If I Perish I Perish-01 Ministry From Esther — Major Ian Thomas

Christianity Without Christ

A recording of If I Perish, I Perish, by W. E. N. Thomas, commencing in Chapter 1. I'm tired of religion, and, to be entirely honest, I know of nothing quite so boring as Christianity without Christ. Have you ever tried to start a car without fuel, until there wasn't a spark left in the battery?

Then you will know exactly what I mean, for there are few things more frustrating than a car that will not go. Everything is nicely greased and in its rightful place, and all the working parts move beautifully, but try as you may, if there isn't the suspicion of a kick, nor the tiniest evidence of life in the engine, you might just as well dump the thing, for all the chance you have of getting it on the move.

Countless people have stopped going to a place of worship simply because they are sick of going through the motions of a dead religion. They're tired of trying to start a car on an empty tank. What a pity it is that there are not a few more people around to tell them that Jesus Christ is alive.

I spoke of nothing more boring than Christianity without Christ, but I know of nothing so exciting, utterly exciting, as being a Christian, sharing the very life of Jesus Christ on earth, right here and now, and being caught up with him into the relentless, invincible purposes of an Almighty God, and with all the limitless resources of deity available for the job.

Can you imagine anything more exciting than that? Do you know what it is to live purposely? Is there an urgent sense of mission, or some compelling thrust within you which makes life add up to the sheer adventure that God always intended life to be?

Or, are you simply engaged in the struggle for existence and survival? Worse still, far from being caught up into the invincible purposes of an Almighty God, have you been caught up into the rat race of competitive existence, haunted by the fear of being overtaken on the bend, breathlessly trying to keep abreast of events that travel faster than your capacity to cope with them?

The Testimony of Abundant Life

If so, I think you will be interested in the following extracts from a letter I received several years ago from a student attending Bible college. I am writing to thank you for your sixth devotional lecture, the effect of which, upon my life, it would be difficult to exaggerate.

I have been a Christian for four years, but I came home feeling like a person who has just discovered that he has passed the last four years sitting unwittingly on a million pounds. Only the riches I have discovered cannot justly be compared to that sort of train.

That is how the letter began, and I would like to share with you a little more of what he had to say. I believe that God prepared me for his lectures. Last term, I had to prepare a talk on I Am the Truth from John's Gospel, chapter 14, verse 6.

One of the two main headings under which I was collecting and jotting down my thoughts with Jesus is the truth. The fundamental characteristic of truth is consistency. It must fit every known and unknown fact and situation, and its absence.

I get the picture in my mind of a giant jigsaw puzzle. If I have anything but the truth, at least one of the pieces will not fit, and others will need forcing into place. The fundamental idea behind Jesus is the truth was that Jesus is the key to the understanding of all things, and almost the first thing you said was that the Lord Jesus Christ is the final exegesis of all things.

Thus God prepared my mind. As I listened, as I copied up my notes, and ever since I have read my Bible and thought about it, pieces of the jigsaw puzzle have been falling over each other in their eagerness to tumble into place.

It is as if I had been collecting pieces for the past four years, but just flinging them into the box without any real thought of fitting them together. Now, each time I come across one of these pieces, it seems to fit into the total scheme of spiritual life, and into the whole scheme of things in general, from verses of Scripture to insignificant things of everyday experience.

I find it difficult to describe the sense of being utterly at one and in harmony with the Lord Jesus. Spiritual wisdom has become part of a sum total of experience, rather than something detached and fragmental.

My life since my conversion has been one of striving to work for Christ, instead of letting Him work through me. What a difference there is now that He, and not work for Him, has the preeminence. Now, I really realize that not only am I in Christ, but that Christ is in me.

I also realize that there is no further basic issue to face. Humanly speaking, those six lectures have helped me more than all the talks, lectures, sermons, books, and examples which I have experienced since my conversion.

The Lord Jesus said, I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. I know now what He meant, because I have it. The writer of this letter was a pilot with the Missionary Aviation Fellowship in Ethiopia, and quite recently flew me over the mountains into Panis Panos.

It was thrilling to discover that the intervening years had served only to establish ever more firmly in his own experience the principles of true discipleship which he had so readily embraced. Trading his poverty for Christ's wealth, his weakness for Christ's strength, this young man has exchanged the bankruptcy of the fallen Adam for all the fullness of the life of Christ, and has discovered the sheer adventure of allowing Jesus Christ to be God in his own experience, for God He is.

