{"id":2699,"date":"2026-02-20T19:40:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T00:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/?p=2699"},"modified":"2026-02-21T18:37:37","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T23:37:37","slug":"purim-could-you-be-chosen-for-a-moment-like-this-live-02-20-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/2026\/02\/20\/purim-could-you-be-chosen-for-a-moment-like-this-live-02-20-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Purim: Could You Be Chosen for a Moment Like This? Live 02\/20\/2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1iev5kGC0bI?si=OXUmwo2-SzwMw_-8\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/presentation\/d\/e\/2PACX-1vTWE3DTRLDI5vb9lELbQsCMpANSQjQiMw1pqA7w4y-fzmypKcPE5RoCG-mVni1uW2047vfm9zTCT8xg\/pubembed?start=false&#038;loop=false&#038;delayms=3000\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"960\" height=\"569\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" mozallowfullscreen=\"true\" webkitallowfullscreen=\"true\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p>Purim is more than a story\u2014it\u2019s a wake-up call to courage, faith, and divine purpose when God seems hidden. If you\u2019ve ever wondered how God works when He appears silent\u2014or how courage and obedience change history\u2014this teaching is for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this powerful teaching, you will gain a clear understanding of the Purim story and find the courage to stand firm against the shadows of our modern world. You\u2019ll learn the biblical background of Purim and how this often-overlooked feast reveals God\u2019s faithfulness working behind the scenes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a world full of uncertainty, this Christian Purim education unlocks profound lessons on divine providence, resilience, and celebration\u2014transforming a seemingly obscure holiday into a powerful tool for spiritual growth and biblical understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Join us as we explore the Purim story through a Christian lens: from Haman&#8217;s plot to Esther&#8217;s bold stand, and how it all points to the ultimate Savior. Come along with us as we learn the God Honest Truth about the feast of Purim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-heading\">#Purim #BookOfEsther #BibleStudy #WhatIsPurim #PurimExplained #FaithAndCourage #GodHonestTruth<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/document\/d\/e\/2PACX-1vRo-26jx0yClZ4WTr_OEbZ9HbNq3QT03u9ZQ_0vKXXOCYCv0TaGAcOZ5P6slAxAptNjYyJ5QcfuZTfs\/pub?embedded=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"800\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">Transcript<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h1><b>Teaching Introduction<\/b><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you&#8217;re like me and you come from a mainstream Christian background, you probably never heard of the feast of Purim, what it is, where it comes from, all that kind of stuff. Well, that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re going to get into in this video, as well as tell you about how it relates and connects back to the Exodus from Egypt and also to our Messiah, Yeshua. There&#8217;s lots of information that goes into this. Very, very interesting stuff. So don&#8217;t miss a moment of it. Stick around because we&#8217;re going to tell you all about Purim.<\/span><\/p>\n<h1><b>Video Start<\/b><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So this teaching is going to be all about Purim, where it comes from, how to celebrate it, various symbols, various things to do, and also a few things to watch out for and make sure that you do not do because it contradicts with the scriptures as laid out by Yahweh himself. So make sure to stay tuned for every single section here to learn all about Purim. Now, there&#8217;s a lot of stuff coming your way during this particular teaching, but there&#8217;s a whole lot more that we&#8217;re not going to be able to get into for the sake of time. If you would like more information and to further increase your study on this particular subject, make sure to go and to our website at godhonesttruth.com, click on the article post for this particular episode. There you&#8217;ll find the on demand video, the draw slides that you can go through at your own pace. You also find the notes that we took for this particular subject as well as the transcript if that&#8217;s of benefit to you. That&#8217;s on our website at godhonesttruth.com. A more convenient way is to go down below in the description and click on the convenient link down there to take you directly to that article post on our website and that should be down there in the description whether you&#8217;re watching on an audio or video platform or an audio podcasting platform.<\/span><\/p>\n<h1><b>Saga Setup: Historical Timeline<\/b><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All right, so as we get started, let&#8217;s go ahead and do a little bit of foundational work and do some of the setup for the saga of Purim just to give you the background and the main characters and what it is that we&#8217;ll be talking about as we go through the actual story of Purim. First off, let&#8217;s set up the historical timeline and where Purim is actually happening, when Purim is actually happening, all that kind of good stuff. First off, as most of you may know, after King Solomon, the country of Israel, the nation of Israel was split in two. There was a civil war and there was a northern kingdom and then a southern kingdom. The northern kingdom had about 10 tribes and the southern kingdom had two tribes with the and also included the tribe of Levi which didn&#8217;t have property inheritance. But that really gives you a total of three down below in the southern kingdom which is referred to as the kingdom of Judea. Remember that that&#8217;s going to come into play as we go through and speak various words and context and whatnot. But the southern kingdom is known as Judea. If you&#8217;d like to look up where that split and stuff happened, all that stuff, you can look in the book of First Kings, especially here in 12:16. and chapter 12 verse 20 eventually the of course the people of Israel all throughout the Tanakh or the aka Old Testament they would yo-yo they would do good for a while and then they would fall into idolatry or do wrong for a while and they would be punished for their wrong. Well eventually the northern kingdom was taken over taken captive and defeated by the Assyrians and they were taken out into the world and dispersed among the nations. they still for the most part have not returned. Now if you look in the New Testament or the Brit Hadasha you&#8217;ll find something or a group of people mentioned by the name of Samaritan. Now these are descendants of the remnant of the northern kingdom that was still there. They mixed with various other nations as far as the children and families and stuff like that. But that&#8217;s who the Samaritans are there. But for the most part the northern kingdom has not returned. And there&#8217;s what we call the lost 10 tribes. They&#8217;ve been dispersed among the nations. However, for a time, the southern kingdom remained in the southern kingdom. But even after so long a time, they did wrong and they were taken away as well. The southern kingdom was taken captive and defeated by Babylon and they were taken into exile for a set period of time. Now eventually a lot of people from the southern kingdom returned back to Judea but not everyone. There were still some of the Judeans who stayed in Babylon instead of returning to Judea. They had their reasons but eventually even they come and uh went back. But during this time that certain Judeans went back to Judea and certain Judeans stayed in Babylon, that&#8217;s the time period we&#8217;re talking about with the story of Purim. Purim happens in Babylon during that time when certain Judeans decided to remain in Babylon. And in fact, the story of uh Purim, the king Ahashverosh is actually mentioned in other books of the Bible besides the book of Esther where the book of or where the story of Purim takes place. The king of Purim, Ahashverosh is actually mentioned in the book of Ezra as well, which kind of goes along with the same timeline, but not completely. It&#8217;s not doesn&#8217;t contain the story of Purim or whatnot. But anyways, certain uh people of the Judeans returned to Judea, but some stayed in Babylon and that is where our story of Purim takes place specifically in the city or the province. I really don&#8217;t know which one it is, but it&#8217;s called Susa or Shushan. It&#8217;s pronounced different ways, but here on the screen, you can actually see the where it&#8217;s at in the world. You can see on the left over there in the west that is the nation of Israel or where the land of Israel is and then to the east where it would be modernday Iran I think that is where Susa is was part of the Babylonian Empire and this story of Purim takes place in captivity or actually in the kingdom or empire of Babylon. So that&#8217;s a little bit of the historical background and setup for our story of Purim.