Zechariah 9:4-9 – Zechariah’s Prophecy and Alexander the Great

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The foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith.

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Alexander the Great was one of history’s most ruthless military leaders. But did you know that his life and story were foretold? Well, welcome to Through the Bible. I’m Steve Schwetz, and I’m glad that you’re here as Dr. J. Vernon McGee unpacks this remarkable prophecy from Zechariah and shows us how the truth of God’s word cuts through the confusion of history, politics, and even modern language. Before we dive into Alexander’s story, Dr. McGee has something to say about how easily we twist the truth and how clearly God sees through it all. Let’s listen.

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And God judges according to truth. And that’s exactly what most of us do not want him to do. We want him to pass by or excuse. And there’s all kinds today of words that are being changed around in our language so that reality isn’t reality today. It’s covered over with what is called euphemisms. And that’s what Orwell talked about. Let me give you an illustration of that. Let’s say a man’s running for mayor. At one time in his life, he was a doorman at a hotel. Then he ran an elevator. He was an elevator boy. But listen to him refer to his early career, and you won’t hear those words. He says he was an access controller. And he also said he was a vertical transportation specialist. May I say to you, one reality has changed to another. He was a doorman and an elevator boy, but now it means something else. And you find they refer today to a negative financial adjustment, and they talk about a temporary fiscal shortfall. You know what that means? That means they’re bankrupt. And then today you hear the automobile dealer, he’s selling you a secondhand car, but it’s not a secondhand car. It’s a pre-owned car. And then you go in to buy something from the butcher shop and you want some sliced cheese, but he doesn’t sell sliced cheese. It’s in portion control packages. And the butcher says today he doesn’t sell kidneys and brains and tongue and tripe and hearts and lungs. He doesn’t sell those. He sells specialty meats. And then you go to the dry goods store or to the department store and you can’t find a girdle anymore. You find a control garment. Even in the military today, they do not talk about dropping bombs. It’s called vertical air support. May I say to you how things are being covered up today with these euphemisms? God judges according to truth. And there are a great many so-called fundamental preachers that won’t use the term sin or won’t mention things that are negative. The Bible’s full of things that are negative, and it calls a spade a spade and not a garden instrument. It calls sin, sin, and God judges according to truth. And today it’s very difficult to find actually honest witnesses. That’s a very difficult thing to do. I’ve been a minister a long time, and honestly, it’s been difficult to get a staff. It’s hard to get a man today, even in a ministry sometimes, that you can put full confidence and trust in. Some of them are looking for money, by the way, and some of them are looking for glory. May I say to you today, friends, we need to recognize that God is going to judge us according to truth, and that’s the thing that scorches and burns me. How about you?

SPEAKER 04 : 4:07

Well, that’s just the latest in Dr. McGee’s series of introductions on the millennium. So keep hopping aboard the Bible bus to hear them all. You know, Greg, I’m thinking about what we just heard from Dr. McGee, and he never shied away from harsh truths, did he?

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No, he didn’t. He didn’t. And we appreciate that so much about him. He divides the word of God rightly. And like Dr. McGee said, God sees things clearly and he judges accordingly. And that’s why through the Bible we place such a high priority on prayer. And we really mean that. It’s not that we’re super uber spiritual people. We are dependent people. We sense the magnitude of what God’s asking us to do, get the whole word to the whole world, and our absolute inadequacy to do it in our own strength. Yeah.

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Yeah, and we’ve just seen how God has so faithfully shown up now over the decades, and we know it’s in large part because of the faithful prayer, both of listeners and our own prayers as well, how God has been so faithful.

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Well, and maybe you don’t know this, but we have our team, as you and I are sitting here in the studio, our team are praying for us because they know us. Yeah. And they want us to be used by God.

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We need all the help.

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We need all the help we can get, folks. And also, we have a wonderful team that is so critical to Through the Bible’s ministry, and that’s our World Prayer Team. And what we never envisioned when we started this was that we would hear great letters from the people on the team testifying to the blessing.

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Yeah, here’s an example. This is a listener named Rena, and she wrote an email. I love the World Prayer Team. In spite of what’s going on globally, there’s not an inch of territory up to the very minute uncovered by consistent and fervent prayer. It is extremely comforting to know that we’re all in this together just as God has commanded us when he said that the world will know us by the way we love one another.

