The morning Manna will be provided at 6am. Thanks.

Studying Mission in the SSnet.org series Lesson 12, may the Holy Spirit be the speaker to your heart.

The Topic today is: “Mission is standing principled so that other nations want to also become believers as in Esther for Morning Manna of the Sabbath School Lesson Mission”.

The Opening Hymn will be 229 "Spirit of the Living God."

The Sabbath School Quarterly, downloadable from SSnet.org in the Teacher's Edition is on pages 156.

The SSnet.org site allows anyone, anywhere to read the lesson in their own language. Choose your own language to see God speaking also to your heart.

Why do you not click on this now?

https://www.adultbiblestudyguide.org/pdf.php?file=2023:4Q:SE:PDFs:EAQ423_012.pdf

---“Many people of other nationalities became Jews” (Esther 8:17

---‘Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?’ Esther 4:14.”

---The Name of God does not appear in Esther. His presence is there.

---The voice or words of God does not appear in Nature. His presence and Creatorship can be seen like in Fibunacci’s spirals that are in Dendron, flower leave arrangements, stars, having the exact mathematical formula in arrangement. Big Bang? Impossible. Even Idian scientists before Christ could see that!

---Deism originated because Indian scientists could see “god” in the spirals of Nature.

---So Esther does not need the Name of God mentioned to see His presence.

---The two verses cited above is the presence of God.

---It is His agenda and plan for humanity.

---Mission to the unreached. Mission to the lost sheep.

---If someone is lost, God is focused on him/her.

---So who and what was Mordechai?

---A few months ago Dan Price wrote about Mordechai accusing him as a troubling character.

Source: Dan Price, Mordechai. Downloaded on the 19^th of December 2023 from https://israelmyglory.org/article/mordecai/

---Dan is a young bright researcher and possibly a freelance writer.

---No problem.

---Many of his ideas are fresh and serious. When people have a positive view of Mordechai, he does but get carried away by a list of problems that Mordechai had.

---Dan’s analysis is done with feet solidly in modern democratic political establishment setting, with a society that fosters a moral-ethical set of values that are no longer “biblical” but humanistic.

---I do not get the impression that Dan is writing about Mordechai with a pacifistic ideology. No war but love hippie mentality.

---It was about defense of the Jews.

---Dan Price works with the reality of the existence of Mordechai. Opposite to others who do not. I like that.

---About Mordechai he summarized: “Mordecai was an official in Ahasuerus’s court in the capital city of Shushan. It’s unclear how important his position was; but he clearly held influence because he sat in “the king’s gate,” where judges and other officials typically worked in ancient cities (Esther 2:19; 6:10, 12); and he had access to the portion of the palace that housed the king’s harem (Esther 2:11).”

---Should we declare that Persepolis is not Shushan. Well, it is not, but the king’s treasury was kept in Persepolis.

---Dan Price summarized Mordechai’s good points:

a) He showed great compassion and graciousness in choosing to raise his young cousin, Hadassah, as his own daughter (Esther 1: 7).

b) He also showed his dutiful faithfulness by revealing his coworkers’ assassination plot against Ahasuerus (Esther 1:19–23).

c) And he shared God’s passion to protect His people, evidenced by his mourning in Esther 4when he learned of Haman’s edict to annihilate the Jews.

d) After the Haman dishonoring event Mordechai went back to the gate to work. Haman went home (Esther 6:12).

e) Mordechai trusted God as Esther 4:14 indicates:

If you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?

---Dan Price then listed Mordecai’s Troubling Behavior.
1. “Why, for example, was Mordecai in Shushan at all”

a)     Cyrus’s decreed 59 years before that they could go back. Mordechai did not. Why? We can ask also why Jews do not return to Israel after 1948 from New York?

b)    Did he assimilate with the Persians not to join his Jewish friends? Apparently not, for his Jewish compassion is very strong.

c)     Was it too comfortable among the Gentiles for him?

d)    Mordechai chose to be working in the gates of a king who “was notoriously ruthless, drunken sexual predator. Why do Adventists work for Putin? Or any Christian work for any government around the globe?

