Biblical History Is Important

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1:01Good morning. And sometimes we like to take a show and a moment to step back from the news of the day headlines and some of the political hot topics that we address always from a biblical worldview. And from the perspective that God ordained three institutions of government, the civil government, the family government, and the church government, and all of the headlines and the policy and the things that we talk about. We want to address from those categories and from a biblical worldview to see how does this align or not with a biblical standard. And so today we are going to actually address more of an overview of how we read the Bible in context and some of the headlines that are in the Bible. Because when we read the Bible, it can be easy to separate what we call biblical history from what we learned

2:02in school or college as world history. But scripture doesn't present itself as happening in some kind of isolated religious universe or that these are just stories that are all parables. Obviously the Bible does contain some parables, but you know that up front. And when there is a story in the Bible, we should call it actually an account because these are accounts of actual history that took place in world history and in that context. So the story and the accounts in the Bible unfold amid real nations, kings and wars, empires, and cultures from Egypt and Assyria to Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, and then even into history that hasn't happened yet, which we call prophecy. And also the end times or eschatology, the end of all things. So when we begin putting these timelines next to each other, there are connections that emerge that we can place

3:05scripture alongside a world history and what we know from ancient records, from archeology that has uncovered actual people in places that are mentioned in scripture. And this is why studying world history is important and also why understanding the biblical timeline is important. And so the rise and fall of major world empires provide and historical backdrop for everything, from the prophets to the exile of John and in the world in which Jesus was born, the Roman Empire. And so it's important to know what was going on philosophically and also in the kingdoms and the world rulers at the times and places that biblical accounts take place. Because then we can more understand the biblical context and we can also understand, of course, when it relates to Jesus as Messiah and Lord,

4:06we can understand a where world history that aligns with biblical history has taken us and then also where we're headed into the future. And so joining me for this conversation is a guest that you are all very familiar with on my mom Valerie Ellis who has her degrees in theology and biblical counseling. And when she teaches theology and the study of the Bible and Bibliology, one of the important contacts for all of this is the timeline of biblical history. And this is one of the things actually that we studied in homeschooling. When we read the Bible all the way through annually per year. And then also when we studied world history and in a separate program, we talked about how in homeschooling, my mom did this differently where we didn't just study units that were kind of decontextualized and you learn about the Roman Empire

5:09then you learn about the pioneers and then you learn about the founding fathers and then you learn about ancient Egypt and you don't have this understanding of the chronological timeline. Well, we need to have that in world history and we also need to have that in biblical history. So mom, thanks so much for joining. And tell us how you put this together in the context of your theology class. Yeah, hi, John. Good to be with you again. I like charts as anybody who knows me knows I like charts and many things. As much as analogies. Yes. Yes, to make a lot of information able to be seen quickly and you can grasp it when you put it into a chart. So as we're going through, excuse me, the Bible chronologically and we hit these different, as you mentioned, kingdoms and kings and rulers and empires and everything, they are not never, never land information

6:11or middle earth or something. They are real here on planet earth. And we always want to, as we are going through the Bible, then pause and look at that king and those artifacts from that culture and whatever was going on in biblical history put it in its context in this world. And it's wonderful, it's a wonderful faith booster to know that these places and people in scripture are real even in secular history. They have the same kings and they have the same names and places and all. And then you can understand the Bible better. So let's put it all in a chronological, the biblical history with the secular history and who the kings were into a chart so that we could look at it and follow all of the history of it all. Yeah. And this is. Yeah. And so it's really important to understand this for all the reasons that we've mentioned.

7:13And so give us basically then an overview of this chart and how the beginning and the concepts in Genesis, I guess we'll just start there, align the overview of the Bible, but then also the overview of world history. You just want me to go topic by time. Let's do kind of an overview of just kind of a one minute, 60 second view of world history in the Bible. And then we can go a little more in depth. OK. So early history of course is, as you said, in Genesis. And then there was not really a world empire at that time at the end of Genesis, it is down in Egypt. And then we have the next book which is Exodus. And so that, then that whole time from Exodus, Leviticus numbers, Deuteronomy goes along with who the Pharaohs were at that time in Egypt.

