Podcasts about Roman Senate

Welcome back! In today's episode, we explore how the early Christians in Thessalonica dared to proclaim a different kind of “good news”—one that directly challenged the power and propaganda of the Roman Empire. --The PursueGOD Truth podcast is the “easy button” for making disciples – whether you're looking for resources to lead a family devotional, a small group at church, or a one-on-one mentoring relationship. Join us for new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Find resources to talk about these episodes at pursueGOD.org.Help others go "full circle" as a follower of Jesus through our 12-week Pursuit series.Click here to learn more about how to use these resources at home, with a small group, or in a one-on-one discipleship relationship.Got questions or want to leave a note? Email us at podcast@pursueGOD.org.Donate Now --The Gospel vs. The Empire: Why Jesus, Not Caesar, Is the Real Good NewsSetting the Stage: A Young Church in a Pagan CityThe Apostle Paul's letter to the Thessalonians is one of his earliest writings, addressed to a young and courageous church in the city of Thessalonica. Located in Macedonia, this city was a thriving cultural center in the Roman Empire. It was full of competing loyalties:Civic Assemblies that promoted public allegiance to Roman ruleJewish communities rooted in Old Testament traditionPagan mystery cults that worshiped local gods like Cabirus and DionysusImperial cults that demanded loyalty to Caesar, who was honored as “Lord” and “Savior”This cultural mixture made Thessalonica a spiritual and political battleground. It was in this context that Paul boldly preached a new message—one that didn't fit into any existing category.Caesar and the Counterfeit GospelTo understand the revolutionary nature of Paul's gospel, we need to grasp how the Roman Empire presented its rulers.Julius Caesar (100–44 BC) was a military genius and political reformer. After his assassination, the Roman Senate declared him divine—Divus Julius.His adopted son, Caesar Augustus, used that claim to establish himself as the “Son of God.” He was also called “Savior” and “Lord”, and he was praised for bringing peace to the empire—the Pax Romana.In 9 BC, an inscription from Priene declared Augustus's birthday “the beginning of the good news (euangelion)” for the world.This was the Roman Empire's version of the gospel: salvation through the emperor, peace through power, and a kingdom built by human might. It was political propaganda wrapped in divine language.Paul's Radical Message: The True GospelIn direct contrast, Paul brought a different kind of good news to Thessalonica.“For when we brought you the Good News, it was not only with words but also with power, for the Holy Spirit gave you full assurance that what we said was true…”— 1 Thessalonians 1:5 (NLT)This message centered on Jesus—not Caesar—as the true Son of God, the real Savior, and the eternal King. Paul wasn't just preaching theology; he was making a political and spiritual declaration. His message was:Not about the birth of Augustus, but the death and resurrection of Jesus (Acts...

Why does the Roman Empire still hold such power over our imagination — and our institutions? In this episode, Steve is joined by journalist and bestselling author Aldo Cazzullo, whose new book The Never-Ending Empire explores the enduring legacy of Rome in everything from politics to language to architecture — and now, the papacy itself. We discuss the Roman Republic, the Gracchi brothers, Julius Caesar, the transformation into the Christian empire, and the echoes of it all in today’s world — especially with the historic election of the first American pope, Leo XIV. What connects Augustus and Zuckerberg? Caesar and Washington? The Roman Senate and Capitol Hill? Tune in to find out. Visit Aldo’s work at https://www.instagram.com/cazzulloaldo or check out The Never-Ending Empire from your favorite bookseller.Support the show:Buy me a coffee! https://buymeacoffee.com/historyofthepapacyPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/historyofthepapacyBuy me a book! https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/1MUPNYEU65NTFHave questions, comments or feedback? Here are ways to contact me:Email Us: steve@atozhistorypage.comhttps://www.atozhistorypage.com/podcastMusic Provided by:"Sonatina in C Minor" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Funeral March for Brass" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)"Crusade Heavy Perfect Loop" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Agnus Dei X - Bitter Suite Kevin MacLeaod (incomptech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Londinium 90 AD Gaius & Germanicus compare the fourth century acclamatory Roman Senate to the twenty-first century acclamatory US Congress. Michael Vlahos Friends of History Debating Society @michalis_vlahos 1750 ROME

Sign-up for my free 20-day devotional, The Word Before Work Foundations, at http://TWBWFoundations.com--Series: Five Mere ChristiansDevotional: 4 of 5Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. (Matthew 13:34)Jesus revealed God's kingdom primarily through culture rather than politics. He never sought a seat on the Sanhedrin or in the Roman Senate. Instead, he changed the world with parables—tiny tales that stirred hearts to long for God's kingdom.Yet despite Jesus's example, many Christians put far more faith in political solutions than cultural ones to fix the world's problems today. We believe electing the “right people” and appointing the “right judges” will finally bring God's kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.This mindset explains why William Wilberforce, a member of the British Parliament in the 18th century, gets the lion's share of the credit for abolishing the slave trade—even though historians and Wilberforce himself gave equal credit to Hannah More, a poet, playwright, and novelist who outsold her contemporary Jane Austen ten-to-one. Eric Metaxas, a biographer of both Wilberforce and More, says, “How Wilberforce came to be the chief champion of abolition...has everything to do with Hannah More.” While Wilberforce worked to change politicians' minds, More worked to change the people's hearts through art that exposed slavery's horrors.Jesus's parables and Hannah More's poetry point to an important truth: We mere Christians glorify God by advancing his kingdom culturally and not just politically.What might this mean for you today? Consider abortion as a case study. Murder has no place in the kingdom of God. And so it is right to ask the question, “What is the political response to this problem?” But the far more powerful question is, “What is my creative response to this problem?” If you're an artist like Hannah More, your response might be to write stories and songs that break people's hearts toward orphans and birth parents. If you're a business leader, it could be creating generous maternity and paternity policies or funding adoptions for employees. If you work in a café, it might mean setting up a board with resources for pregnancy centers.Here's my point: Please don't wait for politicians to reveal God's kingdom—be the creator who makes it visible today. Whatever the issue is—abortion, racial injustice, gender transitioning, pollution, etc.— glorify God not just by working to change things politically but first and foremost culturally. Because as Andy Crouch said, “The only way to change culture is to create more of it.”

We all know that America like slide ideas and run w it … the house and senate is idea we took

January 16, 27 BCE. Octavian is granted the title Augustus by the Roman Senate, marking the beginning of the Roman Empire.Support the show! Join Into History for ad-free listening and more.History Daily is a co-production of Airship and Noiser.Go to HistoryDaily.com for more history, daily.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A Sermon for the Second Sunday after Christmas St. Matthew 2:13-23 by William Klock For us, a week has passed since we heard Matthew's account of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem and the visit by the shepherds.  But as we come to today's Gospel, roughly two years have passed in the story of Jesus, Joseph, and Mary.  For now, we'll skip over Matthew's account of the visit of the wisemen.  (That's for this coming week as we celebrate the Epiphany.)  So today we pick up the story at Matthew 2:13, Matthew tells us that after the wisemen had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream.  “Get up,” said the angel, “and take the child and his mother and hurry off to Egypt.” I can only imagine what Joseph was thinking.  This is the second time an angel has come to him to tell him what to do.  Remember from last Sunday's Gospel, Jospeh was thinking through how best to extricate himself from his upcoming marriage to Mary after he found out she was already pregnant.  The angel came to him in a dream.  “Don't be afraid!”  The famous first words of every angel.  “Don't be afraid.  Mary didn't cheat on you.  She's pregnant by the Holy Spirit and she's going to have a son and you need to name him ‘Jesus'—which means 'Yahweh saves'—because he will save his people from their sins.” So it's not like Joseph didn't know there was something special about Jesus.  Ditto for Mary.  Matthew tells the story from Joseph's perspective.  Luke tells it from Mary's.  Luke tells us about the visit she had from the angel and how the angel told her—also—to name the baby “Jesus”.  Why?  “Because he will be called the son of the Most High.  The Lord,” the angel said to her, “will give him the throne of David his father, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever.  His kingdom will never come to an end.”  That was all familiar messianic language to Mary.  There's that song that popular Christmas song that asks over and over, “Mary did you know?”  Yes.  She did.  She even composed a song about it that she shared with her cousin Elizabeth—who, you remember—was pregnant with John, who would prepare the way for Jesus.  Mary knew what her baby meant.  Think of the words she sang out in praise: My soul doth magnify the Lord… He hath shewed strength with his arm, he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the might from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath send empty away. He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel, as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed, for ever.   That night that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph both knew with absolute certainty that in him the God of Israel was about to act and that the world would never be the sme.  And not that he was about to act in some unforeseen way that exploded into history totally unexpectedly.  No.  This was the fulfilment of prophecy.  This was the fulfilment of the Lord's promises to his people.  The fact that shepherds came, having been told by angels; the fact that wisemen came, having been guided by a star—these were no mysteries to Mary and Joseph.  They knew from the beginning who Jesus was.  I'm sure they had lots of other questions: Why us?  How is this going to work?  But they knew from the beginning that this child would one day cast down the powers, the gods, the kings of the present evil age and set their world to rights.  That's what Mary's song is all about. So they knew that Mary's baby was a challenge to everything and everyone that stood in the way of God's new age.  As much as scripture gives us every reason to think that they trusted the Lord, I have to think that if they're anything like us, they still had their worries.  At the top of the list had to be King Herod.  And so, I suspect, Mary and Joseph probably didn't go around town announcing any of this.  Surely word got around at least a bit.  There were, of course, the shepherds.  But I expect Mary and Jospeh kept what the angel had told them on the low down as much as they were able.  And then the magi—the wisemen from far away—no one could mistake them riding into town with their camels.  And to hear that they'd been to see Herod, to ask about the new-born King of the Jews.  That was not good news.  Not at all.  Because now Herod knew about Jesus and Herod was what people today might call a “psycho”. Herod was an Idumean—today we'd call him an “Arab”.  His ancestors had been absorbed into Judaea, were circumcised and converted to Judaism—at least nominally.  Most people saw Herod as a pretender.  His decadent lifestyle was out of step with Judaism, but most of all, people hated him for the way he cozied up to the Romans and betrayed his people.  He had no right to call himself King of the Jews.  The Roman Senate had given him that title.  He was no descendant of David.  And all this made Herod more than a little insecure.  Deep down he knew he had no right to Israel's throne and it made him paranoid.  He murdered his own family members—even his wife—because he thought they were scheming against him.  Just before he died, he ordered the leading citizens of Jericho to be killed so that the people would be weeping as his funeral procession passed through the city. So Joseph and Mary had to be worried to hear that Herod had been told about this young “King of the Jews” in Bethlehem.  If Herod would murder his own family at a hint of sedition, what would he do to a new-born rival?  I expect Jospeh was already trying to think through their best course of action.  And then the angel came and said, “Get up and take the child and his mother and hurry off to Egypt.  Stay there until I tell you.  Herod is going to hunt for the child to kill him.” Matthew says that Joseph wasted no time: “He got up and took the child and his mother by night, and went off to Egypt.  He stayed there until the death of Herod.”  And then Matthew adds a quote—just as we saw him do in Chapter One, last week, with that quote from the Prophet Isaiah about the virgin conceiving and bearing a son whose name means “God with us”.  Matthew does it again.  He does this all through is Gospel, but we have to know our Jewish scriptures to know who he's quoting.  In this case it's Hosea 11:1.  Matthew's Jewish audience would have recognised it instantly and it's an indictment against our poor knowledge of the Bible that we need a footnote in our Bibles to tell us.  Anyway, Matthew writes, “This happened to fulfil what the Lord said through the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son.'”  We'll come back to this in a bit. Matthew then continues with the story.  You'll remember that instead of reporting back to Herod about the child as he'd asked them to do, the wisemen—because of their own visit from the angel—they bypassed Herod on their way home.  So Matthew tells us that when Herod realised that he'd been tricked by the wisemen, he flew into a towering rage.  He dispatched men and killed all the boys in Bethlehem and in all its surrounding districts, from two years old and under, according to the time the wisemen had told him.”  And then another quote from the Prophets, this time from Jeremiah 31:15: “That was when the word that came through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled:  There was heard a voice in Rama, crying and loud lamentation.  Rachel is weeping for her children, and will not let anyone comfort her, because they are no more.” And then another visit by an angel.  Matthew writes in verse 19: “After the death of Herod, suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt. ‘Get up,' he said, ‘and take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel.  Those who wanted to kill the child are dead.'  So he got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel.  But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling Judaea instead of his father Herod, he was afraid to go back there.  After being advised in a dream'—again—he went off to the region of Galilee.  When he got there, he settled in a town called Nazareth.  This was to fulfil what the prophet had spoken: ‘He shall be called a Nazarene.'” Again, we sort of have this idyllic scene of Christmas in our heads: Jesus in a manger.  No crying he makes, of course.  The shepherds kneel adoringly.  Mary and Joseph sit there peacefully with their halos glowing.  Even the animals stifle all their natural noises and gather around to adore the baby.  “Silent night…all is calm…sleep in heavenly peace,” loops in our heads. But when you read the actual story as Matthew tells it things aren't nearly so peaceful.  Matthew tells us of the birth of Jesus at a time and a place of trouble, of violence, and of fear.  Jesus was born in a world of darkness, into a world controlled by powers and gods and kings who stood opposed to him.  Before he had learned to walk or to talk, the wrath of a psychotic king forced his family to flee to Egypt.  The shadow of the cross lies dead across the Christmas story.  And yet all this is in keeping with what Matthew told us last week.  If Jesus is the fulfilment of Isaiah's prophecy of Immanuel—of God with us—we'd expect this.  God's people longed for his presence, they longed for his deliverance, because the world was not as they knew it should be.  And so God came to them in the midst of the darkness, the brokenness, the evil, the pain—the violence and injustice—the sin and death.  God entered the world of a king who would murder dozens of innocent children just to keep his investment in the present evil age secure.  Think about the fact that on the three days after Christmas Day the Church commemorates St. Stephen, St. John, and the Holy Innocents.  John was exiled to the island of Patmos for preaching the good news about Jesus.  Stephen—the first martyr—was stoned to death outside Jerusalem for preaching to the people that Jesus was the fulfilment of Israel's story.  And the Holy Innocents—the collateral damage of the first attempt on Jesus' life.  It's a reminder that, yes, the light has come into the darkness, but that there are those who love the dark and there are those invested in it. Brothers and Sisters, as much as the light has shined in the darkness and as much as the darkness has not overcome it—as St. John writes in the opening of his Gospel—the darkness still remains and the darkness still fights back.  Herod's murder of the innocents of Bethlehem—probably a few dozen baby boys—pales in comparison to the millions of unborn children murdered in modern times in our once Christian nations.  The wars and violence of Herod's or of Caesar's day pale in comparison to the wars and violence of the last century—all too often perpetrated by supposedly Christian nations, kings, presidents, and prime ministers.  We see the light around us too often subverted by the darkness.  First by Modernists and now by Postmodernists, the gospel virtues that once transformed the West are plucked from the gospel tree, left to go feral, and fed back to our culture, twisted and abused—darkness masquerading as light. It's easy to get discouraged, isn't it.  Last year I read historian Tom Holland's book Dominion.  It's about how Christianity transformed the West.  The Gospel came into a world of Herods and Caesars and taught us things like mercy and grace that hadn't been known before.  It transformed sexual ethics.  It gave status to women and children and to the poor.  It ended slavery.  And now you look at the world around us and everythings reverting back into the darkness.  Large segments of the church have or are selling out.  I look at the alumni page for my seminary on Facebook and it seems everyone is “deconstructing”—and it always ends the same way—with denying the exclusivity of Jesus and an embracing of Postmodernism and the twisted sexual ethics of our post-Christian culture.  I've listened to local pastors who spend their time apologising for the Bible, blurring the lines it makes clear, and walking their people through deconstructing their faith.  Others have sold out to the materialism of our secular culture and are preaching a crossless gospel of health and wealth.  The gospel—the real gospel—is the answer, but it seems like it falls on deaf ears these days and that the people lost in today's darkness have become resistant to it.  It's easy to lose hope. But Brothers and Sisters, that's when I think of Matthew as he drops his quotes from the Prophets through his telling of the good news.  Remember that I said last week that Matthew saw God's promises down through the ages as lights in the darkness.  Last summer Veronica I did some railgrade riding on our bikes.  We rode through some tunnels—some of them long and windy enough that there was no light at the end—at least not at first—and so there were small lights at intervals, guiding the way, until you finally came around that final corner and daylight blazed into the tunnel.  I didn't appreciate those lights until I rode through the Adra Tunnel in the mountains between Kelowna and Penticton.  It's one of the longest rail tunnels in BC and it's been closed since the 80s.  Volunteers have spent the last few years making repairs and it's just about ready to be reopened.  At present the trail bypasses it and there are fences across the old railgrade to keep people out of the tunnel.  But when I got there, the fences were off to the side.  I took the turn and pretty soon found myself inside the tunnel.  It goes through something like a 270° turn and pretty soon I was in pitch dark, riding slowly, cold water dripping on me.  There are no little lights to light the way.  And I almost ran—smack!—into a grader that was parked in the dark.  I could just as easily have run off the grade and into a ditch or a wall. Like the lights in those tunnels, God's promises led his people through the darkness—around the corners, keeping them out of the ditch, keeping them from running—smack!—into obstacles sitting in the darkness—so that he could lead them out into the light.  At the time those little lights seemed like really big deals—those little lights like Passover and the Exodus, like the torah and the tabernacle, like King David and like the return from Exile.  They gave the people some bearings.  The lights gave them hope.  But what many didn't realise at the time was that those lights were leading the people—preparing them—to understand how God works, to understand that he is faithful, so that when they finally came out into the bright light of Jesus, into the bright light of the gospel—they'd understand that this is where the story had been taking them all along.  This is what Matthew's up to all through his Gospel.  Like we saw last Sunday with that bit of Isaiah and the baby, Immanuel, who served as the sign to accompany the Lord's promise to deliver his people from Israel and Syria.  And here, Matthew quotes Hosea 11:1, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”  At first it looks like Matthew is ignoring what that passage means in Hosea.  It's not looking forward.  It's looking back.  Israel was the Lord's son whom he had called out of Egypt.  That meant—at the time, back in the dark days of Hosea—that the Lord would not abandon the people: Israel was his beloved son and he'd gone to great lengths to deliver Israel from Egypt.  And Matthew saw that little light back there in the darkness of Hosea's day and it led him towards the light that had come in Jesus.  Jesus brings Israel's story to completion.  He's not just “God's son” in the sense that he's divine.  He's “God's son” in the sense that he is the embodiment of Israel.  Remember what I've said before: the King represents his people.  And so Jesus came to represent his people, to finally accomplish what they'd failed at all those centuries, and then to die on their behalf the death that they deserved. Matthew does something similar with the prophecy spoken by Jeremiah.  He holds up Rachel weeping for her children as a backdrop to Herod's murder of the baby boys of Bethlehem.  But when Jeremiah spoke those words, he was drawing on the imagery of Rachel to describe the pain of Israel's exile to Babylon and to proclaim the hope of God's promise to renew his covenant and to restore his people—to bring Israel back from her long exile.  The long darkness is full of weeping and mourning, but at the end is the Lord's deliverance. And then that bit of Isaiah 11 that Matthew quotes about Jesus being a Nazarene.  Isaiah uses the Hebrew word nazir.  It means “branch” and through Isaiah the Lord promises that he will be faithful to the promises he'd made to David and his descendants.  A branch will grow out of the stump of Jesse.  It's about a new beginning for the royal line of David.  Matthew hinted at this already in Joseph's genealogy.  The fact that the Old Testament nowhere mentions Nazareth, the fact that the Isaiah passage about the branch has nothing to do with Nazareth, that's okay.  Matthew knew that the lights along the tunnel—even if it doesn't look like it—they all lead to the same place.  Everything in Israel's story was leading to Jesus and so he takes Isaiah's prophecy of the nazir, the branch, and ties it to Jesus' hometown of Nazareth.  Matthew's sort of saying that we know Jesus is the promised branch because he came from “Branchville”.  Maybe it's a more “creative” way of using the Old Testament than we're comfortable with, but for Matthew it worked—again—because he knew that everything God said and everything God did—the whole story of the God of Israel and his people—was leading them through the darkness to Jesus and to the light of this new age, this new world, this new creation. And Brothers and Sisters, that's why as much as it's tempting to lose hope as we look at the surrounding darkness and even as the darkness creeps in and takes ground that was once won by the gospel, I don't lose hope.  Because the scriptures assure me of the faithfulness of God to his promises.  Because I know he has, in the birth, in the death, in the resurrection of Jesus done the hard part already.  Because he has poured out his Spirit.  And as surely as he called Abraham and his family and led them through the darkness—through slavery and through exile and everything in between—and then brought them finally out into the blazing glory of Jesus and the gospel, I know that God, who has established his church and has equipped us with his own Spirit to proclaim the good news—to carry his light into the darkness—will not fail to bring us eventually to that day when his glory covers the earth as the waters cover the sea, when every last enemy has been put under his feet, even death itself, when every tear is wiped away, and everything is once-and-for-all set to rights. Matthew saw God's promises fulfilled all through the story—even at its darkest.  As Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane he said, himself, “All this has taken place that the writings of the prophets might be fulfilled.”  God is sovereign and God is faithful, Brothers and Sisters.  Even as the darkness mustered its forces and rose to its full height to deal a death blow to Jesus, it was doing so as part of a plan orchestrated by the Lord.  Darkness, unwittingly, concentrating itself all in one place so that, through Jesus, it could be defeated when he rose, triumphant over sin and death.  And that is why I remain full of hope.  God's faithfulness to his promises did not end in the First Century.  He remains faithful today.  If we will only walk with him in faith, his light—his gospel promises, his Spirit indwelling us—will lead us through today's darkness. Let's pray: Almighty God, you have poured upon us the new light of your incarnate Word:  Grant that this light, enkindled in our hearts, may shine forth in our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Two men would be called the same thing: "King of the Jews." One man was given the title by the Roman Senate for his ruthless and victorious military campaigns. The other man was given the title as he was crucified by Roman authorities. By bringing Herod & Jesus together at the SAME time in history, God shows (once again) that He uses people who appear to be weak to triumph over those who appear to be strong. Herod the Great seemed unstoppable, but as it turns out, he was no match for (even baby) Jesus.

In the last episode, we talked about Caesar Augustus, ruler of the vast Roman Empire at the time of Jesus' birth. One of the ways he made governing this massive area more manageable was to establish local kings to rule on his behalf. At this time, there arose in Israel a young man who fit the bill perfectly. He was half-Jew, half-Edomite, born into a politically connected family, and hungry for power. His name was Herod.He curried favor with Augustus and at 25 years old was conferred by the Roman Senate with the title, “King of the Jews.”Though Herod is known as an accomplished builder, history remembers him even more as a butcher. He was almost insanely suspicious, and his suspicions drove him to murder. He murdered his wife, his sons, his rivals, anyone who threatened his power. So you can imagine his response when the Magi showed up asking where they could find the new King of the Jews! Matthew 2 says Herod was “disturbed,” literally agitated, all shook up. But rather than eliminating these foreign visitors, he used them. People accustomed to getting and keeping power are masters at using those around them.  “Go find this child, and when you do, come back to me so I can worship him too.” Is that really what he intended to do? No! He played these guys. People who grasp for power are not only users, they are deceivers. When the Magi didn't return to Herod, but having been warned by God they went home a different way, Herod was furious. He ordered the slaughter of every baby boy under the age of two in the region of Bethlehem. People who seek to hold on to power, to stay in control, use people… they deceive people… and they ultimately hurt people. Though Herod died shortly after this, the Herod spirit didn't die. It's alive and well and threatens us today. Every one of us has areas of our lives that we struggle to submit to Jesus' rulership – private areas over which we desire to stay on the throne, protected places where we want to wear the crown. Ask yourself these questions and see if the Lord may identify a Herod spirit in your life.In what area of my life do I have a tendency to use people? At work? In your family? Perhaps you control or manipulate people to get what you want.In what area of my life am I guilty of deceiving people?  Whether you openly lie or leave others with false impressions, where do you shade the truth to maintain control?In what area of my life am I willing to hurt people? It may not be physical harm, but you're willing to hurt people through gossip or slander. Through lashing out in anger or rage. Or maybe you freeze them out and seek to punish them through passive aggression. Are you willing to lay down your crown and surrender control to the true King, Jesus?