2. Dan continues: “Similarly, when Ahasuerus ordered his men to collect young virgins for him, why didn’t Mordecai attempt to hide Hadassah or send her away? He knew exactly what type of abuse lay in her future, but Scripture records no resistance on his part.”

However, it is not that simple for us to speak of abuse of women for we were not in the inner-room of affairs. Do we have any cuneiform tablet talking about the abuse of the women?

“It appears he encouraged Hadassah’s prospects, even telling her to use the Persian name Esther and hide her ethnicity. We can’t help but ask, “Why would Mordecai choose this course of action?” Dan Price asked.

Here I would answer that the legal system of their day for the Persians were the same as that in the USA. Not exactly though, but what I mean is that the power of the law is not in the king or Mordechai but in the customs and mannerism’s expected to be carried out with high propriety, the same as expected in any/most countries.

It is not out of control laws as the Neo-Babylonians sometimes had, but in control laws by the Persians. A nuance difference.

3. Dan felt uneasy about Mordechai’s counterlaw. “However, the most troubling of Mordecai’s activities involved what he did after Haman’s plan to kill the Jews was foiled and King Ahasuerus gave Esther and Mordecai the freedom to write a law to counteract Haman’s evil edict. Mordecai didn’t merely write a law allowing Jewish people to defend themselves against attack; he wrote one allowing the Jews to counterattack “both little children and women, and to plunder their possessions” (8:11).”

Again here is pointed out that the king could not change the law because the Jurisprudence was more complicated than a “one-man-show”. The main idea may have been Mordechai’s but how it was versed and argued to be formulated in detail may have been superior lawyers who’s advice he had to follow when consensus became clear.

4. Dan then listed the numbers killed: “The text says 800 men in the capital were killed and 75,000 throughout the empire (9:12, 15–16). Such retaliation goes far beyond simply protecting the Jewish people. We don’t know why he authorized such action; but it appears needlessly vindictive, opportunistic, and morally questionable. And the text indicates the extent of this new law lacked divine approval. Chapter 9 says three times the Jews did not plunder their enemies (Esterh 9:10, 15–16).”

Here I can say that retaliation laws were designed by Hammurapi after 1795 BC that when a woman did something wrong she must be drowned in the river. Scholars said that was just in theory but not in practice.

Similarly, the law provided room to go to that length if necessary but the retreat, or change of attitude could change the manner of retaliation.

Let us modernize the question: If Gaza attacked Israel first and Israel retaliate with so many of their people killed. If they submit and with a contrite heart changed attitude and assist in getting the villains arrested and handed over, would Israel retaliate with severity continuously? No. Because they will follow the text in Esther 9:10, 15-16. Correct?

5. Dan Price put Mordechai in a more negative position: “In the midst of this ruthlessness, Mordecai was raised to the position of prime minister; and “the fear of Mordecai” (v. 3) fell on all the governors and royal officials, some even pretending to be Jewish because they were afraid (Esther 8:17)”.

The fear of Mordechai mainly mean that he was respected in a higher position. It is not the fear-concept of 2023 USA style. The etymology for Persian times in Hebrew and Aramaic was different in Semantics than it is in Anglo-Saxon use in contemporary times.

---Talking about Etymology or meaning of words. One has to be careful here that we do not rely just on what Hebrew Dictionaries says a word mean. They are 91% correct but 9% of the words are mere guesses and they are using 7^th century AD Arabic to explain what Moses said in Job in 1460 BC! For these hapax legomena or rare expressions for Moses, one should use rather Middle Egyptian similar consonants.

---So Mordechai in my understanding is the same as the Bible tries to give it to us. Kind, thoughtful, compassionate, hardworking, able, courageous, principled, humble. Are you? About time to make a change? Correct? When? Now.

---Source to help understand Daniel, Ezra and Nehemia in the Babylonian and Persians times.

https://www.academia.edu/111773589/Backgrounds_to_Daniel_Ezra_and_Nehemia_2020_plus_

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