Welcome back to Prophecy Today. I'm Jimmy DeYoung Jr. Along with my brother Rick, we examine current events in the light of God's prophetic word. This is the month of December. We've established that. We established it last week and I'm sure everybody knows if you're like me. Rick, we are still kind of trying to get everything together in order to enjoy the season and sometimes the busyness of the holidays gets the best of us and we really forget about the birth of Jesus Christ and we forget about the reason for the season and understanding that. Well, it is the season of Christmas, and last week we also started a series with my good friend, Paul Scharf. Paul Scharf is a church ministries missionary with Friends of Israel, and he works in the Midwest. And we started a series on Hanukkah. Paul, welcome back to the program this week. Thank you, Jimmy. It's great to be back with you. yes sir and we got a lot of great response uh from people that appreciate uh always when we look at the jewish holy days holidays the jewish feast uh with either you or steve herzig with friends of israel you guys uh you enlighten us as to why the feasts are so important for us to understand as Christians, not necessarily to take part in them as bringing them back in, but really to understand them, correct? Right. It's so important for us to understand this background to our biblical faith, which comes, of course, to us really from the Jewish people. And it's also so important that we can understand and relate to our Jewish friends, especially at this Most festive season of the year for them as it is for us as Christians So last week we talked about those the black hole of the Bible and really I mean It's just the pages from the Old Testament to the New Testament from the end of Malachi to the beginning of Matthew Let's go back just rehearse that just a little bit. So somebody that's just coming in new this week We'll understand what we're talking about and why as we start to talk about Hanukkah why it's important Right, well, Jimmy, it's so important because during those 400 silent years, as we often refer to them, we know that God was working all things after the counsel of His will, as He works throughout history to bring all things to fulfillment for the sake of His glory. But He was working specifically during that time, we might say setting the stage for the coming of Christ, His first coming, I think that's why Hanukkah is also so vitally important for us today, as we live at the time we believe we're seeing the stage being set for Christ's second coming and for the fulfillment of those prophetic events. But back in this time, God was directing all things to bring the world to that precise moment when, in the fullness of the time, He would send forth His Son at the exact, precise time that He had determined and when the world conditions were in the place that God wanted them for that marvelous event to occur and for the life of Christ and his ministry to take place on the earth. Yes, you know, what I love about it, it was exactly right on time. When you look at the years, you know, mentioned in the book of Daniel, we know when Christ would appear in the city of Jerusalem. And really, you know, the Jewish people should have, and that's what Christ said, if you'd only read the prophets, you would know that I was supposed to be here. at this very moment. I love the fact that he's always on time, never early, never late. I think that is so very important. Well, we are talking about Hanukkah. It's the Jewish festival, the Feast of Dedication, also known as the Festival of Lights. It is an eight-day festival beginning on the 25th day of the Jewish month of Kislev. And I think that's important. So let's talk about Hanukkah again and just bring us up to speed. And then I have a few other questions I'd like to ask you pertaining to Hanukkah. Well, Jimmy, Hanukkah, of course, celebrates these events that happened in the 160s BC in between the Old Testament and the New Testament. and thus it cannot be a biblically mandated festival. It's not in the Mosaic Law, it's not in Leviticus 23, but it commemorates what happened when the Jewish people rose up in the most astounding way and overcame the tyranny of a man named Antiochus IV, or Antiochus Epiphanes, who came out of the Greek Empire, one of the four offshoots of Alexander the Great, And he took over the kingship of the Seleucid Empire, the Syrians. He's the king of the North, biblically, as opposed to the king of the South in Egypt, who he had tried to attack three times. And he had really set his sights on world domination, being the next Alexander. And the key, he believed, to implementing that kind of reign was to subjugate everyone in the empire, including the Jewish people, whom he had overtaken, and he wanted to remove all of their culture, all of their religion, everything, all of their traditions, everything that they knew and loved, and make them fully Greek. The technical term is Hellenistic. And by the way, Jimmy, we see traces of the results of this all through the Gospels all the way into the book of Acts in the early church. Remember in Acts chapter 6 you had a group of widows that were concerned of the treatment they were receiving because they were Hellenistic Jews and not the traditional Jewish people like the rest. And so we have this remnant of this time all the way down there into the New Testament church. Sure do. And really, that Hellenistic really begins with the Greek time period. And when you think about it, and I hope I'm not stealing your thunder a little