I wonder whether you have learned to do the same. To detach your Christianity from Christ is to reduce it to the impotence of a dead religion, impersonal to him and impersonal to you. Just an intellectual exercise, or a sentimental formula, and Christianity is neither.

Christianity is Christ. It involves a principle of life which pulsates with divine energy, and cannot be explained apart from God Himself. It is essentially miraculous, even though it does not have to be sensational.

It is always supernatural, in that it lies beyond the scope of mortal man apart from the indwelling presence of the Risen Son of God. It is with the object of making the same wonderful discovery that we are about to embark together upon this series of studies in the book of Esther.

Esther as an Allegory of the Christian Life

You may be somewhat surprised at my choice of the book of Esther for this particular purpose, but I know of no other single book in the whole of the Old Testament which more lucidly illustrates the principles governing the Christian life, nor is there a book which demonstrates more clearly what spiritual new birth really involves, and what conditions must be met to be filled with the Holy Spirit and to become effective for God.

Within the pages of the book of Esther, there is to be found a wealth of understanding concerning the implications of true discipleship, and concerning that relentless war for final supremacy being waged within the soul of man between good and evil, between God and the devil.

It is fascinating beyond description to find, with the unfolding of the story, so meticulous an explanation of so much that often baffles the honest but hard-pressed believer. If you are genuinely concerned to find the key to victorious living, and to that dimension of spiritual experience that makes you more than conqueror, then read on, and join me in the exploration.

Before we begin to examine the story, I would like to say a word concerning Bible exegesis, or exposition, which I trust may be helpful to all, and especially to those whose responsibility it is to take the word of God and unfold its message to us.

It is important to bear in mind that the whole Bible, throughout both Old and New Testaments, is a total revelation authored by the Holy Spirit, and that no part may be detached from the rest, nor be incompatible to the truth as consistently revealed throughout the whole of Scripture.

In the fourth chapter of his Epistles to the Galatians, and with reference to the birth of Isaac and Ishmael, Paul writes in the 24th verse, which things are an allegory. The Apostle clearly recognizes that behind the historical events there is a unique symbolism by which the Holy Spirit has chosen to illustrate in the Old Testament spiritual truth enunciated in the New Testament.

It is a correct understanding of this hidden symbolism which offers to us the key to correct spiritualization, which in turn provides the basis for accurate biblical illustration. Correct spiritualization provides the expositional constants to which all biblical illustration must be true, if it is to be accurate and safe, for these constants involve principles which may never be violated.

Allow me to explain to you what I mean by an expositional constant. The Holy Spirit, as author of the Bible, has chosen particular peoples, nations, countries, animals, or inanimate objects as symbols with which to convey certain different spiritual meanings.

Once you have learned the language of the Holy Spirit, and recognized one of these symbols in any particular portion of the Bible, you will be alerted to the fact that he is making reference to that which is represented by the particular symbol which he is using.

It is the spiritual significance of these symbols which I have described above as a spiritual constant, because of the relentless consistency with which the Holy Spirit uses these symbols throughout the whole of the Bible.

One such which readily comes to mind is oil, which in both Old and New Testaments always represents the person, office, and work of the Holy Spirit himself, as indeed do wind and fire. Another which I am sure you will recognize at once as being equally obvious is the snake or serpent used by the Holy Spirit to represent Satan, or the sin that has its origin in Satan.

The devil is pictured as a serpent in the record of man's fall into sin, Genesis chapter 3 and verse 1, and is directly referred to in this way in the twelfth and twentieth chapters of the Revelation, that old serpent which is the devil.

Paul was certainly in no doubt as to whom he was referring in the second of his epistles to the Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 11, but I fear less by any means as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtleties, so your mind should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

The Lord Jesus Christ spoke of the Pharisees as a generation of vice, having told them plainly, Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. John's Gospel, chapter 8 and verse 44.

An allegory is the describing of a subject under the guise of another which resembles and suggests it, as, of course, was the case in the use made by the Lord Jesus of parables. By this means he clarified the truth which he wished to communicate, underlined it, and impressed it upon his hearing.

Another example of an allegory in more recent times is Bunyan's Children's Progress, or His Holy War, and of still more recent authorship, The Screw-Tapes Letters by C .S. Lewis. I would like to make it clear to you, therefore, at the outset of our journey together, that although there is in my mind absolutely no doubt as to the historical accuracy or divine authorship of the book of Esther, I shall be using the story as an allegory, clarify and illustrate spiritual truths soundly established and substantiated elsewhere in the Bible, and all of which must be entirely compatible with the total revelation given to us by the Holy Spirit in the whole of the Scripture.

