The Flower Child Attends Church

The Sermon at Church yesterday focused on the Book of Esther in the Bible. I have never given much thought to this book or even studied it before. I did know that the Book was about a woman.

What I learned is that Esther was a Beautiful Jewish Woman who lived in the Persian Empire. She lost both parents when she was young so she was raised by a family member while the Jewish people were in exile.

The Persian Empire consisted of 129 provinces and the Ruler was looking for a new wife after his former one had disobeyed him. The Ruler's Court visited the whole empire to obtain the desired future Queen.

Esther lived in the Capitol City and she was selected along with many others. Esther found favor with the Ruler and was crowned Queen. However this created problems for some of the Ruler's Advisors. No one knew that Esther was a Jewish person, but some Jewish peoples in the Empire refused to pay homage to the Ruler's Advisors. The Prime Minister (for lack of a better term) devised a scheme to have all the Jewish people executed on a certain day. The Queen heard of this scheme and after a trying period of deciding what to do she visited the Ruler who only could be visited when he requested to try to eliminate the execution of the Jewish peoples.

Esther did this at the risk of her own life because she had not been invited. The Ruler decided that the Jewish peoples could arm themselves to resist the planned killing. In short, the Jewish peoples won the battles and the rest is history.

The peoples of the Middle East have been at War ever since.

The Persian Empire was centered in the country we now know as Iran. The Jewish peoples are now centered in Israel.

The History of the strife between the Ruler of the Persian Empire and the Jewish Peoples contained in the Book of Esther happened over 2500 years ago.

With that history in mind I now have a new insight into the current situation in the Middle East. The Persian Empire at the time of the History of the Book of Esther consisted of the Whole Middle East from Ethopia below Egypt, up through Greece and East to what we now know as Iran.

I thought you might like to know!!!