8:15Egypt at that time was the world empire. Then you go to, they come out of Egypt, they go up into the Promised Land, you have Joshua, and then Judges and Ruth, then you have the United Kingdom with Persian Second Samuel, first kings, 1, 2, 11. And the book of Psalms, the David wrote, books of Solomon wrote, and Israel, and their kingdom were the, that was the, it was the golden age of Israel at that time. Egypt was no longer the world empire, there wasn't really a world empire. Then you get down to second kings and second conicals and we have the world empire of Assyria, whose capital is Nineveh, where Jonah was sent to. And you have the kings mentioned, of the kings of Syria mentioned in Second Kings, the real kings of the Syrian empire. Assyrian empire conquered the Northern Kingdom. And so the Northern Kingdom, it became,

9:15it was a divided kingdom before that. And then you have the next kingdom, there was the world kingdom with Babylon. And so now they conquered Israel. And now the remnant is in Babylon. And you have Nebuchadnezzar having the dream, which tells the future kingdoms. So then you trace that. You have Nebuchadnezzar is the head of gold. He's the Babylonian empire, as I said, and then the chest and arms of silver are the middle Persian empire and all of their kings. They're mentioned in Scripture. Then you have the belly and thighs of bronze in that statue, which represents the kingdom of Greece, which happened in between the testaments. Then you have the legs of iron, represent the Rome. The Roman Empire, which is the empire that was the world empire when the gospels and the rest of the New Testament. That ends biblical history.

10:17Then we have this time period called the Church Age. Now that we are in and in the future, in that same dream of Nebuchadnezzar, the feet and toe of the Iron and Clay, represent the future kingdom of the Antichrist for the tribulation. And then after that, the rock in the statue, in the dream that comes down and strikes the statue on the feet and all the world kingdoms are destroyed. The rock from heaven represents Jesus who then fills the earth. And it's his eternal kingdom that's established. So goes from creations to the end of time, biblical history and how it intersects with secular history. Yeah. And this is so important because this also frames why and Protestantism generally are a young earth creation viewpoint

11:18and also have the eschatology and the view on revelation that we do in part, and obviously the strongest reason is because of the exegesis of scripture and because of what a reasonable interpretation of scripture is, but also because it aligns those views align with world history. And so we don't have millions of years before in the beginning or millions of years in this gap theory of like, okay, there was a beginning, but then before the creation of the world or the creation of humans and animals and all of this. And then we also have the view of eschatology and the end of all things, of the tribulation and the second coming through the lens of scripture. And so scripture can also show us how we understand world history and how all of this aligns. And so let's go back to Genesis and creation

12:20because in your chart of biblical chronology and world history, the approximate year of events for Genesis, which includes creation, Adam and Eve, the fall, which is just the first couple of chapters just through Genesis one to three. You label that 4,04 BC. Yes, 4,04 BC, that is not my chronology. That is a conservative Bible scholar, young earth creationist, date of creation. Yeah, and so this is why, so I guess expand on this a little bit more about the young earth creation and why the conservative estimate and biblical scholars agree that this is the approximate timeline and why we say, you know, 6,000 years approximately is the age of the earth. Because they take the chronology given in Genesis

13:22of the, as they given, some Adam to get this person, to get this person, to get this person, they take all of that and the, up to the history that they know and then backtrack it to 4,04 BC. Of course, that's approximate, but it's a good, it's a good starting place based on the genealogies in Genesis. Yeah, and that's so important. I mean, and so many people say, or I've at least heard this, that the genealogies, they kind of skip over this in pastoral sermons and we were actually talking this weekend when we were all gathering with extended family and all of this when we were talking and my sister-in-law raised the question, if you had a, if you could pick, would you rather your pastor have a sermon and go through an Old Testament book or a New Testament book? And a lot of the general responses, not our family,

14:24but the general responses are New Testament because somehow modern churches think that the New Testament is more relevant to the Christian life. And things like, you know, the genealogies and the law in Leviticus and, you know, a lot of these things that are more ancient and Old Testament aren't necessarily relevant, but we need to understand this. We need to put this all in this chronological perspective. Absolutely. I don't understand that mindset of all, but most Christians just basically read the New Testament and, you know, the Old Testament, like you said, go get relevant to them. But it's amazing how to go through these, the Old Testament in the chronology of it and put it with world history and you understand things of the New Testament because you've read the Old Testament. So much of the New Testament, you don't know these things that are going on in the Old Testament, they won't make any sense to you.

