The 1860’s placard read:
Pony Express
St. Joseph’s Missouri to California in ten days or less
WANTED
Young, Skinny, Wiry Fellows, not over eighteen.
Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily.
Orphans preferred.
$25 per week.
What does the Pony Express have to do with Esther? Well… read on.
Queen Esther begged King Ahasuerus, a.k.a. Xerxes, to save her people. In response, Haman was hanged on his own gallows and Mordecai was elevated to Prime Minister. But still the Hebrews had an expiration date. The King’s decree had been published requiring “the officials to destroy, kill, and annihilate all the Jewish people—young and old, women and children—and plunder their possessions on a single day, the thirteenth day of Adar, the twelfth month” (Esther 3:13).
The King’s decree was final. “A document written in the king’s name and sealed with the royal signet ring cannot be revoked” (Esther 8:8). Once the decree was published, it couldn’t be rescinded or repealed, even by another executive order.
What could be done? They needed a work-around, a bypass, a plan to circumvent the problem!
With God-given wisdom, Mordecai scripted a new law. It didn’t invalidate the previous order, but “the king’s edict gave the Jews in each and every city the right to assemble and defend themselves, to destroy, kill, and annihilate every ethnic and provincial army hostile to them, including women and children, and to take their possessions as spoils of war. This would take place on a single day throughout all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month Adar” (Esther 8:11–12).
The emancipation proclamation “was written exactly as Mordecai commanded for the Jews, to the satraps, the governors, and the officials of the 127 provinces from India to Cush. The edict was written for each province in its own script, for each ethnic group in its own language, and to the Jews in their own script and language. Mordecai wrote in King Ahasuerus’s name and sealed the edicts with the royal signet ring. He sent the documents by mounted couriers, who rode fast horses bred in the royal stables” (Esther 8:9–10). The good news was sent by Persian pony express, “mounted couriers, who rode fast horses!”
We have good news to share! Though the evil enemy has declared “open season” on all humanity, though he wants to “steal, kill and destroy” (John 10:10), we’ve been set free by proclamation of the King! Hallelujah! We have good news to declare!
And get this… you’re just the royal rider that the King is seeking… After all, you were an orphan until being adopted by the King.
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