Original subtitles

dx

We are in our ten of Learn the Bible in 24 Hours.

And we're going to talk now about what's called the post-exile history.

We have the historical books up to the monarchy, then we have the monarchy,

then we have the exile, the captivity and all of that.

Now we're going to have the period of history from the exile that is the return from Babylon

up until the end of the Old Testament period.

And that primarily will involve three books, Ezra and the Amaya, and also the charming book

of Esther.

And we're going to touch on the decree of Cyrus.

I made mention of it last time, but we'll focus on it for some special reasons here,

because it shows up in the book of Ezra.

And we'll talk about the book of Ezra, which has to do with the rebuilding of the temple,

the book of Nehemiah, which follows it, which is the rebuilding of Jerusalem.

It wants to be sensitive to the distinction.

In Ezra, we're trying to rebuild the temple without the permission of being able to build

the city wall.

Nehemiah comes along and gets that permission, and so he solves a lot of the problems, the

leadership problems, by doing that.

And the book of Esther actually occurs during the final years of the book of Ezra, but

it's a separate book that happens to be in your Bible after Nehemiah.

But it's a drama that is incredibly colorful, the more you know about it, the more colorful

it is.

But also the text itself harbors some surprises that I think you'll enjoy.

And we have a few remarks at the very end about the inner Testament period, the period

between the two testes.

Well, the book of Ezra, the building of the temple.

Now we talked about the Babylonian captivity, the first siege, the second siege, and the

third siege that took Judah captive, and the first siege started in the servitude of the

nation, which ends with the decree of Cyrus that we're going to explain here in a minute.

And so the book of Chronicles also ends with the servitude of the nation.

The book of Ezra picks up where Chronicles left off, in fact the verses overlap.

Many people believe that Chronicles, 1st and Chronicles, and Ezra and Nehemiah were collected

by the same scribe.

The desolations of Jerusalem, as I indicated, started from the third siege, and it ends

where the book of Nehemiah really introduces the decree of Artaxerxes, Lonzamanas.

That of course triggers the 70 weeks of Daniel that we've just reviewed, but it actually

happens, the decree takes place in the book of Nehemiah.

So Esther, as I say, occurs chronologically near the end of the book of Ezra, but we

have at the end of our Bible to avoid confusion.

Daniel, of course, is speaking all through the Babylon period and following Ezekiel's

transported in the second siege.

Hagai is the prophet that is contemporaneous with the historical book of Ezra.

Nehemiah is contemporaneous with Zechariah and Malachi in his years.

So that's a quick feeling of that.

Cyrus is another one of these incredible leaders.

He established the Medo-Persian Empire.

His father was Cambus, the first.

He was the king of Anshan, or East Alum, Alum being the ancient biblical name for the

forebears of the Persians.

And Cyrus' mother was Mandain, the daughter of Astagias, the king of media.

So Cyrus is an interesting position because he's half-mead and half-Persian, which he

trades on to weld an empire.

But in 550 BC, he attacks his father-in-law, the wicked and corrupt Astagias.

And he captures his father-in-law's capital, Ek-Patana, without a battle.

That's going to characterize his very shrewd guy.

He captures most of his things without actually having military might, but not actually having

a battle.

And he's a very modelled leader, many people throughout the world.

He's been fabled through, in some respects, even greater than Alexander the Great for

his diplomacy, his leadership, and so forth.

He welded the Medes and the Persians into a unified empire that continued for over 200

years.

Interesting guy, indeed, Cyrus the Great.

Want to focus on the conquest of Babylon on October 12, 539 BC, his general captured Babylon

without a battle.

The Persians diverted the river Euphrates into a canal upriver.

By then they had conquered several of the towns and the outlying towns and were able

to divert the water so that the water level fell to the middle of a man's thigh at Babylon,

which rendered the flood defenses useless and allowed the invaders to slip in under the

gates and take over the city.

There were residents that didn't know they'd been taken over for three days.

No battle.

Very important point.

Herodotus is the, he wrote in the 5th century BC, he's considered the father of history,

and he details a lot of this.

But what's interesting, a few days later after his general conquers Babylon, Cyrus makes

his grand entrance, and when he makes his grand entrance, he's greeted by Guess Who?

Daniel, the elderly Daniel.

And he shows him a scroll that had been written 150 years before Cyrus was born.

And there's a letter addressed to Cyrus in this scroll.

I want you to imagine yourself, Cyrus the Conqueror.

This guy comes up to you and shows you this aged scroll that says, to the deep be dry

and I will dry up thy rivers.

That's the sayeth of Cyrus.

Oh, hey, there's my name.

Cyrus.

He is my shepherd.

And he shall perform all my pleasure, even saying to Jerusalem, thou shalt be built and

to the temple thy foundation shall be laid.

Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, desirous.

Here it is again.

What a strange thing to find in the Hebrew text to his anointed.

Strange word of a Gentile king.

Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, desirous whose right hand I have hold him to subdue

nations before him, and I will loose the lines of kings to open before him the two leave

gates and the gates shall not be shut.

I will go before thee and make the crooked places straight all break in pieces, the gates

of brass and cut in center, the bars of irony goes on.

There's a very humorous side light here because bell shazor when the handwriting of the wall

is writing Daniel 5, it says his loins were loosed.

We didn't make a big thing of that because it's hard to talk about that mixed company,

but you get the picture.

