-14 gives us the most significant prediction and prophecy of who Jesus is in His person. “In my vision at night, I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of Heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.” The only explanation for this vision is Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, coming into the presence of God the Father, the first person of the Trinity. Jesus receives from God all authority in Heaven and earth, as we know from the Great Commission, and he has the right to set up a kingdom that will never end. All peoples and nations and men of every language will worship him — he is worthy. We believe in the incarnation, that Jesus is both the Son of Man — fully human, and the Son of God — fully God. He is not God the ultimate Father, King God — he is equal to and like Him but a separate person. What is given to the Son of Man is the very thing the little horn and the dragon want. They are in direct competition for this authority, glory, sovereign power, and for all peoples, nations and men of every language to worship him. But Jesus is will win. The Antichrist will not achieve his goal. The vision focuses on the fourth beast and the little horn. The key aspects of the little horn are his astonishing arrogance and blasphemy and his small stature. He rises up to dominate using the power God gives him to attack the people of God and slaughter them for a short time. Verses 19 says, “Then I wanted to know the true meaning of the fourth beast, which was different from all the others and most terrifying, with its iron teeth and its bronze claws — the beast that crushed and devoured its victims and trampled under foot whatever was left.” That describes the worldwide empire — Rome was a type of this prophecy, but as it was in the days of Rome, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man, but even worse. Imagine a Gestapo-like police state that can crush any opposition in the world, both armies on the field and individuals and their personal freedoms. Verses 20-21 continue, “I also wanted to know about the ten horns on his head and about the other horn that came up, before which three of them fell — the horn that looked more imposing than the others and that had eyes and a mouth that spoke boastfully. As I watched, this horn was waging war against the saints and defeating them.” That is the point of Jesus’ various warnings to his disciples: “When you see your brothers and sisters being slaughtered, do not give in to the temptation to abandon your faith in me. Remember that I have told you these things ahead of time. Do not fear. Be strong. I am the Resurrection and the Life. You will live forever. You will be given a martyr’s welcome into Heaven and will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of your Father.” The beast is given power to wage war against the saints and defeat them physically on earth, “until [(verse 22) what a blessed word that is] the Ancient of Days came and pronounced judgment [a ruling from the supremest of all Supreme Courts] in favor of the saints of the Most High [your days, oh Antichrist are done], and the time came when they possessed the kingdom.” The little horn wages war and the Antichrist will kill many like he killed the two witnesses in Revelation 11. They were powerful, but God gives the beast from the Abyss the power to rise up, overpowers and kill them. Verses 23-24 say, “[The angel] gave me this explanation: The fourth beast is a fourth kingdom that will appear on the earth. It will be different from all the other kingdoms and will devour the whole earth, trampling it down, and crushing it. The ten horns are ten kings who will come from this kingdom. After them another king will arise, different from the earlier ones; he will subdue three kings.” The Antichrist will be a king of kings. It makes sense. Right now we have many nations, each with its own potentate, ruler, president or prime minister. He will have the political and military skill to subdue all other kings to consolidate them all under one worldwide government. Verse 25 continues: “He will speak against the Most High [blasphemy] and oppress His saints and try to change the set times and the laws [he will try but fail to get longer than three-and-a-half years to make changes]. The saints will be delivered into his hands for a time, times and half a time [“a time” is one year, “times” is two years, and “half a time” is half a year; together that is three-and-a-half years]. But the court will sit, and his power will be taken away and completely destroyed forever. Then the sovereignty, power and greatness of all the kingdoms under heaven will be handed over to the saints of the Most High. His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom and all rulers [that is us] will worship and obey Him [that is Jesus].” He will be perfected — the King of righteous kings and the Lord of righteous lords who have been saved by grace through faith. These kings and lords are not wicked usurper kings but people who worship him and rule their domains and the new Heaven and the new Earth under him. Seventy Weeks Daniel 9 puts the 70 weeks context. Daniel, in exile in Babylon, reads from the scroll of Jeremiah’s prophecy, which gives the clear prediction that the exile will last 70 years. He begins to pray in a marvelous way in Daniel 9:1-19, that God would fulfill His promise that He made in Isaiah and other places to restore the Jews back to the Promised Land and allow them to flourish again. God dispatches the angel Gabriel to give him the answer, which is the 70 weeks. He gives Daniel more than he bargained for — more than he can understand and more than we can understand. He goes far beyond the restoration of the Jews and the rebuilding of the temple written about in Haggai. He includes not only the time of the first coming of Christ who would be cut off, but also the end that Jesus spoke about — the abomination of desolation — which was