<\/span><\/p>\n<h1><b>Saga Setup: Mordecai<\/b><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now let&#8217;s start looking at some of the main characters and the probably the main main character or the second main character is going to be the character of Mordecai or Mordecai how you want to pronounce it pronounced several different ways. For those of you who are nerds like me, here is your Strong&#8217;s number for Mordecai. And that is Strongs H4782. Mordecai. Mordecai. And his name means little man or worshipper of Mars. Now with Mordecai and also Esther, we&#8217;ll get into her in just a little bit, but these names come from like a Babylonian origin, not necessarily a Hebraic origin. That&#8217;s why you&#8217;ve got the meaning of things like with the meaning of worshipper of Mars. Mordecai was not a worshipper of Mars. You can see his devotion to the one true god as we go through the story. So, he was definitely not a worshipper of Mars, but that name from a Babylonian origin does retain that meaning somewhat. I&#8217;ve also heard Marduk plan into the origin or the etymology of Mordecai, but I don&#8217;t really know. Anyways, here&#8217;s your outline of biblical usage from blueletterbible.org as well as your Strong&#8217;s definition for Mordecai. Here&#8217;s your brown drivers entry in your Gesenius&#8217; Hebrew lexicon entry and your Jastrow&#8217;s dictionary of the Targums entry. Now, some things to note about Mordecai that you may not have known before or that you may have had a little bit incorrect. So, let&#8217;s go over this real quick with some proof to back up the points. Number one, Mordecai was a Judean. A Judean, not a Jew. He was a Judean and he was of the tribe of Benjamin. Now, if you use the term Jew in the context of being from the southern kingdom of Judea, then yeah, that&#8217;s correct. But just to be specific, I like to use the term Judean so as to differentiate between the religion of Judaism and those from the southern kingdom. Mordecai was a Judean from the southern kingdom and he was of the tribe of Benjamin. So he wasn&#8217;t a Jew as a Judahite. He was actually a Benjamite because he&#8217;s from the tribe of Benjamin. Right? So anyways, during the story of Purim, he is actually at odds with a man named Haman, which we&#8217;ll get to here in just a little bit. He was a really good guy as you&#8217;ll well if you ever read through the story of Purim, the book of Esther, it&#8217;s not that long, so it doesn&#8217;t take very long to read through it. But when you start reading about Mordecai, he&#8217;s actually a very good guy. He has a lot of compassion for a lot of other people, including his cousin Esther. Now, eventually he became the most or the second most powerful official in Persia or Babylon due to his integrity and his faith and the way that things get woven around. But we&#8217;ll see that as we go through the story of Purim. He&#8217;s also, like I mentioned earlier a little bit, he&#8217;s the first cousin of Esther and he raised the orphan Esther after her parents died. He kind of took her on and became a stand-in or stepfather sort of. He helped raise her and she even in certain parts calls him uncle even though he&#8217;s actually her cousin technically she refers to him as uncle but that&#8217;s more of a show of respect and that&#8217;s something that still happens nowadays especially if you&#8217;re like me and you&#8217;re down here in the south if you have someone who is close to the family a family friend and they&#8217;re around all the time you refer to them as uncle so and so uncle John or Uncle Dawn or whatever it happens to be just because they&#8217;re so close. They&#8217;re like family. They&#8217;re like your uncle. It&#8217;s a show of respect even though they don&#8217;t share the same blood with you.<\/span><\/p>\n<h1><b>Saga Setup: Esther<\/b><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So now moving on into our second character we&#8217;re going to look at or examine. And this is the person of Esther. And Esther is well you can call her the main character in the Purim saga or even maybe the second main character is up to you open to interpretation but Esther comes from the word I&#8217;m sorry from Strong&#8217;s number H635 and here from the outline of biblical usage has it defined as or Esther meaning star she is the queen of Persia during this particular story, the heroine of the book of Esther and she is the cousin and adopted daughter of Mordecai as we mentioned earlier. Now, something to note as well is that this name Esther is actually a Persian or Babylonian name, not a Hebraic name. We&#8217;ll get into her Hebrew name here in just a moment, but Esther is a Persian or Babylonian name. So, here on your screen is the outline of biblical usage for Esther. Here&#8217;s your Strong&#8217;s definition or your Strong&#8217;s entry for a star as well as your Brown Driver Briggs entry. Here is your Gesenius&#8217;s Hebrew lexicon and also your Jastrow&#8217;s dictionary the Targums entry for Esther. Now, her Hebrew name is Strong&#8217;s H1919 and her Hebrew name is actually Hadassah. Hadassah. Now, this is not uncommon. And you see this actually several times within scripture and you also see it in other places even in modern times as well. We look in the Brit Hadasha we see various people like the apostle Paul when is speaking sort of in like a helenic or Greek kind of text it calls him by the name of Paul but when it&#8217;s in more of like a Jewish or Judean or Hebraic context it refers to him as Saul. that apostle had two different names. There&#8217;s also Simon who is called Peter, etc., etc. This is not something that&#8217;s uncommon, but it does happen and something to take note of. Now, her, like I said, her Hebraic name or her Hebrew name is Hadassah, and that actually means something like myrtle, something more of a gentle or calming or persevering kind of meaning to it. But her Hebrew name had means myrtle. Here&#8217;s your outline of biblical usage from blueletterbible.org. Your Strong&#8217;s entry for Hadassah as well as your Brown Driver Briggs entry. Here is your Gesenius&#8217; Hebrew lexicon and Jastrow&#8217;s dictionary of the Targums entry for Hadassah. Now some interesting things to note about Esther or Hadassah if you want to call her whichever one but most of the time in the story of Purim in the book of Esther she is referred to as Esther. Anyways Esther is also of the southern kingdom of Judea. So she is a Judean and she is also of the tribe of Benjamin. So she is a Benjamite just like Mordecai was or yeah she is the first cousin of Mordecai. She is one of the population of the Judeans who remained in the empire of Babylon or Persia whatever you want to call it. Even though certain other Judeans returned back to Judea, she was orphaned early in life and there&#8217;s no record of her having any kind of siblings. So, we don&#8217;t know any of her extended family other than Mordecai. Her mother&#8217;s name is not mentioned in scripture. And her father&#8217;s name is very interesting. We&#8217;ll get into all that tonight, but it goes by Avi, Avihail, or Abihail, but just sufficient to say that she was orphaned early in life and she was raised primarily by Mordecai for the remainder of her life. and he is the guardian of her as we go into the Purim story.<\/span><\/p>\n<h1><b>Saga Setup: Ahashwerosh<\/b><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our third character that we&#8217;re going to look at is the king of the Purim story and this is King Ahashverosh. Ahashverosh. Drop practicing that and saying it five times fast. Anyways, Ahashverosh comes from Strongs H325. That&#8217;s H325 in the Strongs. Ahashverosh. Ahashverosh. Here is your outline of biblical usage from blueletterbible.org. And here, this is a good point to make as well. This word Ahashverosh is not actually a name. It&#8217;s a title. And in the book of Esther, it actually only uses Ahashverosh. But we, from as far as I can tell, his actual name was Xerxes or Xerxes the first. But here anyways, here&#8217;s your Strong&#8217;s entry for Ahashverosh and here&#8217;s your Brown Driver Briggs entry as well as your Gesenius&#8217;s Hebrew lexicon entry. Now, some interesting things to note about King Ahashverosh or King Xerxes. Here you can see on the right a coin or a drawing that of a coin from his time that was minted I guess you could say depicting his likeness on the coin as well as some various things there um speaking about it but he&#8217;s also known as Xerxes I he is the son of Darius the great he conducted lots of great building projects during his time as king. He&#8217;s best known for invading Greece, which that gets into all a whole bunch of other stuff, especially as it comes in to uh things like uh Alexander the Great and Antiochus Epiphanes and the story of Hanukkah, etc., etc., later on in history. But King Xerxes when he invades Greece, that kind of moves things along along as far as what we know of as the historical timeline. But he melted down the statue of Marduk when he became king, which is a good thing. He was still a pagan, which was a bad thing. But melting down false gods, that&#8217;s always a good thing. Now, as far as I can tell, this king, this king Xerxes the first or Ahashverosh as we&#8217;re going to refer to him during the story, if you&#8217;ve ever seen the movie 300, as far as I can tell, this is the exact same king Xerxes that you find in that movie 300. Very, very interesting, but probably needs more verification, but yeah, it&#8217;s very interesting, or at least so I thought.