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Monday: Prophets Encourage — 4 Comments

  1. It is worth taking the time to read Haggai 1:1-15 through. It is a call to reset the focus of the people and to change direction. The issue was that they were focused on themselves.

    Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? Hag 1:4

    Haggai continues on a bit about how they are really working for nothing. I suspect that the issue was that every person was looking after themselves rather than working as a team to rebuild a nation.

    Then Haggai relays the message:

    “Thus says the Lord of hosts: iConsider your ways. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord. Hag 1:7,8

    And to their credit, the people responded:

    And the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people. And they came and worked on the house of the Lord of hosts, their God, on the twenty-fourth day of the month, in the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king. Hag 1:14,15

    As I suggested in an earlier comment, Christianity is essentially in ruins, its image tarnished and its ideas on morality considered archaic. Are we guilty of looking after our own interests rather than rebuilding? Do we need a prophet Haggai to inspire us to rebuild?

    (35)
    • Wow! You are giving me so much to use in my Sabbath School class tomorrow.

      You are so right. We, the remnant, are guilty of thinking and looking after our own interests rather than rebuilding our faith in God (we are the church).

      We do need another Haggai or Sister White, someone to help us wake up. Are we waiting for the eleventh hour, just before the time of trouble is upon us, to wake up? I'm not sure. As for me and my house, I plan to finish God's work. I plan to start up the Dorcas society again at my church, even if I'm the only one, so that the community can get to know who we are again, and not know us as those weird people that go to church on Saturday, and eat differently. I plan to show them that God cares for them, and He wants all of us to come back to Him, to believe in Him again, and to study His word; remember, God says in Hosea 4:6-"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children."

      Please let's wake up, and put God's work First.

      Have a Blessed Sabbath everyone!!

      (2)
  2. In 538 BC King Cyrus made a public declaration granting the Jews the right to return to Judah and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.
    The time has not come -
    There were some good reasons why they might say this, and why the work of rebuilding the temple was hard:

    · The land was still desolate after 70 years of neglect.

    · The work was hard.

    · They didn’t have a lot of money (Haggai 1:6) or manpower.

    · They suffered crop failures and drought (Haggai 1:10-11).

    · Hostile enemies resisted the work (Ezra 4:1-5).

    · They remembered easier times in Babylon.

    God’s people began to rationalize it wasn’t time to rebuild after all. “If it’s so hard, evidently, God doesn’t want us to do it – at least no time soon.”
    The people said that it wasn’t time to rebuild the temple, but their actions said that it was time to live in nicely rebuilt houses.
    The problem was simply wrongly ordered priorities. They were content to let the cause of the Lord suffer at the expense of their comfort.

    Many of us are no different then the Israelites. Most of us work hard to get the latest of everything and when it comes to tithe and offering, we pass the empty plate as though we have nothing to offer to Lord.

    If all of us paid our tithe and offering the church would have finished the work and we would be home with eternity to spend.

    (20)
    • I agree with everything but the last comment. We have never been nor ever will be in charge of the Lord’s coming. The Scriptures state multiple times in many places that God has an “appointed time” for His return. To think that we, mere humans, are somehow responsible for when the God of the universe returns is completely beyond my comprehension. The scripture, Matt 24:14, often quoted to support this view, I believe is misunderstood. It’s not a threat put on us as unless we do all the preaching and converting then when we have completed the task to God’s approval then He will come. But rather, it’s a promise! And a beautiful one! God, through the power and work of the Holy Spirit, will reach and convict all who will accept Him. It is a privilege to be used by Him to do touch in a positive way the lives of others. And it should be our constant prayer that we be used only for good and not as a worker for the Evil One by being critical and oppose those who are trying to rebuild the walls.

      (2)

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