What's interesting that was a public awareness embarrassment because Cyrus recognizes that

here.

God says I will loose the loins of kings.

He probably chuckled.

He knew exactly what he's talking about.

What happened 12 days ago?

God continues to say, I will give thee the treasures of darkness, the hidden riches of

secret places that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, M,

the God of Israel.

God is writing this 150 years before Cyrus is born with the deliberate intent of getting

Cyrus's attention.

Notice in the next verse.

God says, for Jacob, my servants, say, and Israel mine elect, I have even called thee

by thy name.

I have surname thee, though thou hast not known me.

Can you imagine Cyrus as he's reading this thing?

I am the Lord and there is none else.

There is no God beside me.

I girded thee, though thou hast not known me.

Now it's tragic to have to cut this off.

If you read this in Isaiah 44 and 45, God goes on with his encouragement.

Incredible declaration of God's own greatness.

It's one of those rare places in the Bible where God argues for himself.

It's outstanding, but we will go on here.

Cyrus, of course, was impressed.

Wouldn't you be?

So he frees the captives.

He discovers that the among his things he's captured here are Hebrews slaves.

He not only turns them loose, he gives them financial incentives to go home.

He makes donations to make the temple to help the temple get in built.

And he returns to them the vessels that had been plundered 70 years earlier by Nebuchadnezzar

that were used as party tools in this party 12 days ago.

He gives them to them for their temple.

And his incentives?

Now less than 50,000 take advantage of it.

Many of the Hebrew captives have found a home in Babylon.

They're happy to be there.

But just a little under 50,000 pick up and go back to rebuild a new life in their old

city.

Now if you go to the British Museum in London, go there and look up the cylinder of Cyrus.

It's there on display.

It's about that long, about 12, 15 inches, if my memory serves me correctly.

It has the translation where he brags that he conquered Babylon without a battle.

I mention that because we're going to later on talk about Babylon in one of the subsequent

sessions, how Babylon is being rebuilt today.

And that because of Jeremiah 1551 and Isaiah 13 and 14, Babylon has a destiny to once again

emerge as a major capital to be destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah was.

That's never been done.

Many of your Bible helps so wrong.

They say, well, that happened in 539.

No, it didn't.

That Babylon was conquered by the Persians, but without harm.

It forms its capital, a secondary capital for Persian empire for 200 years until Alexander

conquers the Persians.

And Alexander makes it his capital until his four general.

When he dies, the four generals divide up the empire.

And by then another city has become more relevant.

Babylon gradually decays.

It accuracies.

But as late as the 1800s, you know, in the 19th century, the archaeologists were able

to hire locals to help build, to help execute.

In other words, it hadn't been destroyed.

There's no inhabitants and all the conditions that are described in the prophecy.

So anyway, without a battle he entered the town sparing any calamity.

I returned to sacred cities on the other side of the Tigris, the sanctuaries of which had

been ruins for a long time, established for them permanent sanctuaries.

They gathered all their former inhabitants who turned them to their habitation.

So it's an illusion that is consistent with what the Bible says.

And you find this decree also recounted in the opening verses of the book of Ezra, which

is why we're getting into it.

Thus, as I are at the king of Persia, the Lord God of heaven have given me all the kingdom

of the earth.

And he hath charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah.

Who is there among you of all his people?

His God be with him and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of

the Lord of God of Israel.

He is the God, which is in Jerusalem.

Notice the focus of this is the temple, not the city.

That's the difference between Ezra and Nehemiah.

We'll talk about the city where you get to Nehemiah.

In Ezra they got permission and money to go back and build the temple, and they struggle.

They don't get very far because they're harassed by all kinds of adversaries.

They don't really get, it's very discouraging time.

Haggai, the prophet, keeps talking about for them to get their act together and keep at

it.

So, what about the battle?

So, Ezra is probably the author of First St. Chronicles also, not only Ezra and Nehemiah.

All of this was regarded as one book earlier.

Ezra is sometimes assumed to be the, the, the, the, the, accredited with establishing

what we call the canon, the, the, the basic foundational documents of the Old Testament.

And about 49,697 returned in 536 BC.

About 80 years later, under Ezra we had another couple of thousand that joined.

Oh, in 515 we have the temple, finally rebuilt, not quite finished.

In 558 we have another couple thousand, or Ezra.

All this is in the book of Ezra.

The book of Esther occurs approximately 483 BC we figure.

So it's in the, in that era that we explore Esther.

Without Esther we'd never have the temple.

We'd never have anything else.

You'll see why when we get the book of Esther.

It's far more important historically than most people realize.

It's a 445 BC, that's 13 years later course after the other one, that Nehemiah obtains

the authority to rebuild the city of Jerusalem, build the wall and protect themselves against

their enemies.

And that's the big event.

And that's the one that triggers of course the 70 weeks of name.

Okay.

Now, as we're talking about the temple, that's really what book of Nehemiah and Ezra is,

excuse me, the book of Esther is all about.

It's interesting to notice that in the New Testament it says you are the temple of God.

Right?

Did you realize it says that seven times?

Now that caught my attention.

My wife pointed that out to me.

Seven times you are the temple.

Now that may just be a figure of speech because we're the temple of God in the sense the Holy

Spirit dwells in us and of course that's true.

But it turns out there may be far more significance in the architecture of the temple to enable

us to understand our internal architecture.