This being so, I need hardly say that I do not claim any monopoly whatsoever in the interpretation of the book of Esther, but simply add these thoughts to the countless others which have already been legitimately expressed with the earnest prayer that God may be pleased to own and to honor them in the hearts of my readers, and that, as one such, you personally may be enriched and encouraged in your knowledge of our wonderful Lord Jesus Christ, and that, in consequence, He, for His part, may be allowed to enter ever more fully into His inheritance in your lives.

Haman, Mordecai, and the Human Soul

It might not seem to you entirely logical, but I would like you to begin with me at chapter three in the book of Esther, for in the first two verses we are introduced to three characters, all of whom play a significant role in the unfolding of the story.

After these things, did King Ahasuerus promote Haman, the son of Hammedator, the Abagite, and advance him, and set his feet above all the princes that were with him, and all the king's servants that were in the king's gates bowed, and reverenced Haman.

For the king had so commanded concerning him, but Mordecai bowed not, nor did he reverence. King Ahasuerus reigned, we are told, in chapter one, verse one, from India unto Ethiopia, over an hundred and seven and twenty provinces, and may well be identified with the better-known king Exepses, who reigned from 486 to 465 B .C.

The Zonderman Pictorial Bible Dictionary gives four close similarities between them which support this identification, and in the same volume it is noted that in all probability the Ahasuerus of Ezra, chapter four, verse six, is also the same person.

As the king and his palace, Ahasuerus will represent Horus, the soul of man, for it was within the palace that decisions were made, policies declared, and decrees published. The kingdom of 127 provinces will represent the human body, for throughout the length and breadth of the land the laws promulgated in the palace have their repercussions being communicated in this way to the outside world.

From the largest cities of the tiniest village, the conduct of the people and the way they behaved was affected by the king's command. It is within the soul that human behavior is determined, for it is within the soul that decisions are made, plans conceived, and the will exercised to bring the body into action.

In this way the thoughts and the intents of the heart may be communicated to the outside world in terms of human behavior. I have dealt more fully with the function of the soul as the seed of human behavior in the Mystery of Godness, in the chapter entitled The Nature of a Man, but it is necessary here to remind you that the will is exercised under the influence of the mind and the emotions.

Whatever influence it may be that controls the mind and the emotions will ultimately control the will, and this fact leads us to consider the role of Haman the Agagite in the story recorded in the book of Acts.

Haman the Agagite will represent what in the New Testament is called the flesh, not of course the human body, but that perverted principle which perpetuates in man Satan's proud hostility and enmity against God.

You will notice that from the outset of the story Haman is already deeply entrenched within the palace, firmly established in the king's affection, and enjoying his complete confidence, for he advanced him and set his feet above all the princes at the witness.

In his presence, as an act of reverence, every head had to bow. Haman, from within the palace, had constant unhindered access to the king, and in his own subtle way colored the king's thinking, stirred the king's emotions, and with his malicious evil influence molded the king's decisions, so that by every royal decree to the very extremities of the kingdom the character of this wicked man made its impact upon the nation.

On the other hand, sitting in the king's gate outside the palace, and having no access to the king, and exercising no influence whatsoever over him, was one who refused to bow in the presence of Haman.

His name was Morikei. Morikei will represent the person of the Holy Spirit, of whose presence the unregenerate soul is destitute, and you and I were born in this unregenerate condition. The Holy Spirit is the inveterate soul of the flesh, for the flesh lapses against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other.

Galatians chapter 5 verse 17. No doubt by now you are beginning to get the picture. Here is man in his fallen condition, his soul dominated by the flesh and destitute of the Holy Spirit, just as the king was dominated by Haman, and deprived of the counsel of Morikei.

Man's humanity is prostituted by Satan, and deprived of those gracious and benevolent influences of the Spirit of Christ, by whose indwelling it was God's original intention that man should share his life, and become by creation a partaker of the divine nature.

The story begins with the wrong man in, and the right man out, and the problem to be resolved becomes quite obviously apparent. How to get the wrong man out, and the right man in. This is what the gospel is all about.

Quite obviously, to get the wrong man out and the right man in, and thus to exchange the malicious evil influence of Haman for the gracious benevolent influence of Morikei, is going to involve an entirely new situation within the palace, and a radical change of government.

Needless to say, such a change of government within the palace is going to have far-reaching consequences throughout the kingdom. No one will be left in any doubt as to what has really happened. In the spiritual sense, nothing less than this will be involved, if in becoming a Christian, it is your desire to be the Christian that you have become.

