What Gospel Is Important? - Part 6
Jonathan Cahn versus Candance Owen
Copied from the sermon notes of Pastor Don Elmore
March 8, 2026
Scripture Reading: Matthew 2:19, 20
Who was Herod the Great? Herod was ethnically an Idumaean (Edomite, a descendant of Esau). About a century before his birth, his family was forced to convert to the God of Israel’s laws when they were captured by the Israelites under the rule of John Hyrcanus. They did not faithfully keep these laws (they couldn’t keep them), but in fact they took control of the nation. The Edomites (Idumaeans) became the rulers over the kingdom of Judah. At the time of Christ, the House of Israel (ten tribes) had been taken in captivity for over seven centuries and were not living in the Promise Land--there were only Israelite Judeans and Edomite Judeans who were living in the land of Judaea.
Herod’s father was a descendant of Esau and his mother was a descendant of Ishmael. King Herod the Great was a very real, very dangerous man. The region that he was king over was very unstable in the first century AD. In the centuries before Jesus’ birth, it had been ruled by the Greeks, then by the Ptolemies, then the Seleucid Empire, then the Maccabees, then a century later the Romans.