<\/span><\/p>\n<h1><b>Saga Setup: Concept of Lots<\/b><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now, let&#8217;s move on and look at our next character. And this is going to be the character of Haman. Haman. He&#8217;s going to be the main antagonist of our story. Whereas Mordecai or especially Mordecai being the protagonist, if not Esther being the main one. Anyways, Haman comes from Strongs H2001. That&#8217;s Strongs H2001. Haman. Haman. And here is your outline of biblical usage from blueletterbible.org. Haman with the meaning of magnificent. He was the chief minister, the second in all of the land of Babylon during the time of King Ahashverosh, especially during the story of Purim. And here is your Strong&#8217;s definition for Haman, as well as your Brown Driver Briggs entry. Here&#8217;s your Gesenius&#8217;s Hebrew lexicon entry and Jastrow&#8217;s dictionary of the Targums entry for Haman. And like I said, if you&#8217;d like the full entry on this or more information, then by all means, please go to our website or click on the link down below to go to the article post and find the notes for a lot more information than what you&#8217;re going to get here in this particular teaching. Now some things to note about Haman is that just like Mordecai was at odds with Haman. Haman was at odds with Mordecai. He eventually rises to being the second in all Persia only second to the king. He was an Agagite of the Amalekites. Now does anyone know what that actually means? Cuz this is very good background information to the story of Purim as well. the Amalekites when the people came out of Egypt and Moses was leading them out of Egypt into the wilderness towards Sinai and eventually on towards the promised land. The Amalekites were the first ones to attack the Israelis or the Hebrews as they came out of Exodus. Because of such and because they attacked the rear and the stragglers and the weak and stuff like that, showing their dirty war tactics, they became very despised in the eyes of Yahweh. Now, as we go through and look at some of this information about the Amalekites here, we can see in Genesis 36:12, &#8220;And Timna was the concubine of Eliphaz, Esau&#8217;s son, and she bore Amalek to Eliphaz. These were the sons of Adah, Esau&#8217;s wife. So the original Amalek was the grandson of Esau and he was the head or the beginning of the Amalekites. Now as we go on, we look in Exodus 17:8. And Amalek came and fought with Israel in Rephidim. That&#8217;s the attack that we are talking about when it comes to the Amalekites and Hebrews coming out of Israel. And then in Deuteronomy 25 says here, &#8220;Therefore, it shall be when Yahweh your Elohim has given you rest from your enemies all around in the land which Yahweh your Elohim has given you to possess as an inheritance that you blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under the heavens. do not forget. So the Amalekites were very, very despised in the eyes of Israel and in the eyes of Yahweh. And he commands the Israelites to wipe them out. Every single one of them. So yeah, Yahweh issues this order to blot out the Amalekites to absolutely and utterly do away with them. But is that what happens? No, it&#8217;s not what happens. In fact, it&#8217;s King Saul, and this is where his fall comes from, who preserves some of the Amalekites. 1st Samuel 15:2-3. Thus said Yahweh of Host, I shall punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way when he came up from Mitsrayim. Now go and you shall strike Amalek and put under the ban all that he has and you shall not spare them and put to death from man to woman from infant to nursing child from ox to sheep from camel to donkey. He says kill them all. Then we go on and look at 1st Samuel 15:8-9. And he, meaning King Saul, and he caught Agag, sovereign of the Amalekites, alive, and put under the ban all the people with the edge of the sword. But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and the cattle, and the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not put them under the ban. But all goods despised and worthless, they put under the ban. So here, King Saul keeps the king of the Amalekites. His name was Agag. He spared the king of the Amalekites and he spared everything that looked good from the gold and silver to the animals etc. Everything that looked good King Saul wanted to keep for himself. Everything else he put under the ban. But that was not the order. The order was to wipe out everything of the Amalekites. Don&#8217;t keep anything. And King Saul disobeyed. Now this king of the Amalekites, his name was Agag and his descendants would be known as the Agagites eventually coming down to Haman who was an Agagite also known as an Amalekite. So that&#8217;s where the Agagites and the Amalekites come from. We look in the Talmud of Megillah 13a. And here is a very interesting passage. So take this as you will. But it says here, quote, &#8220;David did not kill Shimei, although he was liable to the death penalty. The grave consequences of this failure included that Mordecai was born from him, and it was he against whom Haman was jealous, leading Haman to issue a decree against all of the Jewish people.&#8221; and how a Benjamite has repaid me is referring to the fact that Saul who was from the tribe of Benjamin did not kill the Amalekite king Agag immediately from whom Haman was later born and he caused suffering to the Jewish people end quote. So that&#8217;s a very very interesting comparison right there of how King Saul who was a Benjamite also had was uh had interactions with an Amalekite whose name was Agag. And go on into the future and we look at the story of Purim where Mordecai who is also a Benjamite is having interactions with another Amalekite specifically an Agagite named Haman. Very very interesting how that works out. And think about this as we go through the story of Purim. Think about what would have been different if King Saul had wiped out all the Amalekites and there would not have been any Amalekites or Agagites during the time of Purim. Think about how things would have played out a little bit differently.<\/span><\/p>\n<h1><b>Saga Setup: Concept of Lots<\/b><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So now let&#8217;s move on to the concept of lots because this is also something that&#8217;s not taught a lot of times in mainstream churchianity. So let&#8217;s go over what lots are and this whole concept of lots as a whole. The word lots or I&#8217;m sorry the word for this feast day Purim is actually a Babylonian or Persian word. It&#8217;s a the word or lots and that is the word pur. But as some of you may know, when you want to make something plural in Hebrew, especially when it&#8217;s a um something of a um what do you say it um something that&#8217;s masculine in gender and if you don&#8217;t know that um look up uh gender in languages, but if you&#8217;re taking a masculine word in Hebrew and you want to make it plural, you add im to the end of it. The Babylonian word for lot pur becomes Purim if you want to do lots that way. That&#8217;s where the word Purim comes from. It&#8217;s a actually a Babylonian word the and that comes from Strongs H6332 Purim. Purim and that stands for lots or the feast of Purim. Now the Hebrew word for lots is actually goral. Goral and that is Strong&#8217;s H1486 Goral. And that pretty much means the exact same thing. It means lots or whatever you would use to cast lot with. And here is your outline of biblical usage from blueletterbible.org for both Goral and Purim as well as your Strongs entry for these two particular words. And here is your Brown Driver Briggs entry for both Goral and Goral. And here&#8217;s your Gesenius&#8217;s Hebrew lexicon entry. And once again, these will be on the notes if you would like to see more information about each of these as well. Now coming from the Holman Illustrated Bible dictionary quote we do know that people of the Old Testament and New Testament believed God or Gods in the case of non-Israelites or non-Christians influenced the fall or outcome of the lots. Thus casting lots was a way of determining God&#8217;s will. End quote. And again from the Holman Illustrated Bible dictionary quote God commanded that the promised land be divided by lots end quote. And that is so true. And there&#8217;s the use of the casting of lots in a lot more in scripture than just the dividing of the promised land. We look at numbers 26 52- 56. And Yahweh spoke to Moshe saying, &#8220;The land is to be divided to those as an inheritance according to the number of names. To the large one, you give a larger inheritance, and to the small one, you give a smaller inheritance. Each shall be given its inheritance according to their registered ones. But the land is divided by lot. They inherit according to the names of the tribes of their fathers. According to the lot, their inheritance is divided between the larger and the smaller. And we also look at Joshua 14:2 where they actually divide the promised land by using lots. Here&#8217;s Joshua 14:2. Their inheritance was by lot as Yahweh had commanded by the hand of Moshe or the nine tribes and the half tribe. So when they went into the land of Israel, the land was divided up and given to the various tribes. And they did this by casting lots. But there&#8217;s other times they also cast lots such as the feast of I&#8217;m sorry, the moed of Kippurim. We look at Leviticus 16 7-10. And he shall take the two goats and let them stand before Yahweh at the door of the tent of appointment. And Aaron shall cast lots for the two goats, one lot for Yahweh, and the other lot for Azazel. And Aaron shall bring the goat on which the lot fell for Yahweh fell, and shall prepare it as a sin offering. But the goat on which the lot for Azazel fell is caused to stand alive before Yahweh to make atonement upon it to send it into the wilderness to Azazel. So there&#8217;s various places, put it that way, various places within scripture where the righteous people of Yahweh cast lots to decide something, to determine something, things like that. We see something very, very interesting in the book of Proverbs. Proverbs 16:33, the lot is cast into the lap, but every decision by it is from Yahweh. So this is very very strange to us nowadays and very very foreign I guess you could call it also. But during the times of scripture, they actually cast lots and scripture itself says that the decisions of the lot or the decision of the casting of lots is from Yahweh. So that makes it very very interesting or at least I think so. Anyways, this is not something that just happened with the righteous but also happened with the unrighteous as we&#8217;ll see during the story of Purim. We also don&#8217;t only see it just in the Tanakh or the aka Old Testament. We also see it in the Brit Hadasha or the aka New Testament. We look in Matthew 27:35. And having impaled him, they divided his garments, casting lots, that it might be filled what was spoken by the prophet. They divided my garments among them. And for my clothing they cast lots. So when Yeshua was crucified and they took his stuff off and they had his clothes on the ground, they cast lots to see who would get the clothes. Acts 1 26. and