CSN Monday LightWing Messages - To Honor Women’s History Month with the Story of Esther

PM Edition - 3/10/2025

Mar 10, 2025

So the king and Haman went to Queen Esther’s banquet, and as they were drinking wine on the second day, the king again asked, “Queen Esther, what is your petition? It will be given you. What is your request? Even up to half the kingdom, it will be granted.”

Then Queen Esther answered, “If I have found favor with you, Your Majesty, and if it pleases you, grant me my life—this is my petition. And spare my people—this is my request. For I and my people have been sold to be destroyed, killed and annihilated. If we had merely been sold as male and female slaves, I would have kept quiet, because no such distress would justify disturbing the king.”

King Xerxes asked Queen Esther, “Who is he? Where is he—the man who has dared to do such a thing?”

Esther said, “An adversary and enemy! This vile Haman!”

Then Haman was terrified before the king and queen. The king got up in a rage, left his wine and went out into the palace garden. But Haman, realizing that the king had already decided his fate, stayed behind to beg Queen Esther for his life.

Just as the king returned from the palace garden to the banquet hall, Haman was falling on the couch where Esther was reclining. The king exclaimed, “Will he even molest the queen while she is with me in the house?”

As soon as the word left the king’s mouth, they covered Haman’s face. Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs attending the king, said, “A pole reaching to a height of fifty cubits stands by Haman’s house. He had it set up for Mordecai, who spoke up to help the king.”

The king said, “Impale him on it!” So they impaled Haman on the pole he had set up for Mordecai. Then the king’s fury subsided. Esther 7:1 - 10 (NIV)

The King’s Edict in Behalf of the Jews

That same day King Xerxes gave Queen Esther the estate of Haman, the enemy of the Jews. And Mordecai came into the presence of the king, for Esther had told how he was related to her. The king took off his signet ring, which he had reclaimed from Haman, and presented it to Mordecai. And Esther appointed him over Haman’s estate.

Esther again pleaded with the king, falling at his feet and weeping. She begged him to put an end to the evil plan of Haman the Agagite, which he had devised against the Jews. Then the king extended the gold scepter to Esther and she arose and stood before him.

“If it pleases the king,” she said, “and if he regards me with favor and thinks it the right thing to do, and if he is pleased with me, let an order be written overruling the dispatches that Haman son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, devised and wrote to destroy the Jews in all the king’s provinces. For how can I bear to see disaster fall on my people? How can I bear to see the destruction of my family?”

King Xerxes replied to Queen Esther and to Mordecai the Jew, “Because Haman attacked the Jews, I have given his estate to Esther, and they have impaled him on the pole he set up. Now write another decree in the king’s name on behalf of the Jews as seems best to you, and seal it with the king’s signet ring—for no document written in the king’s name and sealed with his ring can be revoked.” Esther 8:1 - 8 (NIV)

FOUNDER’S MESSAGE:

Today we offer the first Monday LightWing Messages edition for March, and we hope people are up to the correct time settings, as most of the nation switched to Daylight Savings in the middle of the night on Sunday. Yet, time is evaporating like rainwater on a hot summer sidewalk. There is no way to ‘save’ time. We tend to manipulate it, but time does not wait for anyone.

So, right at the beginning of this month, we are dealing with the concept of a Red Sea moment for the American people. It is definitely not a normal time in our history, or in the history of the world. Yet, in the United States, people may be aware that the government is not conducting “business as usual.” The American people decided to change their leadership last year through the elections. Many may not have realized that such changes could have been brought about because the speed with which the government bureaucracy operates has usually been at a snail’s pace. It is the genuine will of government leaders that gets things done, or steers things away from being accomplished. Otherwise, without a strong sense of purpose, or the will to do specific tasks, the government is like a rudderless ship. Unfortunately, those at the helm in many recent years have either been steering the ship of state away from the nation’s purpose that the Founders intended, or not steering at all.

So, right at the beginning of March, a month that has been designated as Women’s History Month, the story of Esther from the Bible becomes a focal point for an examination of how a female influenced the government, under an absolute ruler, to affect a serious change that would save the worldwide diaspora of the Jewish people. Despite the detractors of Esther’s story, it is a compelling and educational, if not motivational story. It should evoke interest for two reasons: 1) Americans normally associate Women’s History Month with the struggle for female political equality. Yet, the story of Esther, set under the realm of an absolute ruler, in a time when women had fewer political rights than American women would dream of tolerating, reveals the will of a woman who would put her life on the line for the sake of her people. It represents the power of cooperative effort through prayer and fasting and clever planning to transform ‘reality.’

