when you see a postchristian culture developing and you’re going to watch it’s going to lead to an anti-christian culture and the anti-christian culture is going to lead to the Antichrist and that is exactly what we are watching right now there was a a king named Antiochus evil man and he came and he declared he was ruling over the Syrian Empire which had Israel Judea or Judah and he declared he made the faith of the Bible he declared it illegal he wanted to wipe it out and so he made it illegal to read the word illegal to they burned the
Scrolls of God they declared the Sabbath you if you celebrate the Sabbath you could be put to death if you taught your children the ways of God you could be put to death he launched the what might have been the first major religious persecution in the world he sought to force the people to worship the gods of the Greek Zeus particularly all over the the land they set up altars and people to enforce it and they took over Jerusalem and he went into the temple and he slaughtered a pig to defile it and he set up an idol at the altar of
God an altar of Zeus and he turned the temple of God into a pagan Temple and so now the temple of God was a pagan Temple there and the people were persecuted and it looked as if it was going to be the end of the faith now if he succeeded you wouldn’t be saved today but the thing is he didn’t succeed because God raised up from kind of out of the blue in the Hill Country kind of hillbilly kind of country people he raised up a family a man the father called matathias and he said and then his sons who were then
called the macbes which means the Hammers and he said he was watching them force a a Jewish person to worship or the was worshiping this Pagan God and he rose up and he said no as for me and my house he said we don’t care what you do we don’t care what the cost is we are serving the lord and we are not going to abandon Our God and so they they fled to the hills and the armies of Greek of the Syrian Greek Empire empire came after them antiochus’s Army came after them and by a miracle they won the first battle and then a larger Army came
