they couldn't be burned (Dan. 3). Darius learned they couldn't be eaten (Dan. 6). Haman learned they couldn't be hanged (Est. 7).
(4) After his execution, Xerxes gave Esther Haman's estate and appointed Mordecai his new prime minister (& 1 , 2 ).
(5) Both now begged the king to reverse Haman's order. But the law of the Medes and Persians once made, was immutable, and not even Xerxes himself could change it. Xerxes then did the next best thing. He ordered the jews to defend themselves. Mordecai immediately sent copies of this new decree to all of the 127 provinces (8:3-14).
B. The institution of a feast—Purim (9-10).
1. The Jews perpared themselves and were able to slaughter their enemies on February 23, execution day (9:1-19).
2. Mordecai and Esther then instituted a new memorial feast called Purim, to commemorate yearly their great salvation from Haman (9:20-32).
3. Mordecai became a great and godly statesman, respected by both Jews and Gentiles for his abilities and actions (10).
Note: Some 1400 years after the events in the book of Esther had transpired, an amazing twentieth century replay was enacted in Russia:
On March 1, 1953—a bare eight years after the holocaust that took the lives of six million Jews—Josef Stalin unveiled a proposal to liquidate the Jews of the Soviet Union—another three million. The proposal was due to go into effect on March 9, but it never did, for a day after Stalin presented it, he unexpectedly dropped dead of a stroke.
The amazing story, often rumored, has been officially confirmed by a non-Jewish Soviet librarian, Ludmila Lufa- nov, who worked for years in top-secret Soviet archives in Moscow. She managed relatively recently to leave the USSR and now lives in the United States. A short while ago, in a Soviet Russian language journal, she told the incredible story and a copy reached the Jewish Press in Jerusalem.
Stalin, a paranoid Jew-hater, had liquidated thousands of Jews in the 1930s, including many who had been his most loyal and trusted comrades from the beginning of the Bolshevik movement. He liquidated not only the infamous Jewish community party section—Yevesektzia—which did more to wipe out Judaism and Jewish culture than anyone else, but also exterminated the heads of the Yevesektzia. After the war, which interrupted his plans for the Jews, Stalin was infuriated at the reception given to Israel's first ambassador to Moscow, Golda Meir, by Soviet Jews. He moved ruthlessly.
Jewish poets, writers, and artists were liquidated (most of whom had been loyal communists who had never complained when Stalin liquidated religious and Zionist Jews). He demanded that the satellite states do the same and the world was stunned to see Czechoslovak Community Party boss—Slansky—a loyal Stalinist, and a number of other top Jews, tried on charges of "cosmopolitanism" and "treason" and hanged. But it was the infamous "doctor's plot" that was to mark the climactic moment of Jewish genocide.
In 1953 Stalin suddenly announced that a "plot" had been discovered to kill him. It was a devious and clever one, planned by doctors—all of whom happened to be Jewish. The controlled press gave the "plotters" and the 'plot" non-stop first-page treatment. Denunciations from puppet Communists came in from all over the Soviet Union. It was clear that the key word here was "Jewish" or the code names "Cosmopolitanism" and "Zionism." Stalin decided that the hanging of the doctors would serve as a pretext for mass rioting on the part of Soviet masses that would last three days and would eliminate two thirds of the three million Soviet Jews. The rest would be sent to Siberia to concentration camps where they would also die.
On March 1 , 1953, at 12 noon, Stalin called a meeting of the Politburo in the Kremlin and read to the Soviet leaders his plan for the extermination of the Jews. According to the secret transcript, he said:
"The murderers in the white jackets have admitted their guilt. On the ninth of March they will be hanged in Red Square before all to see, but not even this punishment will satisfy our people. . . . The masses' anger will not be satisfied and there will be three days when we will be unable to stem the righteous wrath of the people who will pour out their fury on the Jewish heads."
Stalin concluded by saying that after three days, the heads of the Jewish community will admit in writing their collective guilt against the Russian people and will plead with the government to save them from total annihilation.
"After receiving this request to intervene, the government will not be able to remain aloof, and in order to separate the racist Jews from the Russian people, the Jews will be placed on special railroad cars and sent to the Far North and the Siberian plains. However, only a third of the passengers on the special trains will arrive at their destinations. The other two-thirds will fall victim to the anger of the masses at every stop along the way."
According to the librarian, when Stalin finished reading the proposal there was dead silence in the room. Stalin, furious, cursed his cabinet minister and walked out, slamming the door.
On March 2, the day after outlining the plans and exactly a week before the extermination of the three million Jews was to have taken place—Stalin died of a stroke. He lay in state for a week and was buried on March 9, which was the Jewish holiday—Purim.
HAGGAI (520 B.c.)
INTRODUCTION:
1. The name Haggai means, "my feast."
2. His book is the second smallest in the Old Testament (Obadiah is the shortest), and consists of but thirty- eight verses.
3. Haggai was a contemporary of Zechariah. Both are mentioned in the book of Ezra (5:1; 6:14) as that dynamic duet who functioned as God's spiritual cheerleaders in erecting the Temple under Zerubbabel.
4. Haggai's prophecies are the most precisely dated ones in all the Bible.
5. His book has been compared to the epistle of James in the New Testament.
6. A chronology of this period may be seen by the following:
a. 536 b.c.: 50,000 Jews under Zerubbabel return to Jerusalem.
b. 536 b.c.: seventh month, they build the altar and offer sacrifice.
c. 535 b.c.: second month, work on the Temple begins, and is stopped.
d. 520 b.c.: sixth month (September), first day, Hag- gai's call to build.
(1) sixth month, twenty-fourth day, building begins
(2) seventh month (October), twenty-first day, Haggai's second appeal
(3) eighth month (November), Zechariah's opening address
(4) ninth month (December), twenty-fourth dqy, Haggai's third and fourth
(5) eleventh month (February), twenty-fourth day, Zechariah's visions
e. 518 b.c.: ninth month (December), fourth day, Zechariah's visions
f. 516 b.c.: twelfth month (March), third day, the Temple is completed.
g. 515 b.c.: first month (April), fourteenth—twenty- first days, joyful Passover.
h. 455 b.c.: Ezra comes to Jerusalem and makes certain reforms.
i. 445 B.c.: Nehemiah rebuilds the wall. Period of Malachi.
7. Thus, his book is actually a record of four sermons.
a. His first is found in 1:1-11.
b. His second, in 2:1-9.
c. His third, in 2:10-19.
d. His fourth, in 2:20-23.
8. The New Testament passage found in 1 Corinthians 15:58 may appropriately be written over the book of Haggai.
I. A September Message: Directed to the hands of the people. It said, "Perform!" (1:1-15).
A. The people had just about given up concerning the building of their Temple. After fifteen years it remained unfinished. Their lame excuse was,
'The time is not yet come, the time that the Lord's house should be built" (1:2).
Because of this carelessness, God could not and would not bless them with either spiritual or financial prosperity.
B. God's advice to them was therefore to:
"Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the Lord" (1:8).
C. The spirits of Zerubbabel (the governor) and Joshua (the high priest) were then stirred up by the Lord. This godly pair thus led the people to finish building the Temple.
II. An October Message: Directed to the hearts of the people. It said, "Patience!" (2:1-9).
A. In spite of the insignificant Temple they had just built, as we have already seen (Ezra 3:8-13), there was weeping as well as joy at the dedication during Zerubbabel's time as some of the old men remembered the glories of Solomon's Temple. The new Temple was far inferior in size and cost.
B. Patience was needed because of the magnificent temple that would someday be built.
"The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the Lord of hosts; and in this place will I give peace, said the Lord of hosts" (2:9).