Ezra 1 – 3 and Stolen

Ezra 1 – 3

Ezra recounts the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy the Temple would be rebuilt. Did you see what King Cyrus of Persia said? “The Lord, the God of Heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth. He has appointed me to build him a Temple at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.” He allowed any who were exiled from Juda to go to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple. He even directed Mithredath, the treasurer of Persia, to give the articles Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the previous Temple to Sheshbazzar, the leader of the exiles who were returning – 5400 articles of gold and silver, in all.

Chapter 2 lists the numbers from various leaders, families, Levites, and Temple servants who returned from exile. A total of 42,360 people return plus 7,337 servants and 200 singers.

The first thing to be rebuilt after the exiles returned was the altar of the God of Israel so they could sacrifice their burnt offerings. Imagine their joy when they celebrated the Festival of Shelters. After this, during the second year, they started to rebuild the Temple itself. Many wept and others shouted for joy when they saw the new Temple’s foundation.

Tomorrow, we’ll read Ezra 4 – 5 and Psalm 137.

Stolen

Today, I went to AMC and saw the movie Stolen starring Nicolas Cage, Josh Lucas (from Sweet Home Alabama), Danny Huston (Stryker in the X-Men movies), Sami Gayle (Nicki Reagan Boyle in Blue Bloods) and Mark Valley (Christopher Chance in Human Target and Oliver Richard in Harry’s Law) I really like Nicolas Cage, in spite of some of his antics and he did his usual good job in this. The movie had lots of car chases (my favorite(, real, evil villains, and a good story.

It’s amazing how you are persuaded to root for the bad guys and how the bad guy can sacrifice and do good things.

Until next time…