15:24So you get very familiar with the Old Testament, the chronology of it, what actually happened and how God set everything up to start with. And then the New Testament and the references that it makes and the things that it quotes and everything you understand what God is doing in the church now because of what he was doing creation and then setting up the nation of Israel especially. Yeah, and even the current debates like whether Israel has a right to the land and whether, you know, the covenant that God gave to Abraham and his descendants, whether that was replaced by the church and in the New Testament, you replacement theology, which I strongly disagree with, I know that you do as well. The only way that we can enter into those debates and even understand them coherently, we have to go back and understand the Old Testament and we need to understand the timeline of world history

16:24and the overview and kind of see that, you know, big 30,000 foot perspective of Genesis the beginning all the way through to Revelation and history, which is his story. And so when we're looking at creation, you know, in the beginning God, in the beginning God created and then we have Adam and Eve and the fall, then the next major events, of course, are the flood, the Tower of Babel and then you have a question mark by the book of Job. What does that mean? Because the belief that Job happened, the events in Job happened sometime early, early history after the flood, you notice that, but somewhere in the book of Genesis but scholars do not know exactly when it's not dated and there isn't a historical reference in Job that would give them a clue what context Job, the society that he lived in or you know, who was the king and another part of the world

17:26or anything like that. Job is early history but they don't know where in Genesis that actually happened in the technology. And so those clues, and that's what's important is to say, you know, these are, these other dates then aren't just guesses. These are based on looking at what we know about world history and then what the Bible tells us about the accounts that are actually given in the Bible. And I want to get to then Exodus and all of that, but we're going to take a break here and I'm talking with my mom Valerie Ellis about the importance of the biblical timeline alongside the timeline of world history. Why could we be confident in the accounts of the Bible that this is real history that God gave us from beginning to end. Obviously we have also advice and wisdom of how to live the Christian life. And all of that is contained in the Bible, but a lot of people just view the Bible

18:27as well it tells you how to get saved and then maybe has some fortune cookie wisdom about how to be a good person. And that's not at all what the Bible contains from beginning to end. And so understanding what the Bible contains, where these accounts were and why it's also important to understand world history so that we can put the Bible also in context. That's what we're talking about. And so we will be right back with you. Hi, I'm Jenna Ellis. Did you know that this content is listener supported? Without people like you, this podcast would not exist. And that's why we need you. A generous monthly gift of any amount will help sustain American family radio and specifically this podcast. Please consider becoming a monthly financial partner today by visiting afr.net forward slash give. That's afr.net slash give. Welcome back to Jenna Ellis in the morning on American Family Radio.

19:27Welcome back and I'm here with my mom Valerie Ellis and we're talking about the biblical chronology and world history and how those align and how we can put the Bible in context and the accounts of the Bible and how we also can understand world history through the accounts in the Bible and how those align and match up. And so it's important on one hand to know world history. I was talking with a friend in my neighborhood a couple of weeks ago said, yeah, I think history is a little bit boring. Well, no, it's not. I mean, we need to understand where we have come from in world history and in empires and governments and kingdoms and all of the significant events from the beginning all the way through until now and the founding of America and American history. And we need to understand all of those world events also in light of the chronology of the Bible. The Bible is not just the epistles from Paul and the New Testament. Those are incredibly important. But the entire biblical account is important

20:31and understanding all of his story or history. And so we left off in the last break coming into Exodus. And this is where Mommy was saying during the break that there's so many fascinating elements of history here with the Pharaohs and Ancient Egypt and what we know from archaeology and world history and also how that aligns with the accounts in scripture. Yes, it's so interesting at least to me. And I think to a lot of people, Ancient Egypt and the Pharaohs and the tombs and the pyramids and all of those things, that intersects all that that we know from secure history, intersects with biblical history in a very interesting way. And it's the kings or the Pharaohs in the book of Exodus and Leviticus numbers due to run me. They're not given names, they're just called Pharaoh. But we can figure it out who that Pharaoh was

21:32and the name of that Pharaoh and then you can go and read the history to further your understanding of what the children of Israel were dealing with down in Egypt when they were in exile down there. Yeah, so let's go through that because you have on this chart a number of the Pharaohs listed and how we can know from history the names of those Pharaohs and where they were in the biblical account as well. So in the book of verse six, chapter six, verse one, it says Solomon began building the temple in 480 years after the Exodus. That's the clue that they can put that together and say, okay, we know when Solomon did that, go back 480 years and puts the Exodus at 1,445 BC and then they can figure out, okay, who was the Pharaoh during that?