Step into the rich and vibrant garden of Puritan wisdom with Charles Spurgeon, one of the most beloved preachers and authors in recent Christian history. In Flowers from a Puritan's Garden, Spurgeon prayerfully selects and expands upon the profound insights and analogies gleaned from Thomas Manton's sermons. Each “flower” in this garden is a spiritual truth, lovingly cultivated and presented with Spurgeon's signature warmth, wit, and pastoral care. Whether you are a long-time admirer of Puritan writings or new to their influence, Flowers from a Puritan's Garden offers a refreshing and spiritually nourishing read. Perfect for daily devotions, personal study, or as a gift to those seeking encouragement in their Christian journey, this book will help readers to see the beauty of God's truth as it applies to our lives. Discover the timeless beauty of following Christ through the eyes of one of history's greatest preachers, and allow the truths in these pages to blossom in your heart. About the Author Charles Haddon (C. H.) Spurgeon (1834-1892) was a British Baptist preacher. He started preaching at age 16 and quickly became famous. He is still known as the “Prince of Preachers” and frequently had more than 10,000 people present to hear him preach at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. His sermons were printed in newspapers, translated into many languages, and published in many books.

pWotD Episode 2682: Cleopatra Welcome to Popular Wiki of the Day, spotlighting Wikipedia's most visited pages, giving you a peek into what the world is curious about today.With 137,832 views on Wednesday, 4 September 2024 our article of the day is Cleopatra.Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator (Koinē Greek: Κλεοπάτρα Θεά Φιλοπάτωρ lit. 'Cleopatra father-loving goddess'; 70/69 BC – 10 August 30 BC) was Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC, and its last active ruler. A member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, she was a descendant of its founder Ptolemy I Soter, a Macedonian Greek general and companion of Alexander the Great. Her first language was Koine Greek, and she is the only Ptolemaic ruler known to have learned the Egyptian language. After her death, Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire, marking the end of the last Hellenistic-period state in the Mediterranean, a period which had lasted since the reign of Alexander (336–323 BC).In 58 BC, Cleopatra presumably accompanied her father, Ptolemy XII Auletes, during his exile to Rome after a revolt in Egypt (a Roman client state) allowed his rival daughter Berenice IV to claim his throne. Berenice was killed in 55 BC when Ptolemy returned to Egypt with Roman military assistance. When he died in 51 BC, Cleopatra began reigning alongside her brother Ptolemy XIII, but a falling-out between them led to an open civil war. Roman statesman Pompey fled to Egypt after losing the 48 BC Battle of Pharsalus in Greece against his rival Julius Caesar (a Roman dictator and consul) in Caesar's civil war. Pompey had been a political ally of Ptolemy XII, but Ptolemy XIII, at the urging of his court eunuchs, had Pompey ambushed and killed before Caesar arrived and occupied Alexandria. Caesar then attempted to reconcile the rival Ptolemaic siblings, but Ptolemy's chief adviser, Potheinos, viewed Caesar's terms as favoring Cleopatra, so his forces besieged her and Caesar at the palace. Shortly after the siege was lifted by reinforcements, Ptolemy XIII died in the Battle of the Nile; Cleopatra's half-sister Arsinoe IV was eventually exiled to Ephesus for her role in carrying out the siege. Caesar declared Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy XIV joint rulers but maintained a private affair with Cleopatra that produced a son, Caesarion. Cleopatra traveled to Rome as a client queen in 46 and 44 BC, where she stayed at Caesar's villa. After Caesar's assassination, followed shortly afterwards by that of Ptolemy XIV (on Cleopatra's orders), she named Caesarion co-ruler as Ptolemy XV.In the Liberators' civil war of 43–42 BC, Cleopatra sided with the Roman Second Triumvirate formed by Caesar's grandnephew and heir Octavian, Mark Antony, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. After their meeting at Tarsos in 41 BC, the queen had an affair with Antony which produced three children. He carried out the execution of Arsinoe at her request, and became increasingly reliant on Cleopatra for both funding and military aid during his invasions of the Parthian Empire and the Kingdom of Armenia. The Donations of Alexandria declared their children rulers over various erstwhile territories under Antony's triumviral authority. This event, their marriage, and Antony's divorce of Octavian's sister Octavia Minor led to the final war of the Roman Republic. Octavian engaged in a war of propaganda, forced Antony's allies in the Roman Senate to flee Rome in 32 BC, and declared war on Cleopatra. After defeating Antony and Cleopatra's naval fleet at the 31 BC Battle of Actium, Octavian's forces invaded Egypt in 30 BC and defeated Antony, leading to Antony's suicide. When Cleopatra learned that Octavian planned to bring her to his Roman triumphal procession, she killed herself by poisoning, contrary to the popular belief that she was bitten by an asp.Cleopatra's legacy survives in ancient and modern works of art. Roman historiography and Latin poetry produced a generally critical view of the queen that pervaded later Medieval and Renaissance literature. In the visual arts, her ancient depictions include Roman busts, paintings, and sculptures, cameo carvings and glass, Ptolemaic and Roman coinage, and reliefs. In Renaissance and Baroque art, she was the subject of many works including operas, paintings, poetry, sculptures, and theatrical dramas. She has become a pop culture icon of Egyptomania since the Victorian era, and in modern times, Cleopatra has appeared in the applied and fine arts, burlesque satire, Hollywood films, and brand images for commercial products.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 02:14 UTC on Thursday, 5 September 2024.For the full current version of the article, see Cleopatra on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm neural Salli.

With Hannibal having shattered Rome's image as a dominant power at the Battle of Cannae, the cities of southern Italy begin forming alliances with Carthage, bringing the Republic close to collapse in 216 BC. Yet, with the Roman Senate remaining defiant, refusing to accept anything less than total victory in the Second Punic War. Driving them to desperate extremes to assemble new Legions amidst horrific casualties, a ruined economy, food shortages and mass allied defections. This, while Scipio and the surviving troops from Cannae are marched to Campania to prevent the region from falling to Hannibal.  If you would like to support my work directly, you can kindly do so here: patreon.com/warlordsofhistory Check out the Ancient Heroes podcast: ancientheroes.net  

Sunday, 4 August 2024   When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. Matthew 2:3   “And Herod the king, having heard, he was agitated, and all Jerusalem with him” (CG).   The previous verse noted that the magicians had seen the star of the King of the Jews in the direction of the sunrising and they had come to worship Him. With that noted, Matthew now records, “And Herod the king.”   Herod was a power-hungry king who feared any challenge, real or imagined, to his reign. Of him, Charles Ellicott writes –   “The old king (the title had been given by the Roman Senate in B.C. 40) was drawing to the close of his long and blood-stained reign. Two years before he had put to death, on a charge of treason, his two sons by Mariamne, his best-loved wife, through sheer jealousy of the favour with which the people looked on them. At the time when this history opens, his eldest son, Antipater, was under condemnation.”   So fearful was he of any challenge to his throne that he had his own sons executed for simply being popular. Understanding his personality, Matthew next records, “having heard, he was agitated.”   Herod certainly questioned how magicians from the East could come looking for the King of the Jews but not be looking for him. He sat on the throne over the Jewish people! Because of this, Matthew notes that he was agitated.   The word is tarassó. HELPS Word Studies says it means to “put in motion (to agitate back-and-forth, shake to-and-fro); (figuratively) to set in motion what needs to remain still (at ease); to ‘trouble' (‘agitate'), causing inner perplexity (emotional agitation) from getting too stirred up inside (‘upset').”   One can see Herod standing there beside himself, distraught with the thought of a challenge to his throne. Certainly because of this, it next says, “and all Jerusalem with him.”   The word “all” is used in a comparative sense. An important point in Scripture is that not every “every” means “every,” and not all “all's” mean “all.” There were certainly people sitting in local cafes that had no idea what was transpiring in the royal hall. There were servants tending to the homes of their masters who would have no idea about the coming of the magicians. In all, probably very few of the people in the city had an inkling about the report.   Rather, in this case, Jerusalem stands for the seat of power. Therefore, it is referring to those who were in the royal court with Herod. They would have certainly been agitated, knowing his proclivity for harming others, and they would be walking on eggshells at the thought of what he might do in this instance.   Life application: Herod was an Idumean by birth, meaning an Edomite. Idumean is simply the Greek form of the word. Of this people group, the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus says that about 129 BC John Hyrcanus –   “...subdued all the Idumeans; and permitted them to stay in that country, if they would circumcise their genitals, and make use of the laws of the Jews; and they were so desirous of living in the country of their forefathers, that they submitted to the use of circumcision, and of the rest of the Jewish ways of living; at which time therefore this befell them, that they were hereafter no other than Jews.” Antiquities, Book 13 Chapter 9 Section 1   What this means is that the Edomites were brought into the nation of Israel, becoming Jews. This is no different than an Arab or a Japanese person today converting to Judaism. They become a part of the Jewish people. Whether their origins are remembered and held against them by other supposedly pure-blooded Jews or not is irrelevant. They are now Jews.   The line of Herod was a part of this conversion, but the racial animosities obviously remained, and despite being a Jew, it is obvious from historical records that he was remembered for his ancestral heritage more than his acceptance into the Jewish culture.   In the Bible, there are references to Edom, Moab, Ammon, etc., that are contained in prophecies that extend even beyond our time. And yet, there is no nation of Edom, Moab, etc. What this means is that the Bible is using the lands, once inhabited by those people groups, as emblematic of the people in those lands today.   Thus, when a future prophecy refers to Philistia, it is speaking of the modern-day Gazans, not Philistines. In referring to Ammon, Edom, or Moab, it is generally speaking of the Arabs who occupy Jordan. In other words, the lands that were originally settled by these people retain those name designations in Scripture.   This is important to understand because the Edomites of the past are now incorporated into the Jews of today. When the Romans exiled the Jews, those Edomites (Idumeans) who had assimilated into the Jewish people were a part of that exile. There are no “Edomites” today in a real sense. The nation does not exist. Instead, only the lands where they were are considered Edom.   Remember this as you read the Bible. There is a baseline for what is presented. That baseline does not change unless the change is recorded in Scripture. But whatever the final designation in Scripture is, that is what is to be considered when analyzing the world today.   Understanding this, the biblical model which refers to Christians is one that is set and unchanging. Jesus came, fulfilled the law, and introduced the New Covenant. Entry into what God is doing now takes place through the baseline that has been set because of Jesus Christ.   Being “Jewish” is no longer what designates a person who is in a right standing with God. Jews may be in a right standing, or they might not be. But the standard that makes it so is by coming to God through Christ Jesus. This is what God is doing in the world. The pattern is set because the Bible is complete.   And for those who have come to Christ, there are no longer any distinctions that should separate us. Herod may have been considered an Edomite even though he was a Jewish convert. However, such designations are no longer to be looked down on as if one group is better than another.   A Japanese, a Kenyan, and a Jew all walked into a church...   When they got there, they were (and remain) on an equal footing before God because of faith in Jesus Christ –   “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.” Galatian 3:26-29   Lord God, how grateful we are for what Christ has done for us. We are all one in Him through faith in His completed work. We are granted access to Your heavenly throne where You hear us regardless of who we once were. Thank You for the wonderful blessing of being Your child through simple faith in Him. Hallelujah and Amen.

The month of July is named after Julius Caesar. In 44 BC, after his assassination, the Roman Senate renamed the month of Quintilis after him in honor of the month he was born. The fact that he was appointed dictator for life probably had something to do with it.  All the emperors that came later never changed it, so instead of Quintilis, we have July.  So stay tuned for the Quintilis episode of questions and answers on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors Available nationally, look for a bottle of Heaven Hill Bottled-in-Bond at your local store. Find out more at heavenhilldistillery.com/hh-bottled-in-bond.php Sign up today at butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily to choose your free offer and get $20 off. Visit BetterHelp.com/everywhere today to get 10% off your first month. Use the code EverythingEverywhere for a 20% discount on a subscription at Newspapers.com. Visit meminto.com and get 15% off with code EED15.  Listen to Expedition Unknown wherever you get your podcasts.  Get started with a $13 trial set for just $3 at harrys.com/EVERYTHING. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Ben Long & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Title: Two Missionaries, A Proconsul, and A Sorcerer Text: Acts 13:1-12 FCF: We often struggle obeying the Lord's often daunting command to make disciples. Prop: Because our God is Lord of all and puts down all opposition, we must obey the Lord's command to make disciples. Scripture Intro: [Slide 1] Turn in your bible to Acts chapter 13. In a moment we'll read from the Legacy Standard Bible starting in verse 1. You can follow along in whatever version you prefer. Because this chapter lacks Lukes typical transition to a new narrative, we see this inherently connected to the previous one. The previous narrative focused on the troubles the church faced as the gospel goes to Gentiles in primarily gentile cities in the middle east. Today we'll see more troubles, but the setting changes. Now the gospel goes west. And because it is another episode in the same narrative, we will see similar themes running through this sermon as we have in the previous two. However, the application diverges. What will happen as the gospel leaves the Holy Land? How does it leave the Holy Land? Does it go west because of the great planning of mission's agencies? Who will be the missionaries? Let's find out. Stand with me out of respect for and to focus on the reading of the Word of God. Invocation: O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His commandments, let Your ear be attentive and Your eyes open, to hear the prayer of Your servant that I now pray before You for Your people. We come before You and humbly ask You to descend to us and feed us on Your Word. For it is in Jesus name we pray… Amen. Transition: Another lengthy sermon this week so we'll go right to the text this morning. I.) God's sovereign hand expands His church to the uttermost parts of the earth, so we must obey the Lord's calling on our lives to go and make disciples. (1-3) a. [Slide 2] 1 - Now there were at Antioch, in the church that was there, prophets and teachers: Barnabas, and Simeon who was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. i. So along with Peter we have also left behind Jerusalem for the time being. ii. We will be back but the focus of the book of Acts now shifts to the westward expansion of the church via the missionary endeavors of Barnabas and Saul. iii. We find ourselves again in Antioch. As a reminder Antioch was the third most strategic and important city to the Roman Empire. Only less important that Rome and Alexandria. iv. Antioch was the capital city of Syria, with around 500,000 people living in the city at the time. v. It was a melting pot of sorts consisting of Jewish, Roman, Persian, Greek, Arabian, and other nationalities. vi. The church had recently exploded with growth in the city and under the guidance of Barnabas and Saul were growing in maturity as well. vii. We fast forward, probably to sometime after the famine and before the Jerusalem council. viii. Probably around AD 48 give or take a few months. ix. At this point, the church of Antioch was thriving. Several prophets and teachers in the church were gathered together. x. Although many are named here, only Barnabas and Saul have any information available to us from other passages of scripture. xi. We also see an interesting side bar that Herod the tetrarch's foster brother or childhood friend had converted to Christ and joined the church and became a prophet and/or teacher. xii. Herod the Tetrarch was Herod Antipas who was the Herod who presided over one Roman trial of Jesus. xiii. He is probably the source for much of Luke's information on the Herodian family. b. [Slide 3] 2 - And while they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” i. We tend to see things in scripture as formulaic. ii. When Luke says that while they were ministering and fasting the Spirit spoke to them, we might conclude that this is how to be open to the Spirit's leading by ministering to Him and fasting. iii. However, Luke more likely is simply saying that while in the midst of their normal duties of serving the Lord and abstaining from food for a time to devote themselves in prayer, the Holy Spirit spoke to them. iv. So rather than this being a formula for how to get the Spirit to speak to you, instead, this is saying the opposite. He came to them while they carried out their normal practice. v. So what does the Spirit say to these prophets and teachers? 1. He says “Set apart for Me” - What does it mean to set apart? a. Set apart means to mark off, to appropriate or to separate. b. It means to appoint or to single out. c. Essentially the Spirit is commanding the church to designate Barnabas and Saul for a particular mission. 2. What is the work that Barnabas and Saul were called to? a. To a certain degree we could simply read the rest of the book of Acts to determine that. b. However, if we go back to the conversion of Saul that gives us a clue too. c. Saul was to be sent to Gentiles, Kings, and Jews. He was also to suffer for the name of Christ. d. Barnabas no doubt inherited this calling with Saul joining him for ministry. e. And that is certainly what we will see coming up in the next couple chapters of the book of Acts. f. Barnabas and Saul will take the gospel to Gentiles, rulers, and Jews. c. [Slide 4] 3 - Then, when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away. i. Fasting and praying is not always for the purpose of seeking God's will. 1. The prophets and teachers did not need to confirm that what the Holy Spirit said was indeed the will of God the Father. For whatever the Spirit says is from the Father. 2. So, their prayer and fasting here is primarily associated with the importance of the event and the desire that God would go with them to bless the thing He has called them to do. 3. Thus, they prayed as Augustine prayed, “Command what you will and give what you command.” ii. We also see here the practice of laying on hands. 1. We should not see the laying on of hands as some sort of channeling event where prayer is used to transfer power to the person on whom the hands are laid. 2. Instead, laying on hands is a sign of setting apart or appointment. 3. They are obeying what the Spirit said to do by appointing them to this mission and then sending them or releasing them to go on that mission. d. [Slide 5] Summary of the Point: Again, we see the Lord's Sovereign hand guiding the expansion of His church. Although the gospel has gone out to every people group from Jews to Gentiles and everyone in between, now the gospel will leave the Holy Land and head west. Chapter 13 is a pivot point in the book of Acts where the gospel now goes to the uttermost parts of the earth. And of course, Who should we find at the very beginning of that work but the Holy Spirit. The Acts… of the Holy Spirit is the best title for this book. God expands His church. But how does the Holy Spirit choose to accomplish this? By the faithful obedience of His people to go and to take the gospel. So, in obedience to the Holy Spirit, they went out and obeyed His call. They left for their mission to the Gentiles, Kings, and the Jews. We too must faithfully obey our Lord to make disciples, knowing that He alone is responsible for the expansion of His church. Transition: [Slide 6 (blank)] So, if the Holy Spirit has commissioned us and goes with us, does that mean that we will face no opposition? Oh no. If anything, that means that we will face more opposition. But in the face of that opposition, that is when our faith is tested. Will we believe God to the point of continuing to obey, even when we are opposed. Let's see what happens to Barnabas and Saul next. II.) Demonic forces of this age will always seek to oppose the spread of the gospel, but we must obey the Lord's calling on our lives to go and make disciples. (4-8) a. [Slide 7] 4 - So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia and from there they sailed to Cyprus. 5 And when they reached Salamis, they began to proclaim the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews, and they also had John as their helper. i. So, Barnabas and Saul set out on the mission that they were called to, directly by the Holy Spirit. ii. Luke makes it very plain that they were not called to this because men called them to it. The prophets and teachers simply received them and their mission from the Lord and sent them on their way. iii. [Slide 8] They first came to the port city of Seleucia. Then they traveled to Cyprus. iv. In what is the biggest city on the east of the island, they begin their ministry in Salamis. v. Notice how Barnabas and Saul began ministering to the Jew first. vi. Why is this the case? 1. There is a specialness to the Jewish nation. a. God made this nation out of nothing to bring about the fullness of the promises God made to Abraham through the Messiah. The gospel is for the Jews because it has been given to them since before they were a nation. b. God promises in the Old Testament that if we bless His people we will be blessed. And the gospel being for the Jews is one of the greatest ways we can “bless” the Jewish nation. We can give them the gospel. Telling them they worship a false god because they have not received their Messiah, is one sure way we can bless and not curse the Jewish nation. 2. A second reason the gospel should go to the Jews first is because the groundwork for them to believe the gospel has already been laid. a. Along with the specialness of the Jewish people, there is also a rich revelatory history. b. Barnabas and Saul can begin teaching from a place that is far more advanced than where they had to begin with pagans. c. The establishment of the scriptures, the 10 commands, the promise of a Messiah, all of this is already believed and accepted. They must simply point to Jesus of Nazareth as the fulfillment of these. d. However, lest we think this makes them an easier group to win to Christ – we will find that nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, we see the greatest opposition to Barnabas and Saul at the hands of Jews. vii. They are said to minister to synagogues, plural, which indicates to us that there was no doubt a large population of Jews in this city. viii. Luke does not tell us, at all, about the results of this preaching. Nor does he tell us that they also went to Gentiles in Cyprus. It is probably safe to assume some measure of success in the preaching of the gospel to the Jews and Gentiles. ix. But if that is true, why did Luke not record it? x. What is clear is that Luke wishes to record one particular event from this first scene of this episode. And he hasn't quite gotten to it. xi. John also called Mark is with them through all of this, helping them no doubt in various capacities. b. [Slide 9] 6 - And when they had gone through the whole island as far as Paphos, they found a magician, a Jewish false prophet whose name was Bar-Jesus, i. Traveling throughout the island of Cyprus, would have taken around 7 days of walking to achieve. ii. To do so would require frequent stops along the way. No doubt Barnabas and Saul preached in synagogues throughout the island and found lodgings and provisions enough to enable them to continue their journey. iii. This implies that they had some success as new converts to Christianity would house them along the way and provide provisions to them to make it to the next city. iv. They finished their trip on Cyprus when they reached the heavily populated capital city of Paphos. v. It is here that they encounter a magician. vi. A few things of interest here. vii. This is not the first magician we have met so far. viii. We encountered Simon the Sorcerer before in Samaria. ix. As we indicated at that time, we ought not assume these are conjurers of cheap tricks but actually possessed some sort of power. Certainly demonic. Probably through means of witchcraft, soothsaying, divining and necromancy. x. Whether they knew this power was demonic or not, for a Jew to wield this power would have demonstrated a direct disobedience to the Old Testament scriptures which forbid it. What is interesting is that of the three episodes in Acts where magicians are mentioned… All of them are Jews. No doubt because of Daniel's ability to interpret dreams, all the way back to the days of the Babylonian Empire, Jews had received a reputation as being diviners. How far they have fallen yes? xi. Added to this, Luke reveals that this man, who goes by two names here, is also a false prophet. He, like the long line of false prophets before him, is a prophet for hire to the proconsul. Most likely he gave messages that pleased the proconsul or even perhaps that were revealed to him through his witchcraft. xii. Finally, his name is Bar-Jesus. Or, Son of Joshua, Son of Jesus or Son of the Savior. xiii. It isn't clear what the significance of his name is, but Luke gives him two names in this text. xiv. The first could indicate to us some of what he was prophesying falsely about. xv. “Son of” is an idiom used to express an inheriting of qualities from the other. To say you are a son of thunder means you inherit qualities of thunder. You are like thunder. Son of God would mean you are like God, perhaps even just like Him. So, to say you are the Son of the Savior… is to suggest that you are on the same level as Him. xvi. Perhaps he is claiming to be some kind of special prophet in relationship to the Jesus movement. Perhaps he was the first in a long line of “Greater Prophets” that would emerge after Jesus, indicating further revelation beyond what Jesus said. xvii. Luke is sparing with the details but that doesn't prevent us from wondering about this man. And based on what Luke does say – it isn't difficult to imagine this man, Bar-Jesus, as a leader of one of the first Christian cults to exist. c. [Slide 10] 7 - who was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, a man of intelligence. This man summoned Barnabas and Saul and sought to hear the word of God. i. A proconsul is a ruler or magistrate that controlled provinces directly under the government of the Roman Senate. ii. Luke records that Sergius Paulus is a man of great intelligence and one would have to be in order to be given authority over such an important province like the island of Cyprus. iii. In his intelligence and wisdom, he summoned Barnabas and Saul so he could hear the gospel message. d. [Slide 11] 8 - But Elymas the magician (for so his name is translated) was opposing them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith. i. In what is the first of many correlations to Saul's conversion, we see that this man takes his stand in opposition to the Christian faith. ii. Some commentators guess that there is a financial aspect to Bar-Jesus' opposition. That if the proconsul converted, he would dismiss any who practiced witchcraft. This is certainly true and probably somewhat a motive for Bar Jesus' actions here. But if so, Luke does not focus on that. Luke focuses rather on the spiritual war that is going on here. He is trying to turn the proconsul away from the gospel. iii. In so doing, he proves to be an agent of darkness with demonic power and blasphemous intentions. iv. Luke grants him another name. Elymas. This is a Greek transliteration of the Aramaic word for “wise”. v. At the time it would be used to refer to a wise man or a magus… a magi… a magician. vi. In other words, this man's name was Sorcerer. vii. Therefore, it could be that neither of these names were truly his birth given name. Indeed, each name that Luke has provided to us seems to indicate the depths to which his soul has descended. viii. Not only claiming to be the son of the savior but also claiming to be a Sorcerer. e. [Slide 12] Summary of the Point: Against the Lord's provision and leading the forces of darkness stand ready to oppose His church at every turn. Here a powerful and wise man seeks to hear the gospel. He is interested in Barnabas and Saul's teachings. He summons them to speak. But an agent of darkness, one who consults the spirits and thrives on their power does what he is able to do to turn the proconsul away from the gospel. Make no mistake my friends… evangelism is spiritual warfare. Without giving too much power to the forces of darkness, we must recognize that they have been permitted to exercise some level of power and dominion over this world. Even at this time after the Lord's ascension. And I do not think that their power and influence has been eliminated since this time. Barnabas and Saul were faced with a choice. Do they continue to preach the gospel? Or do they run in fear from this one who opposes them? We are faced with the same choice. My friends we must trust the Lord and continue to obey His command to make disciples… even, and perhaps especially when we are opposed. Transition: [Slide 13(blank)] So what do Barnabas and Saul do? Do they run? Do they head home and call it quits on this missionary journey? III.) God is sovereign even over the forces of darkness, so we must obey the Lord's calling on our lives to go and make disciples. (9-12) a. [Slide 14] 9 - But Saul, who was also known as Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, fixed his gaze on him, 10 and said, “You who are full of all deceit and fraud, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, will you not cease to make crooked the straight ways of the Lord? i. So, in the symmetry of Luke's writing, he introduces another man with two names. ii. Paul, which is no doubt what he was named from birth, who went by his Jewish name, Saul in his endeavor to be more Jewish and less Hellenistic, has now readopted his Roman name as he goes to the gentiles to share the gospel. iii. The rest of the book of Acts will refer to Saul… as Paul. And so then shall I

