Get 10 times more than 'the ancients'!

While it’s commonly understood that first-century Greek author Pliny the Elder named Zoroaster as the inventor of magic, the Bible clearly reveals its origins are with the 'wise men' in Babylon.

“As God scatters the nation Israel and brings the times of the Gentiles into vogue, Nebuchadnezzar takes Israel’s place as the king in the earth and in Babylon there’s this scholarly priest-class of people—the magicians, sorcerers, astrologers, the Chaldeans,” explains Preacher Richard Jordan.

“There’s this people with this supposed profound, supernatural-type wisdom and knowledge gained from reading the stars, and the wise men from Matthew 2, who journeyed to see Jesus as a young child, have this connection with being able to grasp this type of knowledge.”

According to a website, “The religion of the Persians is often connected with the name Zoroaster, who enjoyed a wide reputation in the ancient world as the founder of the order of the Magi, and by extension as the founder of the wisdom of the Persians. Many classical Hellenic (Greek) authors and philosophers so preoccupied themselves with Persian culture that they journeyed, studied, and as a result, adopted many Persian-Magian-Zoroastrian ideas and skills.”

Jordan says, “The wise men who saw Jesus Christ’s star in the east were from Persia, from Babylon, no doubt. It was about a 1,200 mile journey. They come into the house where Jesus is now a toddler, and it’s a house, not an inn or stable. He’s not in the barn or in the field. He’s not in Bethlehem; He’s in Nazareth.

“If you remember, Herod tries to get to Jesus by ordering that children two years old and younger be killed, so the implication is it could have been as much as two years gone by since the wise men first saw the star.

“In the Book of Daniel you see these wise men came out of the tradition of Babel and Babylon. When Nebuchadnezzar came in to take Israel away, it says he took away the choicest young men.

"As Daniel 1:20 says, ‘And in all matters of wisdom and understanding, that the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm.’

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“The word ‘magi’ is where you get the term ‘magician’ and it didn’t have to do with David Copperfield and all that sleight of hand stuff you see these guys do today.

“Zoroasterism was a religion based on the ability to read the stars, but nobody can figure out when or where Zoroaster lived. They got about three dates that cover about 900 years and they got him living anywhere from Pakistan to middle Persia to up into Turkey.

"It’s a mess to try and figure out who this dude was and what he did, but the fact is these wise men pre-date Zoroaster, who simply came along and took up some of these guys’ position. Where these guys come from goes all the way back to Genesis 11.

“The magicians and astrologers were people who practiced predicting the future; claiming what was going to happen by calculating the planetary positions, taking these maps of the heavens and the signs of the zodiac and all these 'influences' of the stars.

“They professed to be endowed with profound wisdom and extraordinary knowledge in spiritual things, but we’re told Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah were 10 times better than these other guys. Why do you think that would be? Their wisdom and understanding comes from the Lord.

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“The psalmist writes in Psalm 119, [97] O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day.
[98] Thou through thy commandments hast made me wiser than mine enemies: for they are ever with me.
[99] I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation.
[100] I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts.

“He’s saying, ‘You know, I’m smarter than my teachers—all these people with all this experience in life—and you know why? Because I’ve got God’s Word!’

“So compared to the ability to read the planets, or deduce human observations based upon whatever source, having God’s Word as the basis of your understanding makes you 10 times better than everybody else.

“How do you think those people are going to think about you, though? You remember Daniel wound up in the lion’s den? That’s not because they loved him so much; that’s because this crowd couldn’t take a guy who outshone them like Daniel did.

“Their deal was always, ‘You tell us your dream and we’ll interpret for you.’ Nebby says, ‘No, this time you tell me the dream and then I’ll know the interpretation is real.’ That sounds like a smart guy. These magicians responded, ‘Whoa, nobody ever asked for that before; we never heard of such a thing!’

“We read in Daniel 2:10-13: [10] The Chaldeans answered before the king, and said, There is not a man upon the earth that can shew the king's matter: therefore there is no king, lord, nor ruler, that asked such things at any magician, or astrologer, or Chaldean.
[11] And it is a rare thing that the king requireth, and there is none other that can shew it before the king, except the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh.
[12] For this cause the king was angry and very furious, and commanded to destroy all the wise men of Babylon.
[13] And the decree went forth that the wise men should be slain; and they sought Daniel and his fellows to be slain.

“You see how it says he commanded to destroy all the wise men of Babylon? Who was it that came in Matthew 2? It was some of those magians. The wise men. They were credited with this profound wisdom and extraordinary spiritual knowledge because they were thought to be able to predict fate, the future, by calculating planetary positions.

“The question that comes to my mind is what would make somebody think such a thing? What would they know about the planets anyway?

“Isn’t it interesting that every child learns the song, ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky’?

“These guys didn’t have telescopes and I’m sure they laid out under the desert sky and looked at the twinkling stars and they wondered. But all of a sudden they discover they KNOW; they got all kind of knowledge about these things.”

(to be continued tomorrow)