HAGGAI & ZECHARIAH: PROPHETS FOR THE END OF DAYS – PART 4

FULL MEETING WITH MIDRASH HERE

NOTE: THE TRANSCRIPT IS NOT THE SAME AS THE RECORDING.

HAGGAI’S THIRD PROPHECY

Haggai received two more prophecies on the same day, the 24th day of the 9th month. So now we have prophecies in the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th months.

YHVH was really working with this people to purify them for His purposes. This points to how He will deal with His people during the Tribulation.

It was time, contrary to what He had addressed in Haggai’s 1st prophecy in which they said it wasn’t time for the rebuilding yet. No, it was time. And it was also time for them to understand their inner spiritual state and standing before YHVH, as well.

I have said Haggai was the stone temple-building prophet and Zechariah was the “temple made without hands”-prophet, the “spiritual” prophet, if you will. But here we see Haggai, not Zechariah, will address their spiritual state. This is because an impure people would have defiled the actual stones of the physical temple while they endeavored to rebuild the temple. So, prophetically this still remains within Haggai’s prophetic domain.

To that end, YHVH used Haggai to explain that their defilement did not only defile them, their defilement also defiled the altar they had built and had been operating for 16 years and that it would defile the stones Haggai was directing them to make in the temple.

HAGGAI’S PROPHECY #3: BLESSINGS FOR A DEFILED PEOPLE

Haggai 2:10  In the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, Yahweh’s word came by Haggai the prophet, saying, 

The 24th day of the 9th month of Kislev would become important in the future because it became the day just prior to the start of Hanukkah, which in Judaism, is Hanukkah preparation day. The 24th of Kislev was the last day of cleansing and rededicating YHVH’s temple after the Greek Antiochus IV defiled it. But that was yet in their future. For us, it is history. But for Haggai and the 520 BC Jews, it was a precursor to Hannukah which would come 355 years later.

Haggai delivered this prophecy in the form of a question and answer session on behalf of YHVH:

Haggai 2:11  “Yahweh of Armies says: [Haggai] Ask now the priests concerning the law, saying, 
Haggai 2:12  ‘If someone carries holy meat in the fold of his garment, and with his fold touches bread, stew, wine, oil, or any food, will it become holy?’” The priests answered, “No.” 
Haggai 2:13  Then Haggai said, “If one who is unclean by reason of a dead body touch any of these, will it be unclean?” The priests answered, “It will be unclean.” 
Haggai 2:14  Then Haggai answered: “‘So is this people, and so is this nation before me,’ says Yahweh; ‘and so is every work of their hands. That which they offer there is unclean.”
Haggai 2:15  Now, please consider from this day and forward, before a stone was laid on a stone in Yahweh’s temple. 

From 536 BC to 520 BC no stone had been laid on another one.

This was not the first time or the first thing YHVH had needed to ask them to “consider”. The first time regarded why they had stopped building for 16 years in Haggai 1:9. “Consider your ways”, He had said.

This is not about the priests being “tested”, as some say, whether they still understood the laws of clean and unclean. The most certainly did because they answered correctly. And it is not saying they were unclean because of their failing to continue building the temple, as is sometimes commented. That was sin and they had repented for that! They were forgiven but people but not yet a pure people. YHVH would have to explain why. 

“If someone carries holy meat in the fold of his garment, and with his fold touches bread, stew, wine, oil, or any food, will it become holy?”

No. Why? Because the garment is a barrier between the meat and the other food. Holy objects covered by something, by being covered with a cloth or being inside a box, cannot transfer holiness. There is no direct contact between the meat and the food. If the meat had touched the other food without being in the fold of the garment, holiness would have been transferred.

Let’s discuss the issue of holiness and defilement transferring. Holiness transfers from a holy thing like the altar in Exodus 29:37 where it says “whatever touches the altar shall be holy”, or the Ark of the Covenant that no one was to touch but those commissioned for that purpose. Uzzah died for touching the Ark in 2 Samuel 6:6-7. That means the Ark was uncovered during its transport or possibly Uzzah reached under the cover to touch it. The priests’ garments were never to be outside the tabernacle/temple, because they would transfer holiness to the people through touch (Ezekiel 44:19). Something holy, set apart, confers holiness by being touched by that which is not set apart yet. And sometimes it results in death.