pWotD Episode 2552: Cleopatra Welcome to popular Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of a popular Wikipedia page every day.With 138,235 views on Saturday, 27 April 2024 our article of the day is Cleopatra.Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator (Koinē Greek: Κλεοπάτρα Θεά Φιλοπάτωρ lit. Cleopatra "father-loving goddess"; 70/69 BC – 10 August 30 BC) was Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC, and its last active ruler. A member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, she was a descendant of its founder Ptolemy I Soter, a Macedonian Greek general and companion of Alexander the Great. After the death of Cleopatra, Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire, marking the end of the last Hellenistic-period state in the Mediterranean and of the age that had lasted since the reign of Alexander (336–323 BC). Her first language was Koine Greek, and she was the only known Ptolemaic ruler to learn the Egyptian language.In 58 BC, Cleopatra presumably accompanied her father, Ptolemy XII Auletes, during his exile to Rome after a revolt in Egypt (a Roman client state) allowed his rival daughter Berenice IV to claim his throne. Berenice was killed in 55 BC when Ptolemy returned to Egypt with Roman military assistance. When he died in 51 BC, the joint reign of Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy XIII began, but a falling-out between them led to an open civil war. After losing the 48 BC Battle of Pharsalus in Greece against his rival Julius Caesar (a Roman dictator and consul) in Caesar's civil war, the Roman statesman Pompey fled to Egypt. Pompey had been a political ally of Ptolemy XII, but Ptolemy XIII, at the urging of his court eunuchs, had Pompey ambushed and killed before Caesar arrived and occupied Alexandria. Caesar then attempted to reconcile the rival Ptolemaic siblings, but Ptolemy's chief adviser, Potheinos, viewed Caesar's terms as favoring Cleopatra, so his forces besieged her and Caesar at the palace. Shortly after the siege was lifted by reinforcements, Ptolemy XIII died in the Battle of the Nile; Cleopatra's half-sister Arsinoe IV was eventually exiled to Ephesus for her role in carrying out the siege. Caesar declared Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy XIV joint rulers but maintained a private affair with Cleopatra that produced a son, Caesarion. Cleopatra traveled to Rome as a client queen in 46 and 44 BC, where she stayed at Caesar's villa. After Caesar's assassination, followed shortly afterwards by that of Ptolemy XIV (on Cleopatra's orders), she named Caesarion co-ruler as Ptolemy XV.In the Liberators' civil war of 43–42 BC, Cleopatra sided with the Roman Second Triumvirate formed by Caesar's grandnephew and heir Octavian, Mark Antony, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. After their meeting at Tarsos in 41 BC, the queen had an affair with Antony which produced three children. He carried out the execution of Arsinoe at her request, and became increasingly reliant on Cleopatra for both funding and military aid during his invasions of the Parthian Empire and the Kingdom of Armenia. The Donations of Alexandria declared their children rulers over various erstwhile territories under Antony's triumviral authority. This event, their marriage, and Antony's divorce of Octavian's sister Octavia Minor led to the final war of the Roman Republic. Octavian engaged in a war of propaganda, forced Antony's allies in the Roman Senate to flee Rome in 32 BC, and declared war on Cleopatra. After defeating Antony and Cleopatra's naval fleet at the 31 BC Battle of Actium, Octavian's forces invaded Egypt in 30 BC and defeated Antony, leading to Antony's suicide. When Cleopatra learned that Octavian planned to bring her to his Roman triumphal procession, she killed herself by poisoning, contrary to the popular belief that she was bitten by an asp.Cleopatra's legacy survives in ancient and modern works of art. Roman historiography and Latin poetry produced a generally critical view of the queen that pervaded later Medieval and Renaissance literature. In the visual arts, her ancient depictions include Roman busts, paintings, and sculptures, cameo carvings and glass, Ptolemaic and Roman coinage, and reliefs. In Renaissance and Baroque art, she was the subject of many works including operas, paintings, poetry, sculptures, and theatrical dramas. She has become a pop culture icon of Egyptomania since the Victorian era, and in modern times, Cleopatra has appeared in the applied and fine arts, burlesque satire, Hollywood films, and brand images for commercial products.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:39 UTC on Sunday, 28 April 2024.For the full current version of the article, see Cleopatra on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm Gregory Neural.

Content warning for discussion of genocide and child death Episode music can be found here: https://uppbeat.io/track/paulo-kalazzi/heros-time Day 5 will take a look into the historic event known as the Asiatic Vespers, one of the only genocide committed against Rome instead of by it. Episode Notes Below: Hey, Hi, Hello, this is the History Wizard and welcome back for Day 3 of Have a Day w/ The History Wizard. Thank you to everyone who tuned in for Day 2 last week, and especially thank you to everyone who rated and/or reviewed the podcast. I hope you all learned something last week and I hope the same for this week. For this week's episode we're going to be talking about a genocide committed AGAINST the Romans. This is particularly unusual because usually the Romans are the ones committing genocides and war crimes. Historically speaking the event is called the Asiatic Vespers, which should explain the pun in the episode title. And if it doesn't, I'm not going to be explaining it. Google is free. Our timeline places us in the Roman Republic. The Punic Wars are over, Carthago cecidit and Rome had steadily been expanding its borders in all directions. By the time the Punic Wars were over Rome held all of Italy, most of Iberia, most of Greece, parts of northern Africa, including Carthage, and were on the cusp of moving into the Anatolia (what is today part of the nation of Turkey). You might think that Rome would be tired of wars after their decades of fighting against the Carthiginians, but their victories only made them hungry for more. During the final decade of the 2nd century BCE the Romans were engaged in 2 distinct wars. One in northwest Africa (the area that is today Algeria) against King Jurgatha of Numidia called the Jugurthine War and one fought around western Europe against various Celtic and Germanic tribes who had invaded from the Jutland Peninsula (modern day Denmark and parts of Northern Germany) called the Cimbrian Wars. Both wars would end in Roman victories, and we will discuss them very briefly now as they are relevant to our later discussion, but not the main focus of this episode. The Jugurthan War took place two generations after the fall of Carthage. King Massinisa, an ally of Rome against Carthage died in 149. He was succeeded by his son Micipsa, who was succeeded by two sons and an illegitimate nephew. Adherbal (son), Hiempsal I (son), and Jugurtha (the nephew). Micipsa, fearing conflict amongst his three heirs bid them split the kingdom up into three parts. One to be ruled over by each of them.  The Roman Senate has been given the authority, by Micsipa, to make sure his will was carried out, but being the corrupt piece of shit it was, the Senate allowed itself to be bribed by Jugurtha to overlook his crimes after he assassinated Hiempsal and forced Adherbal to flee to Rome for safety. Peace WAS declared, albeit briefly, between the two men, although in 113 BCE Jugurtha, once again, declared war on Adherbal. Rome, fearing instability in the region, acquiesced to Adherbal's request for aid and sent troops to the fight and ambassadors to Jugurtha to demand peace negotiations. Jugurtha was clever though, and knew how much the Romans loved to talk. So he kept them doing just that until Cirta, Adherbal's capital ran out of food and had to surrender. Jugurtha immediately had Adherbal executed as well as all Romans who had aided him in the defense of Cirta. Now, the Pax Romana didn't exist just yet, but Rome still took a hard line against anyone who dared to harm her citizens. So in 112 BCE the Jugurthine War was declared. We're not going to go into any great detail of the Jugurthine War, suffice it to say that Rome won, it lasted until 105 BCE, and that some historians see this war as the true beginning of the fall of the Roman Republic. Gaius Marius was the victorious general and consul of the Jugurthine War (and also the Cimbrian War we're going to talk about next) and he would use his successes in these, and other wars, to try and seize greater power in Rome. That brings us to the Cimbrian War. Although, to be perfectly clear, these two wars happened at, pretty much, the same time. The Jugurthine War was 112 to 105 BCE and the Cimbrian War was 113 to 101 BCE, and Gaius Marius fought in both of them. Dude must have had the speed force to be in both places at once.  The Cimbrian Wars were another war in a long line of “Rome didn't intend to conquer this region, but an ally called for help and they definitely planned on staying after they won the war”. According to Roman sources the Cimbrian peoples came down from the north and, eventually, attacked the Roman allied Celtic federation the Taurisci, who asked Rome for aid against the Cimbrians. One of the interesting things about the Cimbrian War was that, after an initial victory against the Roman general and consul Gnaeus Papirius Carbo the Cimbrians were perfectly poised to carry their invasion into Italy itself, but instead of doing so they turned and pushed their way into Gaul (modern day France). The war against the Cimbri was an unmitigated disaster until Marius came in and shored up the Roman strategy. Marius, it is interesting to note, was the uncle of Julius Caesar. Famed for being the worst hostage and the best knife practice dummy in history. The Cimbrian War would end with Roman victory and would also spark the rivalry between Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix which would eventually lead to the first of Rome's great Civil Wars which would see Sulla march on Rome and see Marius outlawed and exiled, albeit very briefly. I said earlier that there were two major wars during the end of the 2nd century BCE. There were actually 3. The Third being the Second Servile War that took place from 104 until 100 BCE on the island of Sicily. Servile War was the name that Rome gave, or that historians gave, to the three large scale slave uprisings that occurred during the time of the Roman Republic. If you're wondering where Spartacus is, he won't be around until the Third Servile War. The reason to bring up the Second Servile War is that this one also involved our good friend Gaius Marius. He was not one of the generals in this war, but he was in northern Africa trying to recruit aid for the war with the Cimbri from the Roman province of Bithynia in Asia Minor. There, after discovering that King Nicodemus III had no one to spare for Rome as all able bodied men had been enslaved by tax collectors, the Senate issued an edict stating that no Roman ally could be enslaved. This led to discontent on the island of Sicily as several hundred slaves were freed, but many were not as they were not from Roman allied states. This, combined with the abuses that were rampant in Roman Republic slavery led to a massive, and ultimately futile, uprising against the Republic.   Now, Rome and the Kingdom of Pontus, which had been declared in 281 BCE and had been ruled over by a string of Kings all named Mithradates were neighbors across the Anatolia, but during the Cimbrian and Jugurthine Wars they, frankly, had nothing to do with each other. Rome had some interests in the area due to their alliance with Nocodemus and the Kingdom of Bithynia, but they were very occupied with the Cimbrian War, the Jugurthan War, the Second Servile War, and then in the beginning of the 1st century BCE, the Social Wars that they fought against former, autonomous, allies living on the Italian peninsula (the Social War also ended in Roman victory).  With the beginning of the Social War Mithradates VI saw the oppurtunity to expand further into the Anatolia and allied with Tigranes I of Armenia and declared war against the Roman client state of Cappadocia. Mithradates and Tigranes were quickly able to conquer Cappadocia and expel Nicodemus from Bithynia. When Rome heard about this they demanded that both kings be restored to their thrones and then, stupidly, urged those kings to go to war against Pontus and Armenia. Mithradates responded to this aggression by conquering Cappadocia and Bithynia and conquering most of Roman Asia with about a year. Once Rome was no longer distracted by the Social War they would turn their attention to Pontus and Mithradates, although it would take almost 2 years for Rome to mobilize armies against Mithradates.  See, at first the Roman general Sulla was placed in charge of the forces against Pontus, but political backbiting from Publius Sulpicius Rufus, a political opponent of Sulla, almost saw the army taken from him and placed in the hands of his rival Marius. Sulla responded to this threat by marching into Rome with his forces and taking control by force, forcing Marius into a brief exile. Mithradates would take the delay in Rome's response to carry out the event that would come to be called the Asiatic Vespers. The Vespers were a genocide targeted all Roman and otherwise Latin speaking peoples in the western Anatolia The genocide were a calculated response to the Roman declaration of war. It was meant to force cities to take a side: "no city that did his bidding now could ever hope to be received back into Roman allegiance". The killings took place probably in the first half of the year 88 BC, although precise dating is impossible. Valerius Maximus indicates a death toll of approximately 80,000, while Plutarch claims a death toll of 150,000. The reported numbers, according to fragments of Dio, are however probably exaggerated. They were planned, with Mithridates writing secretly to regional satraps and leaders to kill all Italian residents (along with wives, children, and freedmen of Italian birth) thirty days after the day of writing. Mithridates furthermore offered freedom to slaves which informed on their Italian masters and debt relief to those who slew their creditors. Assassins and informers would share with the Pontic treasury half the properties of those who were killed. Ephesus, Pergamon, Adramyttion, Caunus, Tralles, Nysa, and the island of Chios were all scenes of atrocities. Many of these cities were under the control of tyrants, and many of the inhabitants enthusiastically fell upon their Italian neighbours, who were blamed "for the prevailing climate of aggressive greed[,] acquisitiveness[,] and... malicious litigation". Based on this we can see the initial uprising against Roman rule in the region as a kind of class uprising against oppressors. This brings us to an important discussion about the use of violence in social revolutions. Violence is, and always will be, a necessary tool in creating social change. However, there will always be a line that should not be crossed.  Mithradates, in inciting enslaved peoples to rise up against their masters and in debtors to kill their creditors, was based as fuck. That's some capital G, capital S good shit. Those are the oppressors. Those are the people committing violence against the people of the Anatolia. Political violence SHOULD be directed at the people in positions of authority, especially if those people are using that authority to oppress marginalized communities. The part where the morality starts to slough off like flesh off a 5 day old corpse is when the WOMEN and CHILDREN start to be killed. The First Mithradatic War (there would be two others) would begin immediately after Rome heard of these massacres. The war would run from 89 BCE until 85 BCE and would, ultimately, end in Roman victory. The war ended with the signing of the treaty Dardanos and the end result was status quo ante bellum. Which is a Latin phrase that basically means. Everything is the same as it was before the war. Mithradates retreated back to Pontus and everything that had been a Roman client state returned to being so.  Of course none of this would bring back to roughly 80,000 Roman and Latin speaking civilians that had been killed during the Vespers, but necromancy doesn't exist and revivify can only be cast within a minute after death anyway.  That's it for this week folks. We don't have any more review at the time of recording this, so we're gonna jump right into the outro. Have a Day! w/ The History Wizard is brought to you by me, The History Wizard. If you want to see/hear more of me you can find me on Tiktok @thehistorywizard or on Instagram @the_history_wizard. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe to Have a Day! On your pod catcher of choice. The more you do, the more people will be able to listen and learn along with you. Thank you  for sticking around until the end and, as always, Have a Day  

Content warning for discussion of genocide Episode music can be found here: https://uppbeat.io/track/paulo-kalazzi/heros-time Day 4 will take a deep dive into the Punic Wars and the Sacking of Carthage. The Fall of Carthage is widely considered to be the first recorded genocide in history and we will be looking at the hows the why and the whos of it all. Episode Notes below: Hey, Hi, Hello, this is the History Wizard and welcome back for Day 4 of Have a Day w/ The History Wizard. Thank you to everyone who tuned in for Day 3 last week, and especially thank you to everyone who rated and/or reviewed the podcast. I hope you all learned something last week and I hope the same for this week. This week we're going to be going all the way back to the purported origins of my field of study. This week we're going to be discussing History's first genocide… probably. Remember that genocide require intent to destroy a specific group of people, and the destruction of Carthage during the Third Punic war is the first time in history that was can demonstrate that intent, at least so far. As always we are not going to be diving right into the event itself. All history exists within specific cultural, national, and ethnic contexts. Genocide moreso than any other type of event. No nation just wakes up one day and suddenly decides to go on a mass murder spree. So what caused Rome and Carthage, two states that had been allies and friends for hundreds of years to suddenly fight three wars against each other and ultimately, in the case of Rome, wipe Carthage off the map? Following the Pyrrhic War and throughout the middle of the 3rd century BCE Rome and Carthage because the two preeminent powers of the Mediterranean. During this time Carthage would come to dominate southern Spain, much of the coastal regions of North Africa, the Balearic Islands, Corsica, Sardinia, and the western half of Sicily, in a military and commercial empire. Whereas Rome had subjugated almost the entirety of the Italian peninsula and finally driven the last Greek colonies off of the mainland. In 265 BCE a group of Italian mercenaries called the Mamertines appealed to both Carthage and Rome for aid after they had seized the city of Messana on the island of Sicily (modern day Messina) from the Kingdom of Syracuse. Carthage immediately entered the war, but on the side of Hiero II the King of Syracuse. The Romans, as Romans are wont to do, debated for a while about this. They didn't really want to go to war to support people who had stolen a city from its rightful owner, and as Carthage had already entered on Syracuse's side, entering the war at the Mamertine's request could lead to a war with Carthage. However,  Appius Claudius Caudex filled his fellow senator heads, as well as the heads of the general assembly, with thoughts of booty and plunder. Many of the senators were already arguing that there was a strategic and monetary advantage to gaining a foothold on Sicily. The First Punic War officially began when the first Roman sandal made landfall in 264 BCE. By the way, in case you're wondering why it's called the Punic war, and not the Carthaginian War, Punicus was a term the Romans used to refer to the people of Carthage, hearkening back to their Phonecian origins. When the Romans landed Messana was under siege by the combined forces of the Carthaginians and the armies of Syracuse. Sources are unclear as to why, but first the Syracusans and then the Carthiginians withdrew from the siege. Rome's armies, under the command of Caudex marched south and put Syracuse under siege, but having only brought two legions with them they did not have the forces or supplies for a protracted siege.  Immediately this war was looking to be a bad idea for Rome, as Carthage had nearly overwhelming naval superiority at the beginning of the war. Indeed it is somewhat shocking, at face value, that Rome was able to win the First Punic War as the majority of the 23 year long war was fought on, or very near the water. To try and counter the Carthiginians naval prowess the Romans introduces a device called a corvus to their ships. The corvus was a 4 foot wide and 36 foot long bridge that was attached to the front mast of a Roman quinquereme. It has a large, hooked spike attached to the underside of the front of the bridge and was used to attach Roman ships to Carthiginian ones and allow for swift boarding of enemy vessels. While the corvus did have some measure of success it made Roman ships very front heavy, made them far less maneuverable, and in heavy seas were practically useless. Now, Sicily was a nightmare for an attacking force. Its hilly and remarkably rugged terrain made moving large bodies of troops very difficult. The ground of Sicily heavily favored the defender. In fact, in 23 years of fighting on the island, only two full scale pitched battles were fought.The Battle of Agrigentum in 262, which was a Roman victory, and the Battle of Panormus, which was also a Roman victory. Agrigentum was a particularly interesting case. Both Roman consuls at the time  Quintus Mamilius Vitulus and Lucius Postumius Megellus were in the field with 40,000 Roman soldiers.  A large army has an even larger stomach though, and the consuls had two major problems. First, because of Carthage's naval superiority it was exceedingly difficult to keep their forces supplied by sea. And to compound those issues, neither consul had experience moving around armies of this size. So after seizing Agrirentum, right around harvest season. The consuls dispersed their men to the fields in order to harvest as much food as the possible could. And, of course, that was the moment that Hannibal Grisco (a different Hannibal than the one famous for marching elephants over the Alps) attacked the Roman forces. Rome's forces would rally after this initial assault and rout the Carthiginian forces before besieging and capturing the city, selling 25,000 people into slavery. The war was less direct after Agrigentum for a few years. Rome made failed attempts in Corsica, Sardinia, and Northern Africa. For several years the war followed a pretty simple pattern. Rome was superior on land. Carthage was superior at sea, and sieges sucked for everyone. In 265 BCE Rome gained two new consuls Marcus Atilius Regulus and Lucius Manlius Vulso Longus. Both men, frustrated by the stalemate that was raging on Sicily decided to take the fight to Africa itself. After a series of relatively quick sieges of Aspis and Adys Rome had taken the city of Tunis, this put them only 10 miles away from Carthage itself. Carthage tried to sue for peace, but the terms that Regulus offered were so harsh that Carthage decided to fight on. Rome would actually suffer one of its largest defeats at Tunis, though it wouldn't come from a Carthiginian general. Rome lost to a Spartan mercenary commander Xanthippus. In 255 BC Xanthippus led an army of 12,000 infantry, 4,000 cavalry and 100 elephants against the Romans and defeated them at the Battle of Tunis. Rome would lose much of its fleet and tens of thousands of allied soldiers in various storms around the Mediterranean. There was even a time, following the Battle of Phintias, that it looked like things were finally turning around for Carthage. However, by 248 Carthage only had control over two cities on the island, Lilybaeum and Drepana and both nations' coffers were nearly emptied. Carthage tried to get a 2000 talent (approximately 52,000 kilograms of silver)  loan from Ptolemaic Egypt, but was denied. Rome turned to its wealthiest private citizens. Asking them each to build a single quinquereme and promising repayments from the reparations they would make Carthage pay after the war. It should also bear mentioning that Rome lost about 17% of its fighting age men over the course of this war.  The consuls who finished off the war were Gaius Lutatius Catulus and Quintus Valerius Falto (Rome elected new consuls yearly). These two consuls defeated the last of Carthages fleet in the Battle of Aegates Island. After this battle was finished Rome continued to put pressure on Lilybaeum and Drepana until Carthage decided to sue for peace. The Treaty of Lutatius was signed and brought the First Punic War to its end: Carthage evacuated Sicily, handed over all prisoners taken during the war, and paid an indemnity of 3,200 talents over ten years. This wouldn't end Carthages' woes though. In 237 BC Carthage prepared an expedition to recover the island of Sardinia, which had been lost to the rebels (mostly foreign soldiers they were unable to pay fully after the war) In a fit of cruelty, the Romans stated they considered this an act of war. Their peace terms were the ceding of Sardinia and Corsica and the payment of an additional 1,200-talent indemnity. Weakened by 30 years of war, Carthage agreed rather than enter into a conflict with Rome again; the additional payment and the renunciation of Sardinia and Corsica were added to the treaty as a codicil. The tensions caused by THIS particular bit of tomfuckery would be one of the major determining factors in the start of the Second Punic War. The mark that the First Punic War made on history cannot be understated. It was not only the longest Rman war to date, but it was the most devastating maritime war of the ancient world. Over the course of it Rome built over 1000 ships and would use the skills they learned and honed in this war to rule the seas, virtually uncontested for the next 600 years. Following the First Punic War Carthage turned its eyes to the North. They knew they would need to expand their power base and accrue a much greater store of wealth if they were ever going to stand on equal footing with Rome again. The Italian Peninsula and the surrounding island were off limits, so they turned to Iberia. They would meet Rome again in Iberia, but in 226 the two powers signed the Treaty of Ebro, fixing the River Ebro as the border between the two empires. It's likely that Rome had no intention of maintaining the terms of this treaty as some few years after they established an alliance with the city of Saguntum, a city which existed within the Carthiginian sphere of influence. Hannibal (yes, that one, with the Elephants) saw this as an act of aggression from Rome and besieged the city of Saguntum, eventually seizing it after 8 months of siege. Rome sent Quintus Fabius Maximus to the Carthage senate with peremptory demands. When these were rejected, as Rome knew they would be, war was declared in the spring of 218 BC. The Second Punic War would last for 17 years and would, again, end in victory for Rome. The war got off to somewhat of an odd start. Both Rome and Carthage planned to invade the other, but neither side seemed to really know what the others were doing or where they would be. It's likely, given the way the previous war had gone, that Rome expected a naval attack from Carthage, and so they remained in the south putting together their plan to invade Africa again. Hannibal though had a different plan. He intended to swing up through Iberia, starting in modern Cartagena, cross the Alps, which he did in 15 days, and sweep down on Rome from the North. He successfully crossed the Alps with 20,000 infantry, 6,000 cavalry, and an unknown number of elephants (he'd left Iberia with 37 of them, but it's unclear how many survived the crossing.) Hannibal then proceeded to dog walk the Roman army around Italy for the next two years. The only challenge he really faced was from Quintus Fabius Maximus, nicknamed Cuncator (the Delayer) by his contemporaries for his adoption of the Fabian Strategy. Well, his creation really. The strategy is named after him. The Fabian strategy employs hit and run tactics and seeks to avoid pitched battle. Fabian hoped to use this harrying tactic to enter into a battle of attrition, hoping that Hannibal would run out of supplies and be forced to leave or surrender. In 216 Rome elected two new consuls Gaius Terentius Varro, who advocated pursuing a more aggressive war strategy, and Lucius Aemilius Paullus, who advocated a strategy somewhere between Fabius's and that suggested by Varro. The Senate also authorized the raising of a double sized army, some 86,000 men. The largest Roman army in history at that point. Varro and Paullus lost most of their army in Rome's greatest military disaster, the Battle of Cannae. Some 67,500 Roman troops died in this one battle. This was almost the end for Rome. They almost lost the whole war in that one Battle. Hannibal was supported by Gaulish and Spanish mercenaries, he was up against military incompetents, and he was about to be joined by the King of Macedonia as an ally. In 215 Phillip V launched the First Macedonian War. It was time for Rome to bring back the one man who had stood a chance against Hannibal. It was time to bring back Fabius. Fabius became consul again in 215 BC and was re-elected in 214 BC. Rome, now more desperate than they'd been in a long time also drastically reduced its standards for soldiers. Enrolling slaves, criminals and those who did not meet the usual property qualification. By early 215 BC they were fielding at least 12 legions; by 214 BC 18; and by 213 BC 22. By 212 BC the full complement of the legions deployed would have been in excess of 100,000 men, plus, as always, a similar number of allied troops. The majority were deployed in southern Italy in field armies of approximately 20,000 men each. This was insufficient to challenge Hannibal's army in open battle, but sufficient to force him to concentrate his forces and to hamper his movements. For 11 years after the Battle of Cannae, the war was raged across Southern Italy in a constant give and take as Carthage captured Roman cities, only for them to be recaptured. The fighting in Italy was fierce and seemed to be going mostly in Hannibal's favor, but Italy was not the only theatre of this war. The Iberian Theatre could best be described a a holding action for the first several years. As Rome sought to hold Carthiginian forces in Iberia and prevent them from reinforcing Hannibal by crossing the alps again (although Hannibal's brother Hasdrupal was able to cross the Alps with 35,000 additional troops).  Scipio Africanus was ultimately successful in Iberia, clearing it of Carthiginian control. He almost lost control of the region when the Iberian leaders sought to fight against the Romans who they had just fought with against the armies of Carthage. They'd expected Rome to leave after defeating Carthage here, but Rome wouldn't give up land it held and sent Claudius Nero over to stabilize the situation. This left Iberia under Roman control and Italy fighting for its life against Hannibal and Hasdrubal. In a move of some desperation and no little boldness Rome decided to finally launch its invasion of Africa in 204 BCE led by the famed Scipio Africanus, and after defeating Carthage in two major battles, Carthage elected to sue for peace and recall Hannibal and his brothers from Italy.  Rome and Carthage entered into peace negotiations. The Roman Senate ratified a draft treaty, but because of mistrust and a surge in confidence when Hannibal arrived from Italy, Carthage decided to take one last stab at achieving victory. Thus did the Battle of Zarna begin. Hannibal tried to use a charge of 80 elephants to break Rome's lines, but Rome was able to turn the charge back and the elephants wound up devastating their own forces. The new peace treaty dictated by Rome stripped Carthage of all of its overseas territories and some of its African ones. An indemnity of 10,000 talents of silver was to be paid over 50 years and hostages were taken. Carthage was forbidden to possess war elephants and its fleet was restricted to ten warships. It was prohibited from waging war outside Africa and in Africa only with Rome's permission. And so there would be peace for 50 years. Sort of, but not really. Carthage finished paying off their indemnity in 151, 50 years after the end of the Second Punic War and was, once again, economically prosperous. They were, really, no military threat to Rome anymore, but many Roman senators refused to believe that. Most famous of which was the senator Marcus Porcius Cato, also known as Cato the Censor. Cato had been part of an assembly sent to Carthage in around 153 BCE and notes how wealthy and prosperous it seemed. He was famous for ending all of his speeches before the senate with the phrase Ceterum (autem) censeo Carthaginem esse delendam ("Furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed"), which is often shortened to merely Carthago delenda est (Carthage must fall). In 149 BCE Rome sent its armies to Carthage, under the pretext of a punitive expedition because Carthage was allegedly engaging in illicit military operations. The Third Punic War, which lasted for a mere three years, really only had the one major engagement. That being the Siege of Carthage, which would eventually be led by Scipio Aemilianus, the adoptive grandson of Scipio Africanus. Initially Carthage tried to surrender and, indeed, surrendered all of their weapons. But Rome would not be swayed by this. They wanted Carthage destroyed, and ultimately it would be. The early years of the siege saw little success. Carthage was a hard city to besiege, and it still had some allies in the region. So in addition to contending with the city itself, Roman forces needed to be on guard for allied towns and cities who would try to come to Carthage's aid. After 3 years though it would end in a single week of some of the most horrific slaughter of the ancient world. In Spring of 146 Scipio launched a full scale adult on the harbor area and successfully breached the walls of Carthage. Over six days, the Romans systematically worked their way through the residential part of the city, killing everyone they encountered and setting the buildings behind them on fire. The city was razed to the ground, over 700,000 people were killed, including women and children, and some 50,000 survivors were sold into slavery. The next part of the story that you might know, if you know this story at all, is that Scipio then proceeded to salt the earth around Carthage so that nothing would ever grow there again. This story is almost certainly apocryphal. Which is fancy historian speak for “full of shit”. There are no ancient sources for this event. The salting story entered the academic literature in Bertrand Hallward's article in the first edition of the Cambridge Ancient History (1930), and was widely accepted as factual. What IS factual though is that Rome committed genocide in sacking Carthage. There was a clear and deliberate plan to destroy every single vestige of the people of Carthage, either through mass slaughter or slavery. There was clear intent to destroy planned and carried out by the duly elected leader of Rome and its armies. It literally doesn't get any more clear than this. Intent was vocally demonstrated by Cato and physically carried out by Scipio. That's it for this week my friend. Thank you for coming with me on this educational foray into the past. We've got some more reviews to read for this week, so let's jump right into them. *Read Reviews* Have a Day! w/ The History Wizard is brought to you by me, The History Wizard. PLease remember to rate, review, and subscribe to Have a Day! On your pod catcher of choice. The more you do, the more people will be able to listen and learn along with you. Thank you for sticking around until the end and, as always, Have a Day.

