Herod the Great

Because of the fantastic work of Zechariah and those men who ministered before 516 BC, and because of the teaching and the dissemination of doctrine, from 516 BC to 323B C, the death of Alexander the Great, the Jews had their greatest prosperity, both spiritual and economic, and as always with the Jews there was a close relationship between their spiritual prosperity and their economic prosperity. And we have many generations of Jews where there is maximum evangelism followed by that which is often missing — maximum doctrinal teaching in categorical form. This was the greatest period of prosperity the Jews had ever known and it was founded on the principle of Bible doctrine. But in 323 BC when Alexander died the great Graeco-Roman empire was destroyed and four of the outstanding surviving generals divided the empire. First of all they killed all of the progeny of Alexander, his wife and children, so that there could be no inheritance, and then they divided up the empire. Two of them had a great deal to do with Jewish history after that point. The area of Syria, which went all of the way to the Euphrates river, went to Seleucus. The southern area below Palestine, Egypt, went to another Greek general, Ptolemy. These two put a great deal of pressure on the Jews under the principle of the third cycle of discipline. This went on from 323 BC to 167 BC. At that time the Seleucid line, Antoichus Epiphanes specifically, had so damaged the situation that the Jews were about to go into the fourth cycle of discipline, at which point God raised up a family called the Hashmon family, known in history as the Hasmonaeans. The Hasmonaeans have a great deal to do with the second chapter of Matthew. From this family, which dominated the Jews from 167 BC until Herod the Great became a client king under the Roman empire, came the nationalist party in Israel.

The first and the greatest of the Hasmonaeans was Judas the son of Mattathias. Mattathias had five sons, three of them ruled Israel. Judas, because of his great military ability in fighting the Seleucids, was called Judas the hammer, just like at a later time when across the Pyrenees came Islam from Spain, they were met at the Battle of Tours by Charles Martel. He was known as Charles the Hammer in history. In other words, he was a great military man and he struck with the force of a hammer. So Judas was called Judas the Hammer, and that of course is Maccabaeus, known in history as Judas Maccabaeus, so that the Hasmonaeans were also known as Maccabaeans. Since Judas was a born-again believer and since he was a very dedicated sort of a person to the Lord’s service it might be preferable to keep the name where it belongs, with him — Judas Maccabaeus. It is necessary to understand the Hasmonaeans to understand the four hundred silent years between the Old and the New Testaments and to understand the condition into which Jesus Christ came into the world.

In 167 BC Judas Maccabaeus threw off the yoke of the Seleucids and from then down to 63 BC when Pompey the Great finally came the Jews had a second great period of prosperity. But the Hasmonaeans went down, down, down until they are no better than Herod in the great struggle for the control of that part of the world. In 63 BC, through Pompey the Great, the shadow of Rome finally fell. Up until then the Romans had very little to do with Palestine in that particular area, but because of the rise of the Parthian empire and because periodically the Parthians moved down to the Mediterranean it became necessary for the Romans to come into this part of the world, and Pompey the Great was the Roman who did so. With Pompey the Great and the conquest of Jerusalem the fourth cycle of discipline began for the Jews again. In the next twenty years Jerusalem was conquered four times. It lasted until 70 AD at which time the fifth cycle of discipline went into operation and continues up to the present time and will continue up until the second advent of Jesus Christ. It is the period of the fourth cycle of discipline which will be the background for Matthew chapter two.

In the meantime there is one point out of the last part of chapter one to be considered. This is the principle: “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet [Isaiah],” and it is one of three great warnings that Isaiah gave to the Jews who would live between 63 BC and 70 AD that the fifth cycle of discipline was coming. Isaiah was the chief prophet to warn the Jews about their future problems, the beginning of the 5th cycle in 70 AD. Actually there were two prophets who warned the Jews of the 5th cycle: Isaiah who had three warnings — the first was in chapter 7:14, the warning of the virgin birth; the second was in chapter 53:9, the warning of the unique crucifixion of Messiah — He would die twice; the third warning by Isaiah is found in chapter 28:11, the warning of the phenomena of tongues and how it would be the last great evangelistic push before the 5th cycle of discipline came, and the only way the Jews could have cursing turned to blessing was to listen to the gospel given under the principle of tongues and to be born again; Jesus Christ Himself was the second prophet to warn concerning the fifth cycle of discipline. His warning had to do, in Luke chapter 21, with what the born again people were to do. He gave specific instructions in verses 21-24 to the born-again Jews how and when and under what conditions to evacuate Jerusalem so as to avoid the great catastrophe there. Then we have actually in one sense another warning, but not given by a prophet. Whoever wrote Hebrews gives this last warning to the Jews in Jerusalem about three years before the 5th cycle hit.

