About six hundred years before the birth of Christ Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and transported the bulk of its inhabitants to Babylon. His empire was short-lived; within the space of seventy years the Babylonian Empire was overthrown by the Medes and Persians under the leadership of Cyrus. One of his first acts was to give all the Jews liberty to return to their own land, thereby fulfilling the prophecy of Jeremiah (Jer. 25:11-1211And this whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment; and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. 12And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith the Lord, for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans, and will make it perpetual desolations. (Jeremiah 25:11‑12)). But Cyrus went further; he ordained that the temple should be rebuilt at Jerusalem and its vessels, which had lain so long in Babylon, should be restored to their place. Only a proportion of the Jews availed themselves of this liberty. The rest remained scattered throughout the Medo-Persian Empire, as we learn from the book of Esther. The temple was rebuilt, the worship of God was restored, and later, in the days of Nehemiah, the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt.
This took place in 455 B.C. in accordance with a decree of Artaxerxes I. There is a remarkable link between this and the coming of Christ, for the prophet Daniel had predicted that from the time of the decree to rebuild the city of Jerusalem and its wall there should be a period of 483 years to the coming of Christ (Dan. 9:2525Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. (Daniel 9:25)). This prophecy was fulfilled to the letter when our Lord rode into Jerusalem in the year 29 A.D. on the foal of an ass, the very manner of His entry being foretold by the prophet Zechariah (Zech. 9:99Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass. (Zechariah 9:9)).
For a time, under the Medo-Persian Empire, the Jews prospered in their land, but during the course of the Grecian Empire a time of trouble ensued. Antiochus Epiphanes defiled the temple and bitterly persecuted the Jews. A long and painful struggle followed in which the Jews had to fight for their national existence. Extraordinary successes often attended their arms, until they finally received the protection of Rome under Julius Caesar. The much-tried Jewish nation then enjoyed a period of rest which lasted about one hundred years.
It was during the reign of Augustus, the second of the Caesars, that our Lord was born. What was the condition of the world then? It was a time of comparative peace, for the Roman legions dominated the civilized world. But it was a time of awful moral darkness. It has been said that “two phrases sum up the characteristics of the Roman civilization in the days of the empire —heartless cruelty and unfathomable corruption.” There were millions of slaves who were without any rights at all and who were largely at the mercy of their masters. Little better off were the masses of free poor, for the most part beggars and idlers whose lives were spent in squalor, misery and vice. In contrast with these was a comparatively small class of wealthy whose days were occupied with reckless extravagance and riotous living. “Gluttony, caprice, ostentation and impurity rioted in the heart of a society which knew of no other means by which to break the monotony of its weariness or alleviate the anguish of its despair. Amusement was provided by the shameless vulgarity of the theater or the abominable cruelty of the games in which men fought for their lives against wild beasts or with one another.” Superstition and idolatry spread their dark veil over the masses; the learned and intelligent, while professing to honor the popular gods, were skeptics at heart whose real religion was a despairing fatalism. The Apostle Paul has left on the inspired page his own solemn description of a world that had turned its back on God. (See Romans 1:28-3228And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. (Romans 1:28‑32).)
A little light lingered still among the Jews, for they had at least the letter of the oracles of God, and there were some, as the New Testament clearly shows, who led pious lives. The opening chapters of Luke give us a glimpse of such persons. The picture of the eunuch crossing the desert and reading, on his way, the book of prophet Isaiah, as he returned from a visit to the temple, and the God-fearing centurion, Cornelius, who prayed and gave alms, show us that even among the Gentiles were those who were seeking the true God.
Among the Jews themselves had grown up the hard legalism of the Pharisees who laid upon men’s shoulders their intolerable burdens and were inflated by religious pride, while their hearts, as the Lord testifies, were full of evil and uncleanness. On the other hand, there were the Sadducees who were mere materialists, denying the resurrection and teaching that there were neither angels nor spirits.
Such was the state of the world when Christ was born. The night could hardly have been darker than it was when that great light dawned upon mankind.