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Need for understanding the true gospel as the kingdom; Appointing His kingdom to a new group; Bible at the time of Christ; Power of the Pharisees; Christ instructing in royal treasury; Samaritans following Christ; Jews following Christ; Home church vs Early Church; "Clergy"; Daily ministration of Pure Religion; Cults; Roman "Senate"; Rome in Judea; Hyrcanus; Julius Caesar the priest; Names for God; Natural law; Monotheism; Fearing challenge; Media and government propaganda; John 11:1 Lazarus; "Son of God"; Commander-in-chief; Judges; Welfare snares; "Corban"; Waking Lazarus; Death is sleep?; Doubting Thomas; Do we know the real Jesus?; Theocratic government; Civil government; Biblical constitutions; Bondage of Egypt; Deut 17; Raising the dead; Whole truth; Guiding you to Christ; Simon, Lazarus' father; What's Mary doing?; Resurrection; "I am"; Secrecy; "Disciple"; Fleeing the Tree of Life; Being fruitful; Unbelievers usurping God; Blame game; "put to death"; "stoning"; Cruelty not allowed; Unsnaring social welfare; Being lovers of one another; Repenting from Legal Charity; Walking in darkness; Willingness to see truth of your own error; Nicodemus?; Jesus' troubling; Why did Jesus weep?; The "glory" of God; Looking to God to be your ruling judge; Punishment?; Legislating morality?; Christ raising us all from the "dead"/asleep; Death cult of Public Religion; Letting go of your fear; Love requires sacrifice; Valuing whole truth; Why Christians were persecuted; Keys of the kingdom; The only way back to liberty under God; The solution starts with "repent"; High priest; Who's taking care of your parents?; Seeking kingdom and righteousness; Christ's command; Plotting to take Jesus; Strengthening the poor; Believing without miracles; Simon the jar maker; Distractions from pure religion; Being (sitting) still; Stop believing the lie.

In Revelation 19:11-18 is a description of Jesus that proceeds His reign on earth as promised King who will bring peace on earth. In our passage there are eight descriptions of King Jesus that highlight His authority and character as the Only One who is able to make what is wrong in our world right. Jesus is coming and will come to make peace in our world by waging war on the antichrist who is to come and all the peoples who will align themselves with Him. It will be the realization that perhaps there was some truth that all roads do in fact lead to God, with the major clarification that many lead to Him as judge and only one leads to Him as savior. All I want to do with the time that we have this morning is to show you who He really is. Jesus is a triumphant King. The color white does not symbolize purity here as it does when used to describe garments. The white war horse that Jesus descends from heaven on symbolizes His role as a conquering King, and what is impressive is that, in Revelation 19:1, the battle has not yet begun. Jesus is coming back. You dont have to believe it and you dont even have to live like it, but the fact of the matter is this: Jesus is coming again, and He is not coming to die like He did the first time He came, He is coming to judge! The Bible says, at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:10-11; see also Isa. 45:22-23). The Roman Senate had to give Julius Caesar permission to drive a chariot drawn by white horses through Rome to celebrate his victory in North Africa, but only after he defeated North Africa. When Jesus comes, He comes as a victorious King whose power will be demonstrated in such a way that every living creature will have no alternative but to bow before Him as the Lord. He rides a white horse signifying His victory because none can stay His hand. Jesus is a Faithful and True King (v. 11a). The second characteristic of Jesus is that He is faithful and true. When King Jesus comes to set up His kingdom, He will have no need to boast in a facade of faithfulness and truth because He is the very embodiment of faithfulness and truth. There is a lot of suffering in the world today. Every time there is a catastrophe in the world, governments rush with promises of help and often those who are left in the wake of tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, ethnic genocide, and the like, are left with empty promises of deliverance. Not so with Jesus! My dear brothers and sisters, many of you have been touched by divorce. Some of you have grown up with one broken promise after another. Some of you have been disappointed, have been hurt, have been mistreated, or perhaps taken advantage of. Take a look at verse 11 again, and permit me to ask you, Who is sitting on the white horse? Jesus is planning an eternity with His Bride, and He means to make a home for her that is characterized by holiness and righteousness. Jesus is a righteous King (v. 11b). When Jesus comes, He will come in righteousness to judge the nations. There will be no room to accuse Him as being harsh, rash, or unjust in the execution of His judgment. For many of you, the idea of righteousness and justice is something you have been thinking a lot about because of the politicking we are seeing on television. An election will be coming soon in the United States; promises will be made, and every candidate will claim some measure of integrity while maligning the other candidates. The wars we read about in our history books and the ones we hear on the news often leave a wake of injustice and suffering. Books have been written about The Just War. Whatever your views are concerning war and the one we may find ourselves in the future, one thing is sure: When Jesus comes to wage war on the nations, it will be completely and categorically just, for the Bible says of Jesus: Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, and a Branch from his roots will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And He will delight in the fear of the Lord, and He will not judge by what His eyes see, nor make decisions by what His ears hear; but with righteousness He will judge the poor, and decide with fairness for the humble of the earth; and He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked. Also righteousness will be the belt around His hips, and faithfulness the belt around His waist. (Isaiah 11:15) Jesus is an all-seeing King (v. 12a). This is the third time in Revelation that Jesus is described as having eyes like fire (see 1:14; 2:18); every time He is characterized this way, it is metaphorical of His ability to see all things, including the human heart. As King, Jesus will execute justice on all those who have rejected Him as the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus does not have to pretend at being able to see all things; He is able to see all things; He is all knowing, and the entire world will be held accountable for what they do and think, both in public and private. When He comes to judge the nations, He will do so intelligently, there will be no civilian casualties. Jesus is the King of kings (v. 12b). In verse 12b, John notices something on Jesus head: many crowns. The Greek word for crown is also diadēma (we get the word diadem from it), it also means rulers crown. It is used only three times in Revelation. It is used to describe the crown worn by the dragon (12:3), the beast (13:1), and Jesus Christ. The point that is being made here is that the dragon (Lucifer) and the beast pretend to be what Jesus is. Their authority is temporary and given by God, Jesus authority is absolute and universal (This is why John records that Jesus had many crowns. The use of many is one way of saying innumerable). When Jesus comes, not only does John see many crowns on His head, but John also sees the title King of kings and Lord of lords on His robe and thigh. Every king or ruler that had been born into this world has had a temporal reign limited by age and mortality. When it comes to our lifespan, we are all like blips on a radar flashing on the screen of life and fading out just as quickly as we came in; James 4:14 asks, You do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. For you are just a vapor that appears for a little while, and then vanishes away. Jesus reign and authority is eternal and genuine, He does not need to pretend. Jesus is a One-of-a-kind King (v. 12c) There is a lot of debate and theologizing over what name Jesus has that no one knows. There are two things we know about the ancient world of Johns day that may help us understand why Jesus has a name that no one knows. First, it was common in the world of Johns day to believe that both the gods and humans had a hidden name that contained their true essence, that defined their fundamental nature. Second, it was believed that to know a persons name was to exercise some level of control over that person. What is revealed of the Rider on the white horse is that His revealed name is called, The Word of God and what is tattooed on His thigh is the title: King of kings and Lord of lords. What we see in Revelation 19:11-18, Paul described in Philippians 2:9-11, which I believe helps us understand the unknown name that only He knows: For this reason also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. What Paul wrote in Philippians 2:9-11 would have given his readers goosebumps because of what is written in Isaiah 45:22-23, Declare and present your case; Indeed, let them consult together. Who has announced this long ago? Who has long since declared it? Is it not I, the Lord? And there is no other God besides Me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none except Me. Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth; For I am God, and there is no other. I have sworn by Myself; The word has gone out from My mouth in righteousness And will not turn back, That to Me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance. (Isa. 45:2123) According to Isaiah, only Yahweh has the right to judge the nations, and it is to Yahweh that every knee will bow, and every tongue will swear allegiance. Yet, Paul tells us that it will be before and to Jesus that, every tongue will swear allegiance and every knee will bow. Revelation 19:11-18 described the day when that will happen. The name that Jesus has that no one knows is reveals his absolute authority as God in the flesh who will not nor cannot be manipulated. Jesus is a just and holy King (v 13a). Why is Jesus robe dipped in blood? Is His robe dipped in blood to symbolize what He did at Calvary? I do not think so. I think Isaiah 63:2-3 gives us a clue to the meaning behind what John sees, Why is Your apparel red, And Your garments like one who treads in the wine press? I have trodden the wine trough alone, and from the peoples there was no one with Me. I also trod them in My anger and trampled them in My wrath; and their lifeblood is sprinkled on My garments, And I stained all My clothes (Isa. 63:13). Jesus robe is dipped in blood to indicate how He intends to deal with the nations that conspire against Him. How will He accomplish this? Look at verse 15, From His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron The justice Jesus will execute will flow out of His perfect holiness; it is the kind of judgment described in Psalm 2 The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers conspire together against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, Lets tear their shackles apart And throw their ropes away from us! He who sits in the heavens laughs, The Lord scoffs at them. Then He will speak to them in His anger and terrify them in His fury, saying, But as for Me, I have installed My King Upon Zion, My holy mountain. I will announce the decree of the Lord: He said to Me, You are My Son, Today I have fathered You. Ask it of Me, and I will certainly give the nations as Your inheritance, And the ends of the earth as Your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron, You shall shatter them like earthenware. (Psalm 2:29) Jesus, as the Word of God, is the Promised King. Jesus is the Word of God, a title that is not unfamiliar in the New Testament. It is fitting that John closes his description of Jesus with this title because it gets at the reason why Jesus is qualified to come and judge the nations: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him not even one thing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of mankind. And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it (John 1:15). However, while on earth, even with all the miracles that include His power over demons, disease, and even death (see Mark 5:1-43) the feeding of thousands with some kids five barley loaves and two fish (John 6:1-14), walking on water (6:15-25), and even His power over storms (Matt. 8::18-27), there were people who still refused to believe that He was the promised Messiah. This is why John continued in the opening statements of his Gospel account something to consider against the backdrop of what you have seen in Revelation 19:11-18, He was in the world, and the world came into being through Him, and yet the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own people did not accept Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of a man, but of God (John 1:1013). Conclusion As I consider this sermon series for Adventespecially what we have reflected on in Revelation 19, I am reminded of the conversation Lucy had with Mr. Beaver in C.S. Lewis The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when Mr. and Mrs. Beaver tried to help Lucy understand who Aslan was (Aslan is Narnias Christ figure): "Is - is he a man?" asked Lucy "Aslan a man!" said Mr. Beaver sternly. "Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don't you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion, the Lion, the great Lion." "Ooh," said Susan, "I thought he was a man. Is he - quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion." "That you will, dearie, and make no mistake," said Mrs. Beaver; "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly." "Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy. "Safe?" said Mr. Beaver; "don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the king I tell you." The Lion of Judah is not safe, but He is good. Hes the king I tell you, and His name is Jesus Christ. The question I ask of you is simply this: Who do you say Jesus is and do you really believe it? Have you come to know Him? Do you really believe in His name? Is Jesus a religious icon to you, is He only a baby in a manger, or is He the King? Wherever you are in your thoughts and convictions about Jesus, I leave you with the last two verses of Psalm 2, Serve the Lord with reverence and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, that He not be angry and you perish on the way, For His wrath may be kindled quickly. How blessed are all who take refuge in Him" (vv. 11-12).

In Revelation 19:11-18 is a description of Jesus that proceeds His reign on earth as promised King who will bring peace on earth. In our passage there are eight descriptions of King Jesus that highlight His authority and character as the Only One who is able to make what is wrong in our world right. Jesus is coming and will come to make peace in our world by waging war on the antichrist who is to come and all the peoples who will align themselves with Him. It will be the realization that perhaps there was some truth that all roads do in fact lead to God, with the major clarification that many lead to Him as judge and only one leads to Him as savior. All I want to do with the time that we have this morning is to show you who He really is. Jesus is a triumphant King. The color white does not symbolize purity here as it does when used to describe garments. The white war horse that Jesus descends from heaven on symbolizes His role as a conquering King, and what is impressive is that, in Revelation 19:1, the battle has not yet begun. Jesus is coming back. You dont have to believe it and you dont even have to live like it, but the fact of the matter is this: Jesus is coming again, and He is not coming to die like He did the first time He came, He is coming to judge! The Bible says, at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:10-11; see also Isa. 45:22-23). The Roman Senate had to give Julius Caesar permission to drive a chariot drawn by white horses through Rome to celebrate his victory in North Africa, but only after he defeated North Africa. When Jesus comes, He comes as a victorious King whose power will be demonstrated in such a way that every living creature will have no alternative but to bow before Him as the Lord. He rides a white horse signifying His victory because none can stay His hand. Jesus is a Faithful and True King (v. 11a). The second characteristic of Jesus is that He is faithful and true. When King Jesus comes to set up His kingdom, He will have no need to boast in a facade of faithfulness and truth because He is the very embodiment of faithfulness and truth. There is a lot of suffering in the world today. Every time there is a catastrophe in the world, governments rush with promises of help and often those who are left in the wake of tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, ethnic genocide, and the like, are left with empty promises of deliverance. Not so with Jesus! My dear brothers and sisters, many of you have been touched by divorce. Some of you have grown up with one broken promise after another. Some of you have been disappointed, have been hurt, have been mistreated, or perhaps taken advantage of. Take a look at verse 11 again, and permit me to ask you, Who is sitting on the white horse? Jesus is planning an eternity with His Bride, and He means to make a home for her that is characterized by holiness and righteousness. Jesus is a righteous King (v. 11b). When Jesus comes, He will come in righteousness to judge the nations. There will be no room to accuse Him as being harsh, rash, or unjust in the execution of His judgment. For many of you, the idea of righteousness and justice is something you have been thinking a lot about because of the politicking we are seeing on television. An election will be coming soon in the United States; promises will be made, and every candidate will claim some measure of integrity while maligning the other candidates. The wars we read about in our history books and the ones we hear on the news often leave a wake of injustice and suffering. Books have been written about The Just War. Whatever your views are concerning war and the one we may find ourselves in the future, one thing is sure: When Jesus comes to wage war on the nations, it will be completely and categorically just, for the Bible says of Jesus: Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, and a Branch from his roots will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And He will delight in the fear of the Lord, and He will not judge by what His eyes see, nor make decisions by what His ears hear; but with righteousness He will judge the poor, and decide with fairness for the humble of the earth; and He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked. Also righteousness will be the belt around His hips, and faithfulness the belt around His waist. (Isaiah 11:15) Jesus is an all-seeing King (v. 12a). This is the third time in Revelation that Jesus is described as having eyes like fire (see 1:14; 2:18); every time He is characterized this way, it is metaphorical of His ability to see all things, including the human heart. As King, Jesus will execute justice on all those who have rejected Him as the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus does not have to pretend at being able to see all things; He is able to see all things; He is all knowing, and the entire world will be held accountable for what they do and think, both in public and private. When He comes to judge the nations, He will do so intelligently, there will be no civilian casualties. Jesus is the King of kings (v. 12b). In verse 12b, John notices something on Jesus head: many crowns. The Greek word for crown is also diadēma (we get the word diadem from it), it also means rulers crown. It is used only three times in Revelation. It is used to describe the crown worn by the dragon (12:3), the beast (13:1), and Jesus Christ. The point that is being made here is that the dragon (Lucifer) and the beast pretend to be what Jesus is. Their authority is temporary and given by God, Jesus authority is absolute and universal (This is why John records that Jesus had many crowns. The use of many is one way of saying innumerable). When Jesus comes, not only does John see many crowns on His head, but John also sees the title King of kings and Lord of lords on His robe and thigh. Every king or ruler that had been born into this world has had a temporal reign limited by age and mortality. When it comes to our lifespan, we are all like blips on a radar flashing on the screen of life and fading out just as quickly as we came in; James 4:14 asks, You do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. For you are just a vapor that appears for a little while, and then vanishes away. Jesus reign and authority is eternal and genuine, He does not need to pretend. Jesus is a One-of-a-kind King (v. 12c) There is a lot of debate and theologizing over what name Jesus has that no one knows. There are two things we know about the ancient world of Johns day that may help us understand why Jesus has a name that no one knows. First, it was common in the world of Johns day to believe that both the gods and humans had a hidden name that contained their true essence, that defined their fundamental nature. Second, it was believed that to know a persons name was to exercise some level of control over that person. What is revealed of the Rider on the white horse is that His revealed name is called, The Word of God and what is tattooed on His thigh is the title: King of kings and Lord of lords. What we see in Revelation 19:11-18, Paul described in Philippians 2:9-11, which I believe helps us understand the unknown name that only He knows: For this reason also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. What Paul wrote in Philippians 2:9-11 would have given his readers goosebumps because of what is written in Isaiah 45:22-23, Declare and present your case; Indeed, let them consult together. Who has announced this long ago? Who has long since declared it? Is it not I, the Lord? And there is no other God besides Me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none except Me. Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth; For I am God, and there is no other. I have sworn by Myself; The word has gone out from My mouth in righteousness And will not turn back, That to Me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance. (Isa. 45:2123) According to Isaiah, only Yahweh has the right to judge the nations, and it is to Yahweh that every knee will bow, and every tongue will swear allegiance. Yet, Paul tells us that it will be before and to Jesus that, every tongue will swear allegiance and every knee will bow. Revelation 19:11-18 described the day when that will happen. The name that Jesus has that no one knows is reveals his absolute authority as God in the flesh who will not nor cannot be manipulated. Jesus is a just and holy King (v 13a). Why is Jesus robe dipped in blood? Is His robe dipped in blood to symbolize what He did at Calvary? I do not think so. I think Isaiah 63:2-3 gives us a clue to the meaning behind what John sees, Why is Your apparel red, And Your garments like one who treads in the wine press? I have trodden the wine trough alone, and from the peoples there was no one with Me. I also trod them in My anger and trampled them in My wrath; and their lifeblood is sprinkled on My garments, And I stained all My clothes (Isa. 63:13). Jesus robe is dipped in blood to indicate how He intends to deal with the nations that conspire against Him. How will He accomplish this? Look at verse 15, From His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron The justice Jesus will execute will flow out of His perfect holiness; it is the kind of judgment described in Psalm 2 The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers conspire together against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, Lets tear their shackles apart And throw their ropes away from us! He who sits in the heavens laughs, The Lord scoffs at them. Then He will speak to them in His anger and terrify them in His fury, saying, But as for Me, I have installed My King Upon Zion, My holy mountain. I will announce the decree of the Lord: He said to Me, You are My Son, Today I have fathered You. Ask it of Me, and I will certainly give the nations as Your inheritance, And the ends of the earth as Your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron, You shall shatter them like earthenware. (Psalm 2:29) Jesus, as the Word of God, is the Promised King. Jesus is the Word of God, a title that is not unfamiliar in the New Testament. It is fitting that John closes his description of Jesus with this title because it gets at the reason why Jesus is qualified to come and judge the nations: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him not even one thing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of mankind. And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it (John 1:15). However, while on earth, even with all the miracles that include His power over demons, disease, and even death (see Mark 5:1-43) the feeding of thousands with some kids five barley loaves and two fish (John 6:1-14), walking on water (6:15-25), and even His power over storms (Matt. 8::18-27), there were people who still refused to believe that He was the promised Messiah. This is why John continued in the opening statements of his Gospel account something to consider against the backdrop of what you have seen in Revelation 19:11-18, He was in the world, and the world came into being through Him, and yet the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own people did not accept Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of a man, but of God (John 1:1013). Conclusion As I consider this sermon series for Adventespecially what we have reflected on in Revelation 19, I am reminded of the conversation Lucy had with Mr. Beaver in C.S. Lewis The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when Mr. and Mrs. Beaver tried to help Lucy understand who Aslan was (Aslan is Narnias Christ figure): "Is - is he a man?" asked Lucy "Aslan a man!" said Mr. Beaver sternly. "Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don't you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion, the Lion, the great Lion." "Ooh," said Susan, "I thought he was a man. Is he - quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion." "That you will, dearie, and make no mistake," said Mrs. Beaver; "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly." "Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy. "Safe?" said Mr. Beaver; "don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the king I tell you." The Lion of Judah is not safe, but He is good. Hes the king I tell you, and His name is Jesus Christ. The question I ask of you is simply this: Who do you say Jesus is and do you really believe it? Have you come to know Him? Do you really believe in His name? Is Jesus a religious icon to you, is He only a baby in a manger, or is He the King? Wherever you are in your thoughts and convictions about Jesus, I leave you with the last two verses of Psalm 2, Serve the Lord with reverence and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, that He not be angry and you perish on the way, For His wrath may be kindled quickly. How blessed are all who take refuge in Him" (vv. 11-12).

