The Minoans, Philistines and God's People

Today we begin a two-part series titled The Minoans, Philistines, and God's People. And so now we can show here the PowerPoint presentation about it. And you'll see how through the Bible we can understand world history like few people can because of the spiritual dimension. And so this year my wife and I had the opportunity, the chance to keep the feast in Crete, which is in the Bible is called Kapthor.

And later visited Santorini, ancient Thera, just north of Crete. We had a wonderful feast of Tabernacles. We had 700 brethren. How many have visited that area of Greece? Can I see? All right. Yeah, it's a good group. About 16, 17 people. So I wanted to go because this is an area that the Bible touches. It deals with, and there are very important spiritual lessons that we can learn. Because remember, just as the first sermon or sermonette mentioned about David and the lessons that he had to learn, that they were given for our benefits. So the Bible gives you good examples and what happened. And it gives us bad examples. So it's not just one-sided.

It shows those who did the right things and what happened when they fell. And they got up again. And God is the God of second and third and fourth chances. He will never abandon us, although we can abandon him. And so I was looking forward to this because of all the biblical background that helps us understand the scriptures, the accuracy that they have. And so there you see a picture of Crete at the bottom.

And then you have the first island north of there, about 70 miles away, which is called today Santorini, used to be called Thera. And there's a very interesting thing that happens in world history. Something that we should understand God's mind, what he's doing, how he carries out his will. So let's go to the next slide. This sermon hopes to show the amazing accuracy of the Bible in regard to the Cretans or the ancient Capthyrites and their relationship with the Philistines.

The Philistines almost conquered the Israelites, if not for God's intervention, which included raising up King David. The Bible warns of pagan ways. Let's go to Deuteronomy chapter 12, verse 29. Deuteronomy chapter 12. Because God knows we're always going to be surrounded by paganism, all kinds of things that have been mixed in the religion.

In verse 29, it says, when the Lord your God cuts off from before you the nations which you go to dispossess and you displace them and dwell in their land, take heed to yourselves that you are not ensnared to follow them after they are destroyed from before you and that you do not inquire after their God saying, how did these nations serve their gods? I also will do likewise. You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way for every abomination to the Lord which he hates they have done to their gods.

For they burn even their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. Ever I command you, be careful to observe it and you shall not add to it nor take away from it. So faith is putting God's word into action and trusting God to guide us, to carry us through. One of the beautiful expressions in the Bible says about Noah walked with God. It meant that he had a daily walk.

He conversed. He was close to him. It wasn't once a week that you sort of remember, no, you had this walk, you have this relationship with your prayers or your study of the Bible or other meditation as well. So here we have this warning that we are not to follow the ways of the world, no matter how tempting, how attractive they may be. So the sophisticated Minoan and Philistine culture and religion were a great temptation for Israel.

Just as we learned about the Parthenon, we covered that in a previous sermon. We were able to be there. It's false gods and it's Greek Christmas with the birth of Dionysus on December 25th. So just Google it. That God, remember, he was the Bacchus as well. He was the drunk God. And guess what? In Greek religion, he was born December 25th from a virgin.

You see how Satan has sown all of these false saviors through history. Goes on to say there is a Minoan Greek Philistine connection about their false demonic teachings and its loose perverted morals. This in 1 Corinthians 10. First Corinthians 10. In verse 19 through 21, Paul says, what am I saying then that an idol is anything or what is offered to idols is anything rather that the things which a Gentile sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. And I do not want you to have fellowship with demons getting involved because behind a lot of this mythology and false teachings, it is an abomination. There are demons that influence people to form religions, to form all kinds of followers that way. It says verse 21. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. They had their fake Passover services called Easter and all of these things.