they cast their lots and the lot fell on Matthias and he was numbered with the 11 emissaries. Now, just a quick recap, not to insult your intelligence or anything, but just a quick recap. Remember, Yeshua had 12 disciples. One was Judas. He fell away, fell into sin, and betrayed Yeshua. So, they were down to 11 at the time that Yeshua was crucified and buried and during the time he resurrected and when he ascended. But eventually they wanted a 12th disciple and in order to decide who it was that got to be that 12th disciple they cast lots according to Acts chapter 1. So even in the Brit Hadasha or aka New Testament they were still casting lots to decide things just like they were back in the Tanakh. So now that gives us a lot of background and foundation for understanding the story of Purim. We see the historical timeline leading up to Purim. We see the location on the map of where the story of Purim takes place in Shushan, which is modern-day Iran. We learned a little bit about the characters as well as the namesake Purim, the casting of lots, which if you like me and you come from a mainstream churchian background, you don&#8217;t know a lot about the casting of lots. This is rarely if ever spoken of. But now you&#8217;ve got at least a little bit about the casting of lots to help you with understanding some of the parts that go into the story of Purim,<\/span><\/p>\n<h1><b>Story of Purim<\/b><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">which leads us into the actual story of Purim itself. Now, like I mentioned earlier, the book of Esther isn&#8217;t that long. So, if you want to go read it for yourself, go check it out. I think it&#8217;s only like maybe nine or 10 chapters, and those aren&#8217;t very long chapters themselves. So, go read it for yourself if you want the full version. Now, as we go through this story, I&#8217;m only going to give you the summary or the cliffnotes version of the story of Purim just for the sake of time. But once again, not that long of a book. If you want to go read the whole story, it&#8217;s all in the book of Esther. Go read it and check it out for yourselves for a lot more details. But anyways, the story of Purim goes as such. King Ahashverosh was throwing a party and this was a long long party if you read through the book of Esther. In fact, he throws a sixmonth feast. Six months. That&#8217;s a long party. But if that wasn&#8217;t long enough, once the six-month party got done, he then went around or turned right around and threw a 7-day party on the end of that. So this is a big to-do that King Ahashverosh was putting on here. At one point during this whole feasting or whatnot, King Ahashverosh called for his queen who was named Vashti to come and present herself and show herself to the people who were at the party. Now depending on how you interpret this there, it doesn&#8217;t really say specifically what was going on and what the king was wanting. There are some interpretations that say that he was wanting her to come and present herself in the nude to everyone, but I don&#8217;t that doesn&#8217;t really fit with the culture and what we know. So, I don&#8217;t really go with that interpretation. But anyways, for whatever reason she had, she flat out refused and refused the king and her husband, which is something you do not do in that culture during those times. you do not say no to the king and you do not say no to your husband. So this caused a big big uproar within the court within the counselors and everyone else. She was deposed by King Ahashverosh deposed as queen. So therefore he did not have a queen and as such there was this search that went out throughout all the land to find a new queen. So they brought in all the young women, all the virgins pretty much into the harem of King Ahashverosh to be, I guess you could say, auditioned for the role of queen. But there&#8217;s a whole lot more that goes into that actually. In fact, each of these ladies went and spent a certain amount of time, about a year or so, being trained and perfumed and washed and bathed and all this other stuff for an entire year before they actually went and met with the king. And this is the time that Esther would have been also in this particular harem u getting ready herself to go and be one of the auditioners for the role of queen when she went to meet with king Ahashverosh. Now just something to note about this whole concept of harem just real quick. It&#8217;s common myth within especially like American culture and stuff like that that a harem was nothing more than some rich guy having a brothel of sex slaves there. And that&#8217;s not what the harem was really all about back then. Not really. What the harem was was a dedicated and separate place for a king or a man of note to keep his women folk that would be his wives, concubines, daughters, things like that to keep these women away from other men for the sake of their chastity obviously. And in this harem, it would be served and kind of presided over by eunuchs. And for those of you who don&#8217;t know what a eunuch is, a little bit of snippy snippy more than circumcision, a lot more than circumcision. They had little to no sex drive after the operation as it were. So they were very little threat to the women and to their chastity. That&#8217;s why they oversaw the harem and things like that. And as you read through the story of Esther, if you read through it on your own, you&#8217;ll see the mention of eunuchs as they tend to these women in the harem and train them and bathe them and perfume them, all this other stuff. So that&#8217;s why the eunuchs are there and that&#8217;s what&#8217;s going on as they are getting ready. This is where Esther would have been taken during this particular part of the story of Purim. She is beautified. She is bathed and everything else. And this goes on for about a year. After a year, eventually Esther is chosen to go and be with the king. And after this happens, I don&#8217;t know exactly how long it hap after it happens, but anyways, King Ahashverosh selects Esther to be the new queen of Persia, the new queen of Babylon. So now she has taken Vashti&#8217;s place. And the thing about Esther in contrast to Vashti is Esther is very very modest and very very humble and kind and caring. Compare that to the way Vashti was who was very very belligerent and not very humble. She was very what we call feminist nowadays. some kind of it&#8217;s the kind of wife you really don&#8217;t want if you&#8217;re a king or just any other regular man and it&#8217;s actually put forth in the book of Esther when his counselors are talking to him about what Vashti did they&#8217;re like this cannot stand we have to do something about this or the rest of the women in the kingdom is going to go after her example and be belligerent toward their husband so we&#8217;ve got to nip this in the bud and that&#8217;s part of the reason why Vashti was removed this because of all this. So yeah, Esther is chosen as the new queen of Babylon or Persia. So she is in a very very high position of authority, not as much as a man, but she still has a lot of authority nonetheless. And she actually ends up having a great amount of influence on the king. the king in the book of Esther, it seems like he is rather smitten to a certain degree with Esther. And you&#8217;ll see that as we go on in the story as well. Anyways, after Esther is named queen, the next part of the story is that Mordecai happens to be sitting in the gate out in the town or wherever it happens to may be and he overhears a plot to kill the king, King Ahashverosh. And what he does is he communicates through Esther about this particular plot. The people who are plotting against the king are caught and it&#8217;s uncovered and they&#8217;re killed and the king&#8217;s life is spared and saved all because of the doings of Mordecai. And that&#8217;s really at this point where it stops. The king&#8217;s life is saved, but nothing is done for Mordecai. And we&#8217;ll get into that a little bit later on. Just know that as of right now, nothing is done or Mordecai isn&#8217;t given any sort of reward for saving the king&#8217;s life. Now, as all this is going on, the evil Haman or Haman is rising in ranks. He&#8217;s still doing his thing. Remember, he&#8217;s the Agagite, the Amalekite. He is rising in the ranks and doing whatever he has to do to further himself. He&#8217;s more of a selfish kind of guy, but eventually he rises up and becomes second to in all the kingdom of Babylon. So he is second in command. He is only behind the king. And as such and for his position, there is an order that goes out that people are supposed to show him respect and bow down and give him honor when he comes by in the town. Now this creates some conflict with Mordecai because Mordecai he does not bow down. He does not prostrate or show respect or give honor to Haman. Now this is it&#8217;s sort of interesting in a way but sort of not interesting. You kind of understand why he doesn&#8217;t do it in another way. And the reason for that is if you remember when we did the Godhead series and we did the episode on worship back in that culture and you see this all throughout scripture though you probably don&#8217;t know it but in the Hebraic culture and pretty much in the Middle Eastern or Semitic culture as a whole bowing down kneeling in front of someone or even prostrating in front of someone was something that was commonly done. It was done to kings. It was done to generals. It was done to anyone who might be your superior or anyone that you want to show respect and honor to. So this was not a practice that was foreign to Mordecai. It&#8217;s not something the Greeks on the other hand, the Greeks saw that as worship like in a divine sense. And they would only do that to what they would consider a god. And you did not do that to a regular man in the Greek mindset. Things were different with a Hebraic mindset. And Mordecai would not have been opposed or adverse to kneeling or bowing to someone in order