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CONNIE: Is God still in control, or has He just set the great clock of time running and left us all alone? Join us today as we two little-understood books that reveal God’s hand, still working in our world.
Giving God’s trumpet a Certain Sound for more than 75 years, this is the Voice of Prophecy.

CONNIE: Hello, I’m Connie Jeffery,

LONNIE: and I’m Lonnie Melashenko.

CONNIE: Today we open a couple of books in the Bible that probably aren’t on most people’s favorite reading list, but we’ll find some fascinating things there.

LONNIE: We call our program “Ezra & Nehemiah—Rebuilding for God. We’re looking at these two books together because they come from the same time period, and because one focuses on spiritual rebuilding while the other emphasizes physical rebuilding.

CONNIE: Ezra is not an easy book to understand if you just sit down and read it straight through, because of the way it’s put together. It recounts events that happened over an 80-year period, but not all in order. You can really get confused if you don’t understand the history. But understanding that history is key to understanding Nehemiah as well.

LONNIE: That’s why we’re bringing in a real expert to help walk us through this book. Professor William Shea is widely recognized in the world of biblical studies--he’s an expert especially in the area of history we’re talking about, and Ken Wade spoke with him recently about Ezra, its place in history, and its place in helping us understand some very important biblical prophecies.

CONNIE: Let’s listen.

KEN: Dr. William Shea, welcome to our program.

WILLIAM: Thank you, Ken! It’s nice to be with you!

KEN: Dr. Shea, I look to you as one of the leading experts on biblical history, and we’re looking at the book of Ezra today, and that is a challenging book for a lot of people to understand.

WILLIAM: It is! It stands at the end of what we might call, Old Testament history, it’s one of the last books of the Old Testament written. It basically comes from the centuries 5th and 6th B.C., it was the period of the Persian kings.

KEN: And this would put us where in relationship to Israel and Judah?

WILLIAM: Well, they had four centuries of kings, from David to Zetachia. Then they had 70 years of Babylonian exile when people were swiped off the land by Nebuccnezzer.

KEN: Right, but now you’re talking to me about Persian kings.
WILLIAM: Now, these are the kings that sent the Jews back to their province of Judah. It used to be the kingdom of Judah but now under the Persians, it’s a province of the Persian Empire.

KEN: So the Persians under Cyrus came in and conquered Babylon and Cyrus, is the one then, who sets them free to go back to their home country.

WILLIAM: That’s right. It seems to have been his general policy, because he sent peoples’ to other countries as well, along with the Jews.

KEN: Right! And it’s almost like he sends them back to say prayers for them

WILLIAM: Yes, right in the first chapter we have the vessels of the temple that he sends back with the Jews, even though they had to rebuild the temple later. He makes offerings for the sacrifices and so forth.

KEN: The things that we find recorded in Ezra are actually a fulfillment of a prophecy, aren’t they?

WILLIAM: Yes, they are. The prophecy of Jeremiah, who comes from an earlier time, and in Jeremiah chapter 25, we have a prophecy that the Jews would be in exile for 70 years.

KEN: Now does the math work out?

WILLIAM: Yes! The math does work out! The first of the three waves of captives went in 605, and the Jews get back to their land by 536.

KEN: So when you count the years inclusively, you get 70 years?

WILLIAM: That’s right.

KEN: There’s another prophecy that refers to 70 years as well, isn’t there?

WILLIAM: Yes, it’s in Zachariah chapter 1 and that one takes it from the destruction of the temple to the rebuilding of the temple.

KEN: Which was once again a 70 year period, wasn’t it?

WILLIAM: It works out. It goes from 586 down to 516.

KEN: So, Ezra stands at the end of one series of prophecies…I guess the end of one era, but also at the beginning of another era and another important prophecy is tied to the book of Ezra, isn’t it?

WILLIAM: Yes, they’re both found in Daniel chapter 9. At the beginning of the chapter Daniel is praying and he is reading the scroll of Jeremiah, and he has been in captivity for the whole 70 year period of time, and knows that it’s time for the Jews to go back and rebuild.

KEN: Now, Daniel is in Babylon just as Ezra started out from Babylon, and the people who went back to Jerusalem started out from Babylon, right?