22:34And so, and then you get this whole understanding of who those Pharaohs were. There was a dynasty of Dutmosa and I'm saying this in a way that is, there's Patmosa I've heard it and other ways to pronounce it, nobody probably knows exactly how, but I think Dutmosa, the first was the Pharaoh who killed the Hebrew babies to when they were becoming to, there was the population explosion for the Hebrew and so they killed, he was the one who ordered the killing of the Hebrew babies. And then he had a son Dutmosa, the second from, from a lesser wife, not the queen, a follow me on this. And then he had a, two most of the first had a daughter named Hatshepsut who was from the queen mother. That daughter Hatshepsut is the Pharaoh's daughter who rescued Moses from the basket in the river.

23:37She grew up to become the first female Pharaoh because she's at my brother who is my dad's son by a lesser wife is not in the right lineage. I deserve to be the queen of Egypt because I come from my father and the queen mother. So she, you just need to read the history there. She took the throne and she was known as Hommat, his majesty herself. And Jenna, you would be interested in this. She made pink opal risks and everything. Her color was pink in Egypt. Anyway, that's Hatshepsut. Very interesting. I remember that from home school, but yeah, go ahead. Yeah. And then most of the third who was the son of, the most of the second who never became the Pharaoh by a lesser wife, she is the one who oppressed the Hebrews and made them work, work, it's S-lates.

24:37And then his son, Amin Hotepp, the second is the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Bible scholars do not believe it was Rambees. That's the, based on the biblical chronology that talks about Solomon began his temple 400 and eight years afterwards. So, and then interestingly, if he's the Pharaoh of the Exodus, his firstborn would have been killed in the Passover. And the next Pharaoh who was the most of the fourth was not the firstborn of Amin Hotepp II. That's because the firstborn was killed. So it intersects with biblical history and it's very interesting. And I love that. Yeah, I do too. And I love that we can know those things and see, I mean, I remember in, in Hommat school, there was a, an ancient Egypt exhibit that came to the Denver Museum and we got to go and actually see some of those artifacts and to see not just world history and what we were studying world history,

25:38but biblical history come alive through that. And so when people separate the two and say, okay, there's secular history, there's world history and then there's kind of this biblical timeline that's a lot more nebulous because people don't really put it in a context unless they're just going through the chronology of the books of the Bible. They don't mesh the two and have them line up and say, okay, here is, here are some of the things that we know from these specific pharaohs. And when you know that Hachepsaad is the, is the princess that rescued Moses and you see some of those actual artifacts that archaeologists have uncovered, it gives such a new perspective on biblical history and truly makes that come alive. And it's not just the book of fairy tales or felt board characters or veggie tales or something that we learn in Sunday school, it's actually truth and it's alive

26:39and you can trust the accounts of the Bible. And there are other circumstances that have been described in the Bible, not just scientific realities, but world history that have been described in the Bible that at one point in time historians scoffed at and said, oh, you know, that can't be real or oh, whatever. And then a later discovering archaeology confirmed the biblical account. We've never had an instance where an archaeological discovery disproved an account in the Bible. It's always been that the biblical account is proven true. And so that gives us not only a biblical credibility, but also it solidifies our faith that for things that we may not have yet uncovered in archaeology, we can trust that the Bible is true and look to that account. And it's just, it's so fascinating. And so anything you wanna say on that, Mom? Yeah, do you remember we used to look up these names

27:40after we knew who they were and you look them up and they have a best of them or some kind of an artifact, not just an ancient Egypt, but other ones and you can see that was their way of taking a picture back then as just somebody would sculpt a bust of them. And then when you're reading the Bible and they're talking about this keen was doing this to, you know, the children of Israel and they were having to deal with these kind of laws or whatever and then you look at, you can look and see, you can look at that person as you're reading it and see who was doing this and it just helps it become real. You understand more, this is their president that they had to deal with like we here in America, we have our presidents and our laws and the our justice system and all. So it is, it is faith building because we know the Bible is true and it helps us to see, yeah, archaeology and history, secular history confirm what our Bible says.