Then, after the fifth cycle of discipline began there was one more shot given to the Jews. Peter, in his first epistle, wrote to the Jews of the dispersion. The dispersion is the fifth cycle of discipline and he was writing to the Jews who were now under the fifth cycle because many of the Jews who were now saved and scattered throughout the world, were shaken up by the fifth cycle, were despondent and about to give up hope, and Peter said: “We now have something as Jews we didn’t have before. We are members of a universal priesthood; we are a part of a kingdom of priests.” And so it was Peter’s job in the first epistle to point out to the Jews scattered throughout the world this very important fact: born-again Jews are not under the fifth cycle of discipline, they are members of the body of Christ; they are a royal priesthood, a kingdom of priests, and now they are in a tremendous opportunity. The fifth cycle of discipline is for Jews and once a Jew is born again he is not a Jew but he is in union with Christ and a member of the body of Christ.

Now here is this dramatic moment which actually begins the concept of the second chapter of Matthew, the reference to the first of the three signs given by Isaiah with regard to the warnings of the fifth cycle of discipline. All of the warnings were given under the course of the fourth cycle under the principle that before there is judgement grace always comes first. So we are not surprised at Matthew 1:22 — “Now all of this was accomplished, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of by the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold a virgin” — parqenoj, the Greek word which means a virgin and only a virgin, and nothing but a virgin.

“and his name shall be called Emmanuel,” meaning God with us, the incarnation, the uniqueness of the person of Christ. Once Christ is born He is different from God the Father and God the Holy Spirit in that he is true humanity, but He is different from all humanity in that He is God.

Emmanuel (the God with us)

1. Christ was undiminished deity.

a. All divine names and titles are applied to Jesus Christ.

b. All divine attributes are ascribed to Christ.

c. Jesus Christ is the object of all worship; worship is commanded in His direction.

d. He is the object of a faith, love, reverence, devotion which can only be ascribed to God.

e. He declares that He and the Father are one and that those who have seen Him have seen the Father.

f. He promises to forgive sin, to send the Holy Spirit, to give eternal life to those who believe in Him, to provide inner happiness and peace and stability for believers.

g. He promises resurrection bodies for believers in eternity, and God could not promise more or do more than Jesus Christ is said to do, to promise and to provide.

2. Jesus Christ is also true humanity.

a. Jesus Christ possessed a bona fide body which could suffer pain, thirst, hunger, fatigue, pressure. He could rest, He could sleep, He could suffer death.

b. He possessed in His body a soul and a Spirit; He was a trichotomous being; but He did not have an old sin nature, nor did He ever sin personally.

c. In Christ, in the hypostatic union, are two natures, and these two natures are inseparably united. There is no mixture of them, no fusion of them, no transfer of the properties of attributes of one to the other; they remain separate. There is no loss of separate identity. And this is the way it will be forever.

d. Some scripture on the hypostatic union: Philippians 2:6-11; John 1:1-14; Romans 1:2-5; 9:5; 1 Timothy 3:16; Hebrews 2:14; 1 John 1:1-3.

In verses 24,25 Joseph obeyed the command of the Word of God and this resolved his problem completely.

Verse 24 — “Then Joseph being raised from sleep” — the information and/or divine revelation was given to Joseph through the mechanics of sleep; “did as the Lord had commanded him, and took unto him his wife [affianced or betrothed, not wife].” In other words, the marriage went through.

Verse 25 — “And knew her not.” The word “knew her not” simply means he had no sexual intercourse with her until after the birth of Jesus; “till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and called his name Jesus.” The Hebrew word is Joshua; the Greek word is Jesus. The word means saviour — Acts 4:12.

There is a principle here: cursing turned to blessing. There are two ways in which cursing is turned to blessing in the description of the birth of the King. The first: Joseph was under the curse of Coniah but the curse of Coniah was turned to blessing in the case of Joseph for two reasons. He was born again and he was a very noble person in the way he handled the problem of Mary’s pregnancy, even before he had information with regard to the virgin conception. The second: Jesus Christ, eternal God, becomes a Man so that cursing can be turned to blessing for the entire human race by way of the cross.