And so the great commandment defined by Jesus Christ, quoting from Deuteronomy 6, hero Israel,

the Lord I got is one Lord.

By the one Lord, the word there is a God, not Yahshud.

It's one in the sense of like a bunch of grapes.

It's unity.

It doesn't mean there's one God.

It means that God is in unity.

You can find the Trinity and all of this but I'll keep moving here.

Oh hero Israel, Lord I got is one Lord.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy

might.

And when Jesus quotes it he adds the mind, right?

All thy strength and all thy mind.

So here it's three things and Jesus mentions four.

But the point is what does that mean?

That's the greatest commandment.

What does that mean?

To love God with all that heart as opposed to all thy soul or with all those different.

Those are terms we throw around rather loosely.

And these are actually, you see the real you is not hard word software using modern

vocabulary.

And how do you determine the architecture of software?

You can't do it, you can't determine the architecture by external behavior, no software.

You have to have the owner's manual.

There are different words, the word heart, cardia in the Greek.

The word soul, Suki in the Greek spirit, numa.

And each one of these has a Hebrew equivalent also.

Heart, soul, spirit, mind.

There are places in the scripture.

My wife spent 20 years tracking down every use of every Greek and Hebrew word that relates

to any of these things, plus a few others.

And made a number of discoveries that I lead on heavily, just rather exciting.

The word mind is the most leading of all probably because we think of the mind as brain.

No, the mind is far more than the brain, even neurologically.

But it actually is the channel for our willpower.

It comes close to that's where you exercise the whole issue.

But if you look at the temple, the original tabernacle, we studied that when we were in

Exodus.

When you get to Solomon, God appears to Solomon and gives him some additional details.

Some things are in the temple that are not in the tabernacle, namely among other things,

the two pillars, Yachim and Boaz, which carry nothing.

The pillars with no weight on top, in his strength, in his counsel, in his might, what

the words mean.

And you have this strange porch there.

Everything inside temples go, and everything outside is bronze.

Everything outside is bronze because it can deal with sin and judgment and so forth.

Inside is holy, it's pure.

That's the concept that underlies all this.

And around the temple, we also find there are these wooden chambers.

And each one of these has some provocative possibilities, these wooden chambers where

there's private storage places of the priests, where they could store their personal impolence,

including idols or whatever.

They're secret, private little chambers.

And obviously, there are cases in the scripture where they needed to be cleaned out.

So do ours.

See, the holy of holies, of course, is the inner thing.

The holy place is the preceding to that.

And then you have this porch, this strange place called the porch.

Then you have the inner court and the outer court.

These are the elements of architecture of the temple.

My wife was the one that really explored the possibilities that these represent our architecture.

The outer court represents, say, the body, the inner court, the soul.

The heart is the holy place in a sense.

And the spirit is in the holy of holies.

And the great mystery, of course, is we know God dwells within us, right?

Why is it we can't tell by your behavior?

God dwells in you.

Why is it that we are so honoree, so self-willed?

Because that doesn't mean he's not dwelling us.

It means we're throttling his ability to work through us.

And that's why this is also relevant.

And we are faced with our willpower.

Are we choosing his ways?

Are we making faith choices or self-choices?

If we make faith choices, God will align our desires to our choices.

But we choose first and feel afterwards if we're walking by faith.

I'm oversimplifying, my wife has done a trilogy, The Way of Agape, Be Transformed,

and Faith of the Night Seasons that deal, that expand this impractical, personal walk

terms, so that the Holy Spirit can shine out of us if we let him.

We constantly throttle him by our self-will.

And also leads to this interesting thing of the chambers, which look like they are correlative

to the subconscious.

And the subconscious is not a Freudian concept.

He was very much absorbed with that.

It actually goes way back to August in and earlier.

It's in the scripture and a dozen places.

I won't get into that debate here.

I would simply say that you need to let the Holy Spirit help you clean out our closets,

all of us.

Because if not, they will invisibly affect our behavior.

Well, let's move into some more fun stuff.

The Book of Esther.

The name Esther means something hidden.

I do understand some Hollywood stars have adopted that name.

I wonder if they know what it really means.

But anyway, in the Kings of Persia, we're going to move down and pick up a guy by the

name of Xerxes.

He was the Ahasuerus of Esther.

And he's quite a character, very colorful character.

The Greek translation of a very complicated name to pronounce is the Greek translation

of the Hebrews.

The English adaptation of the Hebrew is Ahasuerus, but the same guy, we believe.

But he was quite an impulsive guy.

He had a very, very passionate extremes.

He had gigantic ideas and very imperious temper.

He actually built a bridge over the Hellespont, the Darden Ellis.

When a storm took it down, he ordered 300 strokes of scourge on the sea for doing that.

And through a paraphetor in the sea.

And then he had the builders of the bridge beheaded as if it was their fault.

And there was a guy named Pithius who was a Lydian.

He was offered a sum of five and a half million, whatever, towards the expenses of the military

expedition.

Xerxes was so impressed that he sent the money back and gave him handsome present.

And yet, when Pithius wanted his eldest son excused from an expedition, Xerxes was so

upset by that that he cut him into pieces and had his army march among the pieces.

So the picture you get of Xerxes, he's very chimerical.

Up one time down another, very hard to predict.

And we see that temperament in the Book of Esther.

And so he built a canal through the Ismos of Athos.