28:41We don't believe the Bible because of that, but it's faith building to know that they wrote history accurately in the Bible. Yeah, absolutely. And if something, some archaeological discovery went against what the Bible said, and we had a lot of those, then we would probably as rational people then be skeptical and say, well, wait a minute, then can we really trust the Bible? And so it's, but when the archaeological discoveries that are made even by, you know, people who aren't Christians when they confirm the biblical account, it just shows that our faith is grounded in a solid basis. And this isn't just a faith like, you know, you'd believe in a fairy tale or magic or a lot of people accuse religion of just being a crutch. It's grounded faith in a rational and a legitimate historical account. And of course, you know, when we come to the person of Jesus

29:43and all of the proof that he really did live in during the Roman Empire and there are so much proof for his life, his death and resurrection, then we can believe with hope and with confidence that that account is accurate. And so Christianity isn't just a way to live as a good person, but to actually believe in the resurrection as the critical event in world history, not just the biblical account and say, okay, therefore, what does God require of me? What does the Bible say about the truth of reality? And that's why I always say I'm a Christian not just because I believe in God because you can believe in a lot of things and some that are true and some that are false, but because the biblical worldview is the best explanation for the reality to which we're presented. And so we can, we obviously believe in world history. We nobody goes to a museum and looks at an artifact

30:43and says, I don't believe that that really is a hammer from ancient Egypt. I mean, they know what it is and you believe in that reality. And so the Bible also confirms the truth of reality. And so by extension, we can believe also in what God has told us that we can't yet verify like what happens to us after we die and into eternity because we know that the rest of the Bible is also true. So it's a really, just wonderful thing that we can see the biblical chronology and we understand the full story. And so as we come to then Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and then into Israel, the United Kingdom, under King Saul, King David, and King Solomon, let's kind of go through some of those, the major and minor prophets and that portion of the Bible. So yeah, you get after the United Kingdom,

31:44Solomon's two sons split the kingdom and there was a Northern kingdom and a Southern kingdom. A Syria was a world empire at that time, as I said before, Nineveh was its capital. And this is where they give us some names and scripture of some of the Aetherian kings, Tiglap, Polizor, Chalmonezer, these are in second kings, Sargon, the Second, Sinekarab, all of these kings as they're had done and Asher Bannapal, they all are there in scripture. You can look them up, do a Google search on it, you can see their best and what they look like and what the Assyrian culture was like and who their gods were and all. And that is who was the world empire when the divided kingdom was going on in Israel. And then the Assyrians came in and conquered the Northern kingdom and that's the 10 lost tribes as they call them,

32:44not sure that they were lost, but that's what they call them, they were taken off the land and the only kingdom that survived then was the kingdom of Judah in the South and that is the kingdom then that continued on until Nebuchadnezzar, even though the prophets came and told them about ascending Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonians to destroy your nation unless you repent. All the prophets during that time who warned them and warned them, you know what's going on? If you know, okay, they were, they're the last kingdom and Babylon is over there, now the world empire, they're gonna come if you don't repent and they did not repent. And so now then the biblical history goes over to Babylon with Daniel and Shadrach Meshach and the Bedingo in Babylon with Nebuchadnezzar as their ruler. And the prophets Ezekiel and Daniel

33:46were the exilic prophets who were speaking to those captives in Babylon while they were there for 70 years. And it's fascinating you can look Nebuchadnezzar and what he looked like in his son, Belchazar, who was the, then he took his father's place and he was the one who was having the feast to he brought all the other rulers in his kingdom to this feast in Babylon and they took out the elements and the bowls and the cups and all that they had brought to Babylon from destroying the temple and they were toasting their gods in Babylon in blasphemy to the Lord God. And that's when the handwriting came on the wall and that's that night there is the need from the middle Persian empire came and conquered Babylon. And you can look all that up, secular history.