future even to Jesus at the time. Daniel receives a timetable of seventy “sevens,” or seventy weeks. A “seven” is a seven-year period. Seventy seven-year periods is 490 years total. But they are divided in an unusual, difficult to understand pattern. That is why this is meat, not milk. In Daniel 9:24, Gabriel partially unfolds God’s timetable and purpose: “Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your Holy City to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy.” Christians see the words “atone for wickedness” and know immediately there has ever been only one atonement for sin and wickedness, which is the blood of Jesus Christ. That phrase refers to redemption through his blood. The other five items on that list include finish transgression, put an end to sin, bring in everlasting righteousness (eschatological glory), seal up vision and prophecy and anoint the Most Holy. He continues in verse 25: “Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, until the Anointed One [or Messiah], the ruler, comes, [that is a timetable between two specific points in time] there will be seven ‘sevens’ and sixty-two ‘sevens’.” It is not clear why the sixty-nine weeks are broken up into seven and sixty-two, but sixty-nine times seven years is 483 years from the issuing of a decree to rebuild Jerusalem until the Messiah comes. Jerusalem was rebuilt in stages, so there would have been a number of such decrees. This particular one would have been issued sometime in the era of Medo-Persian rule. Some try to reverse-engineer to determine the exact time Jesus entered Jerusalem, even up to the eighth decimal point, though very few real-world things are measured with that precision (certainly not apocalyptic visionary prophecy). Like golf, these sixty-nine weeks get us on the green with about a one-inch putt. Was there anybody around 500 years after Persian rulers first decreed that Jerusalem be rebuilt who is worth our attention and study? The book of Hebrews argues that although we do not see the fulfillment of all prophecy, we do know one person who fits this description — Jesus. From the time when Persian rulers started to issue decrees that Jerusalem be rebuilt until Jesus the Messiah comes was 483 years. What about that last seven — why did he stop at sixty-nine? Verses 25-26 continue: “It [Jerusalem] will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. After the 62 sevens [equaling 69 sevens] the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing [Jesus was rejected and killed by the Jewish nation; He had no allegiance from the them]. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary [multiple times, not just once]. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed.” That general statement is similar to Jesus’ statement in Matthew 24:6 and 8, “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars … All these are the beginning of birth pains.” That covers the intervening time between the 69th week and the final 70th week. History will unfold with wars and rumors of wars and other events. Verse 27 says, “He will confirm a covenant with many for one ‘seven.’ In the middle of the ‘seven’ [a repeated reference to three-and-a-half years — time, times and half a time; 1260 days; 42 months] he will put an end to sacrifice and offering [implying animal sacrifice and offering will be reestablished in a physical temple]. And on a wing [some versions add “of the temple”] he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.” Jesus urged the reader of Daniel to read with understanding, which is not easy. In the middle of this seven-year period still to come, after he makes a covenant to establish animal sacrifice, he will stop sacrifices to set himself up, as Paul says, “in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God.” [2 Thessalonians 2:4] The Angel’s Message In Daniel 10, we meet a mighty angel who gives him a revelation, similar to the mighty angel in the book of Revelation. He gives Daniel all the content for Daniel 11 and 12. The angel says in Daniel 10:14, “Now I have come to explain to you what will happen to your people [the Jews] in the future, for the vision concerns a time yet to come.” He introduces Daniel to the name of the archangel Michael, whom he designates as the special prince, an archangel who protects the Jews as a nation, the same angel who fights the red dragon in Revelation 12. “Antichrists” and The Antichrist Daniel 11 reveals many antichrists but points to one final Antichrist who will come. Daniel 11 covers the history of the Jews under the domination of Gentile kings, first the Persians briefly, and then the Greeks. The Greeks were the successors of the first Greek king, Alexander, who rose to a height of power. At the height of his power he was cut off and his kingdom divided into fourths. He had no sons, so it was given to his four generals. Two of them in particular rule over what we know as modern day Palestine, or the Promised Land. The kings of the North were the Seleucids who ruled over the Syrian area. The kings of the South were the Ptolemies, who ruled over Egypt. They would meet in battle again and again in Israel or Palestine. The Jews were trampled on by these Greek kings as they fought each other for control. The drama of those battles gives us a picture of the future ultimate Antichrist. In Daniel 11:36-37, one of these literal Greek kings, whom we can identify as Antiochus IV, called Epiphanes because he claimed to be a God, lived about two centuries before Christ. He was arrogant and blasphemous, and openly defiled the Jewish temple by erecting a statue of Zeus and offering pig’s blood in the Holy of Holies. He was not the final Antichrist. He was a minor Greek king who died, and that was that. But his activities are predicted in both Daniel 8 and Daniel 11. Daniel 11:36-37 seem to go far beyond anything Antiochus ever did: “The king will do as he pleases. He will exalt and magnify himself above every god and will