Last year in October, just before the election in November, a gathering of “One MIllion Women” occurred in which around 250,000 participants gathered on the Capital Mall in Washington, D.C. to focus on repentance and seeking God’s forgiveness for America’s straying from our nation’s covenant with HIm. The LightWing Messages featured a section covering that event last year.

We replicate some of the messages in this edition as a reminder of the impetus of that event. It may have attracted a great amount of God’s attention in such a time as that. In this edition, we offer an article I wrote about Esther and her willingness to offer her own life, without guarantees that it would make any positive difference upon the government she would have to challenge. I wrote the article in 2018 and titled it: “Esther’s Story: A Woman Who Risked her Life for her People.” Those who are familiar with the story, know she was totally willing to risk her life to save her people from the edict of the King.

Esther’s story has relevance for the women, as well as all the people, of this nation who believe in the values, principles, and ideals our nation was founded upon. We the People cannot remain silent in the presence of the enemy within our nation, or the enemies outside our nation. There are still Amalekites or Agagites, the Hamans in our midst. Hitler comes to mind as a modern day version of Haman the adversary of Esther and the Jewish people. These adversaries among us are revealing themselves in this time; yet it is more likely that they must be revealed through the efforts of the people to demand they come from the shadows and stand under the scrutiny of the statutes of justice for the crimes against the people. But, God also has a way of pronouncing His judgment and the citizens need to express their voices and cease being silent about the abuses of our God-given rights that are evident. The moment is now ripe, and the time is right, but this opportunity may evaporate in two years. A person of genuine faith could wonder: how many of my brothers and sisters in faith are currently willing to risk their lives for the sake of saving the Republic and our people?

These words are being freely offered to you – intended to shine light unto our paths, as written: “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” Proverbs 29:18 - (KJV)

Read, absorb and share, and practice what is within you. Become a force for goodness!

May God bless our readers & their loved ones. May God bless America!

Esther’s Story: A Woman Who Risked her Life for her People

By Dennis Jamison 3/23/2018

Traditional perceptions regarding March being designated as Women’s History Month revolve around the struggle for women’s political equality in the United States. Yet, many citizens in the U.S. have been led to believe that the right to vote or even the right of political participation had been totally repressed by an unsympathetic government. Yet, without any comparative to other societies or other governments in history, there is lack of perspective - sometimes out of ignorance, yet sometimes out of dogmatic intransigence.

As the days of March elapse and Women’s HIstory is forgotten for another year (hardly), the very important Jewish holiday of Passover will be celebrated at the end of the month and in the beginning of April. The holiday is ripe with history of the Hebrew people’s struggle and ultimate escape from slavery. Moses is revered as the hero who led his people from slavery under the Egyptians. Yet, at the beginning of the Month of March, there was another Jewish holiday celebrating a woman who saved her people from annihilation. It is possible a majority of Americans know of Moses, but doubtful they would have known of Esther.

There are likely several reasons that could be attributed to ignorance of Esther as a major figure in women’s history, but this Jewish woman was quite politically adept, and managed to intervene with a Persian king’s mandate in order to protect the lives of her people. However, Esther’s story is profound and should be revisited, even though the Jewish Feast of Purim is normally not noted during Women’s History Month. But, if Harriet Tubman is a standard - even referred to as the Moses of her people, Esther should also be recognized and valued for the salvation of her people.

Esther’s story is In the Bible, and for those who do not recognize the value of the Bible, her story may be hard for many to digest. Nevertheless, it provides a unique opportunity to reflect upon a woman who lived long before women’s rights were even conceived, yet whose political impact preserved her people in a time in which they may have been annihilated - much the way thousands of Jews were exterminated under Adolf Hitler’s evil reign. Unfortunately, Americans typically contemplate women’s rights within the scope of the development of the United States, the story of such a woman of ancient Persia may prove to be beyond the contemporary narrative of the Atheists, Leftists and their scholarly progressive-revisionists of history.

Yet, Esther’s story has recently been made into a contemporary movie (One Night with the King) that seems fairly historically accurate; and for those challenged with reading, or reading the Bible, the story reveals a brave and faithful woman’s value well beyond the political arena, and reveals a woman who was well ahead of her time. In contemporary times, when a woman’s value is often relegated to her ability to vote, Esther shows up as a woman living in a time of tyranny in which women, as well as men had relatively zero rights, let alone “voting rights.”

