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0:20 So recently I had the privilege of interviewing Edmund Richardson, who is an expert on ancient Greek history, and he wrote a new biography of Alexander the Great. 0:28 It's one of the best books that I've actually read this year. 0:30 It was really, really interesting because a lot of history books can kind of get, you know, bogged down in the details, but this one reads more like a novel than a summary of a bunch of ancient accounts of a man's life. 0:40 And this is why you don't skip the epilogue, folks. 0:43 Because in the middle of the epilogue, I mean, this is a really long book. 0:46 This is like 400, 500 pages. 0:48 Richardson includes a poem that was written by a young Roman man named Lucan. 0:53 So in this poem, Lucan gives a summary of the impact that Alexander the Great had on the world. 0:59 And I'm going to read the poem here in its entirety. 1:02 He turned his back on home. 1:04 He left behind the borders of his own land, abandoned the dark corners where his people hid. 1:09 He looked at fallen Athens and looked away. 1:12 Fate pushed him forward. 1:14 He cut through Asia like a blade through flesh. 1:16 Cities fell, nations broke. 1:19 He left fields of bodies behind him. 1:22 He destroyed everything he found. 1:24 He turned rivers into graves. 1:26 Persian bodies choked the Euphrates. 1:28 Indian blood turned the Ganges red. 1:31 He was the plague. 1:33 A man-made thunderbolt, a dark star hanging over the entire world. 1:39 Still it was not enough. 1:41 He dreamed of the edge of the earth. 1:43 He built ships for the remotest ocean. 1:46 No fire stopped him, no sea, no heat, no gods, not Libya, not the shifting sands, not even a moon. 1:54 He would have followed the sun into darkness, circled the poles, drunk the Nile from its source, but he was still human and death stood firm. 2:04 He died and took his hunger with him. 2:07 Having devoured the world, he left no heir, no future, just men torn apart by his fall. 2:17 So, guys, I just remember sitting in stunned silence after having spent, you know, hours and hours reading this lengthy historical accounting of Alexander the Great's life. 2:27 I felt like the poet Lucan summarized his rule and reign in just a handful of stanzas, right? 2:32 So Alexander was hunger wearing armor, essentially. 2:36 He was constantly hungry for what? 2:38 For more. 2:39 And in the Egyptian desert at the Oracle of Amun, he followed a priest, and he followed several of the priests, and he wanted them to hail him as a god, as the son of a god, and they obliged. 2:53 They did so. 2:54 Alexander named cities after himself. 2:57 You know, every victory, every monument, every title he achieved pointed back to one name, the same name, his name, Alexander. 3:06 But I actually like the name that Lucan gave him from that poem Dark Star. 3:13 So something that hangs over the world but gives off no light. 3:17 But here's what Lucan and even Alexander didn't know. 3:20 God had already written Alexander the Great's obituary two centuries before he was even born. 3:25 Because in the sixth century before Christ, there was an old Jewish exile in Babylon named Daniel, and he had a vision. 3:31 And we see this recorded in Daniel chapter 8, verse 5. 3:35 As I was considering, behold, a male goat came from the west across the face of the whole earth without touching the ground, and the goat had a conspicuous horn between his eyes. 3:45 Then let's go to verse 8. 3:46 Then the goat became exceedingly great, but when he was strong, the great horn was broken, and instead of it there came up four conspicuous horns toward the four winds of heaven. 3:58 Now, the angel Gabriel actually explains this in verse 21. 4:02 Let's go there. 4:02 And the goat is the king of Greece, and the great horn between his eyes is the first king. 4:08 And then if we skip ahead to Daniel chapter eleven, we see this in verses three and four. 4:12 Then a mighty king shall arise, who shall rule the great with great dominion, and do as he wills. 4:19 And as soon as he is arisen, his kingdom shall be broken and divided towards the four winds of heaven, but not to his posterity, nor according to the authority with which he ruled, for his kingdom shall be plucked up and go to others beside these. 4:32 So remember, his horn was broken when he was strong, when he was at his peak, and his greatness didn't pass on to his posterity. 4:41 And you know, we know this from history. 4:42 Alexander's son was born after his death, and he was murdered when he was a boy. 4:47 And then his four closest generals spent the next four decades tearing each other and the empire Alexander created to pieces until it finally settled into four separate kingdoms or four horns towards the four winds. 5:00 And I love Proverbs 2720 here. 5:02 Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, and never satisfied are the eyes of man. 5:08 So look, guys, you don't need a huge army to have the same kind of hunger that Alexander did. 5:13 You know, for us, it's probably, you know, not the next territory or the next country over, but maybe it's the next promotion. 5:19 Maybe it's a bigger, better house, whatever that means. 5:22 Maybe it's a strong desire to have your name listed first on the email thread. 5:27 Maybe it's that coveted blue check mark on your favorite social media platform. 5:32 But I just want to remind you that the hunger doesn't get full. 5:36 It doesn't get satisfied. 5:38 It only gets bigger. 5:40 So this week we are going to use the history in the life of Alexander the Great as a cautionary tale. 5:46 And we are going to use the characters, several characters from biblical history, to inform us as to whose glory we should be concerned about. 5:55 So the big questions I want you to keep in mind this week: whose glory are you building and whose name is on it?