He built the bridge over the Hellespont as I mentioned.

And this is that wild man that is the ruler of the world during the days of Esther.

Now the drama that occurs is second to few in all of history.

The king throws a lavish royal banquet.

And during that banquet he asks his queen Vashti to immodestly reveal herself in this

drunken revelry that's going on.

And she refuses to do that to her credit.

But because she refuses to do that, she forfeits the crown.

The other nobles are so incensed and they feel that by her not obeying the king that's

going to cause all the wives to stop obeying their husbands.

You've got to make an example.

So the king, Vashti loses her place as his queen.

But that sets the opportunity for Esther.

And she's an orphan Jewish girl raised by her cousin Mordecai.

And she ultimately gets selected as a replacement for Vashti.

So she becomes the queen of Persia.

Mordecai who has raised her is smart enough to warn her, don't let him know you're Jewish.

So he doesn't know that and she doesn't call attention to that.

But in her situation that's going to be a time where it's going to be life threatening.

And so now there's a little incident that occurs early in the book that seems incidental but

it turns out to be very important.

Mordecai somehow finds out about a plot against the king.

And Mordecai tells Esther and from that this plot is thwarted, the guys are apprehended

and killed or whatever.

And it just an incident unrelated to everything else and it turns out to be very pivotal.

Mordecai never gets acknowledged for that but God, it's one of those things, God's timing

is phenomenal.

We watch what happens here.

Mordecai, to really understand what's going on here, you really know the rest of your

Old Testament.

Way back in 2 Samuel 16, there's one of the descendants of Saul that's harassing David.

Obviously Saul has passed as he's gone.

David's now in charge.

But this guy's shimmy eye is along the hills cursing David and throwing rocks at David.

And his men want this guy squelched.

And David says no.

He's cursing, let him curse.

He's spares shimmy eye.

Because he spares shimmy eye, one of his descendants is Mordecai who's on the scene in Esther.

Got the picture?

It gets deeper than that.

He was at a, see Mordecai was the descendant of the shimmy eye, of the house of Kish,

the father of King Saul.

So Mordecai is a product of David's grace, right?

Get the picture?

Yeah, wow is right.

Does you understand how this all ties together?

It re-blows you away.

Now he's going to ultimately confront the villain of the whole story, Haman.

Haman is a result of Saul's failure to follow God's instructions.

And see, Mordecai, Haman hates Mordecai because Mordecai refuses to bow to Haman.

So Haman is, Haman has a vendetta against Mordecai, that's the plot of the whole story.

But what do you got to understand?

See this whole story is a flesh versus the spirit.

This goes way back to Jacob and Esau.

Remember when they're struggling in the womb?

And Amalek descended from Esau.

And Amalek fought with Israel at Rifidim.

And the doom of Amalekites, and Edom, or foretold by Balaam in Numbers 24, by Moses

and Deuteronomy 25, and the whole book of Obadiah deals with this.

Edom represents the flesh versus the spirit.

Now when you have to Saul in 1 Samuel 15, he's instructed by God to destroy the Amalekites,

which includes the king, Agag the king.

And when Saul spares the king, Agag, the king of the Amalekites.

And when Samuel finds that out, he's really upset.

What all these sheep bring?

He keeps Saul, it's taken the spoil rather than wipe it up.

Because Saul didn't do what God told him to do, the kingdom is taken away from Saul.

What you need to understand is that who is the descendant of Agag, king Agag, a guy

by the name of Haman, which was of an Esther.

So in Esther, you've got the result of Saul's failure to do what God said on the one hand,

and you've got Mordecai the result of David's grace in this.

Now Haman is out to wipe out all the Jews, he's particularly after Mordecai, but he wants

to wipe out all Jews in the kingdom.

If he had succeeded, there'd be no temple.

If he had succeeded, there'd be no Redeemer.

So God's not going to let that happen, he's very invisibly behind the scenes obviously.

But Haman does succeed in getting the king to order the extermination of all Jews in

the Persian Empire.

Think about it.

And once that signed, the king himself can't change it.

Now Mordecai realizes that the fate of the Jewish people hangs on Esther.

Because he's the queen, she has access to the king to somehow do something about this.

And for her to approach the king uninvited, subjects her to the possible death.

So she's taking a huge risk in the court procedures of the Persian Empire.

But Mordecai says her thou art come for such a time as this.

He's convinced that she is where she is because God wants her, it has her therefore a destiny.

And she finally, after very concerned about this, she finally says, if I perish, I perish.

She gets the point where she's going to do this.

She knows that she may not survive the ordeal.

So she asks for three days of fasting and prayer, understandably.

Then we get to the critical moment.

Esther enters the inner court of the king.

And that moment, the king seeing her, extends his scepter, which is inviting her to come.

So she's gotten over the first hurdle.

She didn't kill her for violating the procedures.

And all she does, she's a very shrewd gal, or the spirits leading her, a baby both.

She invites the king and Haman to a banquet.

She goes through a banquet.

That's not what she wants.

You and Haman to a banquet.

The king says, okay, great.

Super.

He's obviously a party animal, you know.

And Haman, of course, because he's invited to thinks this is great stuff.

She is on an ego trip.

Now, she invites them to a subsequent banquet.

And what a day brings.

Haman is so gloating because he's on the inside with the king and the queen.

