Scripture often teaches us by example its even stated there is nothing new under the sun what was, will be (Ecclesiastes 1:9)
With that thought in mind we read of a time in history that may foreshadow a type for a future Anti-Christ figure
Darkness Descends on Israel
The Greek Empire had risen to power under Alexander the Great after Judah had served as a vassal state to Persia for two centuries.
After Alexander's death, the state of Judah was wrested back and forth by two of Alexander's generals seven times.
All the while, clashing starkly with "the purity of the Hebrew religion," the pagan culture of the Greeks was wildly offensive: naked wrestling, immodest dress and a preference for homosexuality, writes Richard Hooker in The Hebrews: A Learning Module.
However, while the Greeks influenced the language and culture of Jerusalem and the state of Judah (Judea), "they allowed the Jews to run their own country, declared that the law of Judah was the Torah and attempted to preserve Jewish religion," Such was the case, at first.
Two Greek monarchs, Ptolemy and Seleucus, battled for Judea until 198 BC, at which time Antiochus III, a Seleucid Greek, won the prize.
He allowed the Jews autonomy until defeat at the hands of the Romans began a program of Hellenization that pushed the Jews to abandon their monotheism for the Greeks' paganism," After Antiochus III raised idols in the Jewish Temple, the Jews rebelled, forcing back the Greeks.
However, Antiochus IV took the throne in 176 BC and did not accommodate Jewish customs as his father had.
The son outlawed the keeping of Sabbath and the circumcision covenant, and carried out a cruel campaign against the people of God.
Antiochus IV gave himself the last name "Epiphanes" (meaning "the visible god") and destroyed every copy of the Scriptures he could find, selling thousands of Jewish families into slavery and murdering anyone who had a Scripture scroll in their possession.
Antiochus IV defiled the Jewish Temple by offering a pig on its altar, erected an altar to Jupiter and prohibited the Jews from Temple worship. But the reach of that defilement was wider than the Temple.
"Women who insisted that their sons be circumcised were killed along with their babies. Brides were forced to sleep with Greek officers before they could be with their husbands. Jews were required to eat pork and sacrifice pigs to the Greek gods.
The teaching of Torah became a capital crime.
Although a great darkness had come over Judah and Jerusalem, "most Jews did anything and everything to remain Jewish, including surreptitiously studying Scripture and even getting married in secret.
The Hasmoneans were a Jewish family with a seemingly impossible calling: to stand up for righteousness under the weight of an oppressor trying to eradicate their identity as well as empty the Temple of its holy purpose — and of its eternal light.
The head of the family, Mattathias, was serving as a priest in God's Temple in 167 BC when a Greek official tried to force him to sacrifice to a pagan god. Mattathias resisted and killed the official, which triggered reprisals by Antiochus IV against the Jews.
Nevertheless, Mattathias — and after his death, Judah, one of his five sons — took charge of the fight against the pagan Greeks and earned the name "Maccabee" (possibly from "hammer" in Hebrew) because of their hammer-like blows against their enemies. Three years after the Maccabee uprising, in 164 BC, the Hasmoneans had taken back Jerusalem and purified the Temple.
"Do not gloat over me, my enemy! Though I have fallen, I will rise. Though I sit in darkness, the LORD will be my light." (Micah 7:8)
"Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place." (Ephesians 6:14)
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