Alexander the Great Was Mentioned in the Bible—and He Knew It!

https://www.thetrumpet.com/article/13699.2.0.0/world/military/alexander-the-great-was-mentioned-in-the-bible-and-he-knew-it

‘Alexander, These Ancient Prophecies Are About You!’

Josephus, the Jewish historian who lived in the first century A.D., said that when Alexander was just about to enter the city of Jerusalem, the Jewish high priest at that time, a man named Jaddua, met him on the outskirts of the city.

Jaddua led a procession of affluent residents of Jerusalem. They hoped that by walking out to meet this mighty warrior, they might keep Jerusalem from being destroyed by his army. The sight of the high priest and the procession gave Alexander pause. He entered the city peacefully.

Once inside, Jaddua brought Alexander to the temple and showed him some passages in the book of Daniel.

God had inspired the Prophet Daniel to write his book back in 535 B.C.—about 180 years before Alexander was born. We know that because of Daniel 10:1, in which Daniel says he wrote in the third year of the reign of Cyrus the Great. Historians agree that would have been around 535 B.C.

Jaddua would have shown Alexander such passages as Daniel 11:2 and 3, which discuss the Persian Empire pushing against Greece, and eventually being conquered by a mighty Greek king:

Behold, there shall stand up yet three kings in Persia; and the fourth shall be far richer than they all: and by his strength through his riches he shall stir up all against the realm of Grecia. And a mighty king shall stand up, that shall rule with great dominion, and do according to his will.

Jaddua would also likely have shown him companion passages in Daniel 8, which give more details about this “mighty king” of Greece who would defeat the Persian Empire. These passages truly are about Alexander the Great, and they were written around 200 years before his reign began!

You can imagine Alexander the Great standing in the temple next to the high priest. You can imagine him being shown an ancient scroll with the words of Daniel written on it. Thanks to the education he had received from Aristotle, Alexander could read the Hebrew words Daniel had written. He needed no translation.

He had also been told by his mother his whole life that he was no ordinary man, but someone with divine blood coursing through his veins. This passage in Daniel, of course, did not say he was divine in any way. But Jaddua would have told Alexander that the book had the true God’s fingerprints all over it.

We don’t know all the details. We can only speculate about Alexander’s thought process. But it may be that the fact that his mother had always told him he was of divine origin made him more open to believing these ancient, holy Scriptures were about him. Or maybe he was just compelled by the direct language about a “mighty king” from Greece overthrowing the Persian Empire—especially since he had already made so much progress toward that end.

Whatever the reasoning, Alexander the Great believed that he himself was the man being discussed in these passages. He believed that it was a true prophecy, and that he himself was in the process of fulfilling it!