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Esther--Right Place, Right Time

CONNIE: Is it possible to make a wrong turn on your life's journey and still end up at the right place at the right time? Join us as we find an answer in the biblical book of Esther. Giving God's trumpet a Certain Sound for more than 70 years, this is the Voice of Prophecy.

CONNIE: Hello, I'm Connie Jeffery,

LONNIE: And I'm Lonnie Melashenko.

CONNIE: Lonnie, have you ever been in a big hurry to get somewhere and made one wrong turn . . .

LONNIE: Oh! I sure have, you bet. Just last fall at our Chicago Midnight Cry series with Ken Cox there I made a wrong turn, and its forty-five minutes later, and you end up at O' Hare field.

CONNIE: So you can't turn around and go back.

LONNIE: You can't get there from here!

CONNIE: Well you know life's like that sometimes. One wrong turn can lead to lots of problems.

LONNIE: Or one right choice can spare us a lot of trouble.

CONNIE: There was a catchy popular song about that a few years ago--something about "We Determine Our Fate by the Choices We Make."

LONNIE: That's right--but the question I'd like to look at in our program today is whether that's always true or not. Do bad decisions always lead to good results, and vice versa?

CONNIE: In other words, is there some sort of cosmic law--like karma or something--that makes sure everyone gets just what they deserve based on their choices?

LONNIE: Or is there another law--the law of grace--that interposes and changes things? Does God's grace step in and give us something better than we deserve?
That's a question I think we find addressed in the story told in one of the most fascinating books in the Old Testament. A Bible book that, amazingly, doesn't even mention God. The book of Esther.

CONNIE: Well, I can't wait to hear your message today, which you call "Esther--Right Place, Right Time," but before we get to that, we have a fascinating modern-day Esther story to share with you--coming from the country of Bulgaria.

LONNIE: Ken Wade got this story straight from the horse's mouth I guess you could say--in this interview with Svilen Kolev. It's a story of being in the right place at the right time--or was it the wrong place? You decide.

KEN: Svilen Kolev, welcome to our program today. Glad to have you here.

SVILEN: Thank you Ken.

KEN: Svilen, you and I met by e-mail. You come from Bulgaria, and we just have the privilege of getting together here at the world conference of our church. Svilen, you speak very good English I think.

SVILEN: Well very flattering I believe.

KEN: Tell me though, there's a good reason why you learned English and speak it so well. You had a job there in Bulgaria during the communist régime that required a good command of English.

SVILEN: Well, in fact I'll just put it in a nutshell. I am the former commissioned officer of the security service of the Bulgarian government.

KEN: So that would be the secret police essentially?

SVILEN: That's right.

KEN: And what was your responsibility there.

SVILEN: Well my responsibility was, well I was actually in charge of fifty men deployed through out the mailing post offices, throughout the territory of the city, which was the administrative center for the area I lived in. Also I was part of a member of a unit that did the secret surveillance on all communications, telephone tapping.

KEN: So any mail, any telephone calls, anything that was coming in English…

SVILEN: Not only in English. But total surveillance…

KEN: But you were particularly responsible to check any letters that came in…

SVILEN: I was actually, well, by another name, a front name I subscribed to a NATO magazine, and my superiors wanted to have the fresh articles on the tanks or any sophisticated weaponry that was put in articles.

KEN: You were essentially a spy inside Bulgaria?

SVILEN: Yes, but not deployed.

KEN: Now the amazing thing to me as we corresponded by e-mail was to find out from you that, while you were working there as a secret police officer, spying essentially on any communications that were coming in, you were also using your evenings to translate Christian books.

SVILEN: Exactly! And these books were the three volumes of Brother Arthur Spaulding's "History of the Seventh-day Adventist Church."

KEN: And you were getting these so that people would know about Christianity. How in the world did you happen to be in contact with a book like that, and particularly translating that?

SVILEN: Well the case goes like this. My grandparents were Seventh-Day Adventists, and actually their witness was always impressing me.

KEN: So even though you were doing this work for the…

SVILEN: Well actually, sorry to interrupt you, I was not quit convinced, but I just did this for their sake, because I love them.

KEN: For you own grandparents.

SVILEN: Well that was the uppermost feeling, which actually urged me to do so.

KEN: Well that's fascinating. Now Svilen the story that thrilled my heart was to hear your telling of how in 1989, as things began to fall apart for the communists régime in Bulgaria. You began to feel a little bit like Ester didn't you?

SVILEN: Well the story is, as I told you Ken, well when I come back to the moments of that thrilling day, I wouldn't say that I would want to relive it again, in a nutshell it goes like this. Well all of the commissioned officers were summoned to the superiors, and we had on the video tape all of the people from the local Seventh-day Adventist Church, and the man from the so called sixth department, which surrvailinced all of these organizations that were outside the communist party. He was in charge of collecting the task force to arrest my people, and also to destroy the church.

KEN: So you were looking at videotape showing the people you knew from the church.

SVILEN: Yes and I knew everyone, and they said they had very poorly organized agents just supplying them with the names of only half of the church members. And I knew personally everybody from the church, and I was praying all the while, please Lord do not allow this destruction.