So the scripture says he prepares the gallows for Mordecai.

That's an erroneous translation.

We think of a gallows as a place that you hang somebody, the translators and the king

James, that's the way they visualize the Hebrew word.

The words actually imply impaling on a tree.

The Persians invented crucifixion.

The Romans really ran with it later, but the Persians invented it.

And what's really talking about here is impaling.

He's going to impale Mordecai on a tree like a crucifixion.

But while he's building this so-called gallows or whatever, it happens that night the king

can't sleep.

And when he can't sleep, he does a smart thing.

I don't know about you.

I do the same thing.

If I wake up in the middle of the night, I find a rollover.

I don't go to sleep.

I say, well, I get up and I read for a little while, half an hour, whatever.

Then I go at it and I fall right away.

You found me.

So I middle of the night, get up.

You can't sleep.

Okay, read.

Pick up some read.

Well, that's apparently what this king did.

He picked up the chronicles, the journal, what's going on.

And as he's reading, he discovers something that really bothers him.

He discovers that what he is reminded of this plot where he was going to be killed.

And Mordecai apparently thwarted this on his behalf.

And he realizes Mordecai has never been rewarded for that incredible gesture for the king.

So that's on his mind.

So the next morning, Haman's in the court and the king comes out.

He asks, what would you do for someone?

What should I do for somebody I really want to honor?

Haman, of course, jumps to the conclusion.

He's talking about me.

So he said, well, if you read what I want to honor him, you put him on your robe, give

him your signet, put on your crown, and parade him through the town for a day.

Let him be king for a day.

And parade him through it.

So all the people will know that you're honoring this person.

Mordecai, I mean, Haman, obviously, visualizing himself in that role.

Let everybody see me and bow down on the king for a day coming.

And the king says, good idea.

Do so for Mordecai.

So this backfire is, of course.

And that, of course, humiliates.

That makes Haman even more upset, but he also makes him nervous.

He's getting advice from his friends, hey, buddy, you may not realize it, but you are

in deep yogurt.

So the second banquet, when Esther has the king and Haman present, king says, okay, what's

on your heart?

He says, I'd like my life to be spared.

And the king is shocked.

What do you mean your life being spared?

She explains.

She's Jewish.

And he signed his decree of all Jews killed.

And he, of course, is so shook up by that.

He is so shook by this that he can't even respond.

He in fact says, wait a minute.

He goes out on the balcony to compose himself as he thinks through the implications of this.

He begins to realize not only his beloved queen is Jewish, but he realizes that Haman

engineered this.

He's a victim.

So he's really, he's out on the balcony for a bit.

While he's out, Haman realizes his life's at risk.

And he falls on his knees in front of the couch that Esther's on pleading for his life.

Haman realizes his jeopardy.

As he does so, when the king walks back in, he misconstrues, he thinks, he's attacking

the queen.

And he's really upset now.

So Haman falls in the couch to plead.

The king misconstrues the move and orders Haman hanged, or more precisely impaled.

And he gets impaled on the very gallows that he built for Gessu, Mordecai.

It gets worse.

Haman's entire estate is this cheat to the crown, and it is set under Mordecai's supervision.

Do you see a little irony here?

Isn't God great?

Now the king can't undo the decree that's gone throughout the realm.

It's already a done deal.

But he's regretted it.

So all he can do, the next best thing, he issues a second decree which authorizes the

Jews to defend themselves in 127 provinces from India to Ethiopia.

He also instructs all the magistrates of the king to assist them.

The Jews, obviously, they celebrate this whole event every year at the Feast of Perm.

And the perm is the Hebrew word for Lot, because they cast lots to determine the date earlier

in the story.

An incidental thing, I won't go through the details, I'm sure the text is probably hard

to read on the screen, but the ten sons of Haman are also crucified or impaled.

And as you read the Persian names and tried to decipher them, you discover the ten names

mean curious self or busy body, weeping self, self pity, assembled self, self-mobileized

self-sissioning, generous self-spentherifthiness or self-indulgence, weak self, self-consciousness,

strong self assertiveness, insisting on one's own way, pre-eminent self-ambition and so

on, bold self imprudence, dignified self-proued, haughtiness, what have you, and pure self-worched

of all self-righteousness.

The positioning that the names of his ten sons exemplify self traits that stand in the

way of a relationship with God.

And so all of us need to hang our sons of Haman in our lives, but let's move on.

The book of Esther is often disparaged by some, even Luther said it shouldn't be in the Bible,

because the name of God does not appear in the book.

Well, that's kind of interesting, but see the word Esther means something hidden.

So let me share with you some surprises.

There are hidden codes in the book of Esther.

There are five acrostics that are well known among Talmudic scholars.

And I published those in our news journal many years ago, and one of our subscribers

is a rabbi by the name of Yakov Ramsal who sent me a note.

He says, by the way Chuck, there's three others you don't know about.

Let me share them with you.

And so in Esther verse 1 and verse 20, there's an acrostic that spells Yat Hevaphe, which

is the unpronounceable name of God.

It's the initial letters of these four words because the event that's being alluded to

there is initial, but it's spelled God's name backwards because he's turning back the

councils of man.

Okay, cute little thing.

Esther 5, again we have initial letters because God's initiating the action, but this time

it's spelled forward because God is ruling and causing Esther to act.

Kind of curious.

