For Such A Time As This

Finding An “Esther” Kind of Courage, In a Haman kind of world ....

Purim is upon us again. That Jewish Holiday in which everyone celebrates one of the great victories of the Jewish History, brought about by an orphan girl, and her uncle who were caught up in the Babylonian Captivity under King Zerxes (a.k.a. Ahasurus).

In this historical account, the king's reigning queen went against one of his decrees, and was, as a result, banished from the kingdom. This put him in need of a queen, and so a great search was made of all possible candidates, and young ladies were stripped from their homes and hauled to the palace in great numbers, all to become concubines of the king, with the exception of ONE who would replace the resistant Queen.

As the story unfolds we become acquainted with a scribe named Mordecai. A Jewish captive, who has done well enough for he and his family in Babylonian Captivity, and his young niece, named Hadassah, whom he had adopted, as she was orphaned, probably in the raid of Israel, when these people were captured and hauled off.

Hadassah's Babylonian name was Esther. And it was during this raid of potential candidates for the place of Queen, that Esther was taken to the palace along with scores of other young women. Her faithful uncle Mordecai using what influence he had to keep up with her whereabouts and general safety.

It turned out that Esther found favor in the king's eyes and was indeed made queen. And during this process something alarming happened. Mordecai managed to insult the king's right hand man. A nefarious character named Haman, who was descended from a long line of Jew haters. But not before he had saved the king's life from some insidious servants in the palace.

The end of the story being, that Haman talks the king (who obviously isn't paying attention to much of anything but who will be his new queen) into issuing a decree that all Jews will be hunted down and killed! Not knowing that the new queen was a Jew, and that the man at whom all this rage was aimed was her nearest kinsman, and just happened to be the fellow who most recently saved the king's life! Oy! Talk about irony! 

So. In the end. The decree is sent out, bearing the king's signet. And the Jews are now in mortal danger. Mordecai sends word to Esther, since she is in a notable position at this time. And requests that she get an audience with the king, to, perhaps,  talk him out of this madness. But there is just one little problem. The king gets to call her, she does not get to call him!

She makes this situation known to him, but her uncle persists, and finally says to her; something like, "You may think that you will escape this slaughter. But it it doubtful. Only GOD can save us ultimately, and He will, but perhaps you were given this position for …." . Drum Roll Please..... “Such a time as this?”. So this is when Esther orders a nationwide FAST, and says, when the fast is complete I will go before the king, and... basically ....  if he does not raise his scepter to me, if he does not receive me, then  ….. “If I Perish, I Perish”....

But, I think what most folks miss here is that she would have at least perished knowing that she had done the right thing!  Instead of perishing in regret, as God chose another one, through which He would deliver His nation. She would not perish in cowardly self serving, but in a brave and laudable attempt at doing what was best for all concerned! 

We need more of this kind of courage among God's people today! We've all gotten way too comfy in the culture of the world around us, and have, for all practical purposes, left the Kingdom that we've been called to represent in the dust of our own success!  

Especially in this age of the “new normal” of the “Politically Correct” ideologies, “New Age” indoctrination of our Nation, wherein Truth has become, once again, a dangerous commodity.

 Don't hear what I am not saying though! The "ideology" was just as wrong, as in Scripturally Illiterate, in the “old school”, “Religiously Correct”, now colloquial, system of “Churchology”, to which this PC stuff is a mere kick-back!

That old school stuff, that obviously thought it was okay to demean anyone of a darker skin hue, then go to church on Sunday morning acting all self-righteous! That rank, God-offending, hypocrisy was the mess which Dr. King pushed against!

And it was His persistent pushing of The TRUTH to which they objected, to the point that they took his life because he challenged their unscriptural paradigms!

Now, the deception has been flipped again, however, so that if anyone who attempts to bring God into the discussion, in a SCRIPTURALLY CORRECT way, those people are bombarded, and condemned, demeaned as an immoral ignoramous, by both of those false ideologies!

One ideology which used scripture wrongly to achieve its fleshly ends, and the "opposite" ideology which now blames the scripture for all wrongs, because of that errant system of past misuse. When, honestly? Both ideologies are just the opposite ends of the same measuring stick of man-made pride! 

So, it takes an unusual amount of courage to speak Truth now days. To take a stand. But I shouldn't really say, “now days”. Since Cain slew Able with a rock, in the second generation of humans, over what kind of sacrifice GOD had commanded!  Let's face it, folks have been in a general dispute about what GOD actually said, and what that should look like since that serpent in the Garden confused sister Eve! And folks have been losing their lives to the haters of His Word the whole way ever since.

BUT - It is time for those of us who KNOW our GOD (and who have taken the time to KNOW HIS WORD, and take it seriously)  to stand up and fight this great deception.

A fight which is possibly the last fight of human history. A fight needed to bring about a reawakening of GOD's TRUTH in this Nation again. And to put down the "Haman's" of our generation, who come from a long line of God-haters, Truth-twisters, and Murderers of Righteousness – beginning with the new life in the womb.

It is time that we put OUR lives on the line to save theirs; To stop the dissolution of our Constitution;  and to cease the destruction of righteous government on our watch!

It is time we rose up – with a mighty voice – like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the most venerated actual “Christians” of our time – unafraid of what was to come from man, but more worried about what would come from God.

It is time we stopped our wishy-washy, greasy-grace approach to the WORD of GOD, and got in line with what HE has to say about it! And, if, in this temporal life we perish? Then we perish!

But, like Esther, we will go down (or UP as the case may be), in peace that we did the right thing.

Look, we will all die - that is, disconnect from this flesh and this planet -  sooner or later. And it can't be too soon for me, honestly! But when we leave, which way will we go? And when we stand in front of The Judge of all, will He be wearing a smile or a frown?

Will we have contributed to Life or Death? Will we have built His Kingdom in the earth, or just collected a pile of wood hay and stubble to our own, very temporary benefit? Will we feel the relief of finally making home-base, or will we bear the regret of a life of selfish failure for all eternity, apart from our Creator?

The Battle we face, the choice left to us, may not be as clear as was Esther's, but we had best be figuring out which Kingdom we are contributing to! And, as the open-book test answers indicate -
"CHOOSE LIFE"! His Life. His definition. His Way. And … be willing to perish here, if necessary, to obtain that eternal crown. . . For.. it turns out that we were ALL ....

"BORN, FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS" …

SELAH ….

SCD

2/26/21