Chapter two

Background: Herod the Great. There are two great stories in this chapter. One is the story of the preservation of the King but the other is the story of a man called Herod. The birth of Jesus occurred at the time that Herod was the king of Palestine and the king of the Jews. And the reason that it occurred at that particular time is because the Romans had taken all the pressure off the Jews due to the fact that Herod was the greatest non-Roman in all the Roman empire, and Herod was the friend of Octavius, the grand nephew of Julius Caesar who became known as Augustus [Augustus is a title of deity]. Augustus had two close friends in the world. One was a man by the name of Agrippa, who was a Roman of the Romans, and the other was a man by the name of Herod who was an Arab, an

Idumaean, and who was king of the Jews.

“Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king” is a phrase that must be explained because you can’t understand this chapter until you get a little of the politics and the history and the significance of the phrase, “Herod the king.” In addition to that, Herod had ten wives during his lifetime — he lived almost to seventy — who produced a lot of children for him, and these children actually fulfilled the entire historical framework for three quarters of the book of Acts. You cannot have a reference to anything in Palestine throughout the book of Acts unless you understand how the many children of Herod scrounged out and fought for his great empire.

In Palestine in 73 BC there was a struggle going on. The Hamonaeans were the nationalist party of the Jews. Like all nationalist groups, once they got together they broke up, and the nationalist party had internal dissension until the day it was destroyed by Herod. In other words, the greatest thing that happened to the Jews, and obviously the Hamonaeans, would be the sponsors for the nationalist party for this reason: the Hasmonaeans had one great man, a born again believer, Judas Hasmon, the Maccabaean who actually set the pattern. That was in 167 BC and for nearly 100 years now the Hasmonaeans had controlled the Jews. But way down the line, just before 73 BC, one of the Hasmonaens by the name of Hyrcanus did a terrible thing: he went down and conquered an Arab nation to the south of him called Edom, the children of Esau, and when he did he made them Jews, and when he made them Jews he made it possible for one of these Idumaeans to become the king of the Jews. So when Hyrcanus conquered the Idumaeans, that was it, because in 73 BC the most famous of all the Idumaeans the wealthiest, the smartest of all the Idumaeans was a man by the name of Antipater II, the son of Antipater I. And Antipater had a son called Herod born in the Arabic part of southern Palestine. Herod had a brother by the name of Phasael, and Phasael is still the name of rulers in Trans Jordania today (it was Phasael who supported Lawrence of Arabia). In 73 BC Herod was born and Herod was just as much an Arab as any Arab that ever lived. He was born of a very successful Arab father, an Idumaean, but at this time the Idumaeans had been conquered by the Jews and the Idumaeans had been circumcised and been made Jews, and their religion was Judaism which was strictly a religion in 73 BC due to apostasy, the decline from the doctrine of the Old Testament. So there was great crowing when Hyrcanus conquered Idumaea but little did they know that by bringing them into the Jewish state they were in for trouble. When Herod was born in an Arab village of a great chief, Antipater, the ruler of the Jews was the last of the great Hasmonaeans, a great born-again believer probably, by the name of Alexandra. She was a most remarkable woman. She had married two Hasmonaeans. The first of these was Antigonus, who drank himself to death so she married his brother, and he drank himself to death, and she survived as the Queen mother and did something no one ever did before and no one ever did afterward, she actually ruled as the Queen of the Jews. Alexandra was the only Queen that the Jews ever had and she was the last of the Hasmonaens to actually occupy the throne of the Jews. As the Queen of the Jews she had moved out Hellenistic culture and had moved in Judaism and had been able to rule. When her second husband died he was forty-nine and she was sixty-one, and for the next ten years until she was past seventy, she ruled the Jews and did a wonderful job.

When Alexandra died, and her son helped her to die with a little poison, the throne was vacant and the struggle started between two people. Alexandra had a son, Antigonus who poisoned his mother to get the throne (but he didn’t get it). He was a Jew. He was a Hasmonaean and the head of the nationalist party among the Jews, but the Jewish state now included the Idumaeans and an Arab by the name of Antipater began to fight him all the way. Antipater had a son called Herod. Antipater decided upon a policy. Antipater was the friend of Rome, for the shadow of Rome was moving nearer. When you get to 63 BC Pompey arrives and with him the Roman legions, and for the first time in the history of the Jews they actually saw on their soil Roman legions with their eagles, Roman soldiers and their discipline; and it frightened them out of their wits. It was the beginning of a new era. When Pompey the Great came to Jerusalem Herod was ten years old and living in Idumaea, in the famous town of Petra, there he was learning things from another Arabic group called the Nabataeans. He was learning how to make money and Herod the Great was one of the greatest men of finance of the ancient world; he was a financial and a political genius.