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Thank you, Rina. And here’s another listener who wrote, Thank you for these daily alerts, testimonies, and reminders to maintain prayers for those around the world to whom your ministry remains active, relevant, vital, and up to date. As one who has little public contact, I sincerely and genuinely trust that prayer is indeed power, infinitely more so than my limited circle of personal influence or impact.

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Yeah, and let me just speak to that. There’s probably a lot of people out there that feel like they have little public contact. Yes. You know, maybe you’re homebound, maybe you’re a senior, you can’t get out much and you don’t have a lot of contact. You still have the ability to commune with the creator of heaven and earth and the savior of our souls, Jesus Christ and our heavenly father. And you can come to the throne room of grace on behalf of ministries like through the Bible. And we’re asking that you would do that for us because you have unique access that nobody else does. because of the prayers that you can give to the Lord. So we would encourage you in that and encourage you to be faithful in continuing.

SPEAKER 03 : 6:58

Yeah, thanks for that, Steve. I think it’s important that people hear that. You know, in the study of Nahum, Dr. McGee references C.S. Lewis’s book, The Great Divorce. And one of the most powerful scenes for me is there’s this, he calls her a great lady. And the people observing this great lady in heaven said nobody knew her on earth. And essentially the story was she was a prayer woman.

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warrior in her own circle and now in heaven she’s a great lady so don’t don’t fall into that lie of satan that your little world doesn’t matter yeah it does yeah i think we have time for one more you want to read one this shirt this is uh here’s a comment from ken the world prayer team helps me appreciate that god’s ethnic boundaries seem to be a total of zero i am challenged to be conformed to holy character by the spirit in me through jesus Wow. Yeah. Thanks, Ken. Thanks for that. And the Lord does not know any ethnic boundaries. You know, we are all sinners saved by grace or in need of salvation. That’s the only two states that you can be in, regardless of the color of your skin. Greg, we’re almost out of time. Why don’t you pray for us?

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Father, we rejoice that you’re at work in so many different ways in this ministry of Through the Bible. As our prayer team has testified to the power of prayer, we want to just restate our dependence on you for everything we do. And even now, as we listen to Dr. McGee’s teaching, we need you to teach us through him. In Jesus’ name, amen.

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Well, we’re off to Zechariah 9 on Through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.

