WHAT IS (REALLY) HAPPENING IN IRAN?
Chess pieces do not move on their own. Someone is playing with them. Movements on the board depend on the moves of players who are not on the board.
About 2,565 years ago, Cyrus, the king of Persia, issued a decree to free the Jewish captives in Mesopotamia. This happened relatively soon after the appearance of heavenly beings in the territory of present-day Iran.[1] One of these, Gabriel, told the prophet Daniel that he was sent with an important message about the distant future.[2] He told him also he was unable to reach Daniel with that revelation about the future of Israel before he had overcome the "prince of Persia", that is some adversary who could measure up to Gabriel and Michael,[3] some kind of angel-demon ruling over this territory from heavenly places and who prevented, for a while, Gabriel from reaching Daniel, obviously realizing how valuable the message was that Daniel was about to receive. When Gabriel mentions that he would not have succeeded without Michael's help, he refers to him as "your Michael". That is, Michael is the guardian angel-helper of the Jews.
The temporary supremacy of Gabriel and Michael over the "prince of Persia" opened a door for 1) an invaluable revelation about the final trials and redemption of Israel at the end of the present age,[4] with the Messiah Himself later quoting this prophecy,[5] and 2) an immediate beneficial influence on Cyrus, the King of Persia, in perfect agreement with a previous prophecy from Isaiah,[6] which led to the liberation of the Jews and their return to the Promised Land after 70 years of captivity, just as Jeremiah had foretold.[7]
Since that moment the Devil has always hated Persia. Who loves the battlefield of a lost battle? Who loves the memory and the place of a decisive breakthrough of the opponent? The Devil got his temporary revenge. As Gabriel said, now "the prince of Greece is coming”[8] – the Persians were defeated and humiliated by Alexander the Great. The generally tolerant policy established by the Persians towards individual ethnicities and religions was replaced by fallen Greek culture, which our world still exalts and reveres to this day, with its pantheon of hedonistic gods and unbridled violence. Someone would probably say I exaggerate. Let's let history do the talking.
Gabriel then prophesied about the course and outcome of history[9] and about one of Alexander's successors – Antiochus IV Epiphanes[10] – who became the most famous and influential type of the Antichrist.[11] He desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem and killed thousands of Jews. Gabriel comes out right, the "prince of Greece" did indeed "come" and his actions resemble those of the "prince of Persia",[12] "the prince of Russia",[13] "the prince of Nazi Germany" – all these fallen angels try to destroy the Jews.
But why did God allow this to happen to Persia? Persia of Cyrus? Persia that saved and freed the Jews from Babylon? Persia, which, after the beneficent intervention of Gabriel and Michael, was famous for its overall tolerance of ethnicities and religions? What is the meaning of history? Is God truly speaking to us through world events?
Fast forward to 1943. The industrial extermination of the ancient Jewish people is underway in Europe. Little Bulgaria, however, saves all her Jews. We know that. What we tend to overlook is that Bulgaria could hardly have rescued her 50,000 Jews if not for a highly probable intervention from Michael, "their prince".[14] Ok, but what did Bulgaria get after 1944? They got "the prince of Russia". Russia, which considers herself to be the Third Rome, a Messiah-nation that brings "salvation to the world".[15] Bulgaria received a military occupation more terrible than that of any other country in Eastern Europe. They killed the flower of the nation. Bulgaria was ruined, robbed many times, beaten and killed in concentration camps.
But why Bulgaria? Why did her King have to die in the very same year he stopped the trains and the Bulgarian Jews were rescued from deportation and death? Why did Bulgaria receive occupation and death right after saving her Jews? Where is the “I will bless those who bless you”?[16] Why was Bulgaria sucked into the anti-Israel policy of the USSR for 45 years? Why was her ground used for terrorist training and why was she forced to sell arms to PLO terrorists? What is the meaning of history? Is God truly speaking to us through world events? Or is it just all chaos and chance and geography deciding all matters? Why would the friends of Israel suffer demonic oppression?
Because the Devil never forgets who sides with the Jews. Corrie Ten Boom's family understood this well, so should we. Simon of Cyrene probably realized only later how honored he had been to bear at least for a little while the Cross of the Anointed One.[17]
Up until 1979, Iran was a friend of Israel in the Middle East, then the Devil decided to go with his "Shia gambit" and Iran was absorbed by Shia Islam and, as it happens also with Communism, Islam reprogrammed the whole society.[18] The Devil has a long memory, 2500+ years is not long for him. Persia is paying the price for its millennial friendship with Israel.
However, the Bible tells us how the story will end. The friends of the Jewish people will win, and their enemies will lose. Bulgaria and Persia will have a wonderful and unimaginable future but we still have to fight for it, we have to contend for this perspective on history. We must be ready for more trials. The Church is good enough at managing her immediate needs, but she does not have the vision of the prophets and the apostles. Iran is burning today because the Devil hates the fact ordinary Iranians have so much sympathy towards Israel and he is unwilling to let them go as in the days of old.
The Devil never forgets who sides with the Jews. But neither does God! One day Genesis 12:3 will be fulfilled literally and gloriously! Persia will find her rightful place in the rearrangement of the nations in the Millennium.[19]
MARANATHA!
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
How does understanding history in a Biblical context impact your perspective on current events?
How could this help you to better “love your neighbor”?
How are you fighting for a “wonderful and unimaginable future” in the Millennium?
[1] Daniel spoke to the archangel Gabriel in 550 and 538 BC. (Daniel 8:1; 9:1)
[2] Daniel 10:11, 14, 20-21
[3] Daniel 10:21
[4] The prophecy in Daniel 11
[5] Matthew 24:15
[6] Isaiah 44:28
[7] Jeremiah 29:10
[8] Daniel 10:20
[9] Daniel 11
[10] Αντιοχος Επιφανής (215-164 BC). His title means "God in the flesh."
[11] Among an incredible choice of tyrants, Gabriel chooses to embody the spirit of the Antichrist in Alexander's successor. The prophecy in Daniel 11 contains many details, some of which correspond to the actions of Antiochus Epiphanes, but another large part does not and awaits its final fulfillment in the last Antichrist.
[12] Esther 3:5-6
[13] The pogroms against the Jewish population in tsarist Russia in the 19th century took place on the territory of today's Ukraine, but their roots are in Russian policies towards the recently acquired huge masses of Jewish population, which until then had lived for over 400 years in relative peace on the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, divided between Russia and Prussia in 1772.
[14] And perhaps also Gabriel's, as the angel of revelation? The chief Rabbi of Bulgaria, Daniel Zion, receives a touching revelation from God about the future and he hands it over to the Office of King Boris III and his ministers (See "Rescued from the Reich - How a Rabbi, a Priest, and a King Evaded Hitler's Grasp").
[15] In the official Russian religious and political discourse, Russia is presented as the ‘katechon’ – the politico-religious civilizational entity “restraining” (2 Thess. 2:6-7) the appearance of the Antichrist, who has already conquered the West thanks to Judeo-Freemasonry (see more here https://russiapost.info/society/katechon). This worldview has had its variations in the past, including through the Bolshevik conviction that Communism would bring salvation to the world, with Bolshevik Russia as its main bearer.
[16] Genesis 12:3
[17] Luke 23:26
[18] Shiite anti-Semitism was successfully nurtured and hybridized with the Russian-Bolshevik occupation of northern Iran in World War II.
[19] Psalm 87:4-6; Matthew 25:32-33; Zechariah 14:17; Revelation 21:24
Nikolai is a translator, a teacher, and loves simple fellowship. He authored the book Eschatology in the Psalms, which is available for purchase online or for free on THE EMMAUS TABLE app.