WILLIAM: That’s right. There are actually two returns. 50 thousand people in the first two chapters go back under a governor named Surabable and a priest named Joshua. Then a century later, another 5 or 7 thousand go back with Ezra. The book really divides into those two sections, the two returns of the Jews. They get back to Judah and the first time they get back they rebuild the temple. The second time they get back they start rebuilding the city.

KEN: Right…So, now we tie that into the book of Daniel, which is written in about the same time period and there’s a prophecy looking forward from that time in Daniel that gets tied to Ezra, isn’t there?

WILLIAM: Yes. That’s the 70 weeks of years, that reach from the time of Ezra himself down to the time of the Messiah.

KEN: Now what I think a lot of people don’t realize who maybe have studied Daniel, is that if we didn’t have the book of Ezra, we wouldn’t have one of the greatest prophecies…We wouldn’t even understand it, would we?

WILLIAM: That’s right. It’s Daniel that puts in the stake at the beginning of that 70 year period.

KEN: Or Ezra you mean that puts in the stake?

WILLIAM: I’m sorry…I’m getting confused, between the two books, but hey!

KEN: Sure.

WILLIAM: Ezra is the stake at the beginning of Daniels prophecy, that’s what I meant to say.

KEN: …and Daniel’s prophecy of the 70 weeks is probably the most fascinating time prophecy in the Bible, isn’t it?

WILLIAM: Yes it is. In an answer to his prayer, the angel, Gabriel, came to Daniel and told him your people will return and they will rebuild, but that beyond that there will be the coming of the messiah.

KEN: Even points, I mean you can do the math, you can find the exact year of the baptism of Jesus, if you understand Daniel and Ezra, can’t you?

WILLIAM: That’s correct. He comes at the end of the 70 weeks and his baptism occurs in 27 a.d and his crucifixion in 31 a.d., which is a part of the last week of the prophecy.

KEN: So all 70 of those weeks, a lot of people understand those prophecies differently; think that the 70th week is to still be fulfilled. There are some fictional works out there now that take this 70th week and put them down at the end of time, but literally, if we understand Daniel and Ezra that wrapping up around the time of Jesus, don’t we?

WILLIAM: Yes, that’s right. If you add up the second segments of the prophecy, you have 62 weeks and 7 weeks and 1 weeks and that makes 70 weeks complete, but if you put a gap between the 69 and 70th week, you don’t have 70 weeks, you have two thousand years plus the 70th week.

KEN: Ezra is a very important book and I thank you Dr. William Shea for coming here today and sharing your insights and expertise in these areas.

WILLIAM: Thank you!

CONNIE: Wow! The book of Ezra is really important to understanding Bible prophecy, isn’t it?

LONNIE: It certainly is, and the book of Nehemiah is part of a matched set with it, I guess you could say. In fact there was a time when they were all one book. They seem to have been written by the same author who wrote Chronicles—very likely Ezra. And they cover a crucial time in history, when God’s chosen people were returning from exile. They needed spiritual rebuilding because they had been living in a foreign land, and they needed physical rebuilding as well.

CONNIE: From what I understand, the city of Jerusalem had been almost totally razed to the ground more than a hundred years earlier, and efforts at rebuilding had been, at best, spotty.

LONNIE: And into that difficult situation strode two of God’s heroes. Ezra and Nehemiah. Between the two of them, they made an immense difference in the world.

CONNIE: Each of us has opportunities to make a difference in the world—a thought that’s reflected in the old hymn “Once to Every Man and Nation.” Voice of Prophecy’s founder, HMS Richards, did a dramatic reading of that poem way back in 1955.

LONNIE: And it certainly bears repeating. Let’s listen.

“Once to Every Man and Nation”

CONNIE: Doesn’t that give you a sense of confidence to envision God behind the scenes--whatever happens in the world, He’s backstage--behind the curtain--the Director, and He has a script with a great ending that He’s working out.

LONNIE: I love that imagery of God working in history--working through people who listen and respond to His directing. People like Ezra and Nehemiah.

CONNIE: Now Lonnie, Ezra was a scribe--the founder of the line of scribes--interpreters of the law and the prophets, isn’t that right?

LONNIE: Yes he was, and that’s an important role—still today. We here at Voice of Prophecy have kind of taken on part of the role of the ancient scribes, by making courses available to help people understand and interpret God’s Word.

CONNIE: The Discover Bible lessons are an introduction to the major teachings of the Bible, but today we’re focusing more on some of the prophecies and how they were fulfilled, aren’t we.