There were these two great parties in the Jewish state and there was a prolonged period of civil war. The two parties and men were the Hasmonaeans [Antigonus] and the Idumaeans [Antipater, the father of Herod]. These two fought each other and there was fantastic intrigue as was carried on in the Jewish state which, by the way, now was much more than just a little Jewish state as it is today, it was a large empire that started with the Negev and went all the way to the Euphrates river. In fact, Herod the Great restored the Jewish kingdom to the size it was at the time of Solomon. In this great fight Antigonus went to Pompey. Pompey came to Damascus so Antigonus started to go to Pompey but he had to go back and fight Antipater, so he sent a man by the name of Nicodemus to Pompey. Pompey sent two generals into Palestine while he was in Damascus. Now Nicodemus and Antipater arrived at Pompey’s headquarters at the same time, but Antipater was very smart and he let Nicodemus speak first. He realised that Nicodemus was representing his enemy, Antigonus. When Nicodemus got up to speak the first thing he did was to accuse these two generals of Pompey, and he said that they had accepted bribes from Antipater. With that Antipater kept his mouth shut for this reason: Antigonus, through his emissary, Nicodemus, had made two enemies in Pompey’s staff. If he kept on talking he would make an enemy of everyone in Pompey’s staff and Antipater realised that all he had to do at this time was to keep his mouth shut, and he did.

A year later, after the Parthians were conquered, they had a meeting — which included Pompey — in which the people who came had to pass judgement on Palestine. And again we have Antigonus, coming in person this time, and he repeated all of these accusations against the generals of Pompey. That just put them all against him. When Antipater came he had just made, with the Nabataeans, his first great fortune and he lavished great presents on all of them, but bribed none of them. So in this first meeting he allowed Antigonus to go free but Antipater became his man to rule the Jews. Pompey came on to Jerusalem in 63 BC and he conquered it, and this was the beginning of the fourth cycle of discipline. Then Pompey went back to Rome and he had his great triumphal procession, and Antigonus and his children, two sons, had to march in his triumphal procession in chains and Antipater was left behind to control Palestine. So Antipater wins round one.

Now Pompey was no sooner back in Rome than we have the forming of the first triumvirate, and in this first triumvirate we have three men ruling the world. Rome was the mistress of the world but Rome had many masters, and here are three of the masters. This is a quotation from Herod; this is the way Herod kept his throne and developed his empire. First of all we have Pompey who was the greatest military man in the world at that time, and so everyone thought. Then we have a man who at this time was 60 years old with the name of Crassus, a man who made his fortune by fires. He was a man who controlled all the fire departments in Rome and he would not let the fire department come to a fire until you paid at least half of all that you owned in slaves and money. Crassus is one of the original gangsters and he was the second in the triumvirate. The thirds was the greatest Roman of them all, Julius Caesar.

Caesar had conquered as a military man; Pompey had conquered as a military man; Crassus was sixty years old and that drove him wild, he wanted the military image. So Crassus took about ten of the Roman legions and trotted off to Parthia, which was a terrible mistake because the Parthians were rough. On his way to Parthia he stopped in at Jerusalem and he robbed the temple of several million dollars. He also plundered Jerusalem. Now here is Antipater, the father of Herod, and Herod helping him and the two of them were trying to get the Jews together, and in comes this Crassus and robs everything. Herod and his father Antipater were explaining that they were friends of the Romans and that the Romans were nice people, and Crassus comes along and spoils it. And because Crassus came through on his way to Parthia and robbed everyone the Hasmonaeans rose up again, and Antigonus had a son named Alexander who escaped from Rome after the triumphal procession, came back to Palestine and started a Hasmonaean revolt against Antipater and his son Herod. So Herod had trouble because Crassus came through and embarrassed him. Crassus was a rat all the way.

Crassus went on to Parthia and there he had a very interesting time of it. He was defeated by the Parthians, 20,000 Romans were killed, the greatest setback the Romans had had in 100 years, 10,000 Romans were made prisoners, and among the prisoners who should show up but Crassus. So the Parthian king said: “I hear you are very rich.” Crassus told him how rich he was and that he would be happy to pay a ransom. The Parthian replied: “Well, you like gold so well, let’s see how you take gold.” He then got a big pot of gold and when it was melted down he poured it down Crassus’s throat, and then cut his head off. That was the end of Crassus, so the triumvirate is now down to two men.