bit, Paul, but when you think about it, the times of the Gentiles This is that dream that Nebuchadnezzar had and Daniel chapter 2 Daniel had a dream Pertaining to the times of the Gentiles beginning with the Babylonian Empire over being overtaken by the Medes and the Persians and then the Greeks Alexander the Great and that's who you're referring to when you say Alexander Alexander the Great with the speed that he came from Greece across the European continent all the way to Ended up dying in Babylon at the age of 32 but really then his Greek Empire his Grecian Empire was split into fours in order for the four generals Alexander the Great's four generals to kind of take over and have that area, which, I mean, it's laid out in Bible prophecy. So, I mean, here we're talking about this is the time period that the Seleucids were in control, and, you know, they overtook the Holy Land, really going into the temple. Well, we could talk about that. How do we see this in the Old Testament, Paul? Well, Jimmy, you've hit the nail on the head. It's all based in the book of Daniel. We have Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the four kingdoms that will rule the world from the time that Nebuchadnezzar began to overtake Jerusalem, and his rule, followed by his successors through the end of the Babylonian kingdom, would be followed by Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, and then finally a revived Roman Empire at the end of time in the future time of fulfillment of prophecy, we believe before the second coming of Christ. This is described in Nebuchadnezzar's dream in Daniel chapter 2. It's in the form of this magnificent rule of man that glimmers in the sun, this amazing statue, gold, silver, bronze, and iron. But then when Daniel receives another vision about this four kingdoms, like Peter calls some people, natural brute beasts made to be taken and destroyed. He sees them as these horrendous, just strange creatures, lion, a bear, a leopard, and finally an indescribably horrible beast. And then Daniel sees them again in chapter 8 as a ram and a he-goat, this time only though Medo-Persia and Greece, and that's where we zero in on Greece. and the Greek Empire that you've mentioned under Alexander the Great, and then his successors as they're broken up. And over many decades, we get down to this time around 175 when Antiochus comes to power as the king of the North, the king of the Seleucids, the king of Syria. And he's the man we were talking about who had this vision of ruling the world like Alexander. And in the process of ruling over the Jewish people, desecrates the temple, and does just unimaginably horrendous things to the people, and to show his power over them, and just to demoralize them within the temple in Jerusalem. And he brings an end to temple sacrifice, and in fact, he sacrifices a pig on the altar in honor of the Greek god Zeus, And he's actually insane enough to believe that perhaps he's the manifestation, the Antiochus Epiphanes is his name. He's the manifestation, he believes, Theos Epiphanes of God and the god Zeus. And so he carries out all these abominable works in Jerusalem and on the Jewish people. And it's all laid out, Jimmy, in biblical prophecy. That's where we go back again to the book of Daniel. This story is told in Daniel chapter 8, initially, as Daniel is describing this he-goat, which is Alexander, who's going to come across the world so quickly, not even touching the ground. He's described in Daniel chapter 8, verse 5, and his successors, after that great horn is broken, the horn of Alexander, there come up these four little horns, and they are including the king of the north, that we're talking about, Antiochus Epiphanes. Wow. That's how Hanukkah relates to Bible prophecy. How do you see it relating in the future to Bible prophecy? Well, yes, Jimmy, because we're talking here about the book of Daniel chapter 8, verses 9 through 14, Daniel receives this vision and then Gabriel, interestingly, the first time in all of scripture that an angel is named, Gabriel describes the vision that Daniel has received. He gives him an inspired interpretation, if you will, in verses 23 through 26, as Daniel records this. And it's interesting, and then we would have to go further, Jimmy, in Daniel chapter 11, verses 21 through 35. They lay out this whole scenario, and a couple of things about that. You asked if it relates to Bible prophecy. It's actually, we believe Antiochus is a type of the future Antichrist. They share this unique connection in that they're both going to commit an abomination of desolation in the temple in Jerusalem and proclaim themselves to be God in the temple in Jerusalem. And sometimes the descriptions about them are so intertwined and matched so closely that even Bible students in our pre-trib movement will interpret a particular passage, some will interpret it as being talking about Antiochus, and others will interpret it as talking about the future Antichrist. That's how closely these two men are interconnected on the pages of biblical prophecy. Well, Paul, thank you so much for joining with us today and giving us a better understanding of Hanukkah. We look forward to having you back in the future during a holiday or a holy day, one of the Feasts of the Bible. And give us again your website, Paul. Well, thank you, Jimmy. People can find all my resources for our ministry within the Friends of Israel on sermonaudio.com. Excellent. Thank you, Paul, for joining with us this week. We look forward to joining with you again. God bless you. Thank you so much, Jimmy.