Proof The Bible Is True

Defiance by a people refusing to conform under immense pressure from a popular culture that had become hostile to the God of the Bible.

Antiochus IV issued a decree in 167 B.C. that was pretty cut and dry. If you were an observant Jew, it was game over. You could no longer read the Torah, couldn’t observe the Sabbath, couldn’t circumcise your male offspring, couldn’t practice your faith.

Antiochus, leader of the Seleucid Greek empire based in Syria, declared Zeus the new god throughout his empire, as Jonathan Cahn Hanukkah_endtimesexplains in his documentary film, “The Hanukkah Endtime Mysteries,” produced by WND Films.

The penalty for disobeying this decree was death. Most Jews quickly conformed, trading their biblical culture for that of the pagan Greeks. They bowed to Zeus.

But a small band of Judean “hillbillies” led by Mathathias Maccabee, who had seven sons, took umbrage at the king’s edict.

“He refused,” Cahn said. “He said, ‘I am not going to abandon my God.’ He said, ‘If anyone wants to follow God, follow us.’ He said, ‘We have to fight,’ so he set up an army of his sons and said, ‘Anyone who wants to fight, come with us.’”

They formed a ragtag army and waged a seven-year guerrilla war against Hellenistic oppression (167-160 B.D.), winning battle after battle that they were supposed to lose.

By the end of 167 B.C., Antiochus had a pig slaughtered on the altar in the most sacred space of the Jewish Temple. He erected a statue of Zeus. This was desecration with a capital D, as predicted by Daniel 11:31.

The Maccabees, after their final victory, cleansed and rededicated the temple and restored biblical Judaism. One day’s worth of oil burned miraculously for eight days, hence the name “festival of lights,” which begins this year at sundown on Dec. 16 with the lighting of the first candle.

But what does this story, recorded in the apocryphal book of I Maccabees, have to do with the end-times prophesies in Daniel and Revelation?

Cahn believes the story of Hanukkah is no less than a foreshadowing of things to come and that it holds the “blueprint” for today’s believers who wish to not only survive but thrive in the midst of end-times chaos and increasing persecution.

Read More  Hanukkah’s winning strategy for end-time believers.