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269 Messianic Times. Past, Present, and Future do converge in the two events, separated by twenty-one centuries; Jerusalem was pivotal to both, and by their timing, they were linked by biblical prophecies about the End of Days. To understand what happened twenty-one centuries ago, we need to roll the pages of history back to Alexander, who deemed himself the son of a god, yet died in Babylon at the young age of thirty-two. While alive, he controlled his feud- ing generals through a mixture of favors, punishments, and even untimely deaths (some, in fact, believed that Alexander himself was poisoned). No sooner did he die than his four year-old son and his guardian, Alexander’s brother, were murdered and the quarrelling generals and regional com- manders divided between them the main conquered lands: Ptolemy and his successors, headquartered in Egypt, seized Alexander’s African domains; Seleucus and his successors tuled, from Syria, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and the distant Asian lands; the contested Judea (with Jerusalem) ended up in the Ptolemaic realm. The Ptolemies, having managed to maneuver Alexander’s Jerusalem: A Chalice, Vanished FIGURE 122