34:46Yeah. And so you know, so that was Babylonia and then we get to the post exilic prophets. So, you know, Nehemiah who then goes and is tasked with rebuilding the wall. I mean, and this is why again, you know, history and context is important because so many pastors unfortunately, just use the book of Nehemiah building the wall as some kind of, you know, analogy or allegory to we need to build our churches and we need to tie them or and they use, you know, that kind of symbolism instead of understanding what was actually going on in world and biblical history during the time of Nehemiah. And when Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to their land and during the Meadow Persian empire and what was actually going on. Yeah. You lose all of that when it just becomes a little book of lessons even for Daniel. They'll say, oh, Daniel, you know, dare to get Daniel all these things. Yeah, well, it was really going on but things were really going on.

35:47They had to deal with these rulers, Daniel. And yeah, Cyrus was prophesied by Isaiah. There was going to be some Cyrus who was going to tell the Jews to allow the Jews to go back into their land and that actually happened. He was a real ruler, Cyrus. And then we come to deride the second in the Meadow Persian empire and then to Verkthes who was Esther's husband. Then you read about Zerksy's Insecular History and you read the book of Esther. She was the one that came into one of the beauty contest basically and came into his harem. And then his son, our dessert, Zerksy's the first is the one who allowed Nehemiah to return to rebuild the walls. And he is also in secular history. And from him was his son, Derias II in Nehemiah 12 called Derias the Persian. You can look them up in secular history.

36:48So interesting. It is. People were really real. Yeah, absolutely. And again, Esther is one that is so often used and people have quoted this to me so often. Oh, for such a time as this is if it's just a story and their case studies to say, okay, how can we be more like an Esther? And they take them out of context to just build these little TED talks around these people as if we would say in generations to come, if pastors would say, okay, well, how can you be more like a Trump? How can you be more like a Billy Graham? As if these people weren't actual historical figures that did things that we can either look to as good examples or bad examples, but also understand the world in context and how that fits into the greater narrative of the gospel story, of why God chose Israel

37:51and then Israel's history. And all of that was a foreshadowing to the Messiah who would come and we'll get into the New Testament. We gotta take a break here, but all of that Old Testament history is a foreshadowing and an understanding of why we need a Savior and then why he would come and his name is Jesus and lived and died and rose again. And we have a historical proof of that account so that all people can have the opportunity to receive salvation and then as we enter into the New Testament where that fits into world history. So we'll talk about the Old Testament, sorry, the New Testament when we come right back here on Jenna Ellis in the morning with my mom Valerie Ellis. We're living in a defining moment in history. Today, a woman facing an unexpected pregnancy can order the abortion pill online. Often before anyone has had the chance to tell her

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39:54Together we can save lives, one heartbeat at a time. Welcome back to Jenna Ellis in the morning on American Family Radio. Welcome back and I'm here with my mom, Valerie Ellis. And we're talking about biblical chronology and world history and where we left off before the break was at the end of the Old Testament and the post-exileic prophets. And so now we have an in-between period in world history in between the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament. And so this is what scholars call you in the 400 year period or gap and what was going on in world history between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New. Great, so this is also a fascinating time of history. The Alexander the Great was world ruler. He conquered in the name of Greece. He became, he ruled everything.

40:56If you go and look at his history, there's so many places in that, in his whole kingdom that were called Alexandria. That's, there's Alexandria cities all over. They were named after him. He was a great conqueror. And he, after, soon after he conquered, he was a very young man. He died and his kingdom was divided up into four sections and four general, four of his generals ruled each section. But this was prophesied in Daniel chapter eight. Alexander the Great is represented by the goat, the goat is Greece or the Greek kingdom. The one large horn that the goat has was represented on Alexander the Great. And in the prophecy, it broke off and four other horns grew in its place. And that happened in world history. So he died, Alexander the Great died,

41:58soon after he conquered. And his kingdom was divided into four smaller kingdoms. One of those kingdoms became, obviously, Israel was under one of the kingdoms and one of their rulers became anti-Ekish epiphanies who was the one who hated the Jews and the Jewish culture. He outlawed sacrifices, he banned circumcision. He flew a pig on the altar in the temple to his god Zeus. And he horribly persecuted the Jews. If you wanna read a great book on this, it's migraic brothers by Howard Fast. It's out of print now if you can get it anywhere. It's a great book. It talks about this time of history and who he was and how he persecuted the Jews. And they rose up and they fought the mighty Greek empire