KEN: So they were going to be arrested-- what in about two or three days.

SVILEN: Yes, maybe the church board members, which were on the list supplied by the agent, and maybe some other prominant fellows who they…

KEN: So they would be thrown in prison on the following Sunday, or Monday, or something I think you were saying.

SVILEN: They would have been under arrest, they would have been detained for a longer period had they been under arrest. But in general it was a very dangerous situation, because the secret police raids had destroyed the Evangelical church, and the Church of Gods Followers, and some Protestant denominations

KEN: So this was about to happen, and this was on a Thursday when you were learning about it. You must have had a hard time sleeping.

SVILEN: I could not sleep.

KEN: But what happened on Friday?

SVILEN: Friday the news bulletin of the national radio announced that the former general secretary of the communist party was overthrown, and a new general secretary was elected, and I said thank you Lord. Because the moment the first edict he issued was to abolish those activities of the secret police, which actually were concerned with the arresting of the religious bodies.

KEN: And you went and resigned immediately.

SVILEN: Well on Monday I resigned my commission, which was accepted by the minister of Internal Affairs, and I say Ken, I was captain by rank as an officer, now I'm a captain of one of the hosts of the Lord, I'm a church elder.

KEN: Thank you Svilen. We really appreciated it, and what a thrilling story of God's deliverance, and how he uses someone in any position they are.

SVILEN: Yes, right.

KEN: Thank you very much

LONNIE: Isn't that a fantastic story Connie?

CONNIE: Can you imagine the pressure Svilen was under?

LONNIE: If it had been me--I don't think I would have slept well that night. Thinking, wondering. What do I do? Shall I warn my friends??what will happen to me if I do?

CONNIE: But he was spared having to make that decision. Somehow the grace of God kicked in, and the enemies of God's people were overthrown at just the right moment.

LONNIE: And not only that. The grace of God kicked into high gear in Svilen's life. He abandoned his double life and took his stand on the side of God.

CONNIE: When you think about it, there's a lot of similarity between what happened to Svilen and the story of Esther. In each case, a person was in a position of power in a secular government--kind of hiding out from their religious convictions. But God hadn't forgotten them. He never forgets us, wherever we are. We're always on His mind.

CONNIE: That was our own Del Delker singing "He Had Me on His Mind." The song is found on her record album "On His Mind."

LONNIE: I love the thought that song expresses--that even when it seems to us like we're far away from God, He still remembers us. In today's program we're looking at the story of Esther. It's one of only two books in the Bible that never mention God. Esther was living in a world where other gods were worshiped. She was more than a thousand miles away from her ancestral roots in Israel. But she wasn't out of reach of God.

CONNIE: That's right. She was still on His mind.

LONNIE: And friend, we want to remind you today that wherever you are, you are still on God's mind. Maybe you have some tough decisions to make, as Queen Esther did.
Everyone has important decisions to make every day. And we'd like to offer you a copy of one of our books called Your Most Radical Decision. It includes a chapter titled "In the Right Place--At the Right Time," that gives good suggestions on putting yourself where God can best bless you and your decisions.

CONNIE: Here's a good decision you can make right now: Pick up the phone and call 1-800-872-0055, and ask for a copy of the book Your Most Radical Decision. It's our gift you to today--just for the asking. The number again is 1-800-872-0055, and we'll give our mailing address after Lonnie's message, in case you prefer to write to us.

LONNIE: The title of the book is Your Most Radical Decision and you can call and ask for it any time.
CONNIE: But right now, let's listen as Lonnie shares today's message "Esther--Right Place, Right Time."

Esther--Right Place, Right Time--2

Did Esther make the right decision?
Think about it for a moment. This young Jewish girl was being raised by her cousin Mordecai in Susa
, the capital the Persian Empire, in the fifth century BC. She was born during the reign of Darius the Great, the Persian king best remembered for the defeat he suffered at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC. Four years after that battle Darius died, and his son Xerxes became king.

Xerxes is the man known as Ahasuerus in the Bible. He's the one who divorced his wife, Queen Vashti, for disobeying him, and a few years later went looking for a new queen.
Now, put yourself in the place of this young woman. Her Jewish name was Hadassah, which means "Myrtle." She was named for that beautiful tree with its star-shaped flowers that grows abundantly in Israel, her homeland.

The myrtle was one of the trees that the Jews would use to build shelters out of when they celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles--the festival that reminded them of the Exodus and how God had redeemed them from captivity in Egypt.

Hadassah's very name reminded the Jewish people who were captive in the Persian Empire that they shouldn't be living in captivity. They should be living in freedom in their own homeland--Israel. In fact, some Jews had already gone back to the Promised Land fifty years ago when the Persian Empire overthrew the Babylonians. Apparently Hadassah's grandparents had chosen to stay in Persia instead.
Hadassah's parents died when she was young, and her cousin Mordecai took her in. Then, when she was still a young girl, she was offered what seemed to be the opportunity of a lifetime--but was it really. . .?