So now we look at Herod’s situation. At home he is having trouble with Alexander and the Hasmonaeans, the nationalist party. There is civil war. Now Herod has to decide on whose side he should jump. Before, his friend has always been Pompey and Pompey was the one who went to Rome after his great triumphal procession and went to their senate and said: “We have a friend in the far east, a man called Herod.” And he sponsored Herod before the senate and the senate unanimously voted Herod to be king. And now, here is this man Herod with his friend Pompey but Herod can already see that Caesar is a greater man. But Pompey is his friend, so what is he going to do? He has a civil war in his hands against the Hasmonaeans under Alexander, and that isn’t all of his problems. On the other side of the picture he has to decide: these two men are going to war, Rome is having civil war, he is having civil war, and he is in a jamb. Which way is he going to jump?

It was during this Parthian crisis that Antipater was murdered by one of the Hasmonaean clan, and so Herod now faces the whole problem by himself and his genius begins to come to light. On 9 August, 48 BC, a battle was fought. Caesar eliminated Pompey in the Battle of Pharsalus and the forces of Pompey were decisively defeated. Pompey jumped a boat and went off to Egypt for protection. Caesar followed him but he followed so fast that he didn’t take his troops. He only took a body guard and a part of a legion, and he wound up in Egypt with 4000 men. When he stepped ashore the Egyptians gave him the head of Pompey. It just so happened that Herod had helped Pompey during the civil war, so Herod was in a jamb. Several things happened immediately. There were two people at this time who were very interested in Caesar and these two people became to two greatest enemies of the ancient world — Herod the Arab and Cleopatra the Greek. And so here is Caesar with 4000 troops against 22,000 Egyptian troops surrounding him — he is in a palace and locked up in there. Pompey is dead but he is separated from his troops and in this jamb Herod sees his chance and raises an army to go to Caesar’s rescue. Cleopatra comes in and she is on his side so Caesar makes two friends. Caesar won out and he went back to Rome and confirmed Herod as king of the Jews. But this made Cleopatra mad because Caesar took lands away from her — Trans Jordania and other areas.

At this time Herod is 26 years old and he has made some interesting friends in the past. When he was only sixteen and the Romans first came in there was a young cavalryman by the name of Marcus Antonius [Mark Anthony], and Herod liked the cavalry because Herod was one of the greatest horsemen of his day. He was the best hunter of his time, the best shot with the bow, and he bagged more animals than any man in the ancient world in his time. He was also a great horseman and a champion wrestler. Mark Anthony was also a great horseman and the two of them became fast friends. Now he has made a new friend in Caesar by coming to his rescue, and so from that time on Caesar sponsored Herod and Herod was able to get on his feet. Caesar sent troops to put down the Hasmonaean revolt. Caesar took the Hasmonaeans back to Rome and cleared them out of his way and Herod began to have a wonderful time.

Description of Herod at age 26: Herod never had a statue or a picture made and never had his face on coins, so there is no way of knowing what he looked like from the usual archaeological sources, simply for this reason: Herod knew that he would offend the Jews is an image was set up. He always catered to the Jews, to the nationalist party, and never did he allow his image to be on a coin or a statute to be put up, so our only descriptions come from people of the ancient world. He was tall, very handsome, athletic with a very strong body. He had great charm of address and he was one of the greatest conversationalists of the ancient world. He was a famous hunter and horseman and a championship wrestler. Being of Arab stock he had black hair and a golden skin, with brown eyes, a moulded nose and small ears. He was never worth less than $50,000,000, except when he went bankrupt twice. He went bankrupt once feeding the Jews in a time of economic decline. He spent his whole fortune feeding the Jews by buying grain in Egypt, and they repaid him very shortly thereafter by revolting against him. This all goes to show that the monster Herod that we know wasn’t the monster in his early life.

On 15 March, 44 BC, Julius Caesar was assassinated. There were two leaders in the party, one was Cassius. Cassius was really an excellent general and in the past he had been stationed in Palestine and had kept back the Parthians. He was a close friend of Herod’s and soon as Cassius ran away he went to Palestine because he needed money to raise an army. And who was more likely to get money for him that his friend Herod, and Herod had to provide about $100,000,000. He did, but immediately it put him on a spot because Cassius was going to join up with Brutus who was in Macedonia gathering an army. Opposed to them is the second triumvirate, Octavius the grand nephew of Julius Caesar [who adopted Octavius as his son], and Mark Anthony who is also a friend of Herod, and then we have a Mr Nobody by the name of Lepodus. Anthony and Octavius were as different as two people could be and the only way they could stick together was the marriage of Anthony to Octavius’s twin sister, Octavia.