pWotD Episode 2417: Cleopatra Welcome to popular Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of a popular Wikipedia page every day.With 144,640 views on Thursday, 14 December 2023 our article of the day is Cleopatra.Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator (Koinē Greek: Κλεοπάτρα Θεά Φιλοπάτωρ lit. Cleopatra "father-loving goddess"; 70/69 BC – 10 August 30 BC) was Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC, and its last active ruler. A member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, she was a descendant of its founder Ptolemy I Soter, a Macedonian Greek general and companion of Alexander the Great. After the death of Cleopatra, Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire, marking the end of the last Hellenistic-period state in the Mediterranean and of the age that had lasted since the reign of Alexander (336–323 BC). Her first language was Koine Greek and she is the only known Ptolemaic ruler to learn the Egyptian language. In 58 BC, Cleopatra presumably accompanied her father, Ptolemy XII Auletes, during his exile to Rome after a revolt in Egypt (a Roman client state) allowed his rival daughter Berenice IV to claim his throne. Berenice was killed in 55 BC when Ptolemy returned to Egypt with Roman military assistance. When he died in 51 BC, the joint reign of Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy XIII began, but a falling-out between them led to open civil war. After losing the 48 BC Battle of Pharsalus in Greece against his rival Julius Caesar (a Roman dictator and consul) in Caesar's civil war, the Roman statesman Pompey fled to Egypt. Pompey had been a political ally of Ptolemy XII, but Ptolemy XIII, at the urging of his court eunuchs, had Pompey ambushed and killed before Caesar arrived and occupied Alexandria. Caesar then attempted to reconcile the rival Ptolemaic siblings, but Ptolemy's chief adviser, Potheinos, viewed Caesar's terms as favoring Cleopatra, so his forces besieged her and Caesar at the palace. Shortly after the siege was lifted by reinforcements, Ptolemy XIII died in the Battle of the Nile; Cleopatra's half-sister Arsinoe IV was eventually exiled to Ephesus for her role in carrying out the siege. Caesar declared Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy XIV joint rulers but maintained a private affair with Cleopatra that produced a son, Caesarion. Cleopatra traveled to Rome as a client queen in 46 and 44 BC, where she stayed at Caesar's villa. After Caesar's assassination, followed shortly afterwards by that of Ptolemy XIV (on Cleopatra's orders), she named Caesarion co-ruler as Ptolemy XV.In the Liberators' civil war of 43–42 BC, Cleopatra sided with the Roman Second Triumvirate formed by Caesar's grandnephew and heir Octavian, Mark Antony, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. After their meeting at Tarsos in 41 BC, the queen had an affair with Antony which produced three children. He carried out the execution of Arsinoe at her request, and became increasingly reliant on Cleopatra for both funding and military aid during his invasions of the Parthian Empire and the Kingdom of Armenia. The Donations of Alexandria declared their children rulers over various erstwhile territories under Antony's triumviral authority. This event, their marriage, and Antony's divorce of Octavian's sister Octavia Minor led to the final war of the Roman Republic. Octavian engaged in a war of propaganda, forced Antony's allies in the Roman Senate to flee Rome in 32 BC, and declared war on Cleopatra. After defeating Antony and Cleopatra's naval fleet at the 31 BC Battle of Actium, Octavian's forces invaded Egypt in 30 BC and defeated Antony, leading to Antony's suicide. When Cleopatra learned that Octavian planned to bring her to his Roman triumphal procession, she killed herself by poisoning, contrary to the popular belief that she was bitten by an asp.Cleopatra's legacy survives in ancient and modern works of art. Roman historiography and Latin poetry produced a generally critical view of the queen that pervaded later Medieval and Renaissance literature. In the visual arts, her ancient depictions include Roman busts, paintings, and sculptures, cameo carvings and glass, Ptolemaic and Roman coinage, and reliefs. In Renaissance and Baroque art, she was the subject of many works including operas, paintings, poetry, sculptures, and theatrical dramas. She has become a pop culture icon of Egyptomania since the Victorian era, and in modern times, Cleopatra has appeared in the applied and fine arts, burlesque satire, Hollywood films, and brand images for commercial products.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 02:01 UTC on Friday, 15 December 2023.For the full current version of the article, see Cleopatra on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm Raveena Standard.

fWotD Episode 2414: Temple of Apollo Palatinus Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.The featured article for Thursday, 14 December 2023 is Temple of Apollo Palatinus.The Temple of Apollo Palatinus ('Palatine Apollo'), sometimes called the Temple of Actian Apollo, was a temple to the god Apollo in Rome, constructed on the Palatine Hill on the initiative of Augustus (known as "Octavian" until 27 BCE) between 36 and 28 BCE. It was the first temple to Apollo within the city's ceremonial boundaries and the second of four temples constructed by Augustus. According to tradition, the site for the temple was chosen when it was struck by lightning, which was interpreted as a divine portent. Augustan writers situated the temple next to Augustus's personal residence, which has been controversially identified as the structure known as the domus Augusti.The temple was closely associated with the victories of Augustus's forces at the battles of Naulochus and Actium, the latter of which was extensively memorialised through its decoration. The temple played an important role in Augustan propaganda and political ideology, in which it represented the restoration of Rome's 'golden age' and served as a signifier of Augustus's pietas (devotion to religious and political duty). It was used for the worship of Apollo and his sister Diana, as well as to store the prophetic Sibylline Books. Its precinct was used for diplomatic functions as well as for meetings of the Roman Senate, and contained the Portico of the Danaids, which included libraries of Greek and Latin literature considered among the most important in Rome.Augustan poets frequently mentioned and praised the temple in their works, often commenting on its lavish artistic decoration and statuary, which included three cult statues and other works by noted Greek artists of the archaic period and the fourth century BCE. These poets included Tibullus, Virgil and Horace, whose Carmen Saeculare was first performed at the temple on 3 June 17 BCE during the Secular Games. The Great Fire of Rome in 64 CE damaged the temple, but it was restored under the emperor Domitian (r. 81 – 96 CE). It was finally destroyed by another fire in 363 CE, which was rumoured to be an act of arson committed by Christians. The temple has been excavated and partially restored in various phases since the 1860s, though only partial remains survive and their documentation is incomplete. Modern assessments of the temple have variously treated it as an extravagant, Hellenising break with Roman tradition and as a conservative attempt to reassert the architectural and political values of the Roman Republic. It has been described by the archaeologist John Ward-Perkins as "one of the earliest and finest of the Augustan temples".This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:18 UTC on Thursday, 14 December 2023.For the full current version of the article, see Temple of Apollo Palatinus on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm Salli Neural.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: "Model UN Solutions", published by Arjun Panickssery on December 9, 2023 on LessWrong. When I was in high school, because I was on the history bowl team the teacher who advised the model UN club recruited me to play as their delegate in various "historical committees" like the Roman Senate or 1789 French Assembly. I never engaged in any normal committees since you couldn't undertake false flag attacks or convince the Pope to excommunicate other delegates. In most committees, as far as I can tell, players represent countries trying to pass a resolution addressing some topic like climate change that's decided beforehand. An award is given to the player the facilitator decides is the "best delegate" - an unwritten combination of speaking ability, social dominance, and accurately representing (or at least not fatally misunderstanding) your assigned country's positions and interests. I often make a mental metaphor about "model UN discussions" and "model UN solutions." Model UN discussions revolve around people expecting to be rewarded for making many remarks, even though their actual positions could be expressed simply or don't permit much elaboration. This leads to the "model UN solutions," which have a few types, e.g. Applause lights: You could just say buzzwords or unobjectionable trivialities ("When addressing the climate change question we should consider the interests of all the relevant stakeholders. We should apply neither an {extreme viewpoint} nor {the opposite extreme}") Unspecified solutions: You could give very little information that uniquely identifies a specific change from the status quo in the listener's mind. At the extreme you get a lot of remarks of the form "To address the problem we should {devote resources} to {solving the problem}" where the bracketed parts are replaced with phrases that aren't much more specific ("To address climate change we should set up task forces to identify the best technological and policy approaches") Tradeoff-ignorant solutions: You could even give a directional suggestion but avoid any consideration of the relevant costs or tradeoffs ("We should fund a new educational outreach program related to climate change"). You could imagine responses that try to identify empty remarks: Ask whether anyone holds the opposite of the remark. Ask how a proposed solution is specifically different from the status quo. Ask who loses out in a proposal (or how resources will be reallocated). Sometimes no one loses out but more often this is just an unstated tradeoff. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org

The modern calendar owes its existence to the most famous of all Roman emperors, Julius Caesar. In 46 B.C., he ordered the creation of a new, highly organized calendar to replace the messy system that was in use at the time. With a few minor revisions, we still use that calendar today. One of those revisions is the names of the months of July and August. Under the original Roman calendar, the year began with March. The two hot summer months were called Quintilis and Sextilis — names that mean the fifth month and sixth month. But soon after the new calendar was introduced, the Roman Senate honored its benefactor by changing the name of Quintilis to July. Then, in the year 8 B.C., emperor Augustus Caesar decided that he should have his own month, so Sextilis was changed to August. Scholars disagree on whether other changes were made when August was named. Some say that Sextilis originally contained only 30 days, but Augustus added a day so that his month would be as long as that of Julius Caesar. Incidentally, August 1st is the date of an ancient English festival called Lammas. It's a “cross-quarter” day — a day that's roughly half-way between a solstice and an equinox. In some cultures, the cross-quarter days marked the beginnings of the seasons, not their mid-points as they do today. Lammas was a day for celebrating the first harvest — marking an important date on the imperial summer calendar. Script by Damond Benningfield Support McDonald Observatory

For 98 episodes, the pilots of Radical Research have gone it together. Mind you, the hosts have had some curatorial help along the way (Jason William Walton and Forrest Pitts, please take a bow). But on the eve of episode 100, Radical Research has called on two of its most stalwart allies, the estimable Thomas Nul and Brian Grebenz. Over the course of almost two hours, this veritable Roman Senate chews on the hard-hitting issues that occupy the minds of all right-thinking citizens of the Research Republic. We invite you to turn on and tune in to this symposium of sickness.  Note I: Please consider donating if you listen to Radical Research often: https://www.paypal.me/rrpodcast We also have a webstore where you can find shirts, CDs, and books, many of them recently restocked: http://radicalresearch.org/shop/ Music cited in order of appearance: Genesis, “Dodo / Lurker” (Abacab, 1981) Black Sabbath, “The Eternal Idol” (Eternal Idol, 1987) King Crimson, “Discipline” (Discipline, 1981) Celtic Frost, “(Once) They Were Eagles” (Cold Lake, 1988) A Forest of Stars, “Premature Invocation” (Grave Mounds and Grave Mistakes, 2018) Jethro Tull, “Thick as a Brick” (Thick as a Brick, 1971) Slayer, “The Final Command” (Show No Mercy, 1983) Acanthus, “Le Frisson des Vampires” (Le Frisson des Vampires, 1971) Journey, “Of a Lifetime” (Journey, 1975) Unearthly Trance, “Penta(grams)” (In the Red, 2004) episode 100 preview: Voivod, “Temps Mort” (Phobos, 1997) Radical Research is a conversation about the inner- and outer-reaches of rock and metal music. This podcast is conceived and conducted by Jeff Wagner and Hunter Ginn. Though we consume music in a variety of ways, we give particular privilege to the immersive, full-album listening experience. Likewise, we believe that tangible music formats help provide the richest, most rewarding immersions and that music, artwork, and song titles cooperate to produce a singular effect on the listener. Great music is worth more than we ever pay for it.

Augustus Caesar, also known as Octavian, was a pivotal figure in ancient Rome. His reign as the first emperor of Rome was a transformative period in history. His political reforms, cultural patronage, and long-lasting peace left an indelible mark on the Roman Empire, shaping Western civilization for centuries to come. Early Life and Rise to Power Augustus Caesar was born on September 23, 63 BCE, in Rome. He was the adopted son of Julius Caesar, who later named him as his heir. After Julius Caesar's assassination, Augustus emerged as one of the key contenders in the ensuing power struggle. With strategic alliances and military prowess, he successfully defeated his rivals, establishing himself as the unchallenged ruler of Rome. Reign as Emperor In 27 BCE, the Roman Senate bestowed the title of "Augustus" upon him, meaning "the revered one." Augustus ruled for over four decades, implementing significant reforms that transformed Rome. He focused on strengthening the military, initiating public works projects, and implementing social policies to improve the lives of Roman citizens. His rule marked the beginning of the Pax Romana, a period of relative peace and stability throughout the empire. Political and Administrative Reforms Significant political and administrative reforms characterized Augustus Caesar's reign. He reorganized the Roman provinces, established a civil service, and implemented a system of taxation. Augustus also initiated the construction of key infrastructure, including roads, aqueducts, and buildings, which boosted trade and communication within the empire. These reforms solidified his authority and laid the groundwork for the subsequent emperors, shaping the Roman Empire's structure for centuries to come. Cultural Revival and Patronage Augustus recognized the importance of arts and literature in promoting Roman culture. He encouraged the revival of traditional Roman values and sponsored renowned writers like Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. This period, known as the "Augustan Age," witnessed a flourishing of Roman literature and architecture. Augustus' patronage of the arts enhanced Rome's cultural standing and contributed to the preservation of influential works that continue to be studied and admired today. Legacy and Influence Augustus Caesar's impact on Rome and subsequent Western civilization cannot be overstated. His establishment of a stable government and effective administration laid the foundation for the Roman Empire's long-lasting dominance. Augustus' reign marked the transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire, setting a precedent for subsequent emperors. The Pax Romana ushered in by Augustus ensured peace and prosperity across the empire, fostering economic growth and cultural development. His legacy as the first emperor and a visionary leader continues to inspire historians, political theorists, and leaders today. Show notes at https://thedigressionpodcast.com/107 Sound Off! With a comment or a question at https://thedigressionpodcast.com/soundoff Like the show? Leave a 5-star rating and review: https://thedigressionpodcast.com/review Help us keep the engine running at https://thedigressionpodcast.com/donate Or just share our podcast with a friend! It's the best way to grow the show!! “MaxKoMusic – Dark Ages” is under a Creative Commons (cc-by) license. Music promoted by BreakingCopyright: http://bit.ly/maxkomusic-dark-ages NOTES: Augustus: First Emperor of Rome by Adrian Goldsworthy

Everyone we are going to start uploading the audio of some youtube episodes to the podcast channel. This is the first of that Series. The episode will post likely on tuesday, wednesday, or thursday of the week depending on the amount as well as filming so please enjoy. Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus was the fifth Roman emperor and final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, reigning from AD 54 until his death in AD 68. He was adopted by the Roman emperor Claudius at the age of 13 and succeeded him on the throne. Nero was popular with the members of his Praetorian Guard and lower-class commoners in Rome and its provinces, but he was deeply resented by the Roman aristocracy. Most contemporary sources describe him as tyrannical, self-indulgent, and debauched. After being declared a public enemy by the Roman Senate, he committed suicide at age 30. Travel to Italy With Me here 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

A banking collapse was not likely on the long list of worries that plague the digital entrepreneur. What are the kinds of risks that digital startups face in oil and gas? March 15 stands in infamy as the day that Julius Caesar was stabbed to death at a meeting of the Roman Senate. The conspirators, led by Brutus and Cassius, were ratted out by a seer, who ominously warned Caesar that harm would come to him that day, advice that Caesar pointedly ignored because: he was arrogant, popular and successful—precisely why the Senators chose to off him, and the seer was not unhelpful in clarifying exactly when the harm would come, where in Rome, and what form the harm might take. With hindsight, ‘Beware the Ides' was sound advice from the seer, who apparently derived his insights by consulting the entrails of recently deceased animals. I too have ‘gut instincts', but generally I'm more data driven and not in the business of conducting colonoscopies of goats and sheep for clues about the future. The Ides did not disappoint this year, as it turns out. The big event of the week was the failure of the Silicon Valley Bank, who stands accused of ignoring an iron-clad law of financing—they were inadequately hedged against rising interest rates, and lost a bundle when forced to sell a bond investment at a huge loss.

Julius Caesar, born Gaius Julius Caesar, was a prominent Roman statesman, military general, and dictator who played a pivotal role in transforming the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. Born on July 12, 100 BC, in Rome, Caesar rose to power during a time of political turmoil and instability, leaving an indelible mark on Roman history. Caesar came from a noble family, and his early years were marked by military service and political maneuvering. He distinguished himself as a skilled military leader during his campaigns in Gaul (modern-day France) and Britain, expanding Rome's territorial control and securing his reputation as a brilliant strategist. These military victories helped consolidate his power and popularity back in Rome. In 49 BC, Caesar crossed the Rubicon River with his army, an act considered treasonous at the time, and marched on Rome, sparking a civil war against his political rival, Pompey. Caesar emerged victorious, becoming the sole ruler of Rome and effectively ending the Roman Republic. He implemented a series of reforms aimed at strengthening the central government, improving the lives of ordinary citizens, and reducing the influence of the aristocracy. Caesar's reforms included the Julian Calendar, which became the basis for the modern Gregorian Calendar. He also enacted land reforms, provided land for impoverished citizens, and implemented policies to alleviate debt and unemployment. These measures endeared him to the masses but garnered opposition from some members of the Senate, who feared his growing power and the erosion of their own influence. Caesar's rule was characterized by his autocratic style of governance, and in 44 BC, he was declared dictator perpetuo, or dictator for life. This declaration further exacerbated tensions within the Roman Senate, and a group of senators led by Marcus Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus conspired to assassinate him. On the Ides of March (March 15), 44 BC, Caesar was assassinated in the Senate chamber. His death plunged Rome into another period of political instability, ultimately leading to a power struggle between his adopted heir Octavian (later known as Augustus), and Caesar's assassins. This struggle culminated in the rise of the Roman Empire under Augustus, Caesar's grandnephew, and the first Roman Emperor. Caesar's legacy looms large in history. He is renowned for his military accomplishments, political acumen, and role in the Roman Republic's downfall. His name has become synonymous with power, ambition, and the potential dangers of autocracy. Caesar's life and death have inspired countless works of literature, including William Shakespeare's famous play, "Julius Caesar," which dramatizes the events surrounding his assassination. Despite the controversy surrounding his rule, Caesar left an indelible mark on Roman society. His military campaigns expanded Rome's borders, his political reforms shaped the structure of the Roman Empire, and his name remains an enduring symbol of authority and leadership. Julius Caesar's contributions and impact on ancient Rome have ensured his place among history's most influential figures. Show notes at https://thedigressionpodcast.com/105 Sound Off! With a comment or a question at https://thedigressionpodcast.com/soundoff Like the show? Leave a 5-star rating and review: https://thedigressionpodcast.com/review Help us keep the engine running at https://thedigressionpodcast.com/donate Or just share our podcast with a friend! It's the best way to grow the show!! “MaxKoMusic – Dark Ages” is under a Creative Commons (cc-by) license. Music promoted by BreakingCopyright: http://bit.ly/maxkomusic-dark-ages NOTES: Caesar: Life of a Colossus by Adrian Goldsworthy Julius Caesar (Dover Thrift Editions: Plays) by William Shakespeare

May 27: Saint Augustine of Canterbury, Bishop Early Sixth Century–604 Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White Patron Saint of England The Church's Augustus conquered by example Gaius Octavius Thurinus was a noble Roman. Julius Caesar became his stepfather when he adopted Octavius, posthumously, in his will. Octavius then added his dead stepfather's name to his own, becoming Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. He defeated his political enemies in 31 B.C. and thus became the first Emperor of Rome. To recognize his status, the Roman Senate added another link to his long chain of names—Augustus. And it is as Augustus that he is known to history. This very Augustus called for the census forcing Mary and Joseph to transfer to Bethlehem: “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered” (Lk 2:1). Augustus reigned well and lived long, until 14 A.D. He is considered the iconic Emperor of the “Pax Romana,” a tranquil, vast, expanding, organized, rich, united, and unconquerable realm, an enormous map of which Augustus pondered from his throne in Rome. The eighth month was renamed to honor Augustus during his own lifetime. But greatness is not limited to the Roman Emperor or his Empire. The best of Rome was absorbed, filtered, purified, and reborn in the Catholic Church. As Rome declined, popes and bishops did not pickpocket the corpse of Rome or rifle through the drawers of its abandoned dressers. The transformation from Empire to Church was organic, slow, and unrelenting, like all true cultural change. It happened imperceptibly, year by year, person by person, family by family, town by town, until one day everything was different. The arc of cultural change doesn't have a right angle. It is fitting and poetic, then, that the Church has her own great Augustus, indirectly evoking the laurel-crowned Emperor. In fact, the Church has two Augustines: Saint Augustine of Hippo, in North Africa, a Doctor of the Church; and Saint Augustine of Canterbury, today's saint. But their marble statues are not in museums. They are in churches. Saint Augustine of Canterbury was born in an unknown year about a century after his Christian namesake's death in 430 A.D. in North Africa. He also conquered a king, like his secular namesake, but not for his own glory. Saint Augustine of Canterbury is called the Apostle to the English (not to the British.) The history is complex. Christianity was deeply rooted in Roman Britain. British bishops attended Church Councils in France in the fourth century, and two famous Roman British Catholics well known to history lived centuries before Saint Augustine—Pelagius and Saint Patrick. But after the Romans abandoned Britain around 410 A.D., invasions of the pagan Saxons from Northern Europe mixed with native tribes to alter the cultural and religious landscape. Old Roman Britain faded as Anglo-Saxon England dawned. Christianity was relegated to the margins of the British Isles, surviving in remote regions and in an extensive network of monasteries, not parishes or dioceses, under the wise tutelage of Irish monks. This two-hundred-year British-Irish hibernation of Catholicism was aroused from its sleep when, in 595 A.D., Pope Saint Gregory the Great had a plan. The goal? Convert King Ethelbert. Why? Because he was an Anglo-Saxon pagan. The hope? His wife was Catholic. The means? A large missionary train. The man for the job? Saint Augustine. Our saint, an educated Benedictine monk from Rome, headed a large team that struggled through France on horseback, crossed the English Channel in simple boats, and finally walked to Ethelbert's seat of power in Canterbury. The King of all Kent heard the missionaries and…converted to Catholicism! And then all his subjects converted as well. The plan worked. Mission accomplished! More missionaries followed. Schools were established. Monasteries were founded. Bishops were appointed. Priests were ordained. Parishes were opened. Rough Anglo-Saxon England put on the yoke of Christ and the lovely, rolling, deep green countryside of England became Mary's dowry. Nothing is known of the life of Saint Augustine before 595 A.D. He is famous because he was a missionary monk and later bishop. His life and his mission are indistinguishable. He accepted a dare from the Pope and did the impossible. He was himself the foundation stone upon which a Catholic nation built its house of faith for almost a millennium.Saint Augustine, your long years of prayer, asceticism, and reading as a monk prepared you for greater things. May all who seek your intercession prepare themselves in times of quiet for future challenges. May all missionaries be as daring as you in fulfilling what is asked of them.