Amalek added again, you may wonder why seeing the begunning for Haman, and may ask why have you got your knife into him? What has Haman done to deserve it, and what reasonable excuse do you have for painting such a sinister picture of the man?

Maybe you even feel a little sympathy for Haman, and think that it is presumption on my part to blacken his character without ever having put him on trial. Allow me to disillusion you, gentle friend, if out of charity you feel inclined to champion his cause.

Haman is full of hate, and hidden in his heart, beneath the veneer of disarming charm, there is murder in the making. His ways are the ways of death. It is in the person of Haman that we are alerted by the Holy Spirit to the main thrust of the book, for if we examine his pedigree, we discover in Haman one of those expositional constants to which I have already made reference in the preceding chapter.

Amalek, Esau, and the Flesh

Haman did not like the Jew. This is a fact which we may readily ascertain from the most casual reading of the text. And the king took his ring from his hand, and gave it unto Haman, the son of Hamadeth, of the Agagite, the Jew's enemy.

Chapter 3, verse 10. On that day did the king Ahasuerus give the house of Haman, the Jew's enemy, unto Esther the queen. Chapter 8, verse 1. The ten sons of Haman, the son of Hamadeth, the enemy of the Jews, slew they, but on the spoil laid they not their hands.

Chapter 9, verse 10. Because Haman, the son of Hamadeth, of the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews, had devised against the Jews to destroy them. Chapter 9, and verse 24. Why did Haman hate the Jews? Did he not like the look of their faces, or was there a deeper significance to this murderous hostility, in which was to be conceived the bloodthirsty plan to destroy, to kill, and of course to perish all Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day, even upon the thirtieth day of the twelfth month, which is the month Adar, to take the spoil of them for a prey?

Chapter 3, and verse 13. In my book, The Saving Life of Christ, I have devoted two chapters to the study of Amalek, grandson of Esau, and father of the Amalekites, with whom God had declared himself to be at war from generation to generation.

If you have not already had occasion to read The Saving Life of Christ, please forgive my boldness in suggesting that you take the earliest opportunity of doing so, for its contents, especially in reference to Amalek, have a strong bearing upon the spiritual contents of the book of Esther.

Suffice it, however, for the moment that we might get the sense of the matter to make this quotation. In Esau, the spirit of Satan was incarnate. What do I need of a birthright restoring me to dependence upon God?

I am independent, and I am self-sufficient, and I will be what I am by virtue of what I am. Why did God hate Esau? Because God can do absolutely nothing with a man who will not admit that he needs anything from God.

Esau rejected God's means of grace. He repudiated man's need of God's intervention. He despised his birthright, and God never forgave him. This is the basic attitude of sin. It makes God irrelevant to the stern business of living, and gives to man a flattering sense of self-importance.

God can do nothing for the man eaten up with the spirit of Esau. Amalek was Esau's grandson, and Malachi tells us that the descendants of Esau were a people against whom the Lord had indignation forever.

Malachi, chapter 1, verse 4. And Exodus, chapter 17, tells us that God was at war with Amalek from generation to generation. Perpetuated in Amalek was the profanity of Esau, the man who refused the birthright.

There was no good thing in Amalek. There was absolutely no salvageable content in Amalek. There was nothing in Amalek upon which God would look with favor. That was God's mind, God's will, and God's judgment concerning Amalek.

But Saul forgot to remember. Though he smoked the Amalekites, Saul took Agag, the king of the Amalekites, alive, a king of Edom whom God had sentenced to death. Saul presumed to find something good in what God had condemned.

This was the sin of Saul. He kept the best of what God had hated. So Agag was an Edomite, a descendant of Esau, the despiser of the birthright, and Agag was the king of the Amalekites. Thus Haman was also an Amalekite, for Haman was an Agagite.

Esther chapter 3 verse 1. And the Amalekites were the inveterate enemies of Israel. In the person of Haman, descendant of Agag, king of the Amalekites, Amalek was at it again. As Satan hated God, so Cain hated Abel, and Ishmael hated Isaac.

And as Ishmael hated Isaac, so Esau hated Jacob, and Amalek hated Israel. And as Amalek hated Israel, so Haman hated the Jew. In this connection, it is interesting to note that Herod the Great, who, in his attempt to kill the Lord Jesus, ordered the destruction of all the children in Bethlehem, two years of age and under, was an Edomite.