to show them honor and respect. But he did not do it to Haman. And it doesn&#8217;t specifically say in the story of Purim why he refused to do it to Haman. But we can kind of guess Mordecai was very aware of his lineage. He knew that he was an Israelite. He knew he was from the southern kingdom of Judea. He knew he was from the tribe of Benjamin because all this is very important to the Hebrews and to the Israelites. And more than likely he would have known that Haman was an Agagite or at the very least an Amalekite. And this is probably why he did not bow or give honor and respect to Haman. Now, given the situation at the time, he was probably prevented from killing him like the order from Yahweh stated, but at the very least, it could just not kneel or bow in front of him or show him respect. That&#8217;s why I think he did not bow or show respect to Haman. But anyways, just let it be known that he did not comply with this order. And anytime that Haman came through, Mordecai did not bow or kneel or show him respect. Even though Haman was the second in all of Babylon. This infuriated Haman. And this is where the odds between Haman and Mordecai come into play. Haman really did not like this. And it really, really upset him. And for whatever reason, I guess it&#8217;s cuz he was just that petty, Haman didn&#8217;t take out his frustration or try to correct the situation just on Mordecai. He decided to take it out on all of the Judeans. Everyone that was related to the southern kingdom of Judea. He wanted to wipe out all of the the Judeans. So in order to do this, he did what we call casting lots to decide the date as to when this massacre or this genocide would take place. And this is where we get the name from. It&#8217;s from the casting of lots by Haman to determine the date for the annihilation of the Judeans. And eventually it come up on the day in the month of Adar which we still have today. As we go on, Mordecai eventually or soon finds out about this plot that Haman has come up with and the date and what&#8217;s going to happen and all this other stuff. And so he informs Esther. Now Esther eventually she says that she can&#8217;t do anything about it. If she goes in front of the king and he hasn&#8217;t called her, she could be killed because of that. So, initially she doesn&#8217;t do that. But Mordecai still stays in contact with her and says, &#8220;This is for all your people because you are a Judean as well, Esther. And if you don&#8217;t stand up, Yahweh may raise up someone else to do this very thing. You don&#8217;t know whether or not you were raised up for such a time as this.&#8221; And that&#8217;s a very very powerful and impactful statement by Mordecai. But anyways, she eventually comes and makes the decision to go in front of the king. But before she does that, she sends word back to Mordecai telling all the telling him and all the Judeans that to fast and pray for three days and three nights. And then she will go in front of the king. And she&#8217;ll do it even if her life is at stake. Even if she dies, she will go in front of the king to try and correct this evil plot by Haman to kill all the Judeans. After three days and three nights of fasting, Esther goes in front of the king and the king extends his scepter granting her life and not killing her. So what the king Ahashverosh says and remember he&#8217;s kind of smitten with Esther. So that plays in her favor as well. And what he says after he extends the scepter and grants her life and leave to come in front of him. He says, &#8220;Tell me what you want. Whatever it is you ask, I will give you up until half of the kingdom.&#8221; And Esther&#8217;s clever. So what she does is she says, &#8220;Well, tonight I would like for you, the king, and Haman to come to a banquet that I&#8217;m going to prepare for you, and then we&#8217;ll discuss all that later on.&#8221; So later on that night, the king and Haman go to Esther&#8217;s banquet that she prepares for them. They have a wonderful meal. They have a great time. They&#8217;re enjoying this banquet. And eventually the king again asks her, it&#8217;s like, &#8220;What do you request of me? Whatever it is up into half the kingdom, I will grant to you.&#8221; And Esther says something along the lines of, &#8220;Well, if it pleased the king, I would like for you and Haman to come back tomorrow night for another banquet that I&#8217;m going to prepare for you, and then I will tell you what it is that I would request from you.&#8221; So the king goes home belly full and happy and whatnot, but whether it&#8217;s the food or the pressures of being king, that night he could not go to sleep. He just simply could not get any rest. So as during this time of trying to get to sleep, he has the scribe come in and read to him from the chronicles of the king. And it just so happens that the chronicles fall upon the story of Mordecai saving the king&#8217;s life from the two people who are going to poison and kill the king. As he hears this story, as he&#8217;s trying to go to sleep and he hears the story about Mordecai, the king asks, &#8220;What was done to Mordecai to reward him for saving the king&#8217;s life?&#8221; And they&#8217;re they tell him it&#8217;s like great king Mordecai was never rewarded for this. And the king is like, &#8220;Oh, no. We&#8217;ve got to correct this. We&#8217;ve got to reward him for saving the king&#8217;s life.&#8221; And it just so happens as well that at this moment, who happens to be walking by in the courtyard? It&#8217;s Haman. So, the king calls Haman in like, &#8220;What would you do for the man whom the king wishes to honor?&#8221; And Haman, he gets a big head and he thinks that, oh, the king&#8217;s wanting to honor me, so I better really, really lavish it on, right? So he tells the king, &#8220;Oh, you should put this man, this honored man, in a royal robes that&#8217;s been worn by the king. You should put him on a royal horse and you should have him paraded through town in all this attire and on the royal horse so that he&#8217;s seen and knows that the this man is honored by the king.&#8221; And King Ahashverosh says, &#8220;Great. I want you, Haman, to do that for Mordecai. Oh, you can just almost feel how Haman&#8217;s heart drops at that moment when he realizes that he has just described a great and lavish thing for his arch nemesis. It&#8217;s it&#8217;s wonderful how this whole turn of events goes around. But this is really the start of the turning point of the story of Purim. The next day after the king hopefully got some sleep that night, the next day the order went into effect and Haman went out and he got Mordecai dressed in the royal robes that were has been worn by the king on the royal horse that was ridden by the king. And it was Haman that led Mordecai around town in all this lavishness. And you can only imagine the embarrassment of Haman as he led around his arch nemesis in public all through town. So it is wonderful. Haman or Haman gets done parading around Mordecai and honoring his arch nemesis. And then later that night on the second day he and King Ahashverosh go to that second banquet that Esther had invited them to and prepared for them and whatnot. And so they eat and they feast and they have a good time and whatnot. And then eventually once again, King Ahashverosh tells Esther, &#8220;What is your request? I will give it to you even up until half the kingdom.&#8221; And this is where Esther lets the cat out of the bag. And she tells him that there is a plot against her and her people and that she just asked that her life be spared. And the king is all perplexed at this and he thinking why would anyone want to kill the queen of Persia? This is absolutely absurd. And then uh Esther goes on into more detail saying no. This evil Haman has plotted to kill all of my people including me on a certain day. And once the king hears of this he is distraught. He gets up. He goes off to have a breather. I guess maybe get a drink of water or something. And while the king goes off momentarily, Haman is still there and he is he knows the gig&#8217;s up. He knows his life is in danger at this point. So he starts pleading with Esther. And at some point during this pleading with Esther and pleading for his life, he happens to trip and fall on top of Esther. This is not a good picture for the king to walk back in on. In fact, the king thinks that Haman is now trying to quote unquote take advantage of the queen. So, this enrages the king even more. So, he has Haman taken out with a hood over his face. And it&#8217;s things aren&#8217;t looking good for Esther. And they tell him that part of this plot that Haman has devised, Haman has created gallows for the Judeans to kill the Judeans once the date comes around. So that Haman already has these gallows. And so the what the king says is well take Haman out and hang him on these same gallows. And so they do. They take Haman out. They hang him on the gallows. They kill him. And they also kill his sons and his wife. They kill his family. Also, let&#8217;s once again something they did during those times to as far as I know try to prevent any reprisal in later years as they grow up and come of age. But yeah, they kill Haman and they kill his family and so the antagonist is done away with at this point. However, they still have the issue of the order that was put out by Haman and on the authority of the king. And the problem with this is that once a order goes out or a law is made, it cannot be rescinded. Not even by the king. So they can&#8217;t do away with this law. The works are still in motion to kill all the Judeans on a certain date. So what they do is they come up with a new order to go out and they tell all the Judeans to arm themselves and fight back against anyone who&#8217;s trying to kill them on that particular day. And so the Judeans rise up, they fight back against their foes and a lot of the people who were trying to kill them were killed themselves and thus the Judeans were saved because of them fighting back. And this is the story of Purim and why we remember it and or part of why we remember it. Anyways, and yeah, that is in a nutshell. But like I said, once again, the book of Esther is not very long. You you read it in less than a day. So go check that out if you would like more details and for the full story on Purim. But there&#8217;s connections to Purim far beyond just that particular story or just a particular time of Purim. We see the workings of Yahweh behind the scenes. And you see some of this timing behind the scenes from the um Haman building the gallows and that was turned back on him, the king not being able to sleep and the chronicles just happened to fall out on the story of Mordecai. all this stuff kind of coming together as it works together as Yahweh works everything together. We&#8217;ll get into some of that here in just a moment too.