The Book of Haggai

Introduction Haggai is the tenth of the twelve prophets in the Old Testament. These twelve prophets are sometimes called ‘the minor prophets’ because their writings are brief rather than a consequence of their importance. Haggai is the second shortest book in the Old Testament (only Obadiah is shorter), and is quoted in the New Testament once (Heb 12:26).

      The book consists of four prophecies delivered over a four-month period during the second year of the Persian King Darius I the Great (521 bc).

Author Haggai was a prophet (1:1). His name means ‘festal’, maybe suggesting he was born during one of the three great pilgrimage feasts. His ministry was short, lasting only four months. There is some evidence that Haggai witnessed the destruction of Solomon’s temple (2:3) but, if so, he must have been in his 70s when writing. Alternatively, a different Prophet took his master’s name for this book.

The date The book of Haggai was written 70 years after the Babylonian exile. The book was compiled soon after the events in the book occurred.

Background King Nebuchadnezzar deported the Jewish people to Babylon in 597 BC following his first invasion. A second major deportation occurred in 586 BC soon after the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed.

     Much later, in 538 BC, King Cyrus of Persia conquered Babylon (2 Chron 36:21–24, Ezra 1:1–4). He adopted a policy of local identity and self-rule, and allowed the Jewish people to return to Jerusalem. Cyrus told them to rebuild their temple (Ezra 1:2–4; 6:3–5), so this period is known as the Second Temple period. The Second Temple was begun in 520 BC under King Darius of Persia and completed in 516 BC. The Books of Nehemiah and Ezra also describe the Restoration of Israel.

     The governor of Judah, Zerubbabel, and Joshua the Priest led about 50,000 Jews back to Jerusalem. They immediately started rebuilding the Temple, and completed the foundation within two years (Ezra 3:8–11). Their success upset their Samaritan neighbours, who feared the political and religious implications of a thriving Jewish state with a rebuilt Temple. The Samaritans opposed the project, and managed to halt work until about 520 BC, when Darius the Great became King of Persia (Ezra 4:1–5,24).

The Book of Haggai Haggai’s prophecy is a two-fold challenge to Israel after the Exile in Babylon: they must remain faithful to God and must rebuild the Temple (Ezra 5:1–2; 6:14).

     Haggai was sure that Babylon was able to conquer Israel because its people had broken their covenant with God. He therefore challenged the exiles to choose obedience and repent. He condemned injustice and idolatry, and reiterated the laws of ritual purity, telling the people to humble themselves and reject injustice and spiritual apathy. He reminded the would-be rebuilders of Jerusalem to give God their allegiance and build the Temple before they started constructing homes for themselves.

     Haggai assured the returning exiles that if they repented, God would fulfil His promise to establish a New Jerusalem and would defeat evil from among the nations. 

For more information, please read:

https://thebibleproject.com/explore/haggai/

https://www.biblica.com/resources/scholar-notes/niv-study-bible/intro-to-haggai

http://biblescripture.net/Haggai.html

https://www.bible-studys.org/Bible Books/Haggai/Book of
Haggai.html

https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Book-of-Haggai

Therea of Lisieux

Coping with an 'in-between' month

February is always an ‘in between’ sort of a month. Christmas and New Year lie behind us and we await Easter ahead. We’ve celebrated, know we’re just about to change gear for Lent, and then a different kind of celebration occurs afterward.

      Christians do not live their faith in a simple linear fashion. We experience a diet of slow and fast, high excitement and muted expectation. We have services of music and colour but the periods between can seem almost dull by comparison.

      This continual sense of change can be disorientating, so we need something constant on which to lay hold. For that reason, we think about God continually, and use the knowledge of His love and faithfulness as a kind of bedrock. The Bible tells us the steadfast love of God never ceases and his mercies never come to an end (Lam 3:22). If we lay hold of this truth, and think about it often, then the day-to-day changes in the Church calendar add flavour to our devotion rather than the changes disorientating our lives of faith.

      So as we move into the new Church year, we need to think about God and his ever-constant love. It’s a life changer.

The Book of Jude

The book of Jude is the last of the seven ‘catholic’ (or ‘universal’) letters of the New Testament. It is also one of the shortest books in the Bible and comprises a single chapter of only 25 verses.

Authorship The author identifies himself as Jude (v. 1), which is a form of the common Hebrew name Judah (or, in Greek, ‘Judas’).

       Of those named Jude in the NT, those most likely to be author of this letter are:

1. The apostle Jude Thaddeus, one of the twelve Apostles and the brother of James the Less (see Lk 6:16; Ac 1:13 and note). It was this Jude who asked
Jesus at the Last Supper, ‘Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?’ (John 14:22).

2. Judas the brother of the Lord (Mt 13:55; Mk 6:3).

3. He is definitely not Judas Iscariot because he died before the resurrection.

The second-named is the more likely. For example, the author does not claim to be an apostle and even seems to separate himself from the apostles (v. 17). Furthermore, he describes himself as a 'brother of James' (v. 1). Ordinarily a person in Jude’s day would describe himself as someone’s son rather than as someone’s brother. The reason for the exception here may have been James’s prominence in the church at Jerusalem.

