El Gibhor (Mighty God)

“And now, our God, the great and mighty and awesome God (El Gibhor), who keeps his covenant of unfailing love, do not let all the hardships we have suffered be as nothing to you. “ Nehemiah 9:32a

Babylon rebelled against the Assyrian Empire in 626 BC, overthrew Nineveh in 612 BC and defeated Egypt in 605 BC. Shortly thereafter, it captured Jerusalem and took the best of the Jewish youth and leadership to its courts to be reeducated. One of those hostages was a godly young man by the name of Daniel. He had been given a special gift of prophecy by God. Around 530 BC he made the following predictions:

The kingdom of Babylon would not last. A kingdom would rise with two leaders and cause Babylon’s. Then in fulfillment, the Medes and the Persians did in fact conquer Babylon.

Daniel predicted that another kingdom would arise after the rule of the Medes and Persians. He described it as a leopard with four wings and four heads, or as a male goat with one great horn, four horns and a little horn. Then, indeed, Greece arose and with great swiftness conquered the world under the leadership of Alexander the Great. Upon his death, his kingdom was divided under four generals. The rather small horn was Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who made a determined effort to destroy the Jewish faith.

Daniel also predicted the rise, the division and the fall of the Roman Empire. He went on to predict a future man who will revive the old Roman Empire in order to advance his own power. Many refer to this man as the “Antichrist”.

God the Father, being outside of time, can see the ebb and flow of human endeavor and the rise and fall of empires. He can even accurately predict the names of future emperors as He did through Isaiah one hundred years before Cyrus’ birth (Isaiah 44:28).To transcendent God, the creation of Adam, the arrival of Jesus, the fall of Jerusalem, the fall of the Soviet Union, the coming of the Antichrist and the coming of Jesus’ reign on earth all happen “now”, simultaneously.

But the truly amazing thing is that with all this history before Him, with all these mighty men and great deeds happening, He is deeply concerned with the mundane details of our lives! If we gain great perspective, if we are responsible for more people, if we are kings, or presidents or generals, we humans tend to lose sight of the individuals. We forget the cost of our battles to the mothers and wives. We fail to consider the cost of our policies to the retired, the elderly, and the disenfranchised. But Matthew 10:29-31 tells us that El Gibhor, God Almighty, is concerned when a sparrow falls out of its nest, and He knows the number of hairs that are on our head. Psalm 56:8 tells us that God keeps track of all our sorrows, that He collects our tears in a bottle and records each one in His book.