In Esther chapter 5, again we have Yat Hevaphe, the final letters of the words because

Amans end is approaching.

The written backwards is God is overruling Amans gladness and turning back Amans council.

And Esther 7, 7, you've got again Yat Hevaphe that is final because Amans end come and

forward because God is ruling and bringing about the end that He had determined.

Now these interpretations are the rabbinic interpretations, why they're forward or backward,

whether they're forward or cross-stick or backward or backward or backward.

You see these four different things here.

And so the pairing, you see the first two, the initial letters you use because the facts

are initial and the last two are final letters because the facts are final.

And the first one's backward and the second one's backward and the third one's backward

and the fourth one's forward.

The ones that are backward are gen, to deal with the Gentiles and ones that are forward

deal with the Israelites because Israelites read that correctly, the Gentiles of the direction.

There's also a case of introversion.

The word's spoken concerning a queen versus the word's spoken by a queen or the word's

spoken by Haman or the words concerning Haman.

There's structure, every place you look here.

There's even one where King Lazarus answered and said in Esther the queen, who is he and

where is he that Ders presume in his heart to do so?

This is when the king finds out that she's under threat here.

It's interesting that in the Hebrew of that phrase, if you find the word I am.

Ichia.

Okay.

In Esther chapter 1 verse 3, there's an equidistant letter sequence of the interval of eight.

Interval of eight.

If you look at those letters, you find the word mashia.

And it's eight.

Just as 666 is the number of Satan, 888.

It's the number of the Messiah.

And there's also another one in Esther 4 verses 7 in which it spells Yeshua, Jesus.

And then there's another one in the intervals of seven in Esther 4 verse 2 that is El Shaddai,

the Almighty.

But Ramsal mentions another one.

He says, Chuck, this one you'll get a kick out of.

This is an interval of six.

Okay?

Ready for this?

In interval of six in the Hebrew it says, Haman and Satan stink.

Something hidden.

Now you certainly don't use those to build doctrine.

But in cryptology we call it authentication codes.

The little hints there that it's by design.

Those things don't happen by accident.

You can quickly convince yourself that there's no way it could happen randomly.

Okay.

As we savor the drama of this incredible story of Esther, we should recognize there's some

very key lessons here.

God of course, although operating invisibly behind the scenes, was clearly orchestrating

his plan for caring for his people.

But it's also interesting how this transcends generations.

Mordecai, the hero of the peace in a sense, was actually a result of David's grace in

that he didn't yield to the calls to stone Shemiai from whom Mordecai descended.

Haman was the result of Saul's failure.

Saul had done what Nathan Samuel told him to and to kill the king of Aegag, there never

would have been a Haman.

But are there implications of all of this today?

Are there things that transcends generations?

Well let me mention an example.

I'm indebted to my friend Joe Fosch, who's the senior pastor of the Calvary Chapel in

Philadelphia, for this delightful discovery.

Edward Kimball had a burden for one of his Sunday school students to know Jesus as Lord

and Savior.

So he went to see him at the shoe store where he worked and he led them and he led him to

Jesus Christ in that store.

The name of this young student was Dwight L. Moody, who of course has come to be, whose

two has changed his ministry, his rocked several continents.

Well while Moody was preaching in the British Isles, he spoke at a small chapel, pastured

by Frederick Broderton Meyer.

And Meyer in this sermon, Moody told an emotionally charged story of a Sunday school teacher,

he knew who personally went to every student in his class and won them to Jesus Christ.

The message changed Pastor Meyer's entire ministry and inspiring him to become an evangelist.

Over the years, Meyer came to America several times to preach.

And once in Northfield, Massachusetts, a confused young preacher sitting in the back row heard

Meyer say, if you're not willing to give everything to God, are you willing to be made willing?

And that remark led J. Wilbert Chapman to accept the call of God on his life.

Chapman went on to become one of the most effective evangelists of his time.

A volunteer who helped Chapman's crusades learn to preach by watching him.

His name was Billy Sunday.

Sunday eventually took over Chapman's ministry, becoming one of the most effective evangelists

in the 20th century.

In the greater arenas of the nation, Billy Sunday's preaching turned thousands to Christ.

Well inspired by a 1924 Billy Sunday crusade in Charlotte, North Carolina, a committee of

Christians committed themselves to reaching that city for Christ.

And they invited Mordecai Ham to hold a series of evangelistic meetings in 1932.

A lanky 16-year-old sat in the crowd one evening and spellbound by the message of this

white-haired preacher who seemed to be shouting and waving his long finger directly at him.

Night after night, the youth attended and finally went forward to give his life to Christ.

That teenager's name was Billy Graham.

Billy Graham has obviously communicated the gospel to Jesus Christ to more people than

anyone else in the history of the world.

Now remember how this sequence began at nobody named Kimball, concerned for one of his students,

visited him at a shoe store.

In doing that, Kimball changed the world.

Millions upon millions have been affected by his decision to go to that shoe store and

millions more will continue to feel its impact.

My question to you is, can anything like that happen today?

You know it's interesting to realize that obviously without him, without God we can't.

But the flip side of that is without us he won't.

So one of the things I want to ask you, what do you think about these things?

What's your view?

What are you going to do about these things?

Jesus said, therefore be ulcerity.

For in such an hour as you think not, son of man cometh.

The Book of Nehemiah, the ability of the city.

In this case we're going to move up to Artaxerxes I.