But in verse 13, “if one who is unclean by reason of a dead body touches any of these” the item will be unclean regardless of direct or indirect contact. The item does not even need to be touched by the dead body, but only by someone who has touched the dead body. The 520 BC Jews had been in direct and indirect contact with YHVH’s alter for 16 years with corpse impurity on them. This is the reason He asked those questions.  

Touching is one way to transfer corpse impurity.

Numbers 19:13  Whoever touches a dead person, the body of a man who has died, and doesn’t purify himself, defiles Yahweh’s tabernacle; and that soul shall be cut off from Israel; because the water for impurity was not sprinkled on him, he shall be unclean. His uncleanness is yet on him.

The defilement that comes from refusing to purify travels through the air, as it were, to defile the tabernacle whereas holiness does not. YHVH’s tabernacle can get defiled just by having unclean people in the congregation without them even entering inside its outer court.

So, merely entering and being present in YHVH’s holy area, even without touching anything, defiles the entire area or not purifying oneself and not coming to the tabernacle also defiles it. We know this because a Nazarite in the same room as a dead body, having not even touched the body, becomes defiled (Numbers 6:9). Holiness is only conferred by touching, never by proximity, but defilement is conferred both by touching and proximity even to great distances.

How do I know this? Our defilement defiles both YHVH’s earthly and Heavenly temples. The day of Yom Kippur atones for the sins of the High Priest and his household (Leviticus 16:11), the people (Leviticus 16:30) and the tabernacle or temple (Leviticus 16:16 and 33) which has been contaminated by proximity and perhaps actual touching. After the ascension, Yeshua had to cleanse the Heavenly temple because of the people’s sins and uncleanness, committed here on earth which defiled the Heavenly temple, as well (Hebrews 9:23-24).

Consider how much mercy YHVH bestowed on the 520 BC Jews by not killing them at His altar. His request that they “consider” this was to point out something they may have “considered” before starting the altar but which they might not have arrived at the correct decision. What might that be?

It may have been they thought they were starting all over again like the first generation from the Egypt exodus. They might not have known what to do and perhaps made some assumptions based on their fleshly understanding. They might have assumed that conditions were the same for them as had been in the wilderness. In the way of fleshly thinking, this makes sense. Aaron and his sons ,and the tabernacle with everything in it, were consecrated without red heifer ashes. This meant that nothing was defiled by corpse impurity at the time of the consecration.

They knew red heifer ashes had become needed only after starting the wandering period away from Mount Sinai when men appeared at Passover with corpse impurity on them at the 1st Passover in the wilderness. By the next Passover, a red heifer’s ashes had become available.

So perhaps their reasoning had been that because they were starting over, they were like the first generation in the wilderness who did not need the red heifer ashes until later after the altar had been dedicated and the temple structure completed. It may be they were thinking everything would be clean at the rededication.

What they did not understand was the blood of the Lamb. This was a kind of Nicodemus thing; something Israel was supposed to understand, like being born again which was also not understood, but they did not understand. The first generation came out of Egypt pure from corpse defilement because they had stayed in their homes while the deaths were happening and they only left their homes when Moses said the “danger” was past, the danger of being killed and also of becoming unclean by touching a corpse (although they probably did not understand this last part. We understand it only in hindsight).

That first generation was clean in the same way newborns are clean. But, moving forward as Israel went through life, she still had to be washed and renewed from time to time. If we sin or become unclean again, we must “reapply”, as it were, the blood of the Lamb and YHVH is faithful to forgive and cleanse us.

1 John 1:9  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us the sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Reapplying the blood of the Lamb does not only happen at the annual Passover. His blood is available to us all year.

In the absence of the red heifer’s ashes, they had not asked YHVH to cleanse them.

But how could they be cleansed by Yeshua’s blood before He was born in the 1st century? That was still 500 years into the future. They could have applied His blood because of when He was sacrificed. It wasn’t in the 1st century. That had been only the fulfillment of another time when He was slain.

Revelation 13:8  And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

Yeshua was slain from the foundation of the world. Humans have been able to call on the blood of the Lamb who was slain from the time of Adam. He is the foundation, the cornerstone, of this earth and on that foundational stone He was slain. Few humans have understood this concept. The 520 BC Jews had not exited Babylon through the blood of the Lamb and they did not understand the profound nuance of this difference.