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Now, we got down to the last major division last time of the prophetic burdens from chapter 9 through 14, and the first burden covers chapters 9 through 11, and it has to do primarily with the first coming of Christ. Now, we arbitrarily said that this chapter opens with the burden of the word of the Lord in the hand of Hadrach. Well, this land is north of the land of Israel and also Damascus. Damascus is the capital of Syria and it still is to this day and still has caused Israel a great deal of difficulty. But there is described here the progress, the march of an army and a great general down into the promised land. And here is without doubt one of the most remarkable accounts that you find in the Word of God, and that it was literally fulfilled. This so terrifies the liberal that he has to move Zechariah up to the time of Alexander the Great, because if he doesn’t, he feels like he’s in deep trouble. And I want to say that he is, because this describes actually when Alexander the Great left Europe and crossed over into Asia Minor, what we know today as modern Turkey, He took city after city, and he was a very cruel and brutal man. But you must understand that he had only an army of 50,000 men, which in that day was rather small, and he could not leave back of him any man to watch over the city that he destroyed. Therefore, he had to so weaken the city that it could not become a problem to him in the future. In other words, that he would have difficulty from the rear, so that he obliterated many of these cities, and he was noted for that. He’s a brilliant man, and as we said last time, arrogant, and conceited young man when he died, 33 years of age, same age the Lord Jesus was. And the interesting thing is that the Word of God here makes a comparison between the two. I have a very excellent poem that compares Alexander and the Lord Jesus, and it opens with that, that both Alexander and Jesus died at the age of 33. But Alexander died a drunkard. After a night of carousing, when he got to Persia on the march, the next day he died. But this man was a remarkable general, and he represents in the book of Daniel the third great world power, that panther in the seventh chapter. are as the goat with that big horn, one horn. That goat is the Graco-Macedonian Empire, and that horn is Alexander the Great. But here he’s presented to us in Zechariah. And actually, this was his march. You will find that this is the thing that is recorded. I have the books. I’m looking at them of Flavius Josephus right here in my library. And in those books of the Jewish wars, why, he records the march of this man as he came down into the land. And he took city after city, actually destroyed Tyre and Sidon. And everyone thought Tyre was impregnable. They were out on an island. Actually, it was an island fortress. They were great seagoing people. The Phoenicians were the great commercial nation of that day, one of the wealthiest peoples. And Alexander the Great, he just took time out there to scrape the old city that had been on the mainland and take all the pillars and everything and make a causeway that went out to Tyre. And today you can see all of that that shows how prophecy has been so literally fulfilled. Well, he took Tyre, and then he came on down into the Philistine country. And in verse 5, I read here, Ashkelon shall see it in fear. Gaza also shall see it and be very sorrowful. And Ekron, for her expectations, shall be ashamed. And the king shall perish from Gaza, and Ashkelon shall not be inhabited.” And if you go over there today, I took pictures of the ruins of the old temple of Dagon. And that area has been returned to the nation Israel. And at Ashdod, they’ve built an artificial temple. harbor there, and they built apartment after apartment, and literally thousands have moved in there. And then further inland, as you go down the coast, you find Ashkelon. It’s a great thriving city today, but not where it was. It was actually down right on the seacoast. And the ruins are there today. And it’s more or less of a park, very beautiful area. But the fact of the matter is, it’s not inhabited. It’s a park for people to come and spend the day and have a time of recreation. But it’s not a city anymore. It’s interesting how God’s Word was literally fulfilled. Now, Alexander the Great destroyed all of these great Philistine cities. And we’re told, verse 6, and a bastard shall dwell in Ashdod. It doesn’t say that it will not be inhabited. It just says that it won’t be a very high class people. It’ll be there. And certainly it is inhabited today. And I will cut off the pride of the Philistines. In other words, Alexander the Great brought to an end the Philistine nation. After that, they never emerge as a nation again. You never see them again. And God says in verse 7, And I will take away his blood out of his mouth and his abominations from between his teeth. But he that remaineth, even he shall be for our God, and he shall be like a governor in Judah, and Ekron like a Jebusite. so that God says he’s bringing an end to this Philistine nation. Now, what about Jerusalem? This man, Alexander the Great, He destroyed everything that was ahead of him. And I don’t care what he came to, he destroyed it. And if he had to wait around a few months like he did at Tyre to take the city, he didn’t mind doing it because he’s not going to leave a strong fortress back of him anywhere. As we said, he was actually a very brilliant general. Now, we have this strange statement here, verse 8. And I will encamp about mine house. Now, that’s a little temple that they were building. God says, I’m going to protect that from Alexander the Great, and I will encamp about mine house because of the army, because of him that passeth by, and because of him that returneth, and no oppressor shall pass through them anymore, for now have I seen with mine eyes. Now, God says, And Zechariah had the nerve to give it because of the fact that that could depend on the very accuracy of the word of God, whether that’s going to be fulfilled. God says, I’m going to protect that little building, that little temple. Now, that should have been an encouragement, you see, to these people to go ahead and build. Because God says, even when that great world conqueror, Alexander the Great, comes down, I won’t let him destroy the temple. Well, why didn’t he destroy Jerusalem? Nebuchadnezzar destroyed it. And every other great world general has marched an army through the city of Jerusalem. And most of them have leveled it to the ground. It’s been destroyed again and again and again. And that’s the reason today you can’t say that you’re going to walk where Jesus walked in the streets of Jerusalem. There’s been so much debris there. And one city built upon another and been destroyed so many times. that actually the pool of Bethesda is probably down 40 or 50 feet below the level of the city today. In our Lord’s