The Prophet, The Priest, And The King

The Prophet, The Priest, And The King - This Week’s Feature
Article by Jack Kelley – www.gracethrufaith.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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