You see, we don't have anything against the people. We have a problem with lies, whether they're religious lies or other type of lies. Would you keep something if you knew it was a lie? Do you know how lies have damaged a person's life? And it's part of the lessons. You cannot ever truly spiritually benefit from following a lie, even if it's popular, even if it's accepted, a lie is a lie. And so here we see this kind of a wrong system which became very popular. The Minoan culture is actually the forerunner of the Greek culture. And they were so advanced in technology, in art, in commerce. And they became sort of the Las Vegas of their system. You wanted to go to Crete to go to Las Vegas. That was a place for pleasure. And it was a type of a Las Vegas system, as you can see. Here pictured from the Greek or the Crete Palace in Knossos in Crete, you have a statue that was found right there in the palace. And this is the Minoan snake goddess from the palace in Knossos, Crete. The original shows her with breasts exposed. So this was covered. A unique trait of Minoan culture. Would God put up with it and let it spread widely, even to Israel? So the Minoan culture was during the time basically from Abraham all the way to Joseph and then to Moses. So this was a very attractive lifestyle. So let's go into it a little more next slide. The origins of the Minoans go back to the table of nations in Genesis chapter 10. So here you have the main families that became nations around the world. And it's quite accurate. Historians have examined them and they have found the archaeological evidence for these peoples in different parts.

And if you notice in the map where it has the arrow, it shows Crete right in the middle of the Mediterranean area here. So let's read what it says in Genesis 10, 13 and 14 from the New Living Translation. It says, Misereen was the ancestor of the Luddites and the Kaphtorites from whom the Philistines came. So Crete was called Kaphtor and it's mentioned several times in the Bible, which is another term for Crete and where the Philistines came. Something happened to the Minoan civilization that caused them to take their ships and eventually settle somewhere else. And that's one of the great mysteries that they have in history. Around 1200 BC, the Minoan civilization completely collapsed and they don't know exactly how it disappeared, but you have the Sea Peoples that had the Minoan culture flee to different parts and one of them was Israel. The expanded Bible version says Misereen was the father of the Luddites and the people of Crete. Then it has in parentheses in that Bible, Kaphtorites. And then it has the Philistines came from the Castelohites, which is another pronunciation of and then it says of or Kaphtorites. So that's all in this Bible, the expanded Bible to show you how all of these things are tied together. Also in Deuteronomy 2 verse 23, we can turn there for a moment where it mentions the Kaphtorites again, those people from Crete. Deuteronomy 2 verse 23, it says, and the Avam who dwelt in villages as far as Gaza.

This is part of the coastal area and basically Gaza still exists. They're having a war over there, but it extended a little farther north than it, but it's still the term Gaza is the same biblical location. The Kaphtorim, which is a plural of Kaphtorite, who came from Kaphtor, destroyed them and dwelt in their place. And so by the time Israel had settled in, you already had some of these Kaphtorites, which were called Philistines. They had another name that I'm not going to complicate. They were the main ones, the Philistines set up camp in the coastal area of Israel. And so that's why if you understand the Minoan culture, you'll understand eventually why God had to destroy them because they almost conquered Israel. And then where would God's word be? Where would God's people be? So God had to intervene. And believe me, these Minoans had the technological advantage. They were far more developed and yet the Israelites had the true God and he had a promise to carry out. Abraham's descendants and Jesus Christ eventually would come to be born. So in a sense, this is another false religion that's very glitzy. It's very sophisticated, but also very perverted. Minoans called the Minoans Sibirites, which came from a Greek city, Siberia, which was known for just excess of leisure and life and sex and everything else. That's why you don't want to be called a Sibirite. But Minoans were called this. So we read here where they came from. Okay let's go to the next slide. So let's briefly look at the Minoan culture. The term Minoan comes from their king Minos with its capital in Crete. That's Gnosis. It became the commercial and technological superpower in its day, basically from 1900 BC to 1200 BC, 700 years. Their ships dominated the Aegean islands. They developed what was ultra-modern ships at that time. They just had a knack for invention and innovation. And so they were head and shoulders above any other of these nations. The only ones that could compare truly with them could have been the Hittites in Turkey, the Babylonians in Mesopotamia and the Egyptians in the southern part of the Mediterranean. From its extensive trade, they became fabulously wealthy. Like ancient Tyre in Phoenicia, but also became immoral to the point that men and women had no shame. So Ezekiel 28, 5 mentions Tyre became so wealthy because of its trades and commerce, the famous Phoenicians.

But the problem was that they also just got so proud and vain with their success. Ezekiel 28, 5, God actually talks to the king of Tyre. And what's going to happen? This wasn't something that God provoked.