In the first part of the 4th century, under the newly installed Emperor Constantine, the Tower of Babel religion simply morphed into a new, mysterious version. This is when PAGAN Rome became PAPAL Rome, whereby the Roman Empire became the so-called Holy Roman Empire, and the Tower of Babel Religion simply took on a new name and a new form.The new name was universal Christianity which is what the word “Catholic” means. This new form was that the elaborate hierarchy of the Pagan religion of Rome – the Roman version of the Tower of Babel religion – was simply “Christianized.”Over time, the pagan Roman Emperor became the Pope; the pagan Roman Senate became the College of Cardinals; the pagan Roman Imperial Governors became the Archbishops; the pagan Roman Provincial Governors became the Bishops; the pagan Roman Civitas became the Priests; and the pagan Roman Vestal Virgins became the Nuns.And with that, the Roman Catholic Church was up and running!All of that provides significant background information as we make our way into Revelation 17, where the Apostle John begins to identify the Woman who sits on the back of the Beast – also known as the Antichrist – during the Tribulation Period. Most Biblical Scholars believe that this is the place in Scripture that identifies that Woman with Roman Catholicism.Support the showVisit our website: https://agapelightministries.com/

The war against speech and self-expression took another step forward this week. FigureHead Biden was caused to sign an Executive Order that makes creators of AT Technology fashion their code around “equity” if they want any federal money. These technologies will run search, social media, mapping, archiving, advertising and academia. What the people who run Joe Biden seek is nothing less than disappearing philosophies that oppose The Party, historical facts that embarrass The Party and writings that provide people with inspiration to confront The Party. Does that seem to be an exaggeration? It already happened; people who had e-book copies Roald Dahl's work learned that the publisher automatically changes the very words of the books to match the views of The Party! We must keep paper copies of the books we value; we must not allow an AI in our kid's schools, block ChatGPT and all other devices. Take that fact and combine it with this: in the separate Country of Washington State, the chief diktat-issuer, Bob Ferguson has sponsored a Bill that will create a “Domestic Extremism” tribunal that will then sponsor a state-wide snitch effort to spot domestic extremism. How does the Bill define that extremism? It doesn't! But, it does say it involves views that oppose masking, lockdowns, promotion of LGB”T”Q issues and oppose sexually grooming children. This will make it possible for Ferguson to punish people with process; when the Tribunal demands you answer for your thought crimes in a Struggle Session it will come with the force of “law” that Ferguson will be happy to abuse. Does that make it more clear why FigureHead Biden wants AI to to be programmed to match The Party's Borg-mind? Some Republicans are trying to stop Biden with two separate bills, maybe God has begun to get through to them. What does God say? The Lord gave us the gift of speech. He is pro-free speech and pro-accountability. John 1The Word Became Flesh1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome[a] it.The Top 10 Books Lost to Time; Great written works from authors such as Shakespeare and Jane Austen that you'll never have a chance to readBiden signs executive order, instructing AI development to promote “equity”Roald Dahl ebooks are automatically updated to censored versions, reports sayRepublicans plan to expand the Hatch Act to stop Biden administration's censorship collusionWashington “state” moves to create Domestic Violent Extremism Commission to tackle 'anti-LGBTQ and anti-science misinformation'; To be combatted are "election fraud narratives," "anti-mask and anti-vaccine narratives," "anti-critical race theory narratives," and "anti-LGBTQ 'Grooming' narratives.'"]James O'Keefe on the suffering that can come from telling the truthComposer steps down after backlash over tweet supporting J.K Rowling; Activists called for his resignationLA prosecutor suspended for misgendering so-called “trans” child molester speaks out; Shea Sanna, the prosecutor suspended by Los Angeles DA George Gascon for misgendering trans child molester Hannah Tubbs, says Gascon is a 'politician, not a prosecutor' on 'America Reports.‘Maoist Struggle Session': Former NY Times Writer Details Newsroom Chaos After Tom Cotton Op-Ed; “It was like Caesar on the floor of the Roman Senate or something … I remember closing my laptop and pouring a huge glass of wine even though it was at like noon. Because I was so f–king freaked out by what we had just witnessed.”Show AdvertisersAlan's Soaps https://alanssoaps.com/TODD Use coupon code ‘TODD' to save an additional 10% off the bundle price. Bonefrog Coffee https://bonefrog.us Enter promo code TODD at checkout to receive 5% off your subscription. Bulwark Capital https://knowyourriskradio.comGet your free copy of “Common Cents Investing” Call 866-779-RISK or visit the website. Healthycell https://healthycell.com/todd Journey to better health and save 20% off your first order with promo code TODD.My Pillowhttps://mypillow.com Sleep cool with the new MyPillow 2.0 now Buy One Get One Free with code TODD.RuffGreens https://ruffgreens.com/todd Get your FREE Jumpstart Trial Bag of Ruff Greens, simply cover shipping. SOTA Weight Loss https://sotaweightloss.com SOTA Weight Loss is, say it with me now, STATE OF THE ART!Texas Superfoods https://texassuperfoods.com Texas Super Foods is whole food nutrition at its best.GreenHaven Interactivehttps://greenhaveninteractive.comGet more customer online with a world class website and Google

A 45:00 testimony in a joint committee in Arizona offers compelling accusations of RICO-level corruption that allegedly involves officer holders all the way up to Katie Hobbs, recently installed as governor. While I have no problem believing this level of corruption is happening in America--look no further than Pharma purchasing the Mockingbirds, the CDC, FDA, schools and the military--I don't know what to make of the testimony and cannot judge it fully until I get to see the full report. Revolver News doubts the veracity of the report, but says the reality os probably worse. But, it is absolutely worth considering and analyzing because it would explain so much: why politicians adopt, push and defend demonstrably insane positions on crime, drugs and election security; why it was so easy for supposed “hackers” to steal Covid relief funds from separate countries like Washngton and California. Why government office holders refuse to do any actual investigation into elections that are obviously structured to invite fraud. What does God say? On making false allegations Exodus 20:1616 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.On corruption 2 Peter 2:19 They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.Galatians 6:8 ESV For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.Bombshell cartel allegations against Katie Hobbs may be false… but the reality is much darker…Judge Rejected Congressman's Bid to Shield Emails From DOJArizona's election have been rigged with help of cartels' money and Katie Hobbs should be in prison not be running the state. Report: Preliminary findings of activities impacting Arizona's election integrity with specific focus on the 2020 and 2022 general elections. Entire report in the tweet below.Time Stamp 34:52 - listing of people taking bribes, objection from Senator Ken Bennett Time Stamp 38:35 - Rep. Rachel Jones people have a right to know about who is getting bribedBREAKING: Georgia Elections Board Accepted $2 Million From Mark Zuckerberg's Group, Violating State LawJUST IN: Governor Ron DeSantis just officially signed into law the removal of Walt Disney's special tax privileges, appointing a state board, and ensuring debts are not transferred to taxpayers.Kavanaughing DeSantis: Leftie Hacks Dig Up DeSantis Yearbook, Emerge With “Scoop” That He Took AP Courses; Obviously, AP courses in the '90s weren't (as) infested with woke ideology and leftist indoctrination, so there is literally no comparison at all except in the name “AP.”James O'Keefe on the suffering that can come from telling the truth‘Maoist Struggle Session': Former NY Times Writer Details Newsroom Chaos After Tom Cotton Op-Ed; “It was like Caesar on the floor of the Roman Senate or something … I remember closing my laptop and pouring a huge glass of wine even though it was at like noon. Because I was so f–king freaked out by what we had just witnessed.”Allegations made against these office holders, we need to see the reportIn 2022, according to Maricopa County: o 75.4% of Republicans turned out, up from 2018 o 68.5% of Democrats turned out, down from 2018 o There are more registered Republicans (1,436,852) than Democrats (1,270,544) in AZCBS LOCAL NEWS: Lodi city council member Shakir Khan arrested, now faces voter fraud charges Show AdvertisersAlan's Soaps https://alanssoaps.com/TODD Use coupon code ‘TODD' to save an additional 10% off the bundle price. Bonefrog Coffee https://bonefrog.us Enter promo code TODD at checkout to receive 5% off your subscription. Bulwark Capital https://knowyourriskradio.comGet your free copy of “Common Cents Investing” Call 866-779-RISK or visit the website. Healthycell https://healthycell.com/todd Journey to better health and save 20% off your first order with promo code TODD.My Pillowhttps://mypillow.com Sleep cool with the new MyPillow 2.0 now Buy One Get One Free with code TODD.RuffGreens https://ruffgreens.com/todd Get your FREE Jumpstart Trial Bag of Ruff Greens, simply cover shipping. SOTA Weight Loss https://sotaweightloss.com SOTA Weight Loss is, say it with me now, STATE OF THE ART!Texas Superfoods https://texassuperfoods.com Texas Super Foods is whole food nutrition at its best.GreenHaven Interactivehttps://greenhaveninteractive.comGet more customer online with a world class website and Google

Today we dig into the life of Julius Caesar and the final days of the Roman Republic. How was Caesar and what was Rome when he lived there? How did he transform himself from a random minor noble in a Republic full of fandom nobles, into one of the most powerful man in Rome and one of the most known historical figures of all time? Today's tale if full of alliances, betrayals, a very confusing Roman political system, and more as I try my best not to ruin the tale of the man who set Rome on the path to becoming an empire.  Hail Nimrod! Help Ean find Uncle Buck!  https://www.facebook.com/groups/703874246429031/permalink/2624879937661776/?mibextid=Nif5ozWet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camps go on sale for everyone Friday, January 20th, at Noon PT. Bad Magic Productions Monthly Patreon Donation: We're giving $14,533 to The Museum of Tolerance - the only museum of its kind in the world, and an additional $1,614  to the scholarship fund this month. Thank you, Space Lizards! The MOT is dedicated to challenging visitors to understand the Holocaust in both historic and contemporary contexts and confront all forms of prejudice and discrimination in our world today. For more information, you can visit www.museumoftolerance.com.Get tour tickets at dancummins.tv Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/hzDuCBaOWooMerch: https://www.badmagicmerch.comDiscord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch related questions/problems: store@badmagicproductions.com (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard?  Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcastSign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits.

Roman Parallel - Marius (157-86 BC)Important PeopleDemetrius (337-283) - Neighbor and even, for a time, brother-in-law. Son of Antigonus I and father of Antigonus II, Demetrius rules in Greece, Macedon (for seven years), Asia Minor but was ultimately conquered by Seleucus and imprisoned until he died of his own drinking habit.Cassander (355-297) - Son of Antipater, who had served as regent of Macedon during Alexander's campaigns and later served as regent after the death of Perdiccas, he did not inherit the Macedonian throne from his father but had to fight Polyperchon for it. He conquers Greece as well and, most infamously, ends the charade of the successors serving as satraps to a regent by killing the young Alexander IV and his mother and grandmother, Olympias.Ptolemy I Soter (367-282) - The stable successor to Alexander who carves out Egypt (305 BC) for himself and founds a dynasty that rules Egypt from the prosperous port of Alexandria until Julius Caesar's arrival. Ptolemy also strategic in his dynastic alliances to stave off further wars.Cineas - Philosopher and orator, Cineas acts as a foil to Pyrrhus's reckless moving from hope to hope. In the midpoint of this life, he attempts to help Pyrrhus think through why he should be driven from conquest to conquest and provides reflection on Pyrrhus's accomplishments. Nevertheless, the philosopher accompanies him on all Pyrrhus's expeditions.Fabricius - Our first direct encounters with Roman virtue. While not given his own biography, Fabricius looms large in contrast to Pyrrhus's vices. Fabricius is stable, cautious, and dependable where Pyrrhus is reckless, overly optimistic, and flighty.Important PlacesEpirus - Pyrrhus's birthplace and kingdom by right, inheritance, and conquest.Macedon - Neighboring kingdom to Epirus. Pyrrhus manages to win it and lose it without a fight. Rome - The new power in the Western Mediterranean, having risen even more recently than Carthage, now threatens the entire Italian peninsula, including the Greek-speaking colonies in the south. Tarentum - The colony that asks Pyrrhus for help, and then quickly comes to regret asking. Beneventum - The battle in which the Romans manage, not exactly to beat Pyrrhus, but to convince him that Italy won't be worth the fight. Key Vices and VirtuesExcessive Appetite for Conquest (πλεονεξία) - Not a vice in the Aristotelian canon, but one important to historians like Thucydides, who saw it as the root of the Athenian downfall. This Life becomes a meditation on knowign one's political limits and serving in the capacity one has been placed. The philosopher Cineas provides some of this perspective for us without being too heavy-handed.Justice - Once again ignored by most of Alexander's successors, we do se key aspects of it lived up to by the Romans. It is called the virtue of kings in this life and one philosopher observes that the Roman Senate strikes him as “An Assembly of Kings.” When Justice and Power are joined, Plutarch sees not only a properous state nor even just a stable situation, but a good government promoting virtue in its people. This life sets us up so well to enter into the Roman story, because Plutarch wants to remind even the Romans of their past virtues and encourage them to live up to those old virtues in the height of their power.Support the show