For those brave souls who are not afraid of wading into the depths of the Bible, it may be worth bypassing the Hollywood interpretation to get the original version, which occurs in Susa (Shushan), the Persian capital, when it is believed that Xerxes I (485–464 B.C.E.), ruled; he is the same Persian king who attacked Greece and faced King Leonidas and his 300 men at Thermopylae in 480 B.C.E.

The biblical account relates that the king in the story is called Ahasuerus. Because controversy exists among some biblical scholars regarding the exact date of Esther’s story, and due to discrepancies in corresponding events in ancient Persian history and problems in properly translated Middle Eastern names, it is somewhat difficult to correlate this account in historical records. But this king is accepted as Xerxes by a majority of historians.

The book of Esther is an inspiring tale of a clever woman outwitting a ruthless political adviser, Haman, who in a Hitler-like effort (maybe Hitler succeeded in a Haman-like effort), conspired to have all Jewish people in the Persian Empire killed.It may come as a surprise that centuries before Adolf Hitler generated the horrors of the Holocaust in Europe, or long before Islamic-oriented nations in the Middle East speak boldly of wiping Israel off the face of the Earth, a man named Haman conceived of the idea of exterminating the Jews.

Esther was the one who thwarted Haman’s diabolical plot. And, for those who think it may have

been easy for a beautiful woman to affect an ancient tyrant’s will, one would need to do a bit more background study of how people were treated in Ancient Persia.

The story of Esther makes it apparent that King Ahasuerus has some problems from the start. It begins with Ahasuerus drunk and upset as his queen, Vashti, would not appear for him at an extravagant banquet held over a seven-day period. Vashti’s refusal had serious consequences.

Due to her perceived public insolence, Queen Vashti was exiled, and a new queen had to be found and then crowned. It was akin to the world’s first recorded beauty pageant, and the one who pleased the king would become the new queen.

Esther, which in Persian means “star,” was the non-Hebrew name the girl, Haddasah, decided to use to hide her Jewish roots. She was one of the most beautiful young maidens in Persia, and it worked wonders for her -- she won the “contest.” She not only was seen to have extraordinary beauty but also had some education, which may have been due to her cousin, Mordecai, who raised the orphan after her parents’ death.

Essentially, this is an amazing story of a marriage between a ruthless Persian king (who invaded Greece) and a unique Jewish girl who must have been experiencing something she would have never imagined coming true – like an ancient Cinderella story. However, more than a story of an extraordinary marriage between a Persian and a Jew, the story should be explored by those who cherish freedom and those who value life. But, to summarize, the idyllic world of new Queen Esther came crashing down upon her one day as an arch-villain, Haman, manifests his personal hatred of Esther’s guardian, Mordecai, into something quite horrendous – an evil plan to annihilate the Jewish people. Using his position of authority, Haman was able to persuade the king by offering a large sum of silver talents to the king’s treasury in order to personally assume the expense of the extermination of the Jews, as the king gave his royal permission.

The synopsis is that an absolutist king made a royal decree to kill all the Jews in the Persian Empire due to Haman’s influence; yet, neither knew the new queen was a Jew, who through bravery and wisdom would avert an Ancient Holocaust. Esther was in a life and death situation, and definitely realized the seriousness of her challenge. Esther used her mind to formulate a bold plan plan to thwart Haman who, for all practical purposes, seemed to have a lock on destroying the Jewish people in this time. Yet, while Haman had used his wealth to manipulate the king to carry out a personal agenda, Esther used her wits, and enlisted the support of the Jewish community to fast and pray on her behalf.

Esther’s story is ultimately a story of triumph, as she was not just beautiful, but brilliant and bold; Esther saved her people by risking her life for the sake of her people. Esther represents a triumph of a woman who exhibited great courage because in exercising her plan she was required to reveal the truth, a secret that no one in the palace knew: that she was a Jew. By such a bold risk, the fairy tale could have ended much differently. Esther chose to confront the great dilemma facing her in a male-dominated, tyrannical culture -- at the risk of her life. It represents what women of faith can do when they allow God to infuse them with the courage to do the right thing.

A provocative question for all people of faith in this time is Mordecai’s question: “And who knows

whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” People of faith throughout history have often been the hope of their people’s salvation. Esther’s story is for all of us.