Usurper Antiochus Iv Defiled First Temple In Jerusalem Poem by Terence George Craddock (Spectral Images and Images Of Light)

Antiochus attacked defiled First Temple in Jerusalem
sacrificed a pig on holy altar erected a statue of Zeus
as himself in the temple raided sacred Temple treasury...

minted his 'Theos Epiphanes' God manifest coins
at Antioch silver tetradrachm of Antiochus IV struck
'Basileus Antiochus God Manifest Bearer of Victory'

'Basileus Antiochus translates 'The king made manifest'
'made manifest' implies the deification of Antiochus
face shown with radiate crown indicating aura of divinity...

Antiochus IV the 'little horn' of Daniel 8: 9? Banned
the traditional religion of the entire Jewish people?
Outlawed all sacred Jewish religious rites traditions?

Observant Jews were ordered to worship Olympian Zeus
as supreme god forbidden from keeping sacred Sabbath?
Forbidden from celebrating traditional feasts forbidden...

from admitting to be a Jew? Decree issued ordered Jews
to adopt Greek customs partake of Greek sacrifices
to put to death all Jews who would not publically consent?

Antiochus raging like a wild animal took Jerusalem
by storm 'ordered his soldiers to cut down without
mercy those whom they met and to slay those who took

refuge in their houses. There was a massacre of young
and old, a killing of women and children, a slaughter
of virgins and infants. In the space of three days, eighty

thousand were lost, forty thousand meeting a violent
death, and the same number being sold into slavery.'
Antiochus IV antichrist archetype prefigure antichrist!
2 Maccabees 5: 11-14.

Two Jewish women arrested for having circumcised sons
on prescribed eight day 'were publicly paraded about the city
with their babies hanging at their breasts then thrown down

from the top of the city wall'? Jews who assembled
in nearby caves to observe the sabbath in secret
were betrayed' all burned to death to enforce decree.
2 Maccabees 6: 1-11

Antiochus 'The Mad One' the first vile Seleucid
king to use divine epithets on his minted coins
to proclaim himself divinity god made manifest

forced Jews to abandon customs of their ancestors
at pain of death to live no longer by the laws of God
Antiochus was struck down by disease in 164 BC...


Copyright © Terence George Craddock