MEDIA AND PERSIA

BIBLICAL AND THEOLOGICAL HISTORY – DANIEL – EZRA – NEHEMIAH

 © Carlos Padilla – May 2024

Cyrus, king of Persia, whose edict produced the return of Israel to Jerusalem, from captivity, to rebuild the city and the Temple (Ezra 5:14) 538 B.C. would be the same as saying today that the leader of the present Persia, Iran, blesses and intercedes for Israel and internationally pleads for the estate of Israel and for the reconstruction of the Temple. The miracle is of monumental proportions, and we would not believe it at first instance. This is the key and one of the prophetical moments of Israel’s history, that they lived under the powerful hand of God, that has brought them judgment, but also glory and blessing when they have obeyed the Lord. This is a master way of teaching all of us believers what happens in our lives when we forget about God, and what happens when we walk by His hand. But, what happens with Israel after they return to Jerusalem, and what to the believer when he returns to God through Jesus Christ? Keep reading…

MEDIA AND PERSIA EMPIRE AND ITS RELATION WITH ISRAEL

After the deportation to Babylon of Juda, and to Assyria of Israel, due to their sins against God, for following the pagan traditions of the neighbouring nations and for giving themselves to idolatry of false gods and images, God delivered them in the hands of their enemies. From this point the 10 tribes of Israel stood in the dispersion, but Juda, with Bemjamin, found grace before Cyrus king of Persia and Media, who allowed for them to return to Jerusalem and instructed them by mandate of Yahweh to rebuild, not only the city, but the walls and the Temple – books of Ezra and Nehemiah – they even returned to them the sacred vessels.

The decree was because God awoke the spirit of Cyrus so he would bless the people of Israel for their repentance, after 70 years of captivity, as prophet Jeremiah 25:12 had prophesized. This way king Cyrus began his mandate in his first year, in or close to 536 B.C. He would die in battle on 530 B.C. and his tomb remains in Persia, in Pasargada, present Iran. After the order of God to rebuild the Temple, Darius, king of Persia would confirm Cyrus’s edict, the same as would Artaxerxes, as we read in Ezra, chaps. 4, 5 and 6:14, finishing on the third of the month of Adar, sixth of the kingdom of Darius.

We must not forget that the Persians practiced the Mazdian religion of Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, but would not impose it. God was separate from nature, did not admit any representation of the divinity. It taught the existence of two opposed forces: good and evil, and two kingdoms of spirits, a hierarchy of angels and of archangels governed by Ahura-Mazda, with a thousand benefactor genius. Then the kingdom of the evil spirits governed by the enemy Ahriman. They recommended the battle against evil, to doing good, and to seek for purity of thinking, of words and actions, being the heavens the reward. (Bible Illustrated Dictionary, Vila-Escuain, Pg. 928, Persia). The Magi best known where the Three Kings of the East who visited the Lord Jesus in the Manger.

PROPHECIES OF MEDIA AND PERSIA

At the beginning I reminded that Media and Persia is the second Empire of the prophecy of Daniel, the statue of four, the one that fulfils the specifications indicated, a dual empire, two arms, and the sides uneven of the second animal (Daniel 2:39), the bear (7:5), the two horns uneven of the ram, one taller than the other, and grew after (8:20) and mentions Media and Persia, which would be greater. The name Iran, which is the present name of Persia, has its origin in “Aryan” which comes from the Sanskrit, and were descendants of one of the sons of Noah. The Medes where called Aryan, and we know that the kingdoms of Media and Persia became one called Persia.

Afterwords, in the history of Media and Persia Ahasuerus would become king, him who reigned from India to Ethiopia (Esther 1:1-3). There was a plan for a Jewish holocaust that queen Esther avoided thanks to the intervention of the plan of Mordecai who exposed the conspiration against the king. Once the plot of Haman was uncovered, he was condemned, and Ahasuerus provided a decree in favour of the Jews (Esther 8). The feast of Purim is famous since the victory of the Jews against their enemies in that historical occasion. After, Persia would be conquered by the third empire of the prophecy of Daniel, Greece. It is relevant how Bible prophecies fulfil with Israel, in the same way as they do with the Church, even to the end of times, because God has a plan.