43:02and they won their independence. And that is the story of Hanukkah. And that's what migraic brothers tell the story of that. That all happened in between the testament. So that when Jesus walked there, they were celebrating Hanukkah. And when Jesus said, was at the festival and he said, I am the light, it's he was celebrating Hanukkah at that time. And so then the new testament begins and this is 63 BC. And so this of course is during the Roman Empire and the Caesars of Augustus, Claudius, Nero, Vespation. So walk us through that and how that aligns with the gospels. So Julius Caesar was part of the triumphant when Rome was a republic that there was things happened and it became an empire with Julius Caesar's nephew,

44:06Augustus Caesar being the first Roman emperor. And he is the one who taxed everyone. But Cynes he took over, he wanted to know how many people are in his kingdom so that he would be able to know how many people will be taxed and how much money he was gonna have. It was Augustus Caesar, we all probably remember who because of that Joseph and Mary had to go to Bethlehem to register. And that's why Jesus Christ was born and Bethlehem in fulfillment of the prophecy. And then Claudius Caesar is the next Roman emperor who was named in scripture in Acts chapter 11, Acts chapter 18. Nero is the one who persecuted the Christians horribly. He's not named in scripture, but he persecuted Peter, Ampall and the other Christian's, Peter as the tradition is was crucified upside down

45:08by Caesar Nero. And then the station was the Roman emperor who when in 8070, when the Romans came in and Titus and his legions came in and completely destroyed the temple, it was under the Roman emperor, the station who is not named in scripture, but that's who that was and Titus is also not named, but he's the one who came in and did that. After Jesus was crucified into the New Testament books after the temple was destroyed. Yeah, and so then that was scattering the Jews and then until 1948 when Israel regathers. And so we have then 3380 to the present time is the church age. And so Israel has been scattered, but there is prophecy that says that Israel will be regathered and we saw that happen in 1948.

46:10And then there will be no world empire until the anti-Christ and the tribulation. And that is prophesied and told in revelation during John's vision. And when was John exiled to the island of Patmos and wrote Revelation? Probably in AD 95, that's what conservative Bible scholars give us the date of revelation. And so you think about it, John wrote his gospel, the book of John, first, second, third John, and then the book of Revelation after the temple was destroyed. And so he probably had many people that he knew, probably someone his family, they were all killed by the Romans and scattered, as he said, to the forewins. And John is still faithfully serving the Lord. He's writing his books of scripture. He lost his country, he lost his family, he lost,

47:12the culture, the temple was gone, everything. And yet he's still faithfully serving God. He was an elder in Ephesus. And you can Ephesus is a real city and there's artifacts there. And then he was exiled to the island of Patmos. He got revelation, then he went back to Ephesus probably in his final years. And if you haven't been to Ephesus for listeners, I have had the opportunity to go about 10 years ago. And it's incredible to go there, to go to Israel, to see the historical places and the artifacts that they have that it makes the Bible come alive. And you see that these are real places. These aren't just, you know, as we talked about in the very beginning, these aren't just never, never land or in some, kind of Lord of the Rings land that's just made up. I mean, these are real historical accounts that show the narrative.

48:12And so when we see what is now coming, we're in the church age and then what will come, which is the tribulation and then the second coming of Christ, the actual physical return of Jesus Christ who will then reign forever as the last world ruler. And of course, he will reign over the new heaven and the new earth. What does that tell us when we look at the scope of biblical history and world history? What should we be preparing for? And how should we view then our future and our current culture in terms of being faithful? Yeah, it's so, as you said before, gentlemen, if the Bible is true about everything that we know has already happened, then we can have absolute confidence in the things that haven't happened yet that the Bible tells us. It will happen. Jesus is coming again and this world will be ruled by Him,

49:13praise Him for that. We will finally have a righteous ruler and we can look forward to that. That gives us in our tribulations and our trials and the things they're going on, we look at our own nation right now that's crumbling. Everything is not as we would like it to be and the laws that are passed and the things that people think are true. We can trust Jesus is coming back. There will be this justice served at some point in this world and we can, we wait in hope. We do not wait as if maybe this will happen and maybe we won't know. We know that it will happen. It's just the question of this win and it could happen at any time. And this has been such a quick overview but I hope that this encourages you to study more about world history, biblical history. Thanks so much, Mom. And as always, you can reach me and my team, Jenna at AFR.net. I'm gonna go to AFR.

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