{"id":30920,"date":"2020-01-10T18:38:56","date_gmt":"2020-01-10T18:38:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/?p=30920"},"modified":"2020-01-10T18:39:13","modified_gmt":"2020-01-10T18:39:13","slug":"mystery-persia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/mystery-persia\/","title":{"rendered":"Mystery Persia"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The importance in Scripture and prophecy of Iran and Iraq is apparent in the mention of Babylon, a city located about fifty miles south of what is now Baghdad and the famous dwelling place of demons.<\/p>\n

Her full title in\u00a0Revelation<\/em>\u00a017:5: \u201cMystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes and Abominations of the Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

The name \u201cBabylon\u201d appears, by our count, 273 times in Scripture \u2014 to give one an idea of its historicity.<\/p>\n

A warlike city-state, flush with money, it was used by the Lord to chastise Israel when Israelites strayed into idol worship and other sins.<\/p>\n

\u201cMystery, Babylon.\u201d A mystery, indeed. Might we also wonder over \u201cMystery, Persia\u201d?<\/p>\n

That territory<\/em>\u00a0is what is now called \u201cIran.\u201d And it is no less significant. At its peak, Persians controlled an empire stretching from Libya and Turkey across Egypt, much of modern-day Israel, parts of Iraq (including, at certain points, Babylon itself),\u00a0 Syria, Iran itself, other nations in the Mideast, then on to Afghanistan and Pakistan \u2014 in short, the hottest of geopolitical hot spots, as we see in our own time.<\/p>\n

What\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0it about this region\u00a0that causes such vehemence, hatred (in the name of Allah), and vitriol; that causes amazing fanaticism? Is it inbreeding? Is it a religion based on the false premise that killing others \u2014 innocent others, including the young \u2014 is serving God?<\/p>\n

Or is it also supernatural?<\/p>\n

Have the \u201cjinn\u201d \u2014 pagan genies or spirits spelled out in Islamic teaching \u2014 obumbrated and infested the populace?<\/p>\n

Jinn<\/i>\u00a0is an\u00a0Arabic\u00a0collective noun\u00a0deriving from the\u00a0Semitic root\u00a0jnn<\/span>, whose primary meaning is \u201cto hide\u201d or \u201cto conceal.\u201d Some authors have interpreted the word to mean, literally, \u201cbeings that are concealed from the senses.\u201d\u00a0Cognates\u00a0include the\u00a0Arabic\u00a0majn\u016bn<\/i><\/i>\u00a0(\u201cpossessed\u201d, or generally \u201cinsane\u201d).<\/p>\n

That pretty well describes suicide bombers\u00a0and entire segments of these populations in this region \u2014 in Mystery Persia \u2013bent on violence with each other and particularly with Jews and Christians (savagely kill, and then denounce others as \u201cthe great Satan\u201d).<\/p>\n

Where Muslims rule, there is more often than not brutality \u2014 whether it\u2019s public floggings, assassination-by-dismemberment, or cutting off hands (for theft) in rather sedate nations like Saudi Arabia, fervid internecine battles in Iraq (with Kurds), revolutions,\u00a0 civil war (Lebanon), bombings in Damascus, civil war in Syria, skirmishes in Egypt, the threat of nuclear war between Muslim Pakistan and India, or war between Turkey and Cyprus \u2014 with Iran and Iraq (Mystery Persia) tallying a disproportionate share of the conflicts and threats. For a while, the island of Thassos off Greece was under Persian control (but taken back by the Archangel Michael:\u00a0see here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

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Curious it is to note how,\u00a0when an angel was sent to help Daniel (Daniel<\/em>\u00a010:10), the angel was delayed for twenty-one days by the \u201cthe prince of the kingdom of Persia,\u201d a principality or territorial demon whose blockage was only overcome when the Archangel Michael arrived to assist.<\/p>\n

As an evangelical\u00a0website<\/a>\u00a0notes, \u201cWhy does such a powerful demon as the Prince of Persia and the mighty angel Michael come into play? Because when it came to Israel, the Persian Empire stood out as the major empire that ruled over Israel during Daniel\u2019s time. The Prophet Daniel earlier in chapters 2 and 7 prophesied about the world empires that would affect Israel over the next few hundred years. He started with the Babylonia Empire, which had first exiled the Jews. The subsequent empire was the Medo-Persian Empire, and then eventually the Greek Empire, and finally the Roman Empire. These empires stood out as the Gentile nations which trampled Israel, and their Gentile descendants will continue to trample Israel until Jesus Christ returns.\u201d<\/p>\n

That principality was not alone. There were other \u201ckings of Persia.\u201d Who and exactly what they were or are remain a mystery.<\/p>\n

Mystery Persia.<\/em><\/p>\n

But we are left with the notion that major demons \u2014 and one in particular \u2014 hover or hovered over that region, so powerful that the hold can be broken only by the likes of the great Michael \u2014 who now, in these days, should be invoked as Babylon and Mystery Persia once more create mayhem.<\/p>\n

[resources: Michael Brown retreat in\u00a0Florida<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0North Carolina<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n

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The importance in Scripture and prophecy of Iran and Iraq is apparent in the mention of Babylon, a city located.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46,36],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-30920","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-apparitions","7":"category-commentary","8":"entry"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30920\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spiritdaily.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}