We are just going to do a shortened study in Esther. Then I would like to discuss the doubling of the five months one more time.
The problem is that there are at least three different ways of doing this and I keep wondering which way is best, and so I am just going to lay out all three. We will see that this is what God has done; but depending on how this is done, the numbers can be looked at in a different way.
Let us go to Esther 7. We saw in Esther 7:7-8:
And the king arising from the banquet of wine in his wrath went into the palace garden: and Haman stood up to make request for his life to Esther the queen; for he saw that there was evil determined against him by the king. Then the king returned out of the palace garden into the place of the banquet of wine; and Haman was fallen upon the bed whereon Esther was. Then said the king, Will he force the queen also before me in the house? As the word went out of the king's mouth, they covered Haman's face.
So we were looking at Revelation 2:22 that is speaking of the churches and states:
Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation…
This is what has just happened. Over the 23-year judgment on the congregations, God cast them into a bed of spiritual fornication and it was great tribulation. Satan was very much involved with this.
We have to again remember that the 17th day of the 2nd month was May 21 and that May 21 was the 8400th day of the great tribulation. Simultaneously, it was also the 6100th day of the latter rain. It was also the first day of the Day of Judgment.
How God did all of this can be a little mysterious. This is because with the latter rain, He was saving. Then May 21, or the 17th day of the 2nd month, began on the Friday evening of May 20th. From Friday evening, May 20th, till sundown of Saturday, May 21st, was the 17th day of the 2nd month.
On that day, God closed the whole great tribulation period. He could not bring judgment until He closed the judgment on the church, because the Bible tells us that judgment “must begin at the house of God”; and so He had to first close the judgment on the churches and congregations. Then, also, there was the latter rain.
I do not know if you have thought about this, but since the 17th day of the 2nd month began on Friday evening and went into Saturday until sundown, it could be that God was saving on that Saturday, on May 21st itself.
I know that I was just looking towards midnight of that Friday and thinking that that was all the time that we had, but we do have precedent for God saving on May 21st in the flood account. What I mean by this is that He gives precedent for saving individuals or at least giving a figure of salvation on the same day that He brings judgment.
This is because of what we read in Genesis 7:11-13:
In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark;
What day did they enter in? They entered in on 2/17. The ark typifies Christ and their entry into the ark points to salvation. This happened the same day that the flood waters came.
This is exactly what we see when we lay out the 8400 days. When we go from the first day of the great tribulation and we lay this all out, day 8400 comes to the 17th day of the 2nd month, or May 21, and so does day 6100.
Remember that there was the first part of the great tribulation, the first 2300 evening/mornings, when virtually no one was being saved. Then the latter rain began for 6100 days, but day 6100 did not end until the 17th day of the 2nd month ended.
Somehow, God closed the great tribulation, He finished saving everyone who was part of the great multitude whom He intended to save, and then He brought judgment all on the same day.
So the 17th day of the 2nd month is also day one of the first five-month period. We say it was day one, but was this a full 24-hour span of the 17th day of the 2nd month? No; because on some portion of that day, God was still saving. More than likely, God was still saving most of that day and He stayed the judgment until near the end of that day, and so the judgment aspect of that day could have been going on for only a couple of hours.
We will talk about this later, but if we are counting day one, that may actually be an overlap of 2/17 / 2/18 on the Hebrew calendar before we get to one full day. We will look at this at the end of discussing these things when we lay out the three different ways that God doubled the five months at this time.
But in Esther 7 when Haman was fallen upon the bed, this was representing day 8400 of the great tribulation. Haman was a type of Satan, and Satan has been very successful in alluring and manipulating the church into spiritual fornication and into an adulterous relationship with him. Now as soon as the king steps out, Haman is on Esther’s bed; and this is the spiritual picture. The spiritual picture, basically, is that Satan is trying to actually deceive the elect, like he was able to deceive the churches into rebellion against God.
Let us look at it in this way. In 2 Kings, we read of King Hezekiah (of Judah) and the Assyrian army. This army came against Jerusalem. Rabshakeh, the Assyrian king’s representative, said in 2 Kings 18:25:
Am I now come up without JEHOVAH against this place to destroy it? JEHOVAH said to me, Go up against this land, and destroy it.
This was what they were claiming. The Assyrians were claiming that God had given Jerusalem and Judah into their hands. This claim had some weight behind it because practically all of the nations had been given up into the hands of the Assyrians at that time. This would have included Samaria, which was Israel in the north. The Assyrians were the ones who destroyed them; and who was the God of Samaria or who was the God of Israel? It was Jehovah.