     Neither Jude nor James sought special privileges from being brothers of Jesus. Indeed, neither describes himself as a brother, but others always spoke of them in that way (see Mt 13:55; Jn 7:3–10; Ac 1:14; 1Co 9:5; Gal 1:19).

Date There is nothing in the letter that requires a date beyond the lifetime of Jude the brother (or stepbrother) of the Lord. The question of the relationship between the books of Jude and 2 Peter has a bearing on the date of Jude. If 2 Peter makes use of Jude—which is a commonly accepted view—then Jude needs to be dated before 64 AD when Peter was martyred. It certainly appears that Jude’s readers were first-hand witnesses of the apostles (see vv. 17–18).

Content Jude wrote his letter to Messianic believers who were familiar with Old Testament scriptures and Jewish literature. He uses these texts intelligently.
      Although Jude was eager to teach his readers about salvation, his main teaching is a warning against men who were perverting the grace of God (see v. 4). He refutes these corrupt teachers who he thought were leading his flock astray, and describes them in vivid terms as apostates.

      Both Jude and 2 Peter sought to combat a heresy that was common at the time of Peter’s death (cf. Ac 20:29–30; Rom 6:1; 1 Cor 5:1–11; 2 Cor 12:21; Gal 5:13; Eph 5:3–17; 1 Thess 4:6).

      These false teachers seem to have tried to convince believers that being saved by grace gave them licence to sin since their sins would no longer be held against them. The teachers believed their own teaching and therefore lived immoral lives. (It is generally thought that these false teachers were Gnostics — they taught that matter is evil, so Jesus can’t have been a real flesh-and-blood human.) Jude taught his readers against such men and told them to be prepared to oppose them using the truth about God’s saving grace.

      Finally, Jude is unique in containing the only verse in the Bible that refers to Michael being an Archangel (verse 9). It also quotes extensively from books in the so-called apocrypha, such as Enoch.

Jude fact file

Author Jude the brother of James. He is probably the same Jude who was the brother / stepbrother of Jesus.

Date Soon before the martyrdom of St Peter, which occurred in 64 AD.

Main purpose of writing Jude wrote to warn the Church against immoral teachers who taught alarming heresies which endangered the faith of the
believers.

Key verse Beloved, while eagerly preparing to write to you about the
salvation we share, I find it necessary to write and appeal to you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. For certain intruders have stolen in among you, people who long ago were designated for this
condemnation as ungodly, who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. (Jude 3–4, NIV)

 For more information, please visit

https://thebibleproject.com/explore/jude

https://www.biblica.com/resources/scholar-notes/niv-study-bible/intro-to-jude

http://biblescripture.net/Jude.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistle_of_Jude

Anthony of Sourozh

Anthony Bloom

Andrei Bloom was born in Lausanne, Switzerland on 6 June 1914. He spent his early childhood in Russia and Persia because his father was a member of the Russian Imperial Diplomatic Corps. His mother was the sister of Alexander Scriabin, the composer.

     His family left Persia during the Bolshevik Revolution and, in 1923, settled in Paris, where Andrei was educated. He graduated in physics, chemistry and biology, then took a doctorate in medicine.In his own words, he met Christ when he was a teenager:

‘I met Christ as a Person at a moment when I needed him in order to live, and at a moment when I was not in search of him. I was found; I did not find him.
      ‘I was a teenager then. Life had been difficult in the early years and now it had of a sudden become easier. All the years when life had been hard I had found it natural, if not easy, to fight; but when life became easy and happy I was faced quite unexpectedly with a problem: I could not accept aimless happiness. Hardships and suffering had to be overcome, there was something beyond them. Happiness seemed to be stale if it had no further meaning.

      ‘As it often happens when you are young and when you act with passion, bent to possess either everything or nothing, I decided that I would give myself a year to see whether life had a meaning, and if I discovered it had none I would not live beyond the year.

      At the start of war in 1939, he secretly professed monastic vows in the Russian Orthodox Church, then left for the front as a surgeon in the French army. He was tonsured later (in 1943) and received the name of Anthony. He worked as a doctor during the German occupation of France and took part in the French Resistance.

      He continued to practise as a physician after the war until his ordination as a priest in 1948. He was sent to England as Orthodox Chaplain to the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, a society established to foster understanding and friendship between the Russian Orthodox and Anglican churches. He was appointed vicar of the Russian patriarchal parish in London in 1950, consecrated its Bishop in 1957 and Archbishop in 1962, when he assumed charge of the Russian Orthodox Church in Great Britain and Ireland (the Diocese of Sourozh). In fact, he founded the Diocese of Sourozh.

      Anthony was best known as a writer and broadcaster on prayer and the Christian life, but was also widely honoured by the academic world. For example, Aberdeen University gave him a doctorate of divinity ‘for preaching the Word of God and renewing the spiritual life of this country’.

His best-known books on prayer and the spiritual life are: Living Prayer, Meditations on a Theme, and God and Man, and were among the first to bring the riches of Russian Orthodox spirituality into the Christian mainstream.
      Anthony died on 4 August 2003. Today, many Orthodox Christians think of him as a saint.

Anthony Bloom quote

The Lord is my Shepherd