<\/span><\/p>\n<h1><b>Yeshua &amp; Purim<\/b><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But the connections with Purim go beyond just the book of Esther and just during the time of the story of Purim. It goes on into our Messiah Yeshua as well because think of this, Yeshua was a Judean from the southern kingdom of Judea, but he was also of the tribe of Judah. If the Judeans, which included the tribe of Judah, had been wiped out by Haman during the story of Purim, there would have been no lineage for Yeshua to come through. So you see how all that works too. So there is various connections between Yeshua and Purim as well. We can see somewhat of a connection to Purim in the book of John 5:1. Here it says after this there was a festival of the Yehudim and Yeshua went up to Yerushalayim. Now it does not name the particular feast or festival here but we can kind of assume that maybe it was Purim because one of the themes of Purim is secrecy. And if you think back about the story of the story of Purim, Esther hid her lineage for a while from the king. She was secret about it. The time that Mordecai saved the king&#8217;s life, that was a secret for a certain amount of time, etc., etc. There&#8217;s various secrets behind this. And also if you look in the Hebrew text of the book of Esther, you&#8217;ll also not find the name of Yahweh in the entire book of Esther. There&#8217;s this whole theme of secrecy there. And with the book of John, especially chapter 5, not mentioning the name of the particular festival going on in Jerusalem, it kind of makes you come to the conclusion that yeah, that was Purim that was being celebrated even up in Yeshua&#8217;s day. Now, some other connections to Yeshua and Purim. We see here that Haman cast lots to determine which date that he would use to annihilate the Judeans. Compare that to Yeshua where the soldiers cast lots to see who would get his clothing. In the story of Purim, Esther spent three days fasting before she went in front of the king. Yeshua was 3 days and three nights in the tomb. In the story of Purim, the Judeans were on the verge of annihilation. And as we already mentioned, Yeshua was a Judean from the line of Judah. So there&#8217;s various connections there. And there&#8217;s also other connections go on in prophecy as well, though I&#8217;m not really a big prophecy buff myself. So take that as you will if you studied it out for yourself. There&#8217;s also connections there in end times prophecy, too. But going on, look at some other stuff. We look in Romans 8 28. This is a very good verse to relate to Purim. It says here in Romans 8:28, &#8220;And we know that all matters work together for good to those who love Elohim, to those who are called according to his purpose.&#8221; Now, notice here that it doesn&#8217;t say that all matters are good or that everything that happens is good because we know that is not true. But we do know, and it tells us right here, that all matters work together for good to those who love Elohim. Not that all things are good, that all things work together for good. If you love Elohim. Then we look at 2 Timothy 3:16. And here it says, &#8220;All scripture is breathed out by Elohim and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for setting straight, for instruction in righteousness.&#8221; What are we getting at here? Well, the book of Esther is in our scriptures is considered to be scripture. And as the Paul tells us in the book of second Timothy, all scripture is breathed out and good profitable. The book of Esther including the story of Purim is profitable for us. Now, a little bit of uh caveat on that too. If you look at the mo&#8217;adim, what we generally refer to as the mo&#8217;adim, those are the feast days and the holidays, I guess you could say, that are laid out and ordered by Yahweh in the Torah. Esther is not part of the Torah, but Esther is part of the Tanakh. With that being said, if you don&#8217;t want to celebrate Purim, I don&#8217;t see any obligation to do so. As far as the way I see it, you&#8217;re good to go. If you don&#8217;t celebrate Purim, and you&#8217;re good to go if you do, there is no sort of obligation or command to celebrate Purim like there is with the mo&#8217;adim that we find in the Torah. However, even though it&#8217;s not part of the Torah, it&#8217;s still part of scripture and still profitable as Paul tells us in the book of Second Timothy. And if you&#8217;ve paid attention, you can see all the things that relate and are relevant to us even nowadays coming from the story of Purim, what Mordecai did, what Esther did, etc., etc.<\/span><\/p>\n<h1><b>Celebrating Purim<\/b><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, you&#8217;re thinking now, okay, well, maybe I want to celebrate Purim. So, how do I do this? Well, Purim is a feast day, which means you eat, but included in this whole celebration is a period of fasting if you so choose. And this is called the fast of Esther, and it&#8217;s done for 3 days before, which this year happens on March 2nd. And those three-day fast that we still sometimes celebrate nowadays is reminiscent of the three-day fast that Esther had ordered back during that time before she went to the king. See how that remembrance and that connection is still there. Another thing to do on besides fasting, another thing to do on the um feast of Purim is to read the book of Esther. Obviously go through the story of Purim. And like I said, it&#8217;s not that long. You can get through it fairly quickly. You can even read it out loud and not take that long either. But read through the story of Esther. And as you do that, there&#8217;s a lot of fun that can be had as well. We&#8217;ll get to that here in just a moment. But as you read through it, he it&#8217;s a lot of fun for kids and even adults, too. But that&#8217;s coming up. Man, I&#8217;m starting to get ahead of myself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As far as some of the food goes, one of the most popular foods to have and eat on Purim is what&#8217;s called hamantaschen. Hamantaschen I&#8217;ve heard described as being a standin and meaning uh Haman&#8217;s Haman&#8217;s hat. I I don&#8217;t know why Haman was wearing a triangular hat and I don&#8217;t really get that from the story in the book of Esther but that is tradition and the yeah anyways if you want food to cook for uh Purim you make some hamantaschen that&#8217;s a dessert or you can make it into a non-desert if you want but hamantaschen also lots of seeds nuts things that are green like green vegetables apples and beans and stuff like that. Those are very common to eat on Purim when you&#8217;re celebrating Purim as well. And of course, you cannot have a feast day, any feast day or any mo&#8217;adim except for Pesach. You can&#8217;t have it without the obligatory challah. And when it comes to Purim, generally the challah made for Purim is larger than you would make for other feast days or mo&#8217;adim. And why? I don&#8217;t know. It&#8217;s just tradition. But you can see some fairly large challah here in this particular image. And challah is good anytime. You don&#8217;t have to wait for a feast day. But yeah, challah is also a part of the Purim celebration. Now, as I mentioned earlier, one of the traditions on Purim as part of the celebration is to read through the book of Esther. And as you read through the book of Esther, the two main guys that you read through are going to be again Mordecai and Haman. And as you read the story of Esther and the story of Purim and you say the word or the name Mordecai, everyone claps and cheers and says, &#8220;Yay! All right.&#8221; because he is the protagonist of the story or one of the main protagonists of the story. However, when you get to the name Haman and the name Haman is read during the reading of the book of Esther, you say boo and you, you know, jeer or whatever it is and you also use something that&#8217;s called a gragger to make sounds. And the purpose behind all this is to drown out or blot out the name of Haman. And it&#8217;s a lot of fun.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kids really enjoy this too and whatnot. So when you read through the book of Esther, you cheer when the name Mordecai is read and you boo and you make noise to blot out the name of Haman when the name of Haman is read. Another thing that is done commonly in the celebration of Purim is dressing up as the some of the characters from the story of Purim. Whether it be the King Ahashverosh or Mordecai or Esther or whatever have you. Even Haman, you can dress up as Haman too as part of the celebration of Purim. Another thing and this is actually specifically commanded by Esther in the book of Esther to do on the celebration of Purim is to give to the poor, give to others and engage in charity. And that&#8217;s something a lot of mainstream churchianity holidays don&#8217;t do. But biblical feast and festivals, they it&#8217;s tradition to give to the poor. But that&#8217;s another part of celebrating a Purim. And like I said, it&#8217;s specifically commanded by Queen Esther when the feast of Purim is established at the end of the book of Esther. If you want to greet someone with a Purim greeting, you can say something to the effect of chag Purim sameach and that&#8217;s have a happy Purim holiday or happy Purim feast day. Now, as I intimated early on, there are some things to be aware of and be cautious of as you go through and you celebrate Purim and you&#8217;re looking at traditions from other people or other groups and stuff like that. Here are some things that are commonly done by certain groups of Jews on Purim, but is actually breaking the Torah or breaking scripture. These are things that I would highly highly advise you to not do.