Then it says in 2 Kings 18:33-34:
Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered at all his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath, and of Arpad? where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah? have they delivered Samaria out of mine hand?
He saved Samaria for last because he understood that the Jews did not think anything of these other nations and their gods; they were idols. But Samaria had Jehovah, the same God as Judah.
So the claim was that God gave up Israel in the north, the ten tribes, and the charge was that He was giving the Jews in Jerusalem up, too. What was being said to the Jews in Jerusalem was that the same God who gave up Samaria was giving them up.
This is a spiritual picture. The king of Assyria is a type of Satan. Hezekiah is a picture of Christ. And it is true. God gave up the corporate body. He gave up the professed Christians – those who only say that they are Christians – over into the hands of the enemy, over into the hands of Satan himself.
The king of Assyria is really representative here of Satan and his pride. In his arrogance, he has destroyed the corporate church, which Samaria is picturing. Now he has gone after the actual elect people of God, who are here being pictured as those who are inside Jerusalem with King Hezekiah within the city.
That is what Satan has done. He thinks that because God has given up the church that he can also go after the elect people of God and destroy them in the same way that he destroyed the church. I think that this is what is in view when Haman is fallen on the bed in Esther 7, but then the king returns because God will not allow this to happen.
Who knows what would have happened if King Ahasuerus had spent any length of time out in the garden. But the king went out quickly, he got the guards or the soldiers, then he came back in and they seized Haman.
Then the king says in Esther 7:8:
…Will he force the queen also before me in the house?…
Then it says:
…As the word went out of the king's mouth, they covered Haman's face.
This was a picture of God protecting His people who are being typified by Esther. Satan tries and tries, up until the very last, to come against the chosen people of salvation, those who were predestinated from before the foundation of the world, but he just cannot pull it off. As it says in Matthew 24, he can develop gospels to the point where “if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect”; but this is not possible, because God keeps watch over His people.
God protects His people and, finally, Satan cannot do the same thing with the elect that he has been able to do with those who just carry the name of Christ like a title. They do not have Christ in their hearts; they just carry the name of Christian. They are professed believers, but they are not actual believers. God also gave them up into Satan’s hands, but there was a limit. Satan could only go so far and he could not go beyond the boundary of Jerusalem, which is the Jerusalem above, the city where each and every elect is found.
So we read:
…they covered Haman's face.
But I do not know exactly what this means. I cannot find anywhere else where it says that someone’s face was covered by someone.
In Jeremiah 14:3-4, we do find:
And their nobles have sent their little ones to the waters: they came to the pits, and found no water; they returned with their vessels empty; they were ashamed and confounded, and covered their heads. Because the ground is chapt, for there was no rain in the earth, the plowmen were ashamed, they covered their heads.
This is the same word for “covered”; and, of course, if you completely cover your head, you have covered your face, but this does not necessarily mean that. This could just be referring to some sort of cover on the top of their heads.
This does, however, seem to have something to do with shame. Here, they are covering Haman’s face. It is time for his judgment, and shame has everything to do with the judgment of God.
If you remember, Mr. Camping did a study that showed that shame was an integral part of the judgment process and that God would shame those who are under His wrath. It is the same thing for Satan.
Actually, this was a big day of shame for Haman. When Haman had to take Mordecai around on horseback, there was a lot of shame involved in that. Remember that Haman had thought that Esther had wanted him at the banquet of wine because he was such a high-level official, when it actually turned out that Esther indicated that Haman was the one who was trying to kill her and her people; and so there was a lot of shame involved in Haman’s judgment on that day.
Then it says in Esther 7:9:
And Harbonah, one of the chamberlains, said before the king…
Harbonah is only mentioned one other time back in Esther 1:10. He was one of the seven chamberlains who had gone to get Vashti. It says in Esther 1:10:
On the seventh day, when the heart of the king was merry with wine, he commanded Mehuman, Biztha, Harbona, Bigtha, and Abagtha, Zethar, and Carcas, the seven chamberlains that served in the presence of Ahasuerus the king,
The word “chamberlain” is also translated as “eunuch.” Here we read of seven eunuchs, which is why they were sent to get the queen. This was a safe thing to do. They went to get Vashti when the king called for her, and this was when Vashti refused to come.
That was the last mention of Harbona until here in Esther 7, and Harbona was one of the more trusted eunuchs. So Esther 7:9 continues:
And Harbonah, one of the chamberlains, said before the king, Behold also, the gallows fifty cubits high, which Haman had made for Mordecai, who had spoken good for the king, standeth in the house of Haman. Then the king said, Hang him thereon.