Say, do you remember that show that got the Fox TV network such bad publicity a while back. They called it "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire," and it brought them nothing but trouble! Thankfully it only aired once and then was canceled.
Back in the days of Hadassah and Xerxes, they didn't have television, but they had a game show of sorts. It was called "Who Wants to Marry a King?"
Messengers were sent all through the huge Persian Empire, looking for the most beautiful young virgins to "invite" them to try out for the show.

Now, I use the word "invite" advisedly. It wasn't easy to turn down an invitation to and audience with the king--it could be downright life-threatening.
So, put yourself in Hadassah's shoes.
How would you have responded to the invitation?
And while you're pondering that question, let me throw just a little more grist into the mill.
Did you by chance hear the program we did on the book of Ezra a few weeks ago? The story we're looking at in the book of Esther happened just about 20 years before the time of Ezra.

Remember what concerned Ezra so deeply when he returned to Jerusalem? It upset him so badly that he sat down in the city square, ripped his clothes to shreds, and literally tore his hair out.
What made Ezra tear his hair out? He heard that young Jewish men and women were marrying foreigners. And that was leading to impurity, idolatry, and unfaithfulness to God.
So there was strong sentiment against intermarriage with foreigners among Jews who were faithful to God.

But what if that foreigner were a king? Would that make a difference? What if you, as a young Jewish girl, were invited to play that game "Who Wants to Marry a King?" Would you accept the invitation?
Now, imagine you're Hadassah. Your cousin Mordecai says "Hey, if you've been invited to try out for the position Queen of the Empire, go for it! Just don't tell them your name is Hadassah--they'll know you're a Jew. Tell them your name is . . . Ishtar. That's the name of the goddess they call the Queen of Heaven. It's a great name for a queen!"
…

Wait a minute--you might be saying--I thought we were talking about Queen Esther, not Queen Ishtar. Well, the fact is that we call her Esther, but the Persians no doubt called her Ishtar--the name of the most important goddess in the Babylonian pantheon.
So, now how do you respond, if you're Hadassah? Not only are you being told to try out for the right to marry a foreigner, you're being told to take the name of a heathen goddess.
Say, we're probably doing a little different take on the story of Esther than you've heard before, aren't we? This isn't the way you read the story in most Bible Story books. But that's what we like to do here at Voice of Prophecy. We like to probe deeply into the Book of Books. When we do that, we often find the grace and goodness of God revealed in new ways. Follow me on this…I think you'll see what I mean.
If you read the book of Esther, she doesn't seem to have had any qualms about trying out for the position of queen. Here's the account as it reads in chapter 2, verses 8-10
When the king's order and edict had been proclaimed, many girls were brought to the citadel of Susa and put under the care of Hegai. Esther also was taken to the king's palace and entrusted to Hegai, who had charge of the harem. The girl pleased him and won his favor. Immediately he provided her with her beauty treatments and special food. He assigned to her seven maids selected from the king's palace and moved her and her maids into the best place in the harem. Esther had not revealed her nationality and family background, because Mordecai had forbidden her to do so. (NIV)
Now, I've read books that made it sound like Esther merely entered some sort of beauty pageant or sweepstakes contest to see who would be queen. But that's not the way the Bible reads. Here's what would happen to a young woman after she'd been thoroughly prepared for her encounter with the king:
And this is how she would go to the king: Anything she wanted was given her to take with her from the harem to the king's palace. In the evening she would go there and in the morning return to another part of the harem to the care of Shaashgaz, the king's eunuch who was in charge of the concubines. She would not return to the king unless he was pleased with her and summoned her by name. (Esther 2:13, 14 NIV)
That's heavy. It means Esther went into the king's chambers a virgin … and came out a concubine! She went in pure and came out compromised.
Now, why am I tell you all this, you might be wondering. Am I trying to shock you--or spoil what you thought was the story of a courageous, honorable woman?
No. Not at all. I'm telling you this because I know that there's someone out there right now who feels like a thoroughly compromised man or woman. Someone who's made all kinds of wrong choices. You've wandered away from God. You haven't stood up for what you knew was right. And now you find yourself in trouble. Maybe you feel like God has abandoned you--that you've gone too far down the wrong road to turn back. Or maybe you know someone else who feels that way.
Listen: Esther is the story of a woman who didn't always make the right choice by biblical standards. Her decisions would have gotten her disfellowshiped from many churches.
But God didn't abandon her. In fact, when she chose to take her stand with God's people, God was right there for her and made her into a heroine for His cause.
Friend, would you like to be a hero or heroine for God? It's not to late. You're not too far down the wrong road. You can still turn to God, just as Esther did. And do you know what? He'll not only make you a hero or a heroine. He'll make you a king or a queen--for all eternity. To reign with Him. That's what God's grace is all about.
God chose Esther to do great things. And even though Esther chose some paths in life that might not have been right at the time, God didn't abandon her. When she chose to turn back to Him, He used her in marvelous ways.
Friend, He's chosen you for great things too. Now and in eternity. Whoever you are. Wherever you are. He's chosen you.