JOEL 2 GENERATION

My previous post was about Biblical Cyrus' mandate to judge ancient Babylon and I considered the parallel with Trump's role in doing the same thing to our modern-day Babylonian system. Cyrus had another role to play which was to set God's people free from the captivity they were in. That is what this post is about. What does it mean that the Church is being set free? What should we be doing if in fact a modern-day Cyrus is being used by God to free us from things that have had us captive? That have been holding us back? So, let us get back to our Biblical character of Cyrus. Imagine we are in the 6th century BC and God's people have been under judgment during their 70 years of Babylonian captivity. For all those decades, faithful Jews within Babylon were crying out to Yahweh for deliverance AND for God to judge the very ones who God was using to judge them. And then the deliverer came. Cyrus the PAGAN Persian emperor basically took over the entire Middle East and beyond...

To review a key chapter in Biblical History, God's people came under judgment in 586 BC when the southern Kingdom was conquered by the Babylonians and they were taken into captivity in Babylon for 70 years as was prophesied. Also prophesied was that one day they would be freed from their captivity and allowed to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Jewish Temple. A great story - faith-filled, inspiring and yet sobering. Disobedience leads to judgment. And God ultimately delivered His people. God has never changed and "everything that was written in the past was written to teach us" ( Romans 15:4 ). An aspect of the story however that only recently seems to have been re-considered is that God raised up a PAGAN king, King Cyrus, to judge the PAGAN Babylonians. While God judged His people for their disobedience of His commandments, He also judgment upon the pagan "tool", the Babylonians, that He used to first judge the People of God. Cyrus is mentioned in several pas...