So Harbonah remembered that Mordecai had “spoken good for the king.” This was a few years earlier in Esther 2 when Mordecai learned that the two doorkeepers were going to do something to the king as they were plotting against him.
It says in Esther 2:22:
And the thing was known to Mordecai, who told it unto Esther the queen; and Esther certified the king thereof in Mordecai's name.
Harbona remembered this. I can actually guess that this was no wonder; because that night leading into the 17th day of the 2nd month, one of the chamberlains was reading the chronicles to the king and that event was pointed out. That was why the king asked who was in the outer court. Haman was called in and then they exalted Mordecai.
So what Mordecai had done was probably still fresh in a lot of people’s minds; and, here, Harbona also knows that Haman had built a gallows. The word “gallows” is a word that is just a normal word for “tree” or “wood.” It is the very same word. It could say that he built a wood. What he did was build a place to hang Mordecai that was made out of wood and they called it “gallows.”
This term has stayed around for hundreds of years. In certain nations, you will find references to someone being hanged on a gallows, and this comes out of the Bible.
If we go to Deuteronomy 21, we will find this same word for “gallows” translated as “tree” a couple of times. We read in Deuteronomy 21:22-23:
And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree:
This is the same word. It continues:
His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;) that thy land be not defiled, which JEHOVAH thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.
Here God is laying down a law, a very important law, that if you are hanged on a tree, this means that you are “accursed of God”; and anyone who is hanged on a tree, such as a cross made of wood or made of a tree, they are cursed.
Galatians 3 points this out, as God makes reference back to these verses in Deuteronomy. We read in Galatians 3:13:
Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:
This was why Jesus was hanged on a cross. It was because that was a symbol. It was picturing that He had the sins of His people upon Him. For their sake, He became accursed. If you break the law, you are cursed; and Jesus became accursed for us in order that we could receive the blessing.
It is either blessing or cursing; it is one or the other. The Bible tells us that there are blessings for obedience and that there are curses for disobedience. All mankind is disobedient; therefore, we are all under the curse. The only way to become blessed is if Christ takes that penalty and then God gives us a new heart.
In that new heart, what do we desire to do? We desire to obey. We desire to keep God’s commandments and to do the will of God. This is why we are blessed, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” because they have been given a new broken, contrite heart that is in perfect submission to the will of God, to the Bible. Therefore, they are blessed and not cursed.
So all of this is in view as we are looking in the book of Esther and we are finding that Haman built a gallows and that he wanted to hang Christ on that gallows or on that tree. He wanted to hang Mordecai, did he not? And he wanted to do it on the very day of the 17th day of the 2nd month! This was what his intent was when he was going in to see the king early in the morning to make request to the king to hang Mordecai on that same day that he had the gallows built.
This makes us wonder some things, because Christ has already been hanged. He has already been made accursed. Did Satan want to do this again? Did he really want to crucify Christ afresh on that particular day?
We talked about how this would have worked a little bit before. The way that this would have worked is that if he were successful, if he could have prevented the Gospel from reaching one of God’s great multitude who were scattered all over the earth, if he could have prevented this from reaching their ears and from them believing it – after all, Satan had hundreds of millions of professing Christians out there saying that no man knows the day or hour and trying to just bring doubt about the whole thing at every point – if he could somehow have caused even one of those whom God had died for from before the foundation of the world from receiving the application of that or from being redeemed prior to the time that God intended to shut the door on May 21, then what would have happened? Satan would have been successful, because God would then have had an insurmountable problem.
God’s plan called for Him to have this day of salvation, but only to a certain point. He actually told the whole world this as May 21, the 17th day of the 2nd month, was proclaimed, which identified with the day that was 7,000 years earlier when He shut Noah into the ark and Noah and his family were safe and secure.
If Satan could have made it through that day where somewhere some elect person in China or in India or in Africa or in America, just one elect individual, if he could keep the Gospel away from them, then that person would not have had the salvation of Christ applied to them. They would not have been redeemed.
For all intents and purposes, it would be like Christ would have to go and die for that person again. God would have to take that person’s sins upon Himself again and work out a whole other salvation plan, which would require Jesus to be crucified again. This was Satan’s hope.
Of course, it was just ridiculous to think that God would not be successful in doing this. And what do we find? We find that all over the earth, for the first time in history leading up to May 21, I do not know of anyone who did not hear about this.
We were talking about this during the break. Even if someone says that they did not hear about May 21, it could have been two or three years earlier that they received a tract and threw it in the trash and just forgot about it.