They had been living in Babylon for 70 years. People had died during that time. They had all touched a dead body or had been touched by someone who touched a dead body. That was the issue! It wasn’t their sins which they committed that had defiled them. It was their corpse impurity coming out of Babylon because the exodus from Egypt was a one-time event, the birth of His nation on earth, an event which cannot be repeated like the birth of any human or animal cannot be repeated. It can only be renewed. Renewal takes us throwing ourselves on YHVH’s mercy. Every time a national covenant had to be renewed, someone had to throw himself on the ground in front of YHVH. That had been Moses.

Coming out of Babylon, and this is important for the last generation, is not the exact same process as coming out of Egypt. The first exodus is a type and shadow of the Babylon exodus but with different details and nuances that we need to understand because time has moved forward.

And here is one of those details facing us from the Book of Revelation.

Revelation 7:13  One of the elders answered, saying to me, “These who are arrayed in the white robes, who are they, and from where did they come?”
Revelation 7:14  I told him, “My lord, you know.” He said to me, “These are those who came out of the great tribulation. They washed their robes, and made them white in the Lamb’s blood.

When we come out of Babylon this time, we will need to do our own laundry. Coming out Egypt, YHVH took them by the hand (Jeremiah 31:31-32) and did their laundry for them. They were still a pure baby nation at that time. This was something the 520 BC Jews did not understand. They did not understand how to do their own dirty laundry.

Let me put this another way. Israel was born of the flesh when Israel came out of Egypt, and she was fresh as a newborn of the flesh. When Yeshua spoke to Nicodemus about being born again (John 3:3), we read and understand that as only an individual proposition. And it is, but once Israel is regathered, the nation herself will have been born again of YHVH’s Holy Spirit. I think you will understand this more when we talk about the symbolism of the pomegranate.

But Israel grew up like all flesh does and she began to rebel. She can’t go back in the womb, to the original and unique Passover that happened in Egypt, to be reborn again. No. Now she needs different ways to renew herself. She needs mikvahs, special sacrifices, lengths of time to be unclean and red heifer ashes. But none of these are efficacious for the soul. They only cleanse the flesh. Only the application of the blood of the Lamb, Yeshua, is efficacious for our soul and our flesh (Hebrews 10:22). And that is what YHVH has always wanted His people to understand.

Israel needs to be born of the Spirit, individually so that she is born of His Spirit nationally. Only by YHVH’s Holy Spirit can we understand these things. And we and all Israel needs to understand the purpose of the rituals YHVH gave to us which He will view as complete when fulfilled by us and which He will view as having made us clean in the flesh again, and spiritually clean when we have applied the blood of the Lamb.

The red heifer ashes are only one part of His program. But they did not have red heifer ashes to cleanse them from the corpse impurity with which they had left Babylon and they didn’t understand the difference between themselves and the first generation which had not had corpse impurity on them when they left Egypt. And they didn’t understand the difference between righteousness, the Law, and purity, applying the blood of the Lamb.

They would not have red heifer ashes until Ezra slaughtered another red heifer in 456 BC, 64 years later.

And here is what He had done to them to get their attention which He never got until He sent Haggai to say it plainly.  

Haggai 2:16  Through all that time [from 536 BC to 520 BC], when one came to a heap of twenty measures [probably of grain], there were only ten [measures]. When one came to the wine vat to draw out fifty [measures], there were only twenty [measures]. 
Haggai 2:17  I struck you with blight, mildew, and hail in all the work of your hands; yet you didn’t turn to me,’ says Yahweh. 

All He wanted them to do was turn to Him about this issue. He wanted someone, anyone, a man like Moses, to ask Him what they needed to do. They should not have needed this prodding to “consider” their ways. They should already have addressed the problem but they had had not because they were blinded by sin which had happened because they had not, as a nation, accepted YHVH’s Holy Spirit. Instead, they lived and operated according to the way their flesh understood the Law. This is what makes our effort to keep the Law in the flesh as “dirty rags” (Isaiah 64:6). They had seen what was happening to their food supply but had not cried out to YHVH about it. He would have told them the source of the dwindling supply.

Haggai 2:18  ‘Consider, please, from this day and forward, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, the day that the foundation of Yahweh’s temple was laid, consider it. 

He had them to consider about corpse impurity. Now He was asking them to consider what He was going to do about it because it was entirely out of their hands after they had acknowledged the truth about their corpse impurity. And He also wanted them to understand who the foundation stone is. They were to understand the importance of having laid the foundation stone on this day, the 24th of Kislev in 520 BC, and moving forward. That is because Yeshua would later call Himself the foundation stone (Matthew 21:42) that the builders rejected when they crucified Him.