Now Herod has a friend, Cassius, who comes to him for help. And Herod’s money provided the army for Cassius. So Cassius goes up to Macedonia and there we have another famous battle, the Battle of Philippi, in which Brutus and Cassius are eliminated and annihilated. So where does that leave Herod? Fluttering out in the breeze. He has just spent all of his own fortune, plus a lot of money from his kingdom, in order to support Cassius, and he bet on the wrong horse. But Herod never gave up, he fought for his kingdom time after time after time. And that will explain how he fought for his kingdom when he thought his kingdom as in danger from Messiah the Christ. He went into southern Palestine and killed every baby two years old and under because from the time he was 26 years old until the time he died at about age seventy this man fought for his kingdom. He carved out the largest kingdom in the Roman empire and he maintained it throughout his entire lifetime, right up to the moment of his death. And just the year before he died Jesus Christ was born and it was his last attempt to keep the kingdom for Herod and for his progeny.

Immediately Herod does a very smart thing. He takes off for Rome and he goes to see Anthony and Octavius, and he levels with them. He walked in and explained to them that he was a friend of Cassius, Cassius was a Roman, and he was a friend of the Roman empire, and Anthony said: “This man has been my friend, I will stand by him forever” .And he told Octavius about the wonderful things that Herod had done. And Octavius thought he was great and from that time thought that Herod was one of the greatest men he had ever known and he became one of two of his greatest friends. This was a wonderful thing to have the two greatest men in Rome friends of Herod, so he went back to his kingdom and he held it. But then something happened. The first thing that happened when he went back was a revolt from the Hasmonaeans. He got tired of this and decided to settle the revolt so he married the last of the Hasmonaean women, Mariamne. This was the greatest mistake he ever made because this put a Hasmonaean in his own household.

Historians say that Herod made two mistakes in his life. The first was to marry Mariamne; the second was to fall in love with her. This was the thing that led to his eventual undoing and led to his madness and the killing of everyone right and left. Herod had five children by Mariamne and he was madly in love with her. But she never loved him and she betrayed him and he eventually had to kill her and eventually had to kill two of her sons.

In the meantime the roof fell in again for Herod because Anthony went to Egypt, met Cleopatra, and fell in love with her. Cleopatra hated Herod and wanted to get her lands back. So Anthony gave Cleopatra all of the lands of Herod, except Idumaea and southern Palestine. This irked Herod of course and he talked to Anthony about it. Herod was smart and he won some of it back. That was fine but Anthony had to go north to take care of some problems and raise some troops. Herod was still there with Cleopatra and she tried to seduce him. Herod turned her down and went after Anthony. From that time on Cleopatra did everything she could to try and ruin Herod. In the meantime Anthony goes up to raise troops and he and Cleopatra were defeated in battle. Herod had given Anthony the money to raise the fleet. Octavius, at the Battle of Octium, defeats Mark Anthony. Cleopatra and the Egyptian fleet deserted him. Anthony goes back to Egypt and he committed suicide.

Octavius went back to the island of Rhodes where in time past Herod had made friends with the people. And there Octavius, who was now the master of Rome, met with Herod. Herod again levelled with him and he told Octavius that he had paid for Anthony’s fleet and were it not for the fact that Cleopatra hated him so much he would have been with Anthony in that battle because he always stuck with his friends. Octavius said: “You have been my friend, and because you have been honest with me put you crown back on, you are still king of the Jews.” From this time on Octavius had two great friends in the world: Agrippa, who handled all of the administration, and Herod. Herod maintained his status quo and he did great things for the Jews but they hated him — he was an Arab, an intruder! He built many buildings, he brought a great prosperity to their land, but the Jews were always trying to overthrow him.

There was a reason why Jesus was born in the last days of Herod the king. Herod did something for Palestine that the Jews could never do for themselves — apart from doctrine, and there was no doctrine; this was a period of the 4th cycle of discipline. Herod brought peace and order to the land, and especially an area called Galilee where eventually Jesus would settle down. The bandits around the Lake of Galilee and Gadara were very heavy and once he made friends with Octavius he again made another fortune. He used this vast fortune to hire Thracian and Galatian mercenaries with which he went into Galilee and, just a few years before Jesus was born, he cleaned it out of all of its bandits. Jesus spent His youth in Galilee after He came back from Egypt; Galilee was the safest place in all of the ancient world because of what Herod had done.