Hey, my friends. It's Matt. This is the 10 minute Bible hour podcast. And as you just heard

by that song, this is another bonus episode. But it's a very important bonus episode because

we just finished up the Old Testament. If you're listening to this in chronological order,

we just got done with Malachi, the last of the minor prophets. And we are about to turn

the page, one page, listen to it. That's it. Over to the beginning of the New Testament

and the Book of Matthew. Well, in between there, gosh, kind of a lot happens. There's very

significant gap in the resume right there. And in this bonus episode, what I want to try

to do is fill in a little bit of that gap so that we are oriented when we step into Matthew

because otherwise it's going to be weird. A lot has gone on. There are new names and new

situations and new pressures and people's heads are in a new place. At this point, they're

worried about new things. The religion that we've been tracking has evolved a little bit.

So we just, we got to lay the groundwork for all of this. The big significant empire when

we wrap up the Old Testament is of course, Persia. And again, of course, because you've been

listening to this whole series with me, Persia took their power from Babylon. They displaced

Babylon in 539 BC. Cyrus, the great, these are all names. I'm sure you're starting to really

stick with you by now. Cyrus, the great defeated Nebinitis and his son, the last king of Babylon,

and dethroned the Babylonian Empire for the title of the big dog of the ancient world. Well,

Babylon before that had defeated the Assyrians in the late 600s BC and Assyria from before 600 BC

gone back for a couple hundred years. They were the big intimidating empire that was constantly

causing problems. And then along with all of this, you always have Egypt way, way out west. They're

on a separate continent. They got their own river. Everything just kind of works out there. They're

culture under themselves every now and then they come out of hiding to go and have wars with people

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