Jesus was born in obscurity and raised to glory in his death and resurrection, fulfilling the prophets' prophecies. - SERMON TRANSCRIPT - I want to wish all of you a very merry Christmas. My weird statistical analytical mind this morning wanted to know how often this happens, this Christmas on Sunday thing. It feels like it's been a while, but we looked it up, I thought it's got to be every seven years, but it isn't. Because of leap year it happens irregularly and the next time it's going to happen is 11 years from now. So I'll be really old by then, so this is the last opportunity I have as a young man to preach on Christmas Sunday, so grateful to share it with you all. Today we celebrate the birth of our King, the King of Glory, Jesus Christ, into the humblest and most obscure of circumstances. Today we're going to peer into the darkness of a stable where animals were feeding, and standing and resting and lowing and mooing and bleating, and a tiny baby is born, weak, small, unknown, the seed of a formerly glorious lineage that had fallen for almost six centuries into total obscurity. This one born so low would be exalted to infinite glory by the hand of God, born to reign as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. My focus in this message today will be on the God ordained obscurity of his birth. God ordained obscurity. It was predicted in the prophets, it was worked by the hand of God, it was decreed, personally worked by almighty God for his purposes, and then the infinite glory to which He will rise and bring us with him, that's the message today. I. Like a Shoot Out of Dry Ground I want to begin with this phrase “like a shoot out of dry ground.” It comes from Isaiah's prophecy. Isaiah the prophet spoke these words of prophecy over seven centuries before they were fulfilled. Isaiah 53:1-3, "Who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not." The powerful image in that prophecy is that the Messiah, the savior of the world, will be completely physically, visibly, unimpressive. No majesty to attract our eye to him. Nothing in his appearance, he'll be underwhelming to the untrained eye, there'd be no radiant glory, no obvious display. We're going to speak more in detail about this marvelous prophecy later in the message, but let me zero in on this image that has captivated my mind. He grew up before him like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground. This is a powerful agricultural metaphor, as so many are in the Bible, speaking of Jesus Christ, the savior of the world, growing, which He did, from infancy to manhood. The text says He grew up before him. That is the Messiah, the Savior, Jesus Christ, grew up in the presence of almighty God, with God watching over his growth. But the growth was like, it says, a tender shoot, meaning apparently weak, frail, and impressive, and like a root out of dry ground. His culture, his people, his nation were fruitless, dry, sterile, like a desert. No power, no glory, no prospects, a dry and weary land with nothing alive, that's the image. But there is in the center of that desert, a tiny shoot, a little root with a small amount of activity of life, of power, but not apparently amounting to anything at all, that's the image. As I meditated on it my mind went to a part of American history, relatively recent, called the Dust Bowl. In the American Prairie in the 1930s during the Depression was a terrible era of drought and erosion and wind resulting in overpowering clouds of dust that destroyed all crops and drove a mass migration of poverty stricken farmers westward just to survive. John Steinbeck wrote a classic on this era in American history called Grapes of Wrath, and it powerfully depicts the desperation of farmers in this Midwestern Dust Bowl, seeing the Dust Bowl emerge, dust storms ravaging their crops and their hopes, nothing left but stunning poverty, desolation, emptiness and despair. Listen to some of Steinbeck's prose that skillfully captures this desperation. "The wind grew stronger, whisked under stones carried up straws and old leaves, even little clods, marking its course as it sailed across the fields. The air and the sky darkened, and through them the sun shown redly, and there was a raw sting in the air. During a night the wind raced faster over the land, dug cunningly among the rootlets of the corn, and the corn fought the wind with its weakened leaves until the roots were freed by the prying wind and then each stalk settled wearily sideways toward the earth, pointed in the direction of the wind. The people came out of their houses and smelled the hot stinging air and covered their noses from it, and the children ran out of their houses, came out of their houses. But they did not shout or even run about as they would've done after a rain. Men stood by their fences and looked at the ruined corn, drying fast now, only a little green showing through the film of dust. The men were silent, they did not move often. And the women came out of the houses to stand beside the men, to feel whether this time the men would break. The women studied the men's face secretly, for the corn could go as long as something else remained. The children stood nearby drawing figures in the dust with their bare toes, and the children sent exploring senses out to see whether men and women would break this time." That was the Dust Bowl tragedy, the destruction of a hundred million acres of farmland, crops devastated, hopes utterly crushed, buried in billowing clouds of dust. The powerful question Steinbeck raised is whether this time the dust storm, which destroyed the corn, would also break the spirits of the people and crush hopes. That's the image that I have here when it comes to Israel, like a root out of dry ground. So it was with Israel's messianic hopes, a kingdom of words and dreams only it seemed. A bygone era of power and glory; it'd been a long time, more than half a millennium. Ancient prophecies that seem to have absolutely no chance of coming true of a worldwide empire of righteousness in which all nations on earth would submit to the power of the Son of David, the Messiah, reigning on a throne of majesty in Jerusalem. But the house and lineage of David seemed nothing, it meant nothing, apparently. The tree had been felled a long time ago. The lineage of Jesse was a stump left in a dry fields, nothing stirring. So it was that holy night when Jesus was born, the son of God, born to be king of heaven and earth, but it did not appear to be so. II. The King of Glory Born in a Stable The king of glory was born in a stable, you‘ve heard the narrative, it's very famous. We read it every year, Luke 2:1-7, listen again, "In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria, and everyone went to his own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth and Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem, the town of David, because he belonged to the house and lineage of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn." At the beginning and then at the end of this short passage, we have two individuals in stark contrast with one another, you have Caesar Augustus, and then you have Jesus Christ. The narrative begins with the most powerful man then on earth, Caesar Augustus. He was the first Roman Emperor and reigned from 27 BC until his death in the AD 14. He was considered one of the greatest leaders in world history. He established the pattern of the Roman Empire under the Caesars for centuries to come. He had been born Gaius Octavius. He was a great nephew of Julius Caesar, who was assassinated in 44 BC. Julius Caesar had named him his legal son and heir. He won total control over the Roman Empire by the year 31 BC. Four years later in 27 BC the Roman Senate voted him the title Augustus, meaning “majestic one”. For them it implied deity. Luke writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit did not mean so, but he used the title by which he was well known, Caesar Augustus. By the time Jesus was born, scholars tell us, in 4 BC, Caesar Augustus was at the absolute height of his power. He ruled over a vast realm of 1.7 million square miles, 45 million people, about 20% of the world's population was under his domain at that time. He was so wealthy, personally wealthy, that during an economic crisis for Asia Minor, he paid that entire region's tax bill out of his own coffers. He lived in purple, surrounded by marble columns, dining on whatever food he wanted, the finest of meats, the best of wines anytime. The world trembled at his slightest command. It was he who ordered that the census be taken of the entire Roman world, causing minor migrations of people, as for example, Joseph and Mary going to Bethlehem. Jesus, on the other hand, entered the world at the other end of the spectrum. Though he was King of Kings and Lord of Lords, He was born into poverty, the son, so it was supposed, of an obscure Jewish carpenter in a conquered backwater of the empire. The actual circumstances of his birth are famous for their poignant aspects, they are humble and poverty stricken in the extreme. Forced temporarily to migrate from their home village of Nazareth, they had to travel to Bethlehem to register. The reason they went to Bethlehem was that Joseph, we are told, was of the house and lineage of David, the ancient king of Israel. But however glorious was the lineage of David back in the heyday, that line had fallen into total obscurity by this time. The birth of Jesus, the son of David, was in total obscurity, and in far more distress than would've happened if he had been born in Nazareth with his mother Mary at least surrounded by family and some friends that could help with the birth. Instead of that they were desperately seeking a place to stay, a place where the baby could be born, because her time had come and she was in the agonies of childbirth. Of course, very famously, Joseph could not find any lodging in the inn, there were too many people there in the tiny town of Bethlehem. So Mary gave birth to Jesus surrounded, it would seem, by animals. She laid him in a manger, a feeding trough for livestock. Instead of a royal birth in which he was wrapped in purple, He was wrapped instead in simple swaddling cloths of the lowest sort. What a stark contrast to the life of Caesar Augustus, the most powerful man on earth. The humble origins of Christ's birth were essential to God's plan. God wanted his only begotten son to be born into this level of poverty and humility. It's not an accident, it was ordained by God. Honestly there is no glory, there is no wealth, there is no power on earth that remotely compares with the kingdom Christ left to come here. Let's be honest, God is not impressed with Caesar Augustus. He's not impressed with his wealth or his power or his purple. No matter how powerful rulers like Caesar Augustus are, God is not impressed, and God willed that Christ should humble himself to identify with us in our poverty and weakness, for we are poor and we are weak, and apart from Christ we are wicked. He wanted this humility and obscurity and poverty for Christ. "The humble origins of Christ's birth were essential to God's plan. God wanted his only begotten son to be born into this level of poverty and humility. It's not an accident, it was ordained by God." 2nd Corinthians 8:9 describes this journey, "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor so that you through his poverty might become rich." Or again, Philippians 2:6-7, "Jesus being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness." We see the intentional strategic poverty of Jesus, that was his mission. Jesus was born into extremely low circumstances, very few babies in the world are laid in mangers after they're born. I've not done any actual research on this, but I would have to think it would be highly unusual to put a newborn baby in a feeding trough. I think about the standards of cleanliness all over the world where babies are born. The OB-GYN wards here seem pretty clean to me. I don't think they have any mangers there, in either little Duke or big Duke Hospital. That's it, there's a level of cleanliness and protection for newborn babies around the world vastly higher than that which Jesus, the son of God, received that night. Shortly after his birth, Joseph and Mary had to flee to Egypt with the baby Jesus to escape the murderous King Herod. Jesus went from a temporary migrant from Nazareth the Bethlehem, to literally a refugee fleeing to Egypt to save his life. When the family returned it was to Nazareth, to an obscure and poverty stricken area of Palestine, where Joseph was a manual laborer, he was a carpenter, and Jesus would be too before he was presented to Israel and began his public ministry, a manual laborer. Jesus's poverty would continue throughout his life. He told one of the people who wanted to follow him wherever He went, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, the son of man has no place to lay his head. I have nowhere to sleep tonight. Don't expect any kind of earthly power or prosperity if you follow me." Now Jesus' disciples one day were walking through the grain fields on the Sabbath and were picking heads of grain and rubbing them in their hands and eating them. We are told that this is the way that poor people were provided for in Israel back then. This was basically welfare for poor people in Palestine in that day. Jesus's followers had to do that. Jesus's own financial needs were met in part by some women, we're told in Luke 8, that contributed to him out of their private means. But the clearest display of Jesus' poverty would be at the end of his life. When He was arrested, condemned, and crucified, all of his worldly belongings were gambled for in fulfillment of prophecy. John 19, "When the soldiers crucified Jesus they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom. 'Let's not tear it,' they said to one another, 'let's decide by lot who will get it.'" This happened that the scripture might be fulfilled, which said, ‘They divided my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.’” That is what the soldiers did. Jesus entered the world penniless and left the world penniless, without a single possession on earth. All of his actual possessions were fair game for the fulfillment of prophecy. His poverty at that moment was infinitely greater than the material, for He was stripped of all glory and all favor in the presence of almighty God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God, and once God transferred our guilt and our sin onto Christ the substitute, the Savior, He then poured out his wrath on him, justly and rightly, and broke fellowship with him in his role as Son of man Savior. In Mark 15:34 Jesus, "Cried out in loud voice 'Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?' which means 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'" To be forsaken by God is the ultimate poverty. And all of that to make us rich. Brother and sister in Christ, let me tell you something, you are infinitely rich, you're richer than you can possibly imagine. Part of the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to help you know how rich is your inheritance together with all the saints. You're richer than you think you are. Rich in forgiveness, all of your sins, past, present, and future 100% paid for, forgiven by almighty God. Rich in love, for the Father and the Son have lavished all their love on us and will continue to lavish that love for all eternity, and the Holy Spirit pours out his love into our hearts, that we would know that we are adopted and beloved. Our wealth is just beginning, for we have an infinite inheritance of glory waiting for us in the next world. Jesus said, "I go to prepare a place for you and I'll come back, and you will be with me and see my glory, and you will have heavenly possessions yourself, that can never be taken from you, can never perish, spoil or fade." So Jesus became poor so that all of us who believe in Christ might be forever rich. III. The Humble Origins of Christ’s Kingdom Predicted This whole downward journey that I've been describing here, from glory into poverty and then back up to glory, is essential to our salvation. The humble origins of Christ's lineage, the humble origins of his kingdom were specifically predicted by God and orchestrated by God. Isaiah 53, as we've already seen, "Who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him, he was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised and we esteemed him not." Now we need to understand this is written in the seventh century BC by Isaiah the prophet when the lineage of David was still in power, when Hezekiah was a powerful successful king. So this was the prediction of the laying low of the house and lineage of David. The Messiah, the son of David, would have no majesty that would attract anyone, nothing in his appearance, this was predicted before there were even indications that it would happen. And like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground, Isaiah had said it earlier in his prophecies, with the idea of Israel becoming a tree that was felled leaving a stump in the ground seemingly lifeless with no future. Remember the great calling of Isaiah to his prophetic ministry, "In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord seat in the throne, high and exalted." He sees the glory of God, and a voice comes out, "Whom shall I send and who will go for us?" "Here am I, send me," says Isaiah. What's the mission? "Go tell them, 'Be ever hearing but never understanding, be ever seeing but never perceiving. Make this people's heart callous, make their ears dull and close their eyes." How would you like to be a prophet and be told right up front, "They will not listen to you." Isaiah said, "For how long, oh Lord? How long do I have to do that difficult ministry?" And he answered, "Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted, and the fields ruined and ravaged. Until the Lord has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken." That's the Dust Bowl, that's emptiness, desert. "And though a tenth remains in the land, it will again be laid waste, layer upon layer of devastation by the judgment of God. But as a terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be a stump in the land." Here's this image of a dry desert and a stump, how does that look to you? It looks like nothing. But then in Isaiah 11 it says this, "A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse. From its roots a branch will bear fruit." There's life in that stump in the middle of that desert, a shoot coming up from the stump of Jesse. The spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and of an understanding, the spirit of counsel and of power, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord and He will delight in the fear of the Lord. That is Christ rising like a shoot from a stump in the middle of a desert. Ezekiel said the same thing in his prophecy, about the destruction of the monarchy of Judah because of the wickedness and sins of the kingdom of Judah, including their kings. The kingly line of David being reduced to total obscurity, the prophet Ezekiel ministered during the days of the exile to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, reduced the kingly lineage of David to the lowest level of poverty. There were still descendants of David, there are still sons of David physically alive. God made sure of that, there would always be a son of David, the lineage would not die out. But they had absolutely no power, no glory, no majesty, they were stripped. The image that Ezekiel gives in Ezekiel 17 is of a low spreading vine, a vine crawling on the ground looking for water. Ezekiel 17:5-6, "He took some of the seed of your land and put it in fertile soil, he planted it like a willow by abundant water and it sprouted and became a low spreading vine." Picture kudzu I guess, I don't know, something low and insignificant and weak. Ezekiel 17:12-14, a couple verses later, very clear, because it's a complex parable in Ezekiel 17, but then he says, let me spell it out for you, "The king of Babylon went to Jerusalem and carried off her king in her nobles, bringing them back with him to Babylon. Then he took a member of the royal family," [that’s the house in lineage of David] "and made a treaty with him, putting him under oath. He also carried away the leading men of the land so that the kingdom would be brought low, unable to rise again, surviving only by keeping his treaty." Only by getting along with the Gentile overlords would they even have a future. It was the same thing in Ezekiel 19:12-14, "It was uprooted in fury and thrown to the ground. The east wind made it shrivel, and it was stripped of its fruit," that's the Dust Bowl image, shriveling, dry, no fruit. "Its strong branches withered and fire consumed them. Now it is planted in the desert, in a dry and thirsty land." That image, it's a desert and there's just nothing going on. "Fire spread from one of its main branches and consumed its fruit, no strong branches left on it fit for a ruler's scepter." He's talking about the house and lineage of David, there's no one strong enough to be a king. This is a prophetic image, I think, of the Jewish nation as a whole, but especially the kingly line of David, and it's because of their great wickedness and sin. It's not an accident, it's because they're idolatrous, it's because they sacrificed their own sons in the fire to Moloch. Descended from David, they took some of David's descendants and burned them to Moloch. God judged them with the Exile, stripped them of glory and kingly power. A shoot growing out of dry ground, seemingly with no future at all, a mighty glorious tree that is then leveled until there's nothing left but a stump in the land. Then a straggly vine crawling on the ground searching for water, finding enough to survive, but not enough to be anything other than a straggly low, weak vine, a leafy vine, humbled, obscure, weak, powerless, nothing mighty enough for a scepter like a shoot out of dry ground. So Joseph of Nazareth was born a son of David, but He's totally obscure. If you look at the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1, it covers 42 generations, and they're broken into three groups of 14. The first two groups, the first 28, are relatively well known and written about in the histories of Israel, in the Kings and Chronicles, we know about them. But the last 14, we never heard of them. Who are these people? They're all sons of David, they're in the lineage, but they're completely obscure, they're weak. Where do they live? Do they live in Palestine? Live in Babylon, live in Assyria? Where do they live? We don't know, but they're in the lineage, and they're obscure, we've never heard of them. [Trivia question, what was Joseph's father's name? It is knowable. It's Jacob. Tell me about Jacob of Nazareth. I don't even know if he was in Nazareth, I don't know anything about Jacob except that he was Joseph's father. Obscure, weak, and lowly.] Joseph himself, interestingly, was called a son of David by the angel Gabriel. Remember how he was engaged to Mary, to be married to Mary, and found out that she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit. He resolved to divorce her quietly, because he was a righteous man. But an angel spoke to him in a dream, Matthew 1:20-21, "The Angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph, appeared to him in a dream and said, 'Listen Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins." Did you hear that? Joseph is called a son of David. Well, what was he? He was a carpenter in an obscure town in northern Galilee, a despised backwater of Jewish life, a conquered people in a land dominated by Gentiles, especially by the mighty Romans under Caesar Augustus, with no end in sight. Another half millennium of Roman power in that region. IV. From Humble Obscurity to Infinite Glory But from humble obscurity we rise to infinite glory, the future is unspeakably glorious. Listen again to Isaiah 11, "A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse, from its roots of branch will bear fruit. The spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the spirit of counsel and of power, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord, and he will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes or decide by what he hears with his ears, but with righteousness. he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist. The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together, and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra and the young child put his hand into the viper's nest. They'll neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. In that day, the root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples, the nations will rally to him and his place of rest will be glorious." [Isaiah 11:1-10]. That's the shoot from the stump of Jesse, the king of the kingdom of heaven, the spirit of the Lord rests on him to build a worldwide kingdom of peace and justice and righteousness, and the earth is going to be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. It will include Gentiles, for the root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the nations. They are going to rally to him, they're going to come, a multitude from every nation on earth, from every tribe and language, and people and nation will rally to the banner of the root of Jesse. They will worship and obey him, and his place of rest will be glorious. The new Jerusalem will shine, will be illuminated, will radiate with the glory of God and of the lamb, forever. Ezekiel 17 finished that same way, if you know what to look for, it's glorious. Ezekiel's vision was of the house of David being leveled like a low crawling vine looking for water, but not forever. Ezekiel 21:27 speaks of the desolation, "A ruin, a ruin, I will make it a ruin, it will not be restored until he comes to whom it rightfully belongs, to him I will give it.” Ezekiel 17:22-24 is equally majestic. This is what the sovereign Lord says,"I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and I will plant it. I will break off a tender sprig from its top most chute and I will plant it on a high and lofty mountain, on the mountain heights of Israel I will plant it. It will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. Birds of every kind will nest in it, they will find shelter in the shade of its branches. All the trees of the field will know that I the Lord bring down the tall tree and I make the low tree grow tall. I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish. I the Lord have spoken and I will do it." That's awesome, I'm going to take this tiny little shoot and I'm going to plant it on Mount Zion, Jerusalem, and this tender sprig will grow to be a mighty cedar. But it's a strange cedar because it bears fruit. You guys know anything about cedars? They're coniferous, like pine cones. Have you ever eaten a pine cone, or a pine needle? It's nasty. So what is this fruit on the cedar? The cedar is the immensity and height and size, but it's fruitful, and the branches are shaped for birds of all kind to nest in. It's a picture of Christ and of his kingdom that God is going to establish that will reach to the ends of the earth. To me it reminds me very much of the parable of the mustard seed. Mark 4, "'What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it?' asked Jesus. 'It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground, yet when planted it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.'" Friends, do you not understand how powerful the interconnections are in the Bible? You think Jesus didn't know about Ezekiel 17? He knew about Ezekiel 17. All of the birds of the air can nest in its shady branches and eat fruit from it, and that's a picture of the Gentiles from every tribe, language, people and nation coming to Christ, coming to the kingdom. It's beautiful, and it's fulfilled in Christ atoning death and the spread of the gospel. The prediction in Ezekiel 17 is God takes the tall tree and levels it, and makes the low tree grow tall. He has the power to do that. Let me ask you a question. Let's say there are different censuses taken of the entire world. Now two simple questions, have you ever heard of Jesus Christ, or have you ever heard of Caesar Augustus? Who do you think would win? Let me ask another question, of those who have heard of Caesar Augustus, how many have heard because of Luke 2:1-7? So you got to take them off the table, you have to ask a different question, how many have heard of Caesar Augustus but have never heard of Jesus? I think there's like 5,000 of those people. They're all scholars in universities, I guess. I don't know, but they've heard of Jesus. My goodness, Jesus is much more famous than Caesar Augustus. God has the power to take the lofty tree and make it low, level it, and He has the power to take the low tree and make it fill the earth with glory, and that's what He did through the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus was made low, died, so that fruit might come. John 12:24, "Truly, truly I say to you, unless the grain of wheat falls to the ground or dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit." Christ was never weaker and more obscure than when He died, but from his death has become infinite fruit, infinite glory, spreading to the ends of the earth and to the ends of time. VI. Applications Applications for Christmas. Meditate on this, meditate on this rise from obscurity to glory. Meditate on how God worked it. Meditate on the fact that God wills that that obscurity is temporary. He doesn't want obscurity anymore, just so you know. Our job is that Jesus would not be obscure. We are witnesses, we are messengers to take the name of Jesus to those who have never heard of him before. God wills it through the power of the Holy Spirit, that all peoples will hear of Jesus. That this gospel will be preached, and the whole world is a testimony to all nations that He would not be obscure. Meditate on that. Understand that Christ gave up all that infinite wealth and power and glory and honor so that we might become rich. 2 Corinthians 8:9, meditate on that. The willingness to become low so that he might take us with him to glory, meditate on that. Ponder the cost of your salvation. This is a time of celebration, but realize the reason He took on that body was so that that body could be shattered on the cross, so that that blood that flowed through his veins could be poured out as an atoning sacrifice. Ponder the cost of your salvation through that, and ponder the riches of your eternal inheritance. Read Revelation 21 and 22, see where we're heading. Look at that glorious place of rest that Christ is working for you. And then finally, enjoy your Christmas celebration with one another. "Understand that Christ gave up all that infinite wealth and power and glory and honor so that we might become rich." Close with me in prayer. Lord, we thank you for the depth of your word. We thank you for themes that perhaps we didn't even know were there, in Ezekiel and Isaiah. Lord, we in general have been aware of this rise from obscurity to glory, but Lord, we didn't realize how much you directly predicted and orchestrated it so that we would know how glorious is Christ. Help us to meditate much on him, to feed our souls on the gospel. Help us, oh Lord, to be willing to proclaim the message of Christ's death and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins so that any who hear and repent and believe would find forgiveness, and help us to celebrate with one another in ways that bring you glory. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Historical Context of the Nativity - God's covenant with Israel o The Promised Land was given to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the Jews would be Yahweh's people, and Yahweh would be their God. o However, Israel was disobedient, and worshipped other gods, and did many other wicked things besides, so God then handed Judah and Israel over to their enemies. - Babylonian Captivity o The Assyrians captured the northern kingdom of Judah in 721 BC; the Babylonians conquered Israel in 597 BC; both of these events came to pass just as God had sent the prophets to forewarn and promise the people. o With these two successive conquests, of Judah and Israel, many Jews were killed, or carried into foreign lands, or fled, or else were ruled over in their ancestral homeland by foreigners. o The Babylonians and Assyrians both were conquered and subsumed by the Achaemenid Persian empire. - Hellenization o With Alexander the Great's defeat of the Persians, his empire took possession of Judea. o After the death of Alexander, four of his generals divided the empire, and the part containing what had formerly been Israel was ruled by the Seleucids starting in 281 BC. o The Seleucid King Antiochus Epiphanes, ruling from 175-164 BC, persecuted the Jews, desecrating the temple in Jerusalem, and forcing the high priest and other devout Jews to eat pork, which they were forbidden to do. o This led to what was known as the Maccabean revolt in 167-160 BC, in which the Jews led by a certain warrior group called the Maccabees drove the Seleucids out, and established nominal Jewish self-government in the region again from about 110-63 BC. o A characteristic of this government, called the Hasmonean dynasty, was a reduction in the influence of both Hellenism and Hellenistic Judaism. - Roman Conquest o The Hasmoneans were conquered by the Roman general Pompeius in 63 BC, thus ending, until modern times, meaningful Jewish self-rule. o As a client kingdom of the Roman empire, particularly under Herod the Great after the Roman Senate declared him “King of the Jews” in 37 BC, Judea was effectively under Roman rule. - Herod the Great o As a vassal of the Roman empire, Herod got his position because of his father's close relationship with the Roman general and dictator Julius Caesar. o To give you an idea of how ruthless he was, his mother-in-law was a part of the Hasmonean dynasty, and plotted at one point to restore the former dynasty to power by installing Aristobulus III, a member of her family, as the high priest, then sending him off to meet with Mark Antony, who was then in the midst of fighting a civil war with Octavian over who would be the Roman emperor after the assassination of Julius Caesar. § Herod was just so sure Aristobulus III would replace him as King of the Jews if he met with Antony that he arranged for the assassination of Aristobulus. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/garrett-ashley-mullet/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/garrett-ashley-mullet/support