No, it was the king who provoked God's ire and wrath. I mean, Ezekiel 28. And I think again in the sermonette, it touched about all these nations. They're doing things the best way they can. But unlike David, they didn't repent. As Ezekiel 28, verse 5, it says, by your great wisdom in trade, you have increased your riches and your heart is lifted up because of your riches. Therefore, says the Lord God, because you have set your heart as the heart of a God, behold, therefore I will bring strangers against you.

The most terrible of the nations, and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of your wisdom and defile your splendor. And so Tyre was conquered by the Babylonians. But then they moved to the island off of Tyre and they built a fortress that was so impregnable that they thought that nobody would ever touch them. In this time, we're talking Ezekiel, probably maybe a sixth century, 600s or late 500s. And then we have the destruction of Tyre by Alexander the Great in the 300s. And the king of Tyre at that time was so proud. He said, nobody can reach us this way because they were an island off of the coast.

And any ships, those walls were so strong, you couldn't overcome them. Well, Alexander the Great actually took all the rocks from what they had conquered of the city of Sidon and others, and they made this ramp all the way up to where Tyre was. And they were able to go up there and destroy Tyre at the time.

And just like the Bible says today about that area, it's only used now for fish nets because that island of Tyre was wiped clean. There's no walls or any type of antiquity where you had the ancient wonderful palaces and other. So this happened to the Minoans. They became immoral to the point that men and women had no shame. Some historians call them Sibirites, which means that type of shamelessness. It's like the Las Vegas today. It doesn't mean everybody in Las Vegas goes along with that.

But it is known as, quote, Sin City. And if you're going there with that purpose, there's plenty of allure and temptations. And so the Minoan culture was one that just was very loose in morals. They worshiped the goddess, just like this goddess of serpents. By the way, that's another one of these manifestations of Semiramis, the Babylonian queen. Then you have all these different names for him. And also they worshiped bulls, as you will see in a moment. So let's continue. The Minoans from the 1900 B.C.s became the dominant power spreading their advanced technology and culture to the nearby islands.

Their famous wall paintings or frescoes were found not only in the surrounding islands and Greece, but later even in ancient Israel. And just look at parts of that palace at Knossos. That was, they had an open hearth centrally located. They had plumbing. They had running water at the time when most people still lived in huts. So you can imagine what it's like for some primitive people to come across this civilization. And so in the maps you see they had five main cities with great palaces. Their largest was Knossos, but they had other cities in Crete. And they spread their culture throughout these different islands.

In the bottom map you see when they left Crete they went to different parts and they were called the Sea Peoples because it was an invasion. And then is when great waves of these Minoan survivors arrived. They already had the Philistines there, but not in a large group. Let's continue. Their prosperity led to a moral decline and their art reflected it. It was the only society where the women dared to expose their breasts out in public.

And men wore mostly loincloths. This perverted lifestyle coincided with a terrible destruction similar to what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah. And after this no society dared copy their immoral style of clothing. Now you see there some of the wall paintings. That's one in the palace of Knossos in the top where they did a bull jumping, which was a real crazy sport because you had to grab the horns of the bull, flip and land on its top, and then flip again and jump out.

Remember that bulls were adored at the time, but you can still see a lot of these beautiful colors that they developed. Then the figure at the bottom left is the palace of Knossos today. You can see some of the original pillars painted red. And then on the right is artist representation of that palace. Some were up to five floors high at the time when people hadn't even developed that type of architecture in other parts. So what happened? Let's go to the next slide. This is a representation of the volcano of Thera.

Remember that's the island 70 miles north of Crete. This is considered the largest eruption in recorded history according to many historians. You'll see the ash layer that it left all around that Aegean area. Even some Chinese chronicles at that time mentioned that the sun had become opaque because the cloud of dust was so huge. And it was the equivalent, according to geologists, to several atomic bombs going off at the same time.

So if you want to visit Santorini now, you get to go to the rim of the crater. That's all that's left. Because it just shot up all of that magma, what used to be the island itself, it shot it up 20 miles into the air and then the water came in. So now you just have the outer rim of the crater. It's only like five or six miles across. So it just showed, boy, something terrible happened.