LONNIE: That’s right, and it seems like a good time to remind our listeners that if they’re interested in better understanding the prophecies related to Ezra, we have a great online Bible course called Focus on Prophecy. You can find it right on our web page at vop.com

CONNIE: You can enroll in this course and study the lessons right online, or you can also receive them through the mail.

LONNIE: And, as with all our Bible courses, it’s absolutely free. And let me tell you, these lessons are beautiful as well as fascinating. They’re illustrated with full-color pictures and written in an interesting, compelling way that draws you right into the great prophecies of the Bible.

CONNIE: They’ll help you get acquainted with the Bible’s greatest prophecies. So we encourage you to enroll or online, or to give us a call at 1-800-872-0055.

LONNIE: Be sure to ask for the Focus on Prophecy Bible course when you call.

CONNIE: Right now though, let’s listen to Pastor Lonnie’s message for today, “Ezra & Nehemiah, Builders for God.

Ezra & Nehemiah—Builders for God

How do you respond to a report like this one that "hit the fan" recently: James Dobson's organization, Focus on the Family, revealed the results of a survey they had done concerning pornography on the Internet. They asked people whether they had ever visited a sex-oriented website, and found that about one in five would admit to having done so. But the thing that caught my eye about this report was the response of people who considered themselves born-again Christians.

Being a Christian calls us to a higher standard of morality, but the survey revealed that the percentage of Christians who had visited sex-oriented sites on the Internet was almost as high as the percentage of the general population.

Now, let me ask you this: How do you respond to that. Do you think the church needs a good scourging--a good cleaning up? Are you ready for some good old “hell-fire and damnation” preaching to straighten people out--maybe scare them into better behavior?

Or, do you take a more lenient stance?. Do you tend to focus more on the mercy and grace of God and say, “Let’s not dwell on people’s sins, let’s focus on their good points. Let’s be like Jesus, who always looked for the best in people.”

Well, today we’re focusing our attention on two men who weren’t content to let well enough alone.

Ezra--when he found that the people living in Jerusalem were letting their standards down--took a stand and demanded closer adherence to the laws that their loving God had given them.

And Nehemiah, when he heard that the walls of Jerusalem were in ruins and no one seemed to have the gumption to do anything about it—well he showed them what one man with God’s gumption could accomplish in a very short time.

First let’s consider how Ezra reacted when he heard about sin among the people in Jerusalem:

So when I heard this thing, I tore my garment and my robe, and plucked out some of the hair of my head and beard, and sat down astonished (Ezra 9:3, NKJV).

That’s a pretty strong reaction, wouldn’t you say? Ezra was literally tearing his hair out!

All because he discovered that people were letting the ways of the nations around them filter into their lives and take control. They were no longer living for the Lord as they should.

Something like what we hear about Christians in our world today, perhaps?
So, what did Ezra do—beyond tearing his hair out? Well, for one thing, he called an assembly of all the people and had a committee appointed to deal with the issue. This group interviewed all the people who had taken foreign wives and made them promise that they would divorce them--in order to keep the race pure.

Much of the book of Ezra focuses on purity and separation from paganism. So it’s very relevant to our world today, when we see so much of the world creeping into the church.

Now, if you read the stories in Ezra, some of them might seem a bit extreme compared to today’s way of doing things. Ezra actually forced any Israelite men who had married foreign wives to divorce them. He was very concerned about purity. And you have to understand that he was dealing with people who were refugees, returning from exile in Babylon. A large part of the reason they ended up in captivity in the first place was that their ancestors hadn’t remained faithful to God. They had mingled the worship of the Lord with worship of other gods.

The returning exiles didn’t want history to repeat itself. They understood the importance of remaining pure in their devotion to the Lord.

It’s a lesson we could stand to pay more attention to today, don’t you think?
Where, today, are the preachers like Ezra, who will fast and pray and kneel in humiliation before the Lord, confessing the disgrace that is in the land because of sin? Where are the people who will join with Ezra as we read in Ezra 9:4 Then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel assembled to me, because of the transgression of those who had been carried away captive. (NKJV)

Do we tremble at the word of the Lord today, or do we just let it float right over our heads without even furrowing our brows?

Friend, we need a deeper experience with the Lord today, don’t we. Even if it means we have some serious cleaning up to do in our individual lives, or our church’s life. We want the power of God to work again.