Artaxerxes called Lon Jimanas that we've already talked about a little bit.

And as you mentioned, Esther is the end of Ezra.

Then we have the Book of Nehemiah during which we find the Decoré of Artaxerxes which of

course triggers the study weeks of Daniel.

So we have the various prophets also supplementing that.

Something as you get through Ezra and Nehemiah that I like to point out for your own understanding,

there are people that try to build, on the one hand people make mistake by not being

precise enough in the scripture.

But there's also a corollary type of error where you make precision, where there isn't

precision intended.

Spinning hairs so to speak.

There are people that try to build huge cases about the term Jews versus Israelite.

The Jew represents Judah and not Israel.

There are some places where that's true, there's some place where it's not.

I want to alert you of something.

After the Babylonian captivity, the terms Jew and Israelite are used interchangeably.

I'm asserting that and I want you to check it out for yourself.

Ezra calls the returning remnant Jews eight times.

He calls them Israel 40 times.

They're used interchangeably.

All Israel, these are two, three, eight, ten, and so forth.

That's the places.

Nehemiah also uses Jews 11 times, Israel 22 times.

You see the point I'm trying to make?

They're used interchangeably.

All Israel being back in the land, Nehemiah 12 verse 47 and so on.

Malachi speaks the remnant as the nation, Malachi 1 1 and so forth.

In the New Testament, well, in the New Testament, Anna, you may recall, in Luke 2,

knew her tribe of Nenvi as a tribe of Asher.

Not 10 lost tribes.

The 10 lost tribes is a myth of literature.

It's a cruise from a misunderstanding of 2 Chronicles 11 and a lot of other passages.

It's a myth.

I'm accepting the tribe of Dan.

It did spin out in some strange ways.

But the idea of the North, the lost tribes, they had faithful of all 12 go south before

the captivity.

The idol worshipers went north and got wiped out.

Paul knew he was of the tribe of Benjamin.

He calls himself a Jew and an Israelite in Romans 11 verse 1.

The New Testament uses the word Israel 75 times.

The word Jew 174 times.

At the feast of Pentecost, Peter cries, ye men of Judea, Acts 2.

Ye men of Israel, Acts 2, same chapter, eight verses later.

All the house of Israel in Acts 2, all three terms Peter is using to the people he's starting

to do.

Anyway, let's move on.

We had the Babylonian part, Persian part of the Greek empire.

In the Greek empire, of course, we had the Septuagint that I've alerted you of that so

far.

There's another guy that shows up that's important by the name of Antiochus Epiphanes.

He's not a important guy in secular history.

Antiochus III is called Antiochus the Great.

Antiochus IV is a guy that shows up who's very important, biblically.

And Antiochus IV.

The power in about 175 BC in about 170 BC, Ptolemy of Egypt sought to recover territory

ruled over by Antiochus.

So he invaded Egypt and defeated Ptolemy VI and proclaimed himself king of Egypt.

So he returned from his conquest, trouble broke out in Jerusalem.

So he decided to subdue Jerusalem.

People were subjugated, the temple desecrated, the temple treasury plundered.

And from his conquest Antiochus returned to Egypt but was forced by Rome then to evacuate

Egypt because Rome's getting powerful by now.

So he's really upset about all of this.

So he's taken it all out on Jerusalem, which is a buffer state between the Seleucid Empire

and the Ptolemyic Empire.

So he plunders and desecrates the temple.

And he calls himself Epiphanes, the illustrious one.

The kids on the street call him Epimenes, which means the madmen.

But he makes, he's bad news.

He made Torah reading, reading the Torah, the five books of Moses, punishable by death.

He forced the Jews to eat desecrated foods, unclean foods.

He slaughtered a sow on the altar.

You know how the Jews feel about pork and how they feel about their braids and the holy

altar in Jerusalem?

You can imagine how that went over.

But he didn't stop there.

His big event was to erect an idol to Zeus in the holy of holies.

See an abomination in the Bible is idol worship.

Any idol is an abomination to God.

He says, Lord, that God is a jealous God and so forth.

The most abominable of them all is an idol that is erected in the holy of holies.

The most sacred spot.

If you read one and saw God, you only get an idol.

You put it the most sacred spot on the planet earth in Jerusalem, in the temple.

In fact, in the holy place, no, in the holy of holies.

And that's exactly what he did.

And that precipitated the Becca Bien Revolt.

Mattapheus, a patriotic priest, had five sons.

And they, and one of the sons, Julius Mecca Bies, was an incredible military genius.

They actually threw off the yoke of the Seleucid Empire.

It took them three years.

They took the temple vessels that had been desecrated, destroyed the made new ones, and

rededicated the temple.

All this was on Antagas Epiphani's birthday.

He erected an idol on his birthday, 25th of the kiss level of the Jewish calendar.

The third anniversary of all this, when they finally were stronger to do that, they rededicated

the temple.

And that is celebrated to this day by Hanukkah.

Now, Hanukkah, like all holies, they have some colorful legends around it.

But the real point of Hanukkah is the rededication of the temple.

It is authorized in the New Testament in John 10, verse 22.

So Hanukkah has a biblical relevance.

Why?

Because Jesus makes reference to this.

Jesus has a four disciples come to Jesus about his return, Peter, James, and John, and also

Andrew, Peter's brother.

And they have a private briefing on a second coming.

