Alexander the Great - W.B. Godbey

Excerpts from the book of the Wesleyan evangelist, William Baxter Godey (1833-1920).

"When you go to Egypt, you will land at the great sea-port Alexandria, founded by him , and named for him. You will, I trow -- visit his tomb in the Prophet Daniel Mosque. He was first buried in Greece, in a golden coffin. It is very difficult to guard a gold coffin through the ages, as thieves will always be after it, so after while they took him out of it, putting him in a sarcophagus (stone coffin), aud took him to Alexandria, Egypt."

"Oh, how wonderfully God used this brilliant young Greek! It is very doubtful whether there was another man in the world whom He could have used to execute the stupendous work which He wrought by this Macedonian juvenile."

"...heroism and success, just soliloquized: "I will not trouble myself about that young fool; somebody will kill him in due time, and that will be the last of him. " So he waits till not only months, but years, glide away; while meanwhile Alexander was moving hither and thither, with victory perching on the Grecian banner... lasting a whole day and leaving forty thousand Persian soldiers dead on the field, while Alexander had not lost a man! Of course they had no fire-arms then, to kill people in sweeping avalanches of fire and brimstone, but they were armed with swords, spears and battle-axes. How strange that the Persians could not kill one of the Grecians!"

"In this battle of Granicus, they all had equal chances, so far as arms were concerned. While these few Greeks slew the forty thousand Persians, how strange none of them got killed!"

"The effect of this battle was felt in every nation under heaven, shaking and revolutionizing, and opening the eyes of the millions to see the trend of things that the Greeks were actually going to conquer the whole world."

"Then the Persian king makes a grand rally of all his subjects throughout the world, feeling that they certainly could down that paradoxical young Grecian. He so appeals to all the nobility and the princes of the earth that they see they are going to lose their offices, if something decisive is not done, for they all know that if Alexander succeeds, he will officer the whole world with Greeks."

"Again they coil their countless hosts around Alexander, on the fields of Arbela. A battle of a whole week ensues, winding up with the Greeks everywhere triumphant, and the royal army signally and utterly defeated."

"Alexander having pursued and overtaken Darius, the latter begins to sue for peace, observing: "Grecian, we have carried on this war long enough. I am in favor of peace. Rest assured I will treat you right; I will split the world in two in the middle and give you the choice half, and I will keep the other. So you and I will rule the world jointly. "But Alexander responds, pointing up to the sun..."

"After his victory Alexander proceeded to take possession of the whole world, without a rival, as, in the great battle of Arbela, the ruling class were all slain, and none survived to make another fight. Of course Alexander puts the Greeks in every country under heaven, there being so few of them that they were just about all needed for rulers."

"This God did through the Greek officers whom Alexander appointed over every nation under heaven, thus putting the Greek language in every home beneath the skies. When God needs a school, He raises it up and utilizes it in a most marvelous way. The Greek government officers which Alexander placed over all the nations of the earth never dreamed of going to their places to teach the Greek language, yet that is precisely what they did."

"Hence the importance of the providential hands on the Gentile world. Oh, how wonderfully and paradoxically God dropped it down on the little Greek nation!"

"So the Greeks climb far above all their sister nations, abundantly thereby demonstrating the intervention of God's providence, in leading them to loftier heights, deeper depths and broader expanses of wisdom and intellectual culture; the grand culmination of the world's achievements in every ramification of human lore."

"(n) Now, reader, history clearly shows up the fact that God, in His providence, wonderfully used Alexander the Great to give the whole world that beautiful Greek language, which He used the Greeks to make in order that He might give His precious, saving truth to all the world, which the wonderful mechanism, flexibility, euphony, force and felicity of diction of the Greek holds tight; despite all the studied schemes of false prophets, magicians and sophists to pervert and turn it to the destruction of the people."

[W.B. Godbey, Alexander the Great, Holiness Data Ministry 1998]

Alexander the Great - William B. Godbey

©1998 Holiness Data Ministry