This became the island of Santorini as part of the crater and what the volcano left behind. So this eruption of nearby Thera, 70 miles north of Crete, caused earthquakes and a huge tsunami that wiped out a good part of the Minoan culture. No one, including the Philistines, ever copied their sinful dress tiles again. So people stopped at the same type of style. So much for ancient Las Vegas. It was blown. Notice in the next slide, this shows on the right, the ash spread throughout the Aegean Sea and is found in Crete where the great palace in Kenosus was destroyed.

The picture on the right shows a quarry of pumice in Santorini, which you can see the top part there, probably 100 feet. Just pure ash that settled. In addition, a huge tsunami up to 100 feet high and earthquakes followed the eruption and they came south and they wiped out this very flourishing commercial area of Crete at that time.

So what happened after this? Got to go back to the Bible because it tells us something about this. Notice in Jeremiah 47 verse 4, God says, because the time has come to destroy all the Philistines, the time has come to destroy Tyre in Sidon's remaining helpers. This is when God was going to intervene through the Babylonian Empire. It was going to come through that area. The Lord will destroy the Philistines, the survivors from the island of Crete.

So people, they were migrating. They were leaving Crete. They tried to revive the culture, but by 1200 B.C. it disappeared. Amos 9.7 says, the Lord says, Israel, you are no different to me than the people of Cush or Ethiopia. God was angry with them. I brought Israel out of the land of Egypt and the Philistines from Crete, again using the term kaftor and the Arameans, the Syrians from CUR, that's from the expanded Bible version. So something happened in Crete. You don't just leave a wonderful culture and everything going to flee on these boats to land somewhere else.

And they tried to land in Egypt and the Pharaoh at that time had a navy and they clashed with these Minoan survivors. And we have a mural there in Egypt that I'm going to show you in a minute of these Minoan settlers that were called the Sea Peoples. They clashed and you see the ships that they had. So let's go to the next one. Next slide. This is the Feistus disk from Crete. Looks unassuming, but this is one of the biblical proofs that the Philistines did come from kaftor.

This was found in one of the other palaces. Knossos was one, Feistus was another to the south. Also beautiful palace. And they found this disk and it shows the technology because this is a written script. And there at the Heraklion Museum of History, I told Kadi, I need to see this one because here this is something that they have always tried to have strong evidence that the Minoans and the Philistines were the same people. Well this disk is dated around 1700 BC. They still were at the height of their civilization. And you see on the upper left, you see a picture of how the Minoans look like when they went to war.

They sort of look like American Indians with the feathers on their headdress. Well the Minoans had them much more cropped. But that's how they dressed for war. And in this disk, one of the symbols of their writing, when it deals with a person, it shows the head of what became a Philistine. What the Minoan people looked like at that time. Because the Philistines look exactly the same. Then we go to the next slide. Where we see the main invasion of the Philistines come around the 12th century, 1177 here. And notice again their headdress. And they all mentioned that they had come from these civilizations in the Aegean. The first wave of Philistines arrived in Israel. I'm talking about a major, I mean thousands and thousands of people. And notice on the right, you have David, little David, fighting Goliath. Because Goliath was Minoan culture, was a Philistine. So even this far, the Philistines were the projection of this Minoan art and culture. So let's look at that scene that's still found in one of the tombs in Egypt. Next slide. And remember these murals used to be painted, but they're not anymore. But when you do examination, microscopic magnification, you can see the different colors. So this is a battle between the Egyptians and the Philistines from that area of Crete and the adjacent islands. So the Philistines were part of the Sea Peoples. As the Medinet Habu Temple of Ramesses III shows them being repelled by the Egyptians. And actually that battle scene is so much larger. It's worth it to just look it up on the internet. And you see here this great battle for the dominion of Egypt. Now the Egyptians were too strong, but they then settled in the areas of Israel. Remember that these Philistines started coming after that volcano in Thera. A lot just didn't want to live very close to that place. They had to pick up the pieces that were left over and came to these other cultures. These Philistines now came to Israel in the 12th century in major waves. In part two, not willing next week, we will show the history of the Philistines in the Promised Land and how they became the most dangerous enemy of Israel in the time of the judges all the way to the time of King David. And the very important lessons we can learn in our Christian life. Because there's always going to be a Las Vegas to draw our attention away and false teachings. All these things are spiritual Las Vegas and we have to love the truth whenever we discover it because there's no substitute for it. All right brethren, hope you'll get enthusiastic about part two.