God said to Abraham, I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you (Genesis 12:3).

A prominent goal of evil is always the annihilation of the Jewish people. The heart of God is always the salvation of the Jews. In the Book of Esther, we read the dramatic true story of how an evil man, Haman, plotted to have the Persian king annihilate the Jews about 450 years before the birth of Messiah. The holiday is called Purim because Haman had thrown lots (purim) to determine when he should begin the execution of his plot of genocide against the Jewish people.

Esther, a beautiful Jewish teenager reared by her uncle Mordecai, was raised up by God to become the queen. She kept her Jewish background hidden from the king, and, at the urging of Mordecai, Queen Esther risked her life by going before the king wtihout being summoned by him. She revealed Haman’s secret plot to him, begged for mercy and pled with him for the Jewish people, while revealing her own identity as a Jew. The king was moved and decreed that the Jews would be spared. He had Haman hung on the gallows that Haman himself had earlier prepared for the righteous Mordecai whom he hated. The king honored Mordecai with a high position and spared his own Queen Esther.

“Mordecai…sent letters to all the Jews throughout the provinces…, near and far, to have them celebrate annually the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month of Adar as the time when the Jews got relief from their enemies, and as the month when their sorrow was turned into joy and their mourning into a day of celebration. He wrote them to observe the days as days of feasting and joy and giving presents of food to one another and gifts to the poor” (Esther 9:20-22).

Today, once again, the Jews are threatened with annihilation. This time it is from fanatics of radical Islam, Haman-like people who again want to destroy all Jews along with all of the Christians of the world. Praise the Lord that God’s promises of blessings to us will always stand. Like Esther, who was called “for such a time as this,” let us step forward boldly in the name of Messiah Jesus, praying for and blessing the Jewish people.

Gentiles, let us remember, once we “were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:12-13).

And if you belong to Yeshua the Messiah, you are the seed of Abraham (Galatians 3:29).