Zechariah 3 Darius 2nd Year There’s a metaphor I like called the “magical pair of glasses” that allow people to see what is really going on all around them in spiritual warfare—like angels and demons. When you don’t have them on, you only see what the humans around you are doing. But in passages like […]
Zechariah 2 Darius 2nd Year G-d has a way of cramming chapters of meaning into a single verse like verse 2. If the project was to rebuild the temple, and the goal was to minister to the entire country of Israel, why would the angel be measuring Jerusalem? It may initially seem odd because its […]
Zechariah 1:7-21 Darius 2nd Year, 11th Month, 24th Day (2.11.24) Here comes one of Zechariah’s psychedelic moments! Even though the seed of revival, sewn through the tag-team duo of Zechariah and Haggai, had taken root in Jerusalem, it still hadn’t spread across the whole land, which was essential to G-d’s plan. It’s also still essential […]
Zechariah 1:1-6 Darius 2nd Year, 8th Month, ??st Day (2.8.??) Definitely one of the “psychedelic prophets,” in between Zechariah’s wild visions of flying scrolls and still-popular sayings like, “the apple of my eye,” Zechariah has some remarkably immediate and lucid passages that are as clear and prescient today as they were then. The first half […]
At this point in the game, G-d knows what trials we have gone through, and more importantly, He knows the trials to come. In this moment, He asks us to compare our temple: the way it was before exile and the way it is now, and knowing all the trials we face He says, “Take […]
Be prepared leaders! The trials are about to get tougher. Your Bible might have a heading for this chapter, “Haggai Begins Temple Building,” but by the second year of Darius’s reign, they had been at it for nearly 3 decades! And at this point in the story, his grandson had ordered the work stopped. Sometimes, […]
In chapter 4, Ezra steps back and allows a more encompassing view of the future, foreshadowing a death to the vision of rebuilding the temple. Whenever we set our minds to doing G-d’s will and proclaim His light, it draws bugs. Satan is the biggest bug of all. In Ezra 4, the bugs came and, […]
Q. Why did the leaders start by rebuilding the altar? A. Because they were terrified of the peoples of the lands. Sacrifices, feasts, and festivals were the order of the day. They wanted a public statement of dedication to focus their efforts on rebuilding, and one goal was their defense against the peoples of the […]
As the great theologian and writer, Steven Ger, once said, “There’s a lot of great action in genealogies.” I found humor in that the 5th name of this genealogy, “the sons of Elam were 1,254.” Then near the end, and just to see if you were paying attention, the Lord included, “the sons of the […]
Are you ready for miracles? How about plans within plans? What is G-d going to reveal to you…to all of us about rebuilding our temple after Covid exile as we read through these 56 days of scriptures together? Time and space are going to fold as we simultaneously A) journey through a rich tapestry carefully […]