day, why, it was 40, 50 feet below where it is today. So that this city… certainly suffered at the hands of man. And Alexander being the brutal man that he was, why, he certainly is going to destroy Jerusalem because it’s been the fly in the ointment of nation after nation. But God says, I’m going to encamp about mine house. God says, I’m going to protect Well, did he? Well, this is the record of Josephus, Flavius Josephus. He has this to say concerning it, and I’m not giving this verbatim at all. I won’t take time for that, but you could check it if you wanted to. You will find that his explanation was that the great high priest at that time had a vision that he was to go out and meet the conqueror that was coming. And when Alexander the Great came up to Jerusalem, he saw this man. And instead of letting the army move in and slay everyone, why, he went up and worshipped in Jerusalem at the temple. Because he said that before he left Beas, that he had had a vision that he’d be met by a man who would represent the living and true God. And it said that he went into Jerusalem and worshipped. Now, another tradition is that the high priest not only showed him the garments, came out arrayed in all the garments, but brought along the book of Daniel. And he showed Alexander in the book of Daniel where God had prophesied concerning him. And that so moved him that he came into the city and offered sacrifice and worshiped the living and true God. And he did not destroy Jerusalem. Now, that makes this prophecy a very remarkable prophecy, by the way, that you have here. And it doesn’t detract from the fact that Alexander the Great, though the most brilliant general of the day, was still highly brutal and cruel, arrogant and conceited. Now we are introduced to one of the most remarkable verses in Scripture. And this is a verse that is used of the triumphal entry of the Lord Jesus Christ into Jerusalem. Because he too came into the city. And there’s going to be a comparison made now between Alexander the Great and the one who is coming, who’s going to be God’s man. And we have here in verse 9 this language. And I want you to listen to it very carefully because it’s very important. And it’s this. Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem, behold, thy king cometh unto thee, for he is just and having salvation. And by the way, salvation can better be translated victory, because deliverance would be victory of the king coming to deliver. He’s just and having victory, lowly and riding upon an ass and upon a colt, the foal of an axe. Now, if you want to read how that is quoted in the gospel record, you will find it first in Matthew 21, verse 5. And I think probably I should turn over and read that. And if you will note that there is quite a difference. between what you have in Zechariah, what you have in Matthew. And it’s caused some to say this was a misquotation of prophecy. Well, I don’t know why people like that, of course, they’re looking to try to find errors in the Bible, why they don’t study it and see why it’s quoted differently. Now, I’d like to read what Matthew has to say. Tell ye the daughter of Zion, behold, thy king cometh unto thee, meek and sitting upon an ass, and a colt, the foal of an ass. Now, there’s certain parts of that prophecy that are not quoted. Next time, that’s what I’m going to talk about, that prophecy and how only that part which Matthew quotes is the part that was fulfilled and that the other part awaits the second coming of Christ to the earth. Now, may I go back? To the gospel of John, because John likewise quotes in John 12, verse 15. And here he quotes it like this. Fear not, daughter of Zion. Behold, thy king cometh sitting on an asses coat. And that’s all that John gives. Now, why is that abridged and abbreviated as it is? Well, we’re going to find that that portion which is quoted in the New Testament was fulfilled at the first coming of Christ, and the other will be fulfilled at the second coming of Christ. Now, I will go into that next time and show how that is. But I’m also going to show that it actually was not a triumphal entry. It really was a triumphant exit that he made when he was here before. That was the thing that the church, I think, has miscalled. And then I want to call attention to something else we’ll see next time. He didn’t come in just one day. in the so-called triumphal entry. He came in three days. Now, you will find if you consult the Gospels rather carefully, for instance, in Mark, the 11th chapter, verse 11, I’ll not turn to this now, you will find out that he came in first on the Sabbath day, Saturday. We talk about Palm Sunday, there’s Palm Saturday too. But he came in as a king. He came in, he didn’t do a thing in the world, Mark says, that he just looked about the temple and the city. The money changers were not there. It was the Sabbath day. He came in as the king and he rejected the city and temple. He said and did nothing. He went out, he wept over the city of Jerusalem, but as the king. Then he came in the second day and it was Sunday. And that was Palm Sunday. The money changers were in the temple and he cleansed the temple. He came in that day as a priest. And you will find that in Matthew 21, verse 12. He came in as a priest. Then on Monday, he came in the third time. On the way in, he cursed the fig tree. And Matthew 21, verse 23 tells us that he taught in the temple. He came in as the prophet of God. He came in as a king, as a priest, and a prophet. And every instructed Israelite knew what he was doing. He was presenting himself as the Messiah. And now, was he meek? and humble because he rode on that little donkey? And my answer is no. He was meek, but not because he rode on that little donkey. Say, there are a lot of things we have to clear up next time. But we’re coming to what I believe is one of the most remarkable passages of Scripture, this ninth verse. of the ninth chapter of Zechariah and how remarkably it’s quoted in the New Testament and how just that much it’s quoted was fulfilled. The rest will not be fulfilled till he comes the second time. So until next time, may God richly bless you, my beloved.

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For more great teaching in Zechariah, join me for Dr. McGee’s Sunday Sermon, When Christ Returns and Triumph to Jerusalem. You can listen by app at ttb.org or call 1-800-65-BIBLE for help finding a Christian radio station in your area that carries the Sunday Sermon. I’m Steve Schwetz, grateful for your company on the Bible Bus and your partnership in taking God’s whole word to His whole world.

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Jesus made it all All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow.

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Through the Bible exists to take God’s whole word to the whole world. And we invite you to stand with us with your faithful prayer and financial support. Where will God’s word go today?