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">First of all, crossdressing. And this happens a lot within the celebration of Purim within Judaism. And they&#8217;ll put on things like, you know, women&#8217;s dress or you can see here in this particular picture, a tutu that women wear, women dress up as men. You can see from uh pictures in from parades in Israel where people are dressing up in all sorts of stuff and nonsense stuff. Batman, Spider-Man. This is not Halloween, guys. Seriously, have some common sense. Dress up as the characters from the story. Yeah, that&#8217;s fine. I see no problem with that. But comic book characters, crossdressing, that has no business in the celebration of something from scripture or the remembrance of something from scripture. In fact, in Deuteronomy 22:5, it tells us specifically, do not crossdress. And this is something these Jews are missing and violating. Deuteronomy 22:5, &#8220;A woman does not wear that which pertains to a man, nor does a man put on a woman&#8217;s garment. For whoever does this is an abomination to Yahweh your Elohim.&#8221; Notice there that those who crossdress are referred to as an abomination. The same thing as adulterers, homosexuals, etc., etc. So crossdressing is very very no bueno and prohibited by scripture. I don&#8217;t care how powerful a rabbi or how well known of a pope you are. You can&#8217;t change scripture. So keep that in mind. Is not the Hebrew Halloween. No matter what anybody says, it is not the Hebrew Halloween. Use some common sense. Be an adult about it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Another thing to be wary of and watch out for as you go through this is that in some sects of Judaism, they have this thing called adlo yada. Adlo yada if I&#8217;m pronouncing it right. But the basic concept behind this particular celebration of Purim is to get just absolutely plastered drunk. No joke. Drink alcohol in excess. you&#8217;re just absolutely plastered drunk and you don&#8217;t know the difference between someone saying blessed is Mordecai and cursed is Haman. In fact, you get this from the Talmud and you see it also, I&#8217;m sorry, you see it in the Talmud in Megillah 7b. And it says here, quote, Raba said, &#8220;A person is obligated to become intoxicated with wine on Purim until he is so intoxicated that he does not know how to distinguish between cursed is Haman and blessed is Mordecai.&#8221; End quote. Again, this is against scripture and I won&#8217;t go into detail right now because next week we&#8217;re doing an entire episode on alcohol and the Bible. So, tune in for that if you&#8217;d like to see the contradiction between this particular celebration by the Jews and what scripture actually says about alcohol. But yeah, just know that is very very no bueno and as outside of scripture even that is very very dangerous physically speaking because alcohol poisoning is a real thing. You&#8217;re going to at the very least have a bad hangover and bad day the next day if not destroy your liver or damage it or you could also die from alcohol poisoning. So yeah, this is very very not good on so many levels. So I would definitely and highly advise you to stay away from getting absolutely just plastered drunk like the Talmud is telling you to do.<\/span><\/p>\n<h1><b>Interesting Insights<\/b><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now some interesting insights here about the story of Purim and also the celebration of Purim. Number one, the name of Yahweh is never mentioned in the book of Esther which is very very interesting. is mentioned just about everywhere else, but not the book of Esther. It is the last book to have been canonized as part of the Tanakh or the aka Old Testament. It&#8217;s the only book of the Tanakh that is not found in the library of the various scrolls and manuscripts found at Qumran. Purim is a feast day like we said before, but it is not one of the mo&#8217;adim. You celebrate it, you&#8217;re okay. If you don&#8217;t celebrate it, you&#8217;re still okay. It&#8217;s not one of those that&#8217;s ordained by Yahweh in the Torah. Purim is a Hebrew word derived from the Persian word of pur. As we went over earlier, the account of the Purim story is contained in one of the two only books of scripture that have been named after women. The book of Ruth being the other one.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Also, this is some notes that I thought was very very important and very relevant to our time as well because this story of Purim is not a story of beauty or winning a beauty pageant is a story of courage and that&#8217;s something for especially the women of nowadays to take note of because there&#8217;s a lot of emphasis placed on the appearance of a woman nowadays and probably has always been that way for a long long But this is something you can take away from the story of Esther is the having the courage to do the right thing and not focusing on the beauty. But the inner courage and making the right decisions and standing up even in the face of death like Esther did. That&#8217;s something we can take away from the story of Purim. Also, another important thing I think too is that Vashti&#8217;s denial was more self-centered than anything else.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And contrast that with Esther and how she conducted herself. And Esther&#8217;s bravery was more concerned with an entire people group and not just herself. She could have very easily went up and protected herself because she was the queen of all Persia, all of Babylon. She was favored by the king. So, she could have saved herself probably rather easily. But it took real bravery and real courage to stand up for an entire people group against someone as evil and powerful as Haman was. So, that&#8217;s just some interesting things to take note of and kind of simmer over and mull over in your head as you&#8217;re thinking about all this later on.<\/span><\/p>\n<h1><b>Summary<\/b><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In summary, to wrap up this particular teaching, the story of Purim takes place after the nation of Israel becomes divided, the southern kingdom is taken captive by Persia and some of the southern kingdom returns back to the kingdom of Judea. The main characters of the Purim story are Mordecai, Esther, Ahashverosh, and Haman. The casting of lots has been a well established method among the righteous and the unrighteous. Esther quickly became queen of Persia after Vashti was deposed as queen. Haman plans to execute all the Judeans due to his ego being bruised by Mordecai. And like I said, there&#8217;s pro it doesn&#8217;t say specifically why or Mordecai did not bow and give respect to Haman, but we can kind of read between the lines and put together probably why he didn&#8217;t do it. But at the end of the day, it made Haman very mad at bruises ego and it set a lot of things in motion that he was very petty about. Haman&#8217;s plan is eventually revealed and he is executed along with all his family. The Judeans fight back thanks to Mordecai and Esther are saved. The feast day of Purim is then instituted to remember this particular event where the plot to kill all the Judeans was put in place and then the Judeans were saved or they actually ended up helping to save themselves by fighting back and that is why the feast day of Purim was instituted. It was to remember this particular story that happened in the book of Esther. And that is just the God honest truth.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, thank you for joining us for this particular teaching on Purim. We hope that you got something out of it and learned something that you didn&#8217;t know before. If you would like some more information on this subject of Purim and further your education yourself, go check out our notes on our website at www.godhonesttruth.com godhonesttruth.com or go down below and click on the convenient link down in the description. Now, if you did get something out of this, go down below in the comments section and let us know what it is that really stuck out in your mind about this particular teaching. After that, go up above there and click on that subscribe button and ring the bell so that you&#8217;re notified every time that we go live or upload a new on demand video. Also, make sure to hit that like button if you liked it. Hit that down vote button if you didn&#8217;t like it, but let us know in the comments why that is so that we can improve our future videos. And also make sure to hit that share button and share this video around with someone that you may know and who may also enjoy the same kind of content. Thank you for joining us for another production from God Honest Truth Ministries. We really do appreciate your time and hope that we have been of service to you. If you have any feedback then please reach out to us by writing to team at godhonesttruth.com and make sure to visit our website for more information on our social media links, audio bibles, teaching resources and so much more.