Mike Isaacson: Rome gets sacked ONE TIME, and that's all these people can talk about! [Theme song] Nazi SS UFOsLizards wearing human clothesHinduism's secret codesThese are nazi lies Race and IQ are in genesWarfare keeps the nation cleanWhiteness is an AIDS vaccineThese are nazi lies Hollow earth, white genocideMuslim's rampant femicideShooting suspects named Sam HydeHiter lived and no Jews died Army, navy, and the copsSecret service, special opsThey protect us, not sweatshopsThese are nazi lies Mike: Welcome to another episode of The Nazi Lies Podcast. Today we're talking with Edward Watts, professor of history and Alkaviadis Vassiliadis Endowed Chair in Byzantine Greek History at the University of California San Diego. He's here to talk to us about his book, The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome: The History of a Dangerous Idea. The book is an extraordinary scholarly endeavor that managed to give a detailed and engaging history of 1700 years of Roman history in under 300 pages. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Watts. Edward Watts: Thanks so much for having me. It's exciting to be here. Mike: All right. Now, you are one of the rare guests on our show whose book was actually directed at debunking Nazi lies. Tell us what you had in mind when you were writing this book. Edward: So the thing that prompted me to write this book was a recognition that the history of Rome, and in particular the legacy of Rome as it relates to the end of Roman history, was something that was being repeatedly misused across thousands of years to justify doing all sorts of violence and horrible things to people who really in the Roman context had very little to do with the decline of Rome, and in a post-Roman context, had nothing really to do with the challenges that people using the legacy of Rome wanted to try to address. And in particular, what prompted this was the recognition after 2016 of how stories about the classical past and the Roman past were being used on the far right and the sort of fascist fringe as a way of pointing to where they saw to be challenging dynamics and changes, critical changes, in the way that society was functioning. What was happening was people were doing things like using the story of the Gothic migrations in the 4th century AD to talk about the need to do radical things in our society related to immigration. And the discussions were just misusing the Roman past in really aggressive ways as kind of proof for radical ideas that didn't really relate to anything that happened in the past and I think are generally not things that people would be willing to accept in the present. And Rome provides a kind of argument when it's misunderstood,when Roman history is misunderstood, it provides a kind of argument that people are not familiar enough with to be able to refute, that might get people who think that a certain policy is aggressive or inhumane or unnecessary to think twice about whether that policy is something that is a response to a problem that people need to consider. And that's just wrong. It's a wrong way to use Roman history. It's a wrong way to use history altogether. And it's a rhetoric that really needs to be highlighted and pointed to so that people can see how insidious these kinds of comparisons can be. Mike: Okay, so your book discusses the idea of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, which you say started before any such decline or fall in the late Republic. What was politics like in the Roman Empire before the myth of Rome's decline popped up? Edward: So this is an interesting question because the story of Roman decline actually shows up in some of the very earliest Roman literature that we have. So the very first sort of intact Latin texts that we have from the Roman period are things like the plays of Plautus. In one of the earlier plays of Plautus, he is already making fun of people for saying that Rome is in decline. And he's saying this at a time right after the Roman victory over Hannibal when there is no evidence that Rome is in decline at all. And yet we know that there are politicians who are pushing this idea that the victory over Hannibal has unleashed a kind of moral decline in Rome that is leading to the degeneration of Roman morals and Roman behaviors and Roman social structures in such a fashion that will disrupt the ability of Rome to continue. This is just not something that most people recognized to be true, but what we see when politicians in the third century and second century BC are saying things like this, they aren't particularly interested in describing an objective reality. What they're looking to do is insert ideas into popular discourse, so that people in the context of their society begin to think it might be possible that decline exists. So I think that when we look at Roman history before Roman literature, or before these pieces of Roman literature exist, we really are looking at much later reconstructions. But I think that it's fair to say that even in those reconstructions of stories about things like say, the sixth king of Rome, those stories too focus on how that particular regime was inducing a decline from the proper behaviors of Romans. So I think we could say that there is no before decline. Rome seems always to have been talking about these ideas of decline and worrying about the fact that their society was in decline, even when objectively you would look around and say there is no reason whatsoever that you should be thinking this. Mike: Okay. Now your book argues that this political framing helped politicians shape the politics of the Roman Empire in particular ways. So how did those who pushed this declensionist narrative change the Roman republic? Edward: So in the Roman republic, there are a few things that this narrative is used to do. In the second century, early second century BC, this narrative is used to attack opponents of a politician named Cato. What Cato tried to do was single out people who had been getting particularly wealthy because of the aftermath of Rome's victory in the Second Punic War over Hannibal and then its victories in the eastern Mediterranean against the Greek King, Philip V. And what Cato saw was that this wealth was something that profoundly destabilized society because now there were winners who were doing well economically in a way that the old money establishment couldn't match. And so what he's looking to do is to say that when you look around and you see prosperity of that level in the Roman state, this is a sign that things are actually bad. It's not a sign of things are good. It's a sign that things are deteriorating, and we need to take radical steps to prevent this. And the radical steps that Cato takes, and that he initially gets support for, involves very onerous taxes directed specifically against groups of people that he opposed. He also serves as the person who decides who gets to be in the Roman Senate, and he uses that position to kick out a lot of people on the basis simply of him deciding that they embody some kind of negative trajectory of the Roman State. And there's a reaction to this and Cato eventually is forced to kind of back away from this. As you move later in the second century, the narrative of decline becomes something that first is used to again justify financial policies, and then later, actual violence against officials who are seen as pushing too radical an agenda. And so this becomes a narrative that you can use to destabilize things. It doesn't matter if you're coming from what we would say is the right or the left, the kind of equal opportunity narrative that can be used to get people to question whether the structures in their society are legitimately in keeping with the way the society is supposed to function. Mike: Okay. So a lot of people have this misconception that Rome kind of snapped from being a republic to being governed by an emperor, but that's not really so. What was the imperial administration like and how did it change? Edward: The Roman republic was in many ways a very strong constitutional system that had a lot of things built into it to prevent one individual from taking over. Not only did it have a structure that was based on a kind of balance of power–and the description of that structure was something that influenced the Founding Fathers in the US to create the balances of power that we have–but in Rome, the administrative office that correlated to the presidency actually was a paired magistracy. So there were two consuls who governed together and could in theory check one another. What the decline narrative happened or allows to happen is that these structures begin to be questioned as illegitimate. And you get, starting in the later part of the second century and going all the way through the murder of Julius Caesar in 44 BC, a long set of discussions about how the Constitution is not functioning as it's supposed to, how the interests of everybody are not being represented by the representatives in the Senate and by the sorts of laws that are being put forward in assemblies. And you have a greater sense that there's an emergency, and an emergency that requires people to assent to an individual exercising more power than the structure really permits. And so this idea of decline heightens this sense of emergency and you have cycles every generation or so, where the sense of emergency gets greater and another constitutional structure snaps. Until eventually what you have is an individual in Julius Caesar, who is able to exercise complete and effective control over the direction of politics in the state. Mike: Okay. So for whatever reason, the assassination of Julius Caesar sticks strong in our cultural psyche, but reading your book it seems like assassinating emperors was kind of commonplace? Edward: It depends on the period. Yeah, there are definitely periods where the violent overthrow of emperors are somewhat common. I think with Caesar, what we have is the assassination. We're still when Caesar was assassinated in the final death throes of the Roman republic. And so it takes a while and a really brutal nearly 15-year-long sprawling Civil War for Rome to finally just accept that the republic as a governing structure is not really going to function in the way it had before. And the first emperor is Augustus. The first assassination actually occurs about 75 years after Augustus takes over. The first emperor that's assassinated is Caligula. Then you have moments of really profound peace and stability that are punctuated by these upheavals where, you know, in the year 68 the Emperor Nero commits suicide and this leads to a sprawling civil war in which four emperors take power in the course of a single year. Then things kind of calmed down. There's an assassination in 96, and no more assassinations for almost 100 years. And so you have these moments where the structures of the empire are very stable, but when they break, it breaks very seriously. It's very rare when an emperor is assassinated, that there's only one assassination and things kind of work out after that. And so generally, I think what this suggests is, if you have faith that the Imperial structure is working predictably, it's very, very hard to disrupt that. But if you have a sense that an emperor is not legitimate or is not in power or has taken power violently, there's a very serious risk that that emperor will in turn be overthrown violently, and something very serious could happen, even going so far as resulting in a civil war. Mike: Okay so one of the biggest myths surrounding the Roman Empire is that it fell in 476 AD, and that plunged Europe into the Dark Ages, but this isn't really so. What happened in 476 AD, and how did it become the legendary fall of Rome? Edward: Yes, so 476 AD is one of the greatest non-events in history. Because when we look at our history and our timeline for the fall of Rome, this is the date that stands out to us. But actually in 476, there's not a single person who seems to think that Rome fell on that day. What happens is in the middle part of the fifth century, the eastern empire and the western empire separated in 395. And in the middle part of the fifth century, the western empire has a very serious loss of territory and then a loss of stability within Italy. So that there are, in a sense, kingmakers who run the army and decide whether an emperor should be in power or not. And so you have a number of figurehead emperors, starting really in the 450s and going through 476, who are there, in a couple of cases at certain moments they do exercise real power, but much of the time they're subordinate to military commanders who don't want to be emperor, or in many cases are of barbarian descent and don't think they can make imperial power actually stick, and in 476, Odoacer who was one of these barbarian commanders overthrows an emperor in Italy and says, "We are not going to have an emperor in Italy anymore. Instead, I'm just going to serve as the agent of the eastern emperor in Italy." And for the next 50 years, there are barbarian agents–first Odoacer and then Theodoric–who serve in this constitutional way where they acknowledge the superiority and the authority of the emperor in Constantinople over Italy. And in practice, they're running Italy. But in principle, they are still affirming that they're part of the Roman Empire, the Roman senate is still meeting, Roman law is still used. It's a situation where only when the eastern empire decides that it wants to take Italy back, do you start getting these stories about well, Rome fell in 476 when these barbarians got rid of the last emperor and now it's our obligation to liberate Italians from this occupation by these barbarians. In 476, though, this is not what anyone in Constantinople or in Italy actually thought was going on. Mike: Okay. So both the east and the west of the Roman Empire eventually became Christian. How did this alter the myth of the declining Rome? Edward: So for much of Roman history, there is very much this idea that any problem that you have is a potential sign of the decline of Rome, and if you are particularly motivated, you can say that the problem requires radical solutions to prevent Rome from falling into crisis. But with Christianity, when the Roman Empire becomes Christian, there is no past that you can look back to say, "Well, we were better as a Christian empire in this time." When Constantine converts to Christianity, he's the first Christian emperor. And so it's very natural for opponents to be able to say, "Look, he made everything Christian and now things are going to hell ,and so Christianity is the problem." So what Christians instead say is what actually is going on here is we are creating a new and better Rome, a Rome where the approach to the divine is more sophisticated, it's more likely to work. And so for about 100 years, you have instead of a narrative decline, a narrative of progress where Christians are pushing a notion that by becoming Christian, the Empire is embarking on a new path that is better than it has ever been before. Not everybody accepts this. At the time of Constantine's conversion, probably 90% of the Emperor's still pagan so this would be a very strange argument to them. And by the time you get into the fifth century, you probably are in a majority Christian empire, but like a 50% majority, not like 90% majority. So there is a significant pushback against this. And in moments of crisis, and in particular after the Sack of Rome in 410, there is a very strong pagan reaction to this idea of Christian Roman progress. And Christians have to come up with evermore elaborate explanations for how what looks like decline in any kind of tangible sense that you would look at in the western empire is actually a form of progress. And the most notable production of that line of argument is Augustine's City of God, which says effectively, “Don't worry about this world. There's a better world, a Christian world that really you should be focusing on, and you're getting closer there. So the effect of what's going on in the Roman world doesn't really matter too much for you.” Mike: Okay. Now at one point, there were actually three different polities across Europe and Asia Minor all claiming the inheritance of the Roman Empire. How did this happen? Edward: There are different moments where you see different groups claiming the inheritance of Rome. In the Middle Ages, you have the rise of the Holy Roman Empire, which is a construction of Charlemagne and the papacy around the year 800. And the claim that they make is simply that there is the first empress of the Roman state who takes power all by herself in 797–this is the Empress Irene–and the claim Charlemagne makes as well that eliminates the legitimacy of the Roman Empire and Constantinople because there's no emperor. Therefore because there's no emperor, there's no empire and therefore we can just claim it. Another moment where you see this really become a source of significant conflict is during the Fourth Crusade when the Crusaders attack Constantinople and destroy the central administration of the eastern Roman Empire. After that point, you have the crusaders in Constantinople who claim that they are a Roman state. You have the remains of the Roman state that had been in Constantinople sort of re-consolidating around the city of Nicaea. You have a couple of other people who claim the inheritance of the Roman state inEpirus and Trebizond, and they all kind of fight with each other. And so ultimately, what you see is that the Roman Empire has this tremendous resonance across all of the space that was once Roman. So their empire at its greatest extent went from the Persian Gulf all the way to Scotland. And it went from Spain and the Atlantic coast of Morocco all the way down to the Red Sea. It's massive. And in a lot of those territories after Rome recedes, the legacy of Rome remains. So a lot of people who felt that they could claim the Roman legacy tried to do that, because it gave a kind of added seriousness and a more, a greater echo to these little places that are far away from the center of the world now, places like Britain or places like France or places like Northern Germany. And so you, in a sense, look like you're more important than you are if you can make a claim on the Roman imperial legacy. Mike: Okay. And so how do these would-be empires finally end up collapsing? Edward: So, each in their own way. In the case of the Holy Roman Empire, it actually lasts for very long time. It's created under Charlemagne in 800, and it lasts really until the time of Napoleon. And it collapses because it's sort of dissolved because in Germany there was a fear that Napoleon might actually use the hulk of the Holy Roman Empire and the title of Holy Roman Emperor to claim a kind of ecumenical authority that would go beyond just what he had as emperor of France. The crusader regime in Constantinople is actually reconquered by the Nicene regime in 1261. So the Crusaders take Constantinople in 1204, and then these Roman exiles who set up a kind of Roman Empire in exile in Nicaea reconquer in 1261. And they hold Constantinople for another 200 years until the Ottomans take it in 1453. The other sort of small Roman states are absorbed either by the state in Constantinople or by the Ottomans, but ultimately by the end of the 1460s, everything that had once been part of the Eastern Empire in the Middle Ages is under Ottoman control. Mike: Okay. And so despite all of the polities that could have contended for the inheritance of Rome collapsing, Rome's decline still played a large part in political considerations across what was formerly the Roman Empire but now as an instructive metaphor. How was the decline of the Roman Empire leveraged to influence politics leading into the modern era, and who were the big myth makers? Edward: Yeah, there's a couple of really important thinkers in this light. One is Montesquieu, the French thinker who uses a discussion of Roman history to launch into a much more wide and expansive and influential discussion of political philosophy that centers really on notions of representation and sets some of the groundwork for what actors in the American Revolution and French Revolution believed they were doing. Montesquieu is really, really important in understanding 18th-century political developments. And I think it's impossible really to understand what the American Revolution and the French Revolution thought they were doing without also looking at Montesquieu. But now I think the more influential figure in terms of shaping our ideas about what Roman history looked like and what Roman decline meant is Edward Gibbon. Gibbon is also an 18th-century thinker. When he started writing a history of Rome, he started writing in the 1770s when he believed that there was a firm and stable European political structure of monarchies that could work together and kind of peacefully move the continent forward. And while Gibbon is working on this, of course, you know, the American Revolution happens, and the French Revolution happens, and his whole structure that he was looking to defend and celebrate with his Roman history disappears. And so his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire becomes a book that is extracted from its historical context. And it seems like it is an objective narrative of what happens. It's not objective at all. What Gibbon is trying to do is compare the failings of one large single imperial structure and the advantages of this kind of multipolar world where everyone is balanced and cooperative. But everybody forgets that that multipolar world even existed because the book comes out after it's gone. So what you have with Gibbon is a narrative that seems to be just an account of Roman history, and a very, very evocative one. I think most of the people now who have Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on their shelf don't read it. But they know the title. They know the concept. This means that you have a ready-made metaphor for anything that's bothering you. You know, you can talk about the decline and fall of Rome. Just about everybody in the entire world knows that Rome declined and fell. And very few of them know much about why it happened or how it happened or how long it took. And so evoking the decline and fall of Rome allows you to kind of plug in anything, as my friend Hal Drake says, anything that's bothering you at a particular moment, you can plug in and say Rome fell because of X. And if you look at the last 50 years you can see lots and lots and lots of examples of X, lots of different things that bothered people that got plugged into the story of Rome fell because of whatever's bothering me that day. Mike: I am certainly guilty of having a copy of Gibbon on my bookshelf and not having read it. [laughs] So in talking about the modern appropriation of the memory of Rome, you of course talk about Fascist Italy. You reference Claudio Fogu, whom I absolutely love, check out his book The Historic Imaginary. How did Fascists wield the memory of the Roman Empire to justify their regime? Edward: Yeah, it's so, so seductive what is done in the city of Rome in particular. And there's a sense that I think is a very real sense that creating and uncovering and memorializing the imperial center of the Roman Empire makes real the experience of walking through it, and with the right kind of curation can make it feel like you're in a contemporary environment that's linked to that ancient past. And what Mussolini and his architects tried very very hard to do was create this, in a sense, almost Roman imperial Disneyland in the area between the Colosseum and the Capital line. So when we walk there, we see a kind of disembodied and excavated giant park with a large street down the middle running from the Colosseum along the length of the Roman Forum. But that was actually neighborhoods.  Before Mussolini, there were actual houses and shops and restaurants and people living there, and very, very long-standing communities that he removed with this idea that you were in a sense restoring the past and creating a future by removing the present. And I think that's a very good metaphor for what they were up to. What they were trying to do was create an affinity for the fascist present by uncovering this Roman past and getting rid of what they saw as disorder. And the disorder, of course, was real people living their lives in their houses. But the other thing that people, you know, when tourists visit this now, they don't know that history. They don't know that when they walk on the street alongside the Forum, they're actually walking on a street that is a 20th-century street created for Fascist military parades on the ruins of modern, early modern, and medieval houses. They just see this as a way to kind of commune with this Roman past. And the Fascists very much understood that aesthetic and how seductive that aesthetic was. Mike: Okay, so let's circle back to where we started with your motivation for the book. How are people invoking the fall of Rome now, and what are they getting wrong? Edward: I think that we see, again, this temptation to take what's bothering you and attaching it to Rome. And I think even if you just look over the last 50 years, you can almost trace the sorts of things people are anxious about in a modern context based on the things that are advanced for what possibly made Rome fall. So in the 70s and early 80s, there's lots of concern about environmental contamination and the effect that this is going to have on people's lives. And we get the story of Rome fell because of lead poisoning. I mean, it didn't. It's just ridiculous that you would think Rome fell because of lead poisoning when there is no moment that it fell, the place was active and survived for well over 1500 years when it was using lead pipes. There's no evidence whatsoever that this is true. In the 70s, Phyllis Schlafly would go around and say that Rome fell because of liberated women. I think that would be a very big surprise to a lot of Roman women that they were actually liberated, definitely in the 1970's way. In the 80s, and even into the 2010s, you have people like Ben Carson talking about Rome declining because of homosexuality or gay marriage. Again, that has nothing to do with the reality of Rome. There are other places where I think people come a little bit closer to at least talking about things that Romans might acknowledge existed in their society. So when you have Colin Murphy and others in the lead up to the Iraq War talking about the overextension of military power as a factor that can lead to the decline of Rome, yeah, I mean, Rome did have at various moments problems because it was overextended militarily. But most of the time it didn't. To say that the Romans were overextended militarily because they had a large empire ignores the fact that they had that large empire for almost 400 years without losing significant amounts of territory. So comparing Roman military overextension and US military overextension could be a useful exercise, but you have to adjust the comparison for scale. And you have to adjust the comparison to understand that there are political dynamics that mean that places that in the first century BC required military garrisons, in the third century did not. And so you're not overextended because you're in the same place for 400 years. At the beginning, you might need to have an extensive military presence in a place that later you won't. So I think that what we need to do when we think about the use of the legacy of Rome, is think very critically about the kinds of things that Rome can and can't teach us, and think very clearly about the difference between history repeating itself–which I think it doesn't–and history providing us with ideas that can help us understand the present. I think that's where history is particularly useful, and Roman history in particular is useful. Because it's so long, there are so many things that that society deals with, and there are so many things that it deals with successfully as well as fails to deal with capably. All of those things offer us lessons to think with, even if they don't offer us exact parallels. Mike: Okay, so we've talked a bunch about the fabricated history of Rome and the popular memory of Rome. What does the actual history of Rome and fears of Roman decline have to teach us about the present? Edward: I think the biggest thing that we can see is if somebody is claiming that a society is in profound decline and the normal structures of that society need to be suspended so the decline can be fixed, that is a big caution flag. What that means is somebody wants to do something that you otherwise would not agree to let them do. And the justification that they provide should be looked at quite critically, but it also should be considered that, even if they identify something that might or might not be true, the solution they're proposing is not something that you absolutely need to accept. Systems are very robust. Political systems and social systems are very robust and they can deal with crises and they can deal with changes. If someone is saying that our system needs to be suspended or ignored or cast to the side because of a crisis, the first step should be considering whether the crisis is real, and then considering whether it is in fact possible to deal with that crisis and not suspend the constitutional order, and not trample on people's rights, and not take away people's property, and not imprison people. Because in all of these cases that we see Roman politicians introduced this idea of decline to justify something radical, there are other ways to deal with the problem. And sometimes they incite such panic that Romans refuse or forget or just don't consider any alternative. That has really profound and dangerous consequences because the society that suspends normal orders and rights very likely is going to lose those rights and those normal procedures. Mike: All right. Well, Dr. Watts, thank you so much for coming on The Nazi Lies Podcast to talk about the myth of the Roman Empire. The book, again, is The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome out from Oxford University Press. Thanks again, Dr. Watts. Edward: Thanks a lot. This was great. Mike: If you enjoyed what you heard and want to help pay our guests and transcriptionist, consider subscribing to our Patreon at patreon.com/nazilies or donating to our PayPal at paypal.me/nazilies or CashApp at $nazilies [Theme song]

Brazilians will vote in the first round of presidential elections on Sunday. The front-runner is former leftist president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – currently, polls suggest he has a healthy lead over the incumbent far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro. Political observers say these will be the most closely watched elections since Brazil returned to democracy in 1989 - and some of the most polarised, as Katy Watson explains Tensions flared up again earlier this month between the former Soviet states of Armenia and Azerbaijan leaving more than 200 people dead. The fighting is linked to decades-old hostilities over control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region. A fragile ceasefire is now in place. Grigor Atenesian spoke to one family who have twice been forced from their home. Singapore recently announced it will repeal its strict laws banning gay sex after years of fierce debate. But even during that period, Singapore's gay bars, nightclubs and festivals continued to thrive and are being showcased in the city-state's first LGBT walking tour. Tessa Wong went for a stroll. In North America, John Murphy watches a game of lacrosse in the region where it first originated, among Native Americans. Following the arrival of European colonisers, the original game was adopted and adapted with indigenous players being excluded. Now, there's a move to reclaim the indigenous game. The Roman emperor Domitian was known for his tyrannical rule. After his death, by assassination, the Roman Senate condemned his memory to oblivion, but not everything was eradicated, as Hugh Levinson discovered on a visit to the walled city of Kotor in Montenegro.

Today's program: ITW Season 5 Ep# 681: Herod Declared King Of The Jews By The Roman Senate In 40 BC - Antiquities Book 14, Chapters 13-15; Wars Book 1, Chapters 12-16. Join us today at www.IntoTheWord2020.com or via your favorite podcast platform. Produced by ReSermon.com.

When he wasn't taking elephants skiing, he was throwing venomous snakes at nude oarsmen.  Hannibal was one wild son of a mother. If Italy was a boot, then Hanni slipped that bad boy on and shoved it up the Roman Senate's collective asshole. Good ol' H-Bomb didn't even speak the same language as his soldiers; he just grunted at his grunts and sent 'em to the front. And you already know Bal Bal the Baller's cavalry rode with grace enough to make a centaur blush. So join America's #1 Stannibal Kris Casey and historically buff history buff Jeremy Kaplowitz to discuss the Conque Shell's greatest achievements. Afterwards you'll totally see why Eric Andre's sidekick's mom thought it was a worthy namesake.

Oh man, it's an episode on omens this week! Explore ways in which omens impacted the ancient world, including predicting Alexander the Great's death, the Roman Senate consulting the Sibyllinee Books, and more. Then listen to tales of more recent omens about rats, bats, and whistling at night. Plus listener stories about spooky baby nonsense and superstitions!   -- SUPPORT SOME QUALITY SCHOOL STUFF with this fundraiser and we'll send you some stickers! Just email us a screenshot of your donation and we'll take care of the rest. Food Pantry: https://bit.ly/2RpZ4X1 OR https://amzn.to/3iqY7cJ Find us on Twitter/Instagram @spoophour and send your spooky stories to spoophour[at]gmail[dot]com. Want Spoop Hour merch? We've got that too! www.spoophour.threadless.com

May 27: Saint Augustine of Canterbury, BishopEarly Sixth Century–604Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: WhitePatron Saint of EnglandThe Church's Augustus conquered by exampleGaius Octavius Thurinus was a noble Roman. Julius Caesar became his stepfather when he adopted Octavius, posthumously, in his will. Octavius then added his dead stepfather's name to his own, becoming Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. He defeated his political enemies in 31 B.C. and thus became the first Emperor of Rome. To recognize his status, the Roman Senate added another link to his long chain of names—Augustus. And it is as Augustus that he is known to history. This very Augustus called for the census forcing Mary and Joseph to transfer to Bethlehem: “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered” (Lk 2:1). Augustus reigned well and lived long, until 14 A.D. He is considered the iconic Emperor of the “Pax Romana,” a tranquil, vast, expanding, organized, rich, united, and unconquerable realm, an enormous map of which Augustus pondered from his throne in Rome. The eighth month was renamed to honor Augustus during his own lifetime.But greatness is not limited to the Roman Emperor or his Empire. The best of Rome was absorbed, filtered, purified, and reborn in the Catholic Church. As Rome declined, popes and bishops did not pickpocket the corpse of Rome or rifle through the drawers of its abandoned dressers. The transformation from Empire to Church was organic, slow, and unrelenting, like all true cultural change. It happened imperceptibly, year by year, person by person, family by family, town by town, until one day everything was different. The arc of cultural change doesn't have a right angle. It is fitting and poetic, then, that the Church has her own great Augustus, indirectly evoking the laurel-crowned Emperor. In fact, the Church has two Augustines: Saint Augustine of Hippo, in North Africa, a Doctor of the Church; and Saint Augustine of Canterbury, today's saint. But their marble statues are not in museums. They are in churches. Saint Augustine of Canterbury was born in an unknown year about a century after his Christian namesake's death in 430 A.D. in North Africa. He also conquered a king, like his secular namesake, but not for his own glory.Saint Augustine of Canterbury is called the Apostle to the English (not to the British.) The history is complex. Christianity was deeply rooted in Roman Britain. British bishops attended Church Councils in France in the fourth century, and two famous Roman British Catholics well known to history lived centuries before Saint Augustine—Pelagius and Saint Patrick. But after the Romans abandoned Britain around 410 A.D., invasions of the pagan Saxons from Northern Europe mixed with native tribes to alter the cultural and religious landscape. Old Roman Britain faded as Anglo-Saxon England dawned. Christianity was relegated to the margins of the British Isles, surviving in remote regions and in an extensive network of monasteries, not parishes or dioceses, under the wise tutelage of Irish monks.This two-hundred-year British-Irish hibernation of Catholicism was aroused from its sleep when, in 595 A.D., Pope Saint Gregory the Great had a plan. The goal? Convert King Ethelbert. Why? Because he was an Anglo-Saxon pagan. The hope? His wife was Catholic. The means? A large missionary train. The man for the job? Saint Augustine. Our saint, an educated Benedictine monk from Rome, headed a large team that struggled through France on horseback, crossed the English Channel in simple boats, and finally walked to Ethelbert's seat of power in Canterbury. The King of all Kent heard the missionaries and…converted to Catholicism! And then all his subjects converted as well. The plan worked. Mission accomplished!More missionaries followed. Schools were established. Monasteries were founded. Bishops were appointed. Priests were ordained. Parishes were opened. Rough Anglo-Saxon England put on the yoke of Christ and the lovely, rolling, deep green countryside of England became Mary's dowry. Nothing is known of the life of Saint Augustine before 595 A.D. He is famous because he was a missionary monk and later bishop. His life and his mission are indistinguishable. He accepted a dare from the Pope and did the impossible. He was himself the foundation stone upon which a Catholic nation built its house of faith for almost a millennium.Saint Augustine, your long years of prayer, asceticism, and reading as a monk prepared you for greater things. May all who seek your intercession prepare themselves in times of quiet for future challenges. May all missionaries be as daring as you in fulfilling what is asked of them.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 12, 2022 is: bloviate • BLOH-vee-ayt • verb Bloviate means "to speak or write verbosely and windily." // The columnist tends to bloviate on topics about which he is not particularly knowledgeable. See the entry > Examples: "The excerpt itself relates to … a perpetual clock that ticked off precise measures of time, to keep orators in the Roman Senate from bloviating past their allotted speaking period." — Caitlin Lovinger, The New York Times, 10 Mar. 2022 Did you know? Warren G. Harding is often linked to bloviate, but to him the word wasn't insulting; it simply meant "to spend time idly." Harding used the word often in that "hanging around" sense, but during his tenure as the 29th U.S. President (1921-23), he became associated with the "verbose" sense of bloviate, perhaps because his speeches tended to the long-winded side. Although he is sometimes credited with having coined the word, it's more likely that Harding picked it up from local slang while hanging around with his boyhood buddies in Ohio in the late 1800s. The term probably derives from a combination of the word blow plus the suffix -ate.

Following the disaster at the Metaurus, Hannibal retreated to southern Italy. Unable to defeat him openly yet fearful to leave him unopposed, the Roman Senate engaged in a fierce debate with the brilliant Publius Cornelius Scipio who had recently returned from Spain. In a tense showdown, Scipio convinced a grudging Senate to authorize an invasion of North Africa. While politicking with the turbulent Numidian kingdoms and establishing his ally Massinissa on the throne, Scipio also managed to crush the last Carthaginian field army between himself and Carthage. With no other cards left, the Carthaginian Senate recalled Hannibal for a final showdown with his Roman nemesis... Link to the Episode 48 page on the Layman's Historian website Recommended further reading: The Histories by Polybius Hannibal's War by Titus Livius A Companion to the Punic Wars (Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World) Edited by Dexter Hoyos Hannibal's Dynasty by Dexter Hoyos Carthage Must Be Destroyed by Richard Miles Implacable Enemies: The Barcid Armies at War by Karwansary Publishers Clash of the Colossi: The First Punic War by Karwansary Publishers Subscribe or leave a review on iTunes or Spotify Leave a like or comment on Facebook or Twitter Contact me directly through email  

Ever since Julius Caesar allegedly ignored warnings about the 15th of March, that date has been doomed. In today's story, a vogue ballroom competition — not the Roman Senate — sets the scene for a legendary showdown.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The great English poet and writer, William Shakespeare, dramatized the assassination of Julius Caesar in his dramatic tragedy, “Julius Caesar.” Early in the play, a soothsayer warns Caesar to “Beware the ides of March” as Caesar was leaving to participate in festivities of the day. As Emperor of Rome and spiritual head of the Empire, Julius Caesar would have naturally been expected to participate in the public festivities during this important day, despite the seer's prophecy to, “Beware the Ides of March.” When Caesar arrived at the Theater of Pompey, where the Roman Senate met, he was stabbed to death by a group of more than 60 conspirators led by the senators - his friends - Brutus and Cassius, former friends turned enemies in their own thirst for power. Shakespeare has the dying dictator say, in Latin, as he recognizes his one-time friend Brutus among the assassins: Et tu, Brute? (“You, too, Brutus?”) That the conspirators - Caesars closest political allies - chose the Ides of March to enact their plot was no coincidence. And it shouldn't be any surprise that many of the psychopathic conspiracies to make major regime changes have happened on or right around the Ides of March. But the Ides of March has been used frequently as that “world changing Date” So, what other world changing - history changing moment happened on the Ides of March? Think… It was on the Ides of March, March 15, 1917 that Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicated the Russian throne and the age of Marxist Leninist Communism began: the first communist nation in the world, the Soviet Union. So what happened during the Ides of March in 2020? http://sovereignnations.com Support Sovereign Nations: paypal.me/sovnations patreon.com/sovnations Follow Sovereign Nations: sovereignnations.com/subscribe facebook.com/SovereignNations twitter.com/SovNations youtube.com/SovereignNations rumble.com/c/sovnations instagram.com/sovnations/ minds.com/sovnations?referrer=sovnations parler.com/profile/sovnations © 2022 Sovereign Nations. All rights reserved.

The battle for the fate of the Roman Republic was on. On one side were the empire-builders: Julius Caesar and his right-hand man Marc Antony (and sickly little Octavian in the next tent), Pompey the Great, and Marcus Crassus, who wanted to be great himself but never quite got there. On the other side were Marcus Tullius Cicero, Rome's greatest orator, consul in 63 BC, dictator during the Catiline Conspiracy, and all-around clever guy. At his side was Rome's greatest conservative and champion of ancient ideals, Cato the Younger. They also had in their corner—at least on paper--the cowardly Roman Senate, but being cowardly--and venal--the Senate was always kind of a moving target. They could be bought and they could be intimidated, and the empire-builders had money and soldiers to burn. It was a contest between military power, which the Romans had always admired, and republican traditions, which the Romans had always revered. But the citizens of the republic saw their ideals go to the Senate house to die more often than not, and might be willing to take a chance on a smooth operator like Caesar, who claimed to be a staunch defender of the republic even as he quietly dismantled it. Cicero and Cato had their work cut out for them. Subscribe to History's TrainwrecksSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/historys-trainwrecks. Help keep trainwrecks on the tracks. Become a supporter at https://plus.acast.com/s/historys-trainwrecks. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.