It's recorded in three of the Gospels.

We'll take the Matthew 24, 25, Mark 13, Luke 21.

And we'll take a quick look at Matthew 24.

He's all point to Daniel as the key to end time prophecy.

Let's take the Matthew account.

Set up on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately saying, tell us, when

shall these things be?

And what shall be the sign of thy coming on the end of the age?

Good question.

We're very interested.

He gives them a two-chapter answer.

He's answered and said, and take heed that no man deceive you.

He opens and closes his presentation by telling them not to let themselves get deceived.

For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many.

You shall hear wars and rumors of war, see it, she not be troubled.

For all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

They're not signs.

Some people list these as signs.

No, they're not signs.

These end is not yet.

For a nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there shall be.

Families, pestilence, earthquakes, and diverse places.

All these are but the beginning of sorrows.

But they're reading not signs.

He's going to tell us what signs are.

The end is not yet.

When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation spoken by Daniel the prophet,

and in the holy place.

Let's pause right there.

How can somebody see something that's standing in the holy place, the holy of holies, is

only the high priest can go in there and only once a year after a great ceremonial preparation.

But he's going to tell them, let them wish to be in Judea, flee the mountains when you

see this.

How can they see this?

I'll see you in the end.

This is a politically, I'm not being flippant.

This is a politically event.

And when they are conscious of it happening, Jesus says, you split and you split right

now.

Don't even go grab your coat.

You get out of there.

Let them which be in Judea, flee the mountains.

Notice he says, Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place, you covered that before.

And he points to Daniel 9 in this passage.

Who shall real let him understand?

Do your homework, you say.

Let them which be in Judea, flee to the mountains.

Let him which is in the housetop.

Not come down to take anything out of his house.

Neither let him which is in the field.

Return back to take his clothes.

And warn of them that are with child and to them that give suck in those days.

And pray that your flight be not in the winter neither on the Sabbath day.

What is the Sabbath day got to do with anything?

They'll be celebrating the Sabbath at this time.

He's talking to Jews.

See, the Jew has a problem.

How do you flee on the Sabbath day?

He's praying that's not on the Sabbath day.

For then shall be great tribulations such as not since the beginning of the world, to

this time known or ever shall be another which can be worse than the Holocaust in Nazi Germany.

Except those days should be shortened, there shouldn't no flesh be saved.

The entire world is at risk.

But for the Alexei, those days shall be shortened.

Well, of course we have the Roman Empire, phase one emerging as we speak.

So these things are all taking shape.

And I won't go through the whole, I mentioned a couple of things here.

Pompey conquered Judea in 63 BC.

Herod Antipater was an Edomite.

And he was appointed, he was appointed a ruler but he had to stay in Rome.

It was too dangerous.

In 40 BC, the Parthians conquered Judea in 37.

The Romans again regained Judea.

So Herod the Great succeeds Antipater, it was not very popular.

But the point is even though he's appointed by Rome, he can't rule there until he's safe

enough to get there because Judea is a buffer state between two rival empires, the Roman

Empire to the West and the Parthian Empire to the East.

31 BC we have the Battle of Actium, that's where the Republic becomes an empire under

Augustus.

We have the registration and census ordered that we see in the Gospel period.

In 7 AD the Roman Procurator appoints, he removes the right of capital punishment from

the Sanhedrin.

They can no longer administer the death penalty.

You and I figure that's a legal technicolon.

They understood what that meant.

The High Priests went, the Babylon Talmud records how the High Priests put on sackcloth

and ashes and marched through Jerusalem singing woe unto us for the scepter is departed

from Judah and the Messiah's not to get it.

They thought the Word of God had been broken because in Genesis 49 verse 10, Jacob prophesied

that the scepter shall not depart from Judah until the Messiah comes, till Shiloh come.

Because the scepter departed, they thought the Word of God had been broken.

They actually thought that.

What they didn't know was that up in Nazareth in the carpenter shop, it was a young boy

growing up to manhood.

So he had come, they just didn't know it.

Well in the next hour, when we meet again, we'll be looking at the major prophets, Isaiah,

Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel are the major prophets, we've already covered Daniel.

But we'll talk about Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel as incredible, incredible treasures.

And let's stand for closing word of prayer.

Let's bow our hearts, Father, we stand in awe of your Word.

We just thank you for who you are.

And we thank you that you care so much for us to have gone to such extremes that we might

live.

We thank you for your Word, the incredible treasures that are tucked in every nook and

cranny.

We thank you for the joy of your Word, we thank you for the comfort of your Word.

But above all, Father, we thank you that your Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

We thank you, Father, that through the gift of your Son, Jesus Christ.

We have access to you, we have an opportunity to be clothed in your righteousness, his righteousness,

his own.

Oh, Father, we thank you.

We would pray, Father, that through your Holy Spirit you would open our understanding to

your Word.

You alone, Father, can mind-fold our prejudices and help us to set aside the baggage of misconceptions

we've picked up along the way.

Help us to understand what you're saying and what you mean.

We ask that through the Holy Spirit, Father, let Him be our real teacher, that each of

us might grow in grace in the knowledge of the Lord and Savior.

And Father, we would pray that we each would become more fruitful stewards of the opportunities

you've placed before us.

Help us to understand what you would have of us in the days that remain.

As we commit ourselves without any reservation into your hands, in the name of Yeshua, our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Amen.