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns are-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-9d6595d7 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/odysee.com\/@GodHonestTruth:4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"45\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Odysee-150x45.jpg.png?resize=150%2C45&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1014\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/rumble.com\/c\/c-643077\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Rumble-150x150-1.png?resize=150%2C150&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1017\"\/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Rumble<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bitchute.com\/channel\/BfzfXOOYButS\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"33\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/BitChute-150x33-1.png?resize=150%2C33&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1010\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns are-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-9d6595d7 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UC2aAmJYVkdHgTeLfX9WLPDQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"75\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/YouTube-150x75-1.png?resize=150%2C75&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1007\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns are-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-9d6595d7 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iheart.com\/podcast\/269-god-honest-truth-live-stre-100672234\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"222\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/iHeartRadio-300x222-1.png?resize=300%2C222&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-992\" style=\"width:-82px;height:-60px\"\/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">iHeartRadio<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/1tren7cs0uU62QeiNaa0LH\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Spotify-300x300-1.png?resize=300%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-998\" style=\"width:-110px;height:-110px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Spotify-300x300-1.png?w=300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Spotify-300x300-1.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Spotify<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.spreaker.com\/show\/god-honest-truth-live-stream_1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Spreaker-300x300-1.png?resize=300%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-999\" style=\"width:-99px;height:-99px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Spreaker-300x300-1.png?w=300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Spreaker-300x300-1.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Spreaker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns are-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-9d6595d7 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/god-honest-truth-live-stream\/id1632618972\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Apple-Podcasts-300x300-1.png?resize=300%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-989\" style=\"width:-92px;height:-92px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Apple-Podcasts-300x300-1.png?w=300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Apple-Podcasts-300x300-1.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Apple Podcasts<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/podcastaddict.com\/podcast\/god-honest-truth-live-stream\/4066994\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Podcast-Addict-300x300-1.png?resize=300%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-995\" style=\"width:-85px;height:-85px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Podcast-Addict-300x300-1.png?w=300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Podcast-Addict-300x300-1.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Podcast Addict<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.podchaser.com\/podcasts\/god-honest-truth-live-stream-4773277\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Podchaser-300x300-1.png?resize=300%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-996\" style=\"width:157px;height:157px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Podchaser-300x300-1.png?w=300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Podchaser-300x300-1.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Podchaser<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns are-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-9d6595d7 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\"><div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/music.youtube.com\/channel\/UC2aAmJYVkdHgTeLfX9WLPDQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Google-Podcasts-300x300-1.png?resize=300%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-991\" style=\"width:-83px;height:-83px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Google-Podcasts-300x300-1.png?w=300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Google-Podcasts-300x300-1.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">YouTube Music<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\"><div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/castbox.fm\/channel\/id5003886?country=us\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Castbox-300x300-1.png?resize=300%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-990\" style=\"width:-68px;height:-68px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Castbox-300x300-1.png?w=300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Castbox-300x300-1.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/castbox.fm\/channel\/id5003886?country=us\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Castbox<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-center is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\"><div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/music.amazon.com\/podcasts\/668a97a3-08db-4ade-a0b4-108b48e8d035\/god-honest-truth-live-stream\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Amazon-Music-300x150-1.png?resize=300%2C150&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-988\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Purim is more than a story\u2014it\u2019s a wake-up call to courage, faith, and divine purpose when God seems hidden. If you\u2019ve ever wondered how God works when He appears silent\u2014or how courage and obedience change history\u2014this teaching is for you.<\/p>\n<p>In this powerful teaching, you will gain a clear understanding of the Purim story and find the courage to stand firm against the shadows of our modern world. You\u2019ll learn the biblical background of Purim and how this often-overlooked feast reveals God\u2019s faithfulness working behind the scenes.<\/p>\n<p>In a world full of uncertainty, this Christian Purim education unlocks profound lessons on divine providence, resilience, and celebration\u2014transforming a seemingly obscure holiday into a powerful tool for spiritual growth and biblical understanding.<\/p>\n<p>Join us as we explore the Purim story through a Christian lens: from Haman&#8217;s plot to Esther&#8217;s bold stand, and how it all points to the ultimate Savior. Come along with us as we learn the God Honest Truth about the feast of Purim.<span class=\"more-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/2026\/02\/20\/purim-could-you-be-chosen-for-a-moment-like-this-live-02-20-2026\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"Purim is more than a story\u2014it\u2019s a wake-up call to courage, faith, and divine purpose when God seems hidden. If you\u2019ve ever wondered how God works when He appears silent\u2014or how courage and obedience change history\u2014this teaching is for you.\n\nIn this powerful teaching, you will gain a clear understanding of the Purim story and find the courage to stand firm against the shadows of our modern world. You\u2019ll learn the biblical background of Purim and how this often-overlooked feast reveals God\u2019s faithfulness working behind the scenes.\n\nIn a world full of uncertainty, this Christian Purim education unlocks profound lessons on divine providence, resilience, and celebration\u2014transforming a seemingly obscure holiday into a powerful tool for spiritual growth and biblical understanding.\n\nJoin us as we explore the Purim story through a Christian lens: from Haman's plot to Esther's bold stand, and how it all points to the ultimate Savior. Come along with us as we learn the God Honest Truth about the feast of Purim.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"Purim: Could You Be Chosen for a Moment Like This? 2026","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[25,42,4,26],"tags":[70,78,10,864,14,67,865,68,11,861,868,76,15,129,383,45,130,72,28,44,13,69,71,867,860,866,77,110,74,22,24,43,73,23,862,75,21,17,18,20,863,19],"class_list":["entry","author-admin","has-excerpt","post-2699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-livestream","category-moedim","category-torah","category-video","tag-apologetics","tag-belief","tag-bible","tag-book-of-esther-teaching","tag-christ","tag-christian","tag-christian-guide-to-purim","tag-christianity","tag-church","tag-esther-and-mordecai","tag-esther-bible-story","tag-faith","tag-god","tag-god-honest-truth","tag-gods-honest-truth","tag-hebrew","tag-hebrew-roots","tag-history","tag-israel","tag-jerusalem","tag-jesus","tag-messianic","tag-philosophy","tag-purim-explained","tag-purim-for-beginners","tag-purim-for-christians","tag-reason","tag-sacred-name","tag-science","tag-scripture","tag-synagogue","tag-teaching","tag-theology","tag-torah","tag-what-is-purim","tag-wisdom","tag-yahushua","tag-yahuweh","tag-yahweh","tag-yeshua","tag-yeshua-in-purim","tag-yhwh"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Drash-20260220-Purim-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1440&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2699"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2707,"href":"https:\/\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699\/revisions\/2707"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godhonesttruth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}