According to John Peter Lange's commentary on Matthew, Herod the Great was the first sovereign of the Idumean race of Edomites, which, from the year 40 before Christ, reigned over Jerusalem under the supremacy of Rome.

Herod was an Amalekite, descendant of Esau, and of a kith and kin of Haman. In this commentary on Matthew's gospel, it is stated, and I quote from page 60,. "...in the design of Herod, the old enmity of Edom against Jacob seems to reappear.

We are involuntarily reminded of that murderous purpose. I will slay my brother Jacob, which Esau relinquished in his own person, but bequeathed to his posterity.". Genesis chapter 27 verse 41. Haman was true to his breed, and within his wicked heart there sieved this inherent enmity against the promised seed, for God had promised, "...there shall come a star out of Jacob, and a scepter shall arise out of Israel.

Out of Jacob shall come he that shall have dominion.". Numbers chapter 24 verses 17 and 19. Haman was a ready tool in the hands of the devil in the pursuit of Satan's vicious ambition to thwart God's redemptive and regenerated purpose, that of re-establishing his divine sovereignty within the soul of man.

Here, indeed, was murder in the making. If there was one thing more than another which made Haman live, it was the fact that in the king's gate there was one who looked him straight in the eyes with cold contempt, and whose head was never bowed in his presence.

Then the king's servants which were in the king's gate said unto Mordecai, Why transgressest thou the king's commandment? Now it came to pass, when they spake daily unto him, and he hearkened not unto them, that they told Haman to see whether Mordecai's matter would stand, for he told them that he was a Jew.

And when Haman saw that Mordecai bowed not, nor did him reverence, then was Haman full of wrath. Chapter 3, verses 3 and 5. Haman recognized in Mordecai his arch-enemy, for in him he saw the ultimate of all that which elicited his hatred for the Jews.

There is something frighteningly authoritative about the look of quiet, unflinching confidence upon the face of a man who knows that he is right, and at peace with God. The high priest and the council discovered this when, looking steadfastly on Stephen, they saw his face as it had been the face of an angel, and heard him denounce their guilt without any suggestion of apology, nor hint of fear.

In words which cut them to the heart, you stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost, as your fathers did so do ye. And they gnashed on him with their teeth.

It was the look upon the face of the Lord Jesus Christ which, perhaps more than anything else, frightened Herod and Pontius Pilate on that day when they both washed their hands at him, and were made friends together.

A bad conscience is always uneasy in the presence of truth, and whether it be in the presence of Mordecai, or Stephen, or the Lord Jesus Christ himself, it cries out hysterically, Hang him! Stone him!

Crucify him! You may shoot truth between the eyes when it looks you quietly in the face, but it was not the truth which holds victim to your bullet. It was not truth that lay bleeding, dying on a stony slope on the day that Stephen was stoned to death, nor was it truth that hung upon a cross to be buried in a tomb.

Sin was there condemned, and Satan judged. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

Romans chapter 8 verses 3 and 4. On the third morning, truth was vindicated, and Jesus Christ was declared to be the Son of God with power by his resurrection from death. Romans chapter 1 and 4. The Son of God who came into this world to get the wrong man out by taking the flesh into the place of death upon the cross, and to get the right man in by the gift of the Holy Spirit to those who claim redemption through his blood.

He is the truth, the truth that sets men free. Haman saw in the Jews a threat to his authority, a threat personified in the unbending defiance of Mordecai, and he thought scorn to lay hands on Mordecai alone, for they had shown him the people of Mordecai.

Wherefore, Haman sought to destroy all the Jews that were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahazuerus, even the people of Mordecai. Haman said unto King Ahazuerus, There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of thy kingdom, and their laws are diverse from all people, neither keep they the king's laws.

Therefore it is not for the king's prophet to suffer, if it please the king. Let it be written that they may be destroyed, and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver to the hands of those that have the charge of the business, to bring it into the king's treasures.

Chapter 3, verses 6, 8 and 9. Haman recognized that laws had been entrusted to the Jews which, were they to be imposed upon the land, would involve a radical change of government, and introduce an entirely new way of life which would be incompatible with that which derived from his own evil influence.

It was this that had to be resisted at all costs. Who then were these laws entrusted to the Jews, to which Haman took such strong exception? They were the oracles of God, and represented that true spiritual content of the Jewish nation of which, as a people, the Jews gave but feeble expression.

For he is not a Jew which is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh, but he is a Jew which is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of a heart in the spirit, and not in the letter, whose praise is not of men but of God.