say unheard-of things against the God of gods. He will be successful until the time of wrath is completed, for what has been determined must take place. [He will be successful until the clock runs out on him.] He will show no regard for the gods of his fathers or for the one desired by women, nor will he regard any god, but will exalt himself above them all.” Antiochus IV never did that. He actually honored the Greek gods, which is why he set up a statue of Zeus. Paul applies these words from Daniel 11 to a yet-future man of sin in 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4 with a near-paraphrase: “…for [the day of the Lord] will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness [who must be the Antichrist] is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.” That specific arrogant self-worship blasphemy did not happen when the Romans burned Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Titus, who burned it down, did not want it burned and tried to put the fire out, but it had gone too far. From the book of Hebrews, we know that God will never again accept animal sacrifice. The blood of bulls and goats is done, as far as God is concerned, but that does not mean there will not be a temple built. The man of lawlessness will set himself up in the temple the Jews are honoring, that they want rebuilt, which Paul calls “God’s temple.” He will proclaim himself to be God but is not God, any more than the building is God’s temple; but because the Jews think it is, it is a good platform for incredible blasphemy. 2 Thessalonians 2:8-12 says, “The lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders, and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.” That is not apocalyptic or visionary. It is an epistle, telling us what will happen. A man of sin is coming who will set himself up in “God’s temple”, proclaim himself to be God, and do signs and wonders. People will be deceived and will worship him. Then Jesus will come back and will destroy him. The Final Generation and the Counting of the Days At the end of Daniel 12, you have a counting of days. The angels ask how long it will be, a question they ask frequently. In every case, the answer is that we cannot know the exact time of the end. There will be a generation of Christians who will know the exact day of Jesus’ return. This 42 month, or 1,260 day, or 3 1/2 year period has been spelled out repeatedly and so clearly that we are waiting for it to happen. Jesus told us that when the abomination of desolation is set up, to start the clock. We have an exact measure which we do not yet know where to begin, but the starting point will be known when it is time, and then we will know how long until Jesus returns. Even more fascinating, to add to the puzzle, the end of Daniel 12 mentions 1,290 and 1,335 days, 30 and 45 days beyond the 1,260 days respectively. Daniel wanted to understand what it all meant, but God told him it was not for him to understand and to seal up the prophecy until the time of the end. The people who live then will understand. For those living in the final generation, when they see the abomination of desolation, they can start the clock. Remember that if those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect, they will be shortened. You will get to know how many more days remain because it will be horrible. Counting the Days Until the End Recall how Jesus said “As it was in the days of Noah so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.” In Matthew 24:36, he says, “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” In Acts 1:6-8, the apostles were told, “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Jesus even said, “No one knows, not even the son, but only the father.” We know he knows now; he knew when he ascended to heaven. He is telling us that no one knows now when that day will come. He was telling his disciples that he would not be returning later that afternoon. They had work to do, to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth. We also have work to do. We are building an ark where people can be rescued from the wrath to come. As it was in the days of Noah, there is a place of refuge to go to. The ark we are building is not made of wood nor covered with pitch. It is the Gospel message, an invisible Church, into which you enter to find safety from the wrath to come. In Genesis 7:4, God said to Noah, “Seven days from now I will send rain on the Earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the Earth every living creature I have made.” A week, a month, a year before that statement was made, did Noah know the exact day of the flood? No. What was he supposed to do? Finish the ark. After that statement was made, did he know the exact time the flood would come? Yes, he was able to count down until the exact day. He knew the day the flood was to come, and so it did As it was in the days of Noah, there will be a counting down. It is not for us. We do not see the temple or the abomination of desolation set up in it. It is not the Roman Catholic church or cults or false leaders. Our job is to build the ark, to preach the Gospel, until the Lord returns. But there will be a generation that will need to know. They will understand the 1,260 days, the 1,290 days and the 1,335 days. Closing Prayer Father, thank you for the details that we have studied in the book of Daniel today, getting ready for Revelation 13. Lord, I thank you for all the things that we can learn from studying this incredible prophet. I thank you for the things that we learned in the book of Revelation. Give us perseverance to be able to chew on the meat and swallow. Help us to put together a chronology and an understanding of what is yet to come. But in the meantime, God, help us to build; help us to be like the missionaries we send overseas; help us to be godly parents. Help us to do our role of leading people to Christ. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.