“O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation. I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets….
Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so [to fulfill God’s will]…he saith, By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom…
[Not so!] For the LORD God of hosts shall make a consumption, even determined, in the midst of all the land.” (Isaiah 10)
When we take God at his word, and understand how one immortal spirit being moves from time to time and person to person, we can recognize “the Assyrian” as Ashur, god of war, in his many manifestations. These were outlined in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the image, revealed by Daniel to depict a total of four successive world empires, beginning with Ashur’s first Babylonian empire.
YHVH’s second message was given directly to Daniel as a complementary perspective of the same world history. Daniel’s detail is unparalleled in prophetic literature and can be used to identify the players throughout history until the end of time.
From Daniel 7:
“In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon Daniel had a dream and visions of his head upon his bed: then he wrote the dream, and told the sum of the matters…the four winds / hyperdimensional powers of the heaven strove upon the great sea. And [despite striving – opposing this] four great beasts came up from the sea [because humans were given dominion, and “to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey.” (Romans 6:16)]
- The first was like a lion / representing apex predator, the ultimate in strength and dominance, i.e. the Babylonian Empire, parallelling Nebuchadnezzar’s head of gold. Bab-ylon / Gate of the gods is devoured / in-corporated by every aspiring world power.
- 2217 BC Babylon is restored ASAP by Arphaxad / Sargon the Great in his Akkadian empire, albeit only as a small cult center due to continued flooding by the immediate post-flood runoff in the Euphrates River.
- 1792 BC, Nimrod son of Cush restores pre-flood Babylon to a city by which his empire is known.
- 1595 BC – 1155 BC Hittites / Heth, son of Canaan based in Asia Minor, modern day Turkey, sack and rule over Babylon.
- 605 BC Nebuchadnezzar becomes king of what is called the “Neo”-Babylonian Empire to distinguish it from Nimrod’s piddling startup.
- A second, like to a bear / representing immense strength...the Assyrian Empire. and they said thus unto it, Arise, devour much flesh. The repetition of “devoured” substantiates the historical record that each successive world empire incorporated the previous empire – most essentially, Bab-ylon, gateway of the gods.
- Ashur, a rebel son of Arphaxad, assists his brother Arphaxad / Sargon the Great in recovering Babylon from the floodwaters, then founds his own Assyrian empire
- 912-612 BC the “Neo”- Assyrian, so called by historians to distinguish it from its piddling start, grew to become the greatest empire in the ancient world. Based at Ninevah, its success was due to advanced weapons and militarism, but most importantly, complete ruthlessness characterized as “I destroyed, devastated, and burned with fire” those who resisted Assyrian rule.
- Overthrown at the Battle of Ninevah by the combined forces of its vassal states who utterly destroyed the city of Nineveh by burning it, unintentionally preserving for historians, by baking, its massive library of clay documents.
- another, like a winged leopard, Persian Empire /AKA the Achaemenid Empire…known for the speed of its advance. and dominion was given to it over the premier powers of the day – the Medes in northern Iran, the wealthy Lydian kingdom in Anatolia, and the Babylonian Empire.
- 400’s BC – Greece creates the foundations of uniquely western civilization in all domains of culture, including philosophy, music, drama, rhetoric and even a new politics called democracy / rule of the people.
- 331 BC Alexander the Great of Macedonia is the fourth, 10-horned, unnatural, terrible and inspiring dreadful beast which devoured AND brake in pieces, inspiring Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler and other would-be world conquerors from the West. as in a reign of 13 years Alexander shot across the Middle Eastern firmament like a meteor, ensuring that our world could never be the same again,”
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- “….his kingdom shall be broken, and shall be divided toward the four winds of heaven…even for others beside those…”
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- “the king of the south / Ptolemy’s Egypt...one of his [Alexander’s] princes…shall be strong…and have dominion.”
- The north is Greek Seleucid Asia Minor, modern Turkey, where “in Pergamos…Satan’s seat is: and…Satan dwelleth.” (Revelation 2:12-13). In 175 BCE…Antiochus IV, ascended to the throne of Greco-Syria. appending the title Epiphanes (“God Manifest” i.e. Indwelt) to his name.
Antiochus outlawed Judaism’s essentials – the rite of circumcision, the study of Torah, and the keeping of kashrut (Jewish dietary laws). In the Jews’ Holy Temple, he placed a statue of Zeus / Satan the supreme god he claimed was manifest in his own royal being — and he was undoubtedly correct He sacrificed swine on YHVH’s altar, stripped the Temple of its sacred gold vessels and silver and gold coin offerings. These actions so outraged the Jews that they faced great tribulation and death to fight back.
But, but, we’ve run out of empires! What about Rome?
Rome’s essential unity with Greece as a European, Western empire is historically noted by the Roman victory over the Corinthians at the Battle of Corinth in 146 BC. and the establishment of Greek Byzantium by Constantine as the capital of the Roman Empire in 330 AD.
But the shared umbilical cord goes back to the Bronze Age before there were nations as we know them.
~1300 BC Aeneas, a prince of the city of Troy in Asia Minor, a hero / carrying the genes of a pre-flood demigod, and possessed by a god’s spirit, traveled as a nation-less refugee seeking a future and a hope along the rim of the Mediterranean Sea. After consulting imprisoned Apollo through the oracle of Delphi he settled in what would become Italy where in 753 BC – Rhea, daughter of a rustic king, is impregnated by hybrid carrier of Asshur god of war / Roman Mars and gives birth to the twins Romulus and Remus.
After killing his rival brother, Romulus founds his eponymous capitol city of Rome. The westernmost location of this primitive outpost of Mesopotamian civilization delays the rise of Rome as an international force to be reckoned with.
