Page 60 - The Divine Unfolding of God's Plan of Redemption

individual witness and stand of Daniel and his friends against the adversary‟s attempt
to eliminate it by lions‟ den and fiery furnace. Beside the testimony of the great exile
prophets, Daniel and Ezekiel, Jehovah-God gave the faithful Jewish remnant favor

with the Gentile kings, and Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, Cyrus and Artaxerxes
Longimanus gave decrees that were circulated through their great empires which bore
unmistakable testimony to the power, wisdom, and truth of the God of Israel. Cyrus
gave a decree for the rebuilding of the Temple, and Artaxerxes, later, for the

rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem under Ezra and Nehemiah respectively. The serpent
and his seed again contested this restoration of the testimony in the land. Mithredath,
Bishlam, Tabeel, and company did all they could to prevent Ezra and Zerubbabel from
reconstructing the Temple, and Tobiah, Sanballat, and company did their best to

hinder and oppose Nehemiah in the rebuilding of the city. But all the forces of hell
could not stop the work. God had ordained that it should come to pass (when the
seventy years of desolation were accomplished) that His testimony should be restored
in the Temple and the city, and it was done.

One of the most outstanding attempts to obliterate the people of the seed by the
serpent and his seed is recorded in the Book of Esther. The only reason Esther found
its way into the sacred canon was because Jehovah wanted to show how He preserved

His testimony people at a very grave crisis in their history and how Esther was
brought to the throne “for such a time as this.” It is interesting to note that the evil
genius, humanly speaking, behind this dastardly attempt was another of the accursed
line of Amalek and Esau. We are told that Haman was the son of Hammedatha, the

Agagite. Again the warfare flared forth in mortal combat, the principals this time in
the age-long controversy, Haman and Mordecai. Haman‟s hatred of Mordecai
impelled him to plot the murder of all the Jews in the whole Empire of Persia. He even
contrived a decree sealed with the king‟s seal for the destruction of all the Jews on a

given day. The sovereign God, forseeing this move of the serpent, had brought about
the enthronement of Esther as queen, and she, under the tutelage of Mordecai, was
enabled to reverse the whole plan and bring a great victory for the Jews, as celebrated
in the Feast of Purim. And Haman was hoisted with his own petard and hung on the

gallows which he himself had erected for Mordecai. The people of the seed were thus
preserved from wholesale murder and the line of the special seed remained intact.
The last great attempt to cut off the special seed is recorded in the second chapter

of the Gospel of Matthew, when Herod, another of the seed of Esau, having heard
from the Oriental wise men of the birth of Him Who was to be King of the Jews, had
all the boy babies from two years old and under in all the environs of Bethlehem
murdered. Truly the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel, and it is not a good thing
for one to fall into the hands of him who was a murderer from the beginning! His

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