Everyone heard “Judgment Day!” But they did not hear, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” They did not hear a message from the Jehovah’s Witnesses who are scattered here and there. They heard a very definite warning from the Bible – Judgment Day! It was right there in their faces and they could not get away from it. It was on billboards, tracts, T-shirts, hats, vehicles, TV. It they turned on the news, it was on the news. It was seemingly everywhere for the first time in history in every land and in every nation.
Why? How could this be if this was due to a cult? See if any cult can do this who has another kind of a gospel. Any other gospel is free to try this. Go ahead. Make the attempt. And they have been attempting this. They try to share their gospel, but it only has inroads here and there because God is not working with them. He is not with them and He is not helping them. He did not open up doors for them. But for this message, He opened up “a great door and effectual.” There were “many adversaries,” but He still opened up a great and effectual door that no man was able to shut at that point. God Himself shut this door and He shut it on the 17th day of the 2nd month. When He shut it, every last one of His elect had heard and God had saved them.
This is exactly what we find here in Esther when Esther is going to make her request on this very day to the king. She is praying for herself and for all of the Jews in all of the provinces of the whole kingdom. Nobody is left out.
A little later, we will see again how everyone was saved by the 17th day of the 2nd month. This had to work itself out until the day of Purim actually comes. But basically on this day, all of the Jews in all of the provinces are delivered by what takes place at this particular time.
So the gallows were 50 cubits high and the number 50 breaks down to 5x10. The number 5 is the number for atonement. The sword of God’s Gospel cuts both ways: grace and judgment. In this case in regards to Satan, there was no grace. God never made provision for Satan or for the fallen angels. He never provided any salvation for them. It cuts to judgment only; and the number 10 points to the completeness of that judgment. After 13,000 years of history, it was time. This began way back in the Garden of Eden, and now it was to the point where Satan was to be judged.
Even the word “high” (the gallows fifty cubits high) is translated as “proud,” “lofty” and “haughty” in a few instances. It is also translated as “high”; but was this not like Haman who was a very proud man? He could not just build a gallows. He had to practically build a skyscraper. He had to make it 75 feet high, because he wanted Mordecai to hang where everyone could see him. But it turns out that it was all turned on him. Whenever anyone tries to curse God’s people, this does not turn out good for them because God never allows this.
So, here, in his pride, Haman builds this gallows, and yet he is the one who ends up being placed upon it. Then it goes on to say in Esther 7:9:
…which Haman had made for Mordecai, who had spoken good for the king, standeth in the house of Haman. Then the king said, Hang him thereon.
It is now Haman who is being accursed. He is the one who is accursed.
Then it says in Esther 7:10:
So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then was the king's wrath pacified.
You can find this same Hebrew word for “pacified” back in Genesis 8 where it is translated as a different English word. It says in Genesis 8:1:
And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged;
“The waters were asswaged” or “pacified.” The idea is that those waters prevailed for 150 days. Judgment Day came on the 17th day of the 2nd month and the waters prevailed. Then they were pacified.
If we did not understand the doubling of the five months, we would not understand how the waters could be pacified after five months and yet we are still here going on 9 months and into 10 months. But the answer is that God doubled this; and so what was true of five months is true of ten months. The waters will be prevailing until the end of the double five-month period. Then God’s wrath will be pacified.
But how does this help us with Haman, because it is on the first Day of Judgment that he is hanged? He is hanged on the 17th day of the 2nd month.
God cannot just spell everything out. Remember that this is Judgment Day, but this Day extends for months. Haman, representing Satan, is accursed from day one, but have you ever thought about his ten sons? His ten sons identify with the beast and the ten horns, and the ten sons are also hanged during the feast of Purim.
We see this in Esther 9:13:
Then said Esther, If it please the king, let it be granted to the Jews which are in Shushan to do to morrow also according unto this day's decree, and let Haman's ten sons be hanged upon the gallows.
Actually, they were hanged after they were already dead, because they had been killed on the first day, Adar 13, and this is the 2nd day, Adar 14. So they took there dead bodies and they hanged them.
This is because the beast and the ten horns are one. If you look at Revelation 13, it is all speaking of the same being. Satan has many names in the Bible. He is “the beast,” “the devil,” “the dragon,” “the serpent,” etc. Also, God is spiritually identifying Satan as Haman here, which is pointing to the beast; and his ten sons are also representing Satan.
This is why we say that Satan was deposed. He lost all authority and all power and he was humiliated, which was the only way to hurt him. Otherwise, how can a spirit being be harmed except that they get hit where they hurt? Where it hurt Satan was in his pride, because he has always wanted to be like God. He had his seat “in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.”
