Daniel 10:20 reads
Then he (the angel) said (to Daniel), “Do you know why I have come to you? And now I must return to fight with the prince of Persia; and when I have gone forth, indeed the prince of Greece will come.” (Italics mine)
The prince of Persia is a spiritual principality. He is so powerful that the angel sent to Daniel needed help from Michael one of the chief princes to be able to get to Daniel (Dan 10:13), and he was going to have to fight going back as well (Dan 10:20).
On earth, the physical manifestation of the prince of Persia was the Persian empire, but the power behind that empire was spiritual. Likewise the angel talking to Daniel said that once he had gone forth then the prince of Greece (another spiritual principality) would come (Dan 11:3-4).
Most of us are familiar with Alexander the Great, the Greek ruler conquered the world a few dynasties after Daniel (just as the angel had prophesied) but have we considered the spiritual principality behind this ruler? It is clear from Daniel 10 that this was not just a physical dominion but also a spiritual one.
Alexander the Great had a completely different method regarding what he did after conquering a nation. Instead of scattering conquered peoples across the new empire so they couldn’t regroup and fight back later, he built libraries and places of learning and taught his Greek culture everywhere. He was a dedicated cultural imperialist! As a result of this policy, the greatest Greek library in the world from this era was not in Greece but in Alexandria in Egypt.
When the next great world dynasty came along (the Roman Empire) they found the all-pervasive Greek culture so useful they didn’t bother to change it. They just changed the names of some of their gods and continued to use the culture for their own ends.
Even modern Western civilisation’s thinking traces its roots back to Greece (Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, democracy). I love the father in the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding. He is a Greek immigrant living in America and his favourite party trick was to say “Give me a word, any word and I can show you where it comes from in the Greek.” And he was usually right.
“So what?” I hear you ask. Well when we remember that the root source of Greek thinking is a fallen spiritual principality and that that principality has affected the thinking of whole civilisations including our own, we may want to go back and re-examine some of our core beliefs.
At this point I would like to draw a distinction between so called “Western” (Greek) thinking and what I will call “Hebraic” thinking.
Western/Greek thinking has at its root a duality belief system and this is exemplified in the separation of spiritual from physical. This has worked itself out over the ages in various forms e.g. viewing spiritual as pure but physical as sinful or unclean. It compartmentalises the universe. With its framework it seeks to put things in boxes and explain everything through logic. We have most recently seen this powerfully adopted in Western culture in the 1700’s in the so called “Age of Enlightenment” when the West embraced secular humanism (a sneaky way of saying atheism but with man still being No.1) and from there we’ve had to endure 200 or so years of “Modernism.”
This contrasts with “Hebraic” thinking which usually does not make the Greek distinction between physical and spiritual (i.e. separation) but actually sees the whole world as a beautiful interconnectedness of both. My point here is that Bible culture and Yeshua’s world view are based in Hebraic thinking not Greek thinking, as the Hebrew culture and Old Testament predate Alexander the Great by centuries.
Now I am not proposing we throw out logic, otherwise my computer won’t work and we won’t know which side of the road to drive on. But it is interesting to look at the effect Greek thinking has had on the church. Whilst Hebraic thinking is organic, based on what I’ll call Flow (like a river flowing over land), Greek thinking seeks to systemise everything and lock it into certain forms which I’ll call State (like a man made canal tries to control and direct a river). It is interesting that every outpouring of the Spirit of God started in Flow and ended in State. Yes even our dear evangelical and liberal brothers and sisters’ denominations all started in the flow of the Holy Spirit complete with signs and wonders etc. As most of these outpourings happened in “Western” countries the spirit of Greece only took a few generations to “order” the services and stifle the flow. Now please I am not knocking anyone here, even the most Pentecostal of churches in the West are grappling with a Greek mindset.
In John 3:8 Yeshua says
“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
This is a very flow statement!
We in the West long to see God perform the signs and wonders that we’ve read about in the bible and seen in great revivals over the centuries, however we need to free ourselves from the prince of Greece if this is really going to happen (it seems that spiritually, white men can’t jump either). Fortunately bible based Hebraic people across the world have been bravely fighting off Western spiritual imperialism (actually prince of Greece imperialism) and working hard to retain their Hebraic (biblical) world view. Maybe we in the West need to let them into our gatherings to teach us how to connect to Spirit and flow again. We’ve been under the prince of Greece too long.
God Bless and walk in the Spirit.