Alexander the Great invaded the Holy Land in 339 B.C. taking with him Macedonians and Partisans. The following in the prophecy of Daniel, after Greed, would be Rome. Persia was invaded by Rome, but in the IV century A.D. they would be expelled. Finally, the Muslims would conquer it in the VII century A.D. The Greek Empire will be the next Bible Study. To finalize this series, after Greece, Rome will come in two parts, since its conquer of the world and of the Holy Land, and the destruction of the Temple in the 70 A.D. by the Roman general Titus, whose arche in in Rome, next to the arch of Constantine, both in front of the Coliseum. And the second part of Rome, at the end of times, the week 70 of the prophecy of Daniel. Despite diaspora, we would again see Israel exist in the Promised Land after almost 2000 years, in 1948. And still the last prophecies of Israel and Rome must fulfil, which we will be seeing in the development of this historical series.

SPIRITUAL AND SYMBOLICAL MEDIA AND PERSIA IN OUR LIVES

From the symbolical and spiritual point of view, that which is made so that we can apply it to our lives under the example of the Biblical History, the believer must think and look in his heart if he has left the Lord for the idols of his ideas, projects, people, etc. for which he has been taken captive to a life with no fruit nor purpose. Then we must return and seek God in repentance so that He commands the decree of returning from the spiritual desert to His promised land of the soul, where to rebuild the Temple of the Spirit of God through Jesus Christ: “…or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?” (1 Corinthians 6:19). Only this way can the believer worship God, his Father, and Jesus Christ, his Lord, in his heart, before his ideas, projects of life, or idols. To live by the hand of God and plan his life with His guide and prayer is the way of life that God proposes to us for our blessing, as well as saving our soul for eternity through faith in the work of Jesus on the Cross.

As the Jewish people seek God from captivity, and achieves the blessing to rebuild the Temple and the city with its wall, the believer, when taken to the captivity of the discipline of the Lord, to the desert of spiritual loneliness and of life purpose, seeks Christ who receives him in repentance, with open arms and great love, giving the order to rebuild the temple of the soul, symbol of the relationship with God, Jerusalem of the soul, the city that symbolizes a holy life, and the wall, which is the protection of God. In the same way, the history of Nehemiah 2, in his prayer to God from captivity so that king Artaxerxes, who, as we reminded governed the empire of Media-Persia, would grant him to rebuild Jerusalem, is a symbol of a prayer that every Christian has to make not only for the reconstruction of his holy life and of his family, but for the unity of the church of his city, so they may have adequate place, the capacity, the resources, the gifts, sanctity, good social works, the favour of the governors, and the recognition of society, for the evangelization of their people, our temporary and though limited part of the Kingdon of God on earth and for the glory of God.

CONCLUSION

Curiously the empire of Media-Persia encompasses the territory from where Abraham departed, to arrive to Jerusalem, though he was in Egypt, area also conquered by this empire. And lo, were the kings of this land Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes, which was also of Abraham, who would successively obey God in His decree that the Temple of Jerusalem would be rebuilt.

But, what happens to Israel after returning to Jerusalem, and what to the believer when returning to God through Jesus Christ – Yahshua? In both cases God’s blessing, a life that pleases God and that the believer enjoys. But there is a difference between Israel and the Christian which is diametrically opposite due to a vital spiritual reason. In the case of Israel, as we see in history successively, and even thought the people of part of them repent and returned to God, as a people they don’t count on the Holy Spirit inhabiting in them as a group and they fall again and separate from God, being that they did not receive the Messiah Jesus Christ – Yahshua, of them and of the whole world. In the case of the born again Christian, the Holy Spirit keeps him from separating from the Way, and if it trips he can hold on to Jesus who lives, to forgive him, give him strength and restore him for we live in a body of flesh influenced by the world, but faith and the strength that God gives the Christian is superior.

Media and Persia have taken us through the way of the prophetical history of Israel, and the spiritual of the Church, and of the Christian. We see that the governors are turned on our side when we serve God, and that, even though we have enemies, God’s hand is to fulfil His promises to His people, whether Israel or the Church, or the Christian in particular, because God fulfils his purposes that we see in His Word. The Church will see the return of Jesus, and Israel at the end will accept Yahshua – Jesus Christ as the Messiah that before rejected, who will save them from destruction through faith. Amen.