But God took him from that high and lofty place, from that perch, and brought him down to the grave, as Isaiah 14 tells us; that is, He brought him down from that place and removed all of his authority so that Satan was nothing and so that he no longer had any official authority of any kind.
This was what was done on May 21, but do not make the mistake of thinking that he does not exist right now, because he still exists. The teaching of the ten sons of Haman, all the way up until Adar 14 when the last day of the Jews’ enemies are killed, is teaching us that Satan still exists until the end of the world, until God kills all of His enemies. At that point, the being of Satan will cease to be, and then it will be complete.
This is what we read about after King Ahasuerus hanged Haman, because then his wrath was pacified. At the end of the judgment on the ten sons, God’s wrath will be pacified. He will have poured out the completeness of His wrath and He will have destroyed Satan.
We will save Esther 8 for next time. We are running out of time. We are running out of weeks. We have three more weeks. Next Sunday is a short Sunday, so we will only be able to do one study. Maybe in the last Sunday of February and the first Sunday of March, we will be able to do two studies each to try and finish the book of Esther.
Now I would like to just talk about the doubling of the five months. Here is a simple way of understanding this. Stick with the Hebrew calendar and not the Gregorian calendar. This is because it becomes very complicated when two of the Hebrew days overlap one of our days.
I know that it made my head spin trying to go between the Gregorian and the Hebrew calendar to try to figure out how it all fits together. But God is using the Hebrew calendar when He goes from 2/17 to 7/17. This was the length of the 150 days in the book of Genesis.
If we count from 2/17 in the Hebrew calendar, which was May 21, until Adar 15, it is exactly 294 days. If we then start counting from Tishri 17 or the 17th day of the 7th month until Adar 15, it is exactly 147 days. It is half that. This means that the other half must be from the 17th day of the 2nd month up until Tishri 17.
The way that God uses numbers, this may not always satisfy everyone. For instance, when we read in the Bible that Jesus was “three days and three nights in the heart of the earth,” was He? Yes; because this is what God says. But was it three 24-hour periods of time?
It was Thursday night, a full night. Then it was Friday night, a full night. Then Saturday night, a full night. But the days were Friday, a full day. Then Saturday in the tomb was a full day. Then He rose early Sunday morning, and yet God counts that as day three. He counts Sunday as day three, and yet it was nowhere near the length of time of day one or day two.
We have to allow God a little flexibility, and I am just saying that when we go to look at these numbers, there are different ways of working them out. One way was to just go from 2/17 to 12/15. It is a fact that this period of time is 294 days. It is also a fact that Tishri 17, the day that Genesis 7 gives us, to Adar 15 is half that or 147 days. In this case, the first half comes up to the point of 7/17 or on 7/17, but it does not enter into it. And this is one way of counting.
We could also overlap 7/17, which is if we begin counting on 2/18 or on the 18th day of the 2nd month. If that is day one rather then the 17th day of the 2nd month, you land right on 7/17. This is legitimate, too, because 2/18 would be the first complete day. Then, again, we would start on 7/17 and count to Adar 15. But in this case, there would be 293 days because we would not be starting on 2/17, but we would have 147 on both ends because we are overlapping 7/17.
A third way is what we were talking about before with all of the things that were taking place on the 17th day of the 2nd month and that God was still saving on that day. It was still the day of the latter rain. This could have been what was going on for a couple of hours, but we do not know the actual time duration. Maybe there were only one, two, or three hours left to the day, but then He shut the door. We could overlap 2/17 and 2/18 and count that as day one, because it would be until 2/18 that we would have one full day.
If we do this overlap of 2/17 and 2/18, we have the starting point of 2/17 and we come to 147 days on Tishri 17. When we do the same thing going the other way and we overlap 7/17 and 7/18 all the way to Adar 15 and we just stop there, this works out, too.
With three ways of doing this, I am sure that there are still going to be some critics. Just imagine trying to pick a date, any date, like Tishri 17 – but we did not pick this date; this is in the Bible – and then pick two points of time where your date would be in the middle, and then try to get a period to double and to be the same. It is not that easy.
The fact that we are able to do this – and we did not pick the starting point of 2/17, we did not pick the dividing point of 7/17, and we did not pick the end point of 12/15 – but we have 294 days in that space and the dividing point of half of that being 147 days. This is not something that anyone can manipulate. This is something that God has worked out.
This is just a quick review. I have a couple of written studies on Facebook that try to lay this out a little bit better, but we will stop here.