What advantage then has the Jew, or what profit is there of circumcision? Much every way, chiefly because that unto them were committed the oracles of God. He declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and his ordinances to Israel.

He has not dealt so with any other nation. Psalm 147 verses 19 and 20 in the Campsified Bible. Don't forget that in the unfolding of the story of the book of Esther, Haman represents for us the flesh, and Mordecai the Holy Spirit, and we understand from the epistles of the Romans that they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, but they that are after the spirit the things of the spirit.

So we may interpret Paul's words to the Roman Christians this way, for to be carnally minded, Haman-minded, is death, but to be spiritually minded, Mordecai-minded, is life and peace. Because the carnal mind, the Haman mind, is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it.

Romans chapter 8 verses 5 to 7. Being hostile to God himself, it follows that the flesh is hostile to the law of God, and any steps which God might take to re-establish his law in the heart of man will be resisted to the neck.

Being already entrenched within the human soul by nature, as Haman was already entrenched within the palace of the king, the flesh is in an admirable position to incite the mind, the emotions, and the will of unregenerate man to defy God, resist his grace, and keep the right man out.

It was to this end that Haman approached King Ahasuerus, representing the human soul, and persuaded him with his subtlety that the introduction of the divine law into the affairs of the kingdom could only be to the detriment of the king's best interests, and that the voice therefore of this people, the Jews who represented that law, must be ruthlessly silenced.

This is a lie which continues to be propagated by Satan today, with signal success in the hearts of countless men and women, and boys and girls who have allowed themselves to be persuaded that to give themselves back to the God who made them, and to submit themselves to his sovereignty, is to be robbed of that liberty which makes life really worth living.

Such people are not necessarily insincere in this conviction, but are the victims of their own ignorance, which makes them dupes of the devil whose chiefest delight is to exploit their ignorance. Their moral understanding is darkened, and their reasoning is beclouded.

They are alienated, estranged, self-banished from the life of God, with no share in it. This is because of the ignorance, the want of knowledge and perception, the willful blindness that is deep-seated in them, due to their hardness of heart, to the insensitivity of their moral nature.

Ephesians chapter 4 verse 18, from the Amplified Bible. For the God of this world has blinded the unbelievers' minds that they should not discern the truth, preventing them from seeing the illuminating light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, the Messiah, who is the image and likeness of God.

The second of Paul's epistles to the prince, chapter 4 verse 4, from the Amplified Bible. It is for this reason that so many do now what the king not insincerely did then, for he took his ring from his hand, and gave it under Haman the son of Hamadetha the Agagaptet, Jew's enemy.

Chapter 3 verse 10. To understand the interesting significance of this act, we need to turn to a parallel passage in the Old Testament found in the book of Genesis. It concerns Pharaoh's relationship to Joseph, as expressed in what Pharaoh had to say to Joseph in the day that he took his ring from off his own hand, and placed it upon Joseph's feet.

Thou shalt be over my house, and according unto thy word shall all my people be ruled. Only in the throne will I be greater than thou. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, See I have set thee over all the land of Egypt.

And Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand, and put it upon Joseph's hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck. And he made him to ride in the second chariot which he had.

And they cried before him, Bow the knee! And he made him ruler over all the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I am Pharaoh, and without thee shall no man lift up his hand nor foot in all the land of Egypt.

Genesis chapter 41 verses 40 to 44. In other words, this means that although Pharaoh retained his titular sovereignty, all the executive powers of government were vested in Joseph, and the symbol whereby this transfer of authority was seen was Pharaoh's ring upon Joseph's finger.

In the same way, King Ahasuerus expressed his utter confidence in Haman by placing his ring upon Haman's finger, thus investing him with all the executive powers of government throughout the length and the breadth of his kingdom.

Thereafter, no inhabitant of the land might lift up his hand nor foot save at Haman's behest, and under his total jurisdiction. King Ahasuerus was sold out to Haman utterly, as the soul of the unregenerate is sold out to the flesh, and his behavior subject to the demands of a rebel regime that denies to God his right to be God.

Then were the king's scribes called on the thirteenth day of the first month, and there was written according to all that Haman had commanded unto the king's lieutenants, and to the governors that were over every province, and to the rulers of every people of every province according to the writing thereof, and to every people after their language, in the name of King Ahasuerus was it written, and sealed with the king's ring.

And the letters were sent out by post into all the king's province to destroy, to kill, and to cause to perish all Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day, even upon the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month Adar, and to take the spoil of them for a prey.