"Let the Reader Understand"

I have always wondered why Bob insisted on using a Bible with an Apocrypha. I should have realized that, being an historian, he just had to know what went on between the Old and New Testaments.

When our friends at the Messianic congregation began talking about an event which occurred around 165 B.C., I got curious and looked it up in I Macabbees. This is the Feast of Dedication of God's holy Temple in Jerusalem, or Hanukkah.

This celebration is also referred to in John 10:22-24. There we see Jesus, the Light of the World, having made the treck along muddy roads in the winter rains or snow, to come to Jerusalem to attending the Festival of Lights. The huge, flaming menorah is lit and He is walking around with His disciples on the Temple grounds.

Later He refers to the first Hanukkah when he teaches about the Last Days' anti-christ or false prophet in Matthew 24. That is where He warns about something called the 'abomination of desolation.' At one point He advises His friends, "LET THE READER UNDERSTAND."

What reader? Understand what? And what is the abomination of desolation?

He means the reader of the books of Daniel and I Maccabees. He wants the reader to understand what Daniel predicted Hanukkah and I Macabbees records it. The important thing that He wants His friends and us to understand is that a similar event will occur in the future.

Moses in Deuteronomy 13 and Daniel in chapter 11 predicted a false prophet would come, Daniel giving the particulars. The coming Greek-Syrian Antiochus 'Epiphanes' would believe he was a god incarnate, desecrate the Temple of God in Jerusalem, and erect an altar to the Olympian Zeus upon the Jewish altar of burnt offering.

Antiochus did this and then commanded the Jews to ignore God's commandments by sacrificing a hog on this abomination. Out of fear, an unfaithful Jew was about to slay the swine, but up stepped the elderly Mattatias, who seized the knife from his hand and slew his countryman.

So began the famous Maccabean revolt of Hanukah. Anyone can read the story of the God fearing, Jewish, guerilla fighters under Judah "the Hammer" Maccabees and the menorah oil that burned eight days. Jesus' point in mentioning it in the context of His anti-christ warnings is...that Antiochus looks a lot like a future delusional crazyman, the false messiah. Both men are Lawless ones.

Antiochus's evil twin will present himself as a Greekstyle god/savior. His spirit is already at work in the world. Even many of the "elect" are easy prey for him, perhaps because, like so many Hellenized Jews back in the days of the Hanukkah event, we too tend to be assimilated into our worldly culture and ignorant or disobedient of God's perfect Law.

Let us the readers understand.