And when we see the power of God working, we will see great things happening. If we truly put our trust in Him. That’s what happened with Ezra’s contemporary, Nehemiah.

Nehemiah comes on the scene a dozen or so years after Ezra. Probably in about 445 BC. He lived right in the center of earthly power in Shushan, capital of the Persian Empire, and he had an important job as cupbearer to the Persian king. But then one day he received messages from Jerusalem, more than 1200 miles away. Incidentally, the journey the messengers who brought word from Jerusalem had made was something like setting out from Albuqurque, New Mexico to walk to Los Angeles, VIA Denver, Colorado! Over hills, across deserts, through gang-infested mountain passes. They obviously were men with a mission, to have made such a journey.

They reported to Nehemiah that the walls of Jerusalem had been broken down and the gates burned with fire. Nehemiah was shocked and dismayed. The news brought tears to his eyes. But more than that, it drove him to his knees. Notice what he did, I’m reading his account in Nehemiah 1:4:

So it was, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned for many days; I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven. (NKJV)
When King Artaxerxes saw how distressed his cupbearer was, he sent Nehemiah to Jerusalem, along with a detachment of cavalry and a staff of servants. In fact, he appointed Nehemiah governor of Judah, with full authority to patch up the wall and fortify the city.

And Nehemiah went right to work and had tremendous success—because he relied on the Lord and because he was able to rally the people to work with him. But there’s more to the story than just a Habitat for Humanity project—great as that was and is.

Three other items come up in the book that peel back the curtain and allow us to see why Nehemiah had such fantastic success.

In chapters 5 and 6 we read two stories that reveal a lot about Nehemiah. The first concerns his attitude toward his opportunity to serve his people. When he arrived in Jerusalem, he discovered that many of the residents had been forced to mortgage their lands, and even sell their children into slavery, just to pay their taxes and debts. Under those circumstances, Nehemiah chose not to use any of the revenues of the land for his own benefit. Instead he dipped into his own IRA to pay all his expenses, plus the expenses of his staff.

His faithfulness stands out in stark relief against the unfaithfulness of another group of people whom he had to deal with in Jerusalem. Notice this from Nehemiah’s prayer found in chapter 6, verse 14:

Remember Tobiah and Sanballat, O my God, because of what they have done; remember also the prophetess Noadiah and the rest of the prophets who have been trying to intimidate me. (NIV)

Now, Tobiah and Sanballat are the real bad guys of this story. They’re the men who brought their armies up to Jerusalem to try to stop the rebuilding. But notice who else was on their side: “the prophetess Noadiah and the rest of the prophets.”

Now, you would expect that when Nehemiah arrived and started rebuilding the city, all the prophets and prophetesses would have joined right in with him. But there was something peculiar about these particular prophets.

I guess you could call them prophets for profit. They had started taking pay from Tobiah and Sanballat. Their message was corrupted by the temptations of money. They no longer spoke for the Lord, but for the highest bidder!
They were just the opposite of Nehemiah, who did the Lord’s work for the sheer joy of doing it.

And that’s where the third story comes in. It’s found in chapter 8.
When the wall was finished, all the people gathered together, and the scribe Ezra began reading the words of God’s law to them. When the people heard it, they began weeping and mourning, because the law revealed their sinfulness.
But notice how Nehemiah responded to that crisis:

And Nehemiah . . . said to all the people, "This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn nor weep. . . . Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength" (Neh 8:9,10. NKJV)

Did you catch that? Did you notice where Nehemiah found the strength to do all that he did? He didn’t find it in the law of God. He didn’t do the things he did because he was afraid of what would happen to him if he didn’t.

No, Nehemiah found his strength in the JOY of the Lord. The strength for all that needed to be done.

How is it with you, my friend? Is your strength sometimes lacking? Are you discouraged with life? Do you sometimes get to thinking about your sins and feeling discouraged?

Take a page out of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah—two men whom God used in mighty ways. Find the joy of the Lord and let that be your strength. Learn to serve the Lord with joy and gladness--not for profit, or out of fear, but out of the pure JOY of knowing Him and living in the way He guides you as you study His holy Word.

“Touch Your People Once Again”, Ponder Harp and Jennings, from The Best of Ponder Harp and Jennings CD.