That term, “foundation stone” or “cornerstone”, applied to the foundation of the earth; it applied to the foundation or cornerstone of Solomon’s temple and it also applied to this temple because the Jews of 520 BC were simply repeating one of YHVH’s oldest patterns of restoration, and it is a pattern what will repeat itself again in 2500 years when Yeshua will rebuild His temple again and, once again, He will be that temple’s foundation stone, too! This is the meaning of Haggai 1:9 when his prophecy jumped forward into the future by about 2500 years.

This day, the 24th of Kislev, resulted in YHVH not allowing them to go any further without first being cleansed by Him.

When they considered this, did they understand? Did they understand that this foundation stone was the Messiah? Their descendants did not! So now, YHVH will cleanse them Himself through the blood and water that came forth from Yeshua’s body. Why?

Hebrews 9:13  For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify to the cleanness of the flesh:
Hebrews 9:14  how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without defect to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

The water came forth for our uncleanness and His blood came forth for our sins. The 520 BC Jews were blind to the work of the Messiah yet in their future. They were cleansed before the cross the same way people are cleansed after the cross: by submitting to the Messiah and Savior and asking for His cleansing.

Why is Yeshua’s blood and water better than the red heifer’s ashes? Because her ashes only cleanse the flesh for ritual purposes in the stone temple to fulfill the sacrifices, tithes and Feasts according to the Law. But her ashes do not affect the cleansing of our hearts. Only His blood and water cleanses our hearts. We cannot be cleansed from the outside in. It must be from the inside out.

1 John 1:7  But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin.

“All sin” is everything in our heart and in our flesh. We know this because:

Hebrews 10:22  Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.

We must participate in our own cleansing.

2 Corinthians 7:1  Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

So our cleansing is not a one-way street from YHVH to us or from us to YHVH. Our cleansing is by mutual agreement, through Yeshua’s effort and our own after His.  

YHVH had not asked the priests what they knew about clean and unclean because they needed a refresher course. It was because they needed correction for what they were doing for 16 years while they were not building YHVH’s temple but were officiating at a defiled altar.

Him asking them to “consider” was Him wanting them to work their way through the problem. This had been a crisis for which YHVH had been reducing their food so they would get the point which never got to them through their own flesh.

They had been suffering from want, not having all their needs met fully, but from now on, from the 24th day of Kislev in the year 520 BC, the Jews were going to be blessed because He was going to cleanse them Himself, directly, through His yet future water and blood without the red heifer ashes so they could receive those blessings! And He did not force it on them. They had listened and heeded Haggai and YHVH gave His cleansing blood and water to them and He declared them as clean.

I don’t want anyone deciding that the red heifer’s ashes have passed away with the Law! All of that will return to the earth and will be administered by Him from Jerusalem when He returns. The rebuilding of the temple from 520 BC is a type and shadow of the future rebuilding of the temple of Messiah. He says, at the end of the Millennium:

Revelation 21:5  He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”

The word “new” is the Greek word ‘kainos’, G2537. It does not mean a new thing in that it is something that never existed before. Rather, it is a “freshening”, as in when we do our laundry. We have already seen that YHVH’s people will do their own laundry, individually making their garments white again in the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 7:14). So nothing of the Law or the red heifer’s ashes are going away. Rather, all of these things will be restored again when Yeshua returns!

Now let’s talk about those blessings.

THE BLESSING

Haggai 2:19  Is the seed yet in the barn? Yes, the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree haven’t produced. [BUT] From today I will bless you.’” 

For some reason, the old way to say something has not happened is to “yes, it has not happened”, unlike today as we would say, “no, it has not happened”. Don’t let this confuse you.

Up to this time, the vine, the fig trees, pomegranate and olive trees have not produced. But they will produce because YHVH will bless the Jews because He had cleansed them.

Let’s look at the meanings of the symbolisms in Haggai 2:19 because these are all about the various statuses of YHVH’s Kingdom on earth named “Israel”.

The vine symbolizes the covenant relationship between YHVH and Israel. The covenants that belongs only Israel are the Abrahamic, Mosaic and Davidic covenants. Through these, the relationship will now grow and flourish again in order to bring about YHVH’s objectives.

The fig tree represents the abundance of Israel. But because now there was only the House of Judah’s 4 tribes left of the 12, the fig pertained to the Jews until the day they murdered their own husband and King by putting Him on the cross. In the future, when all Israel is back in its place, the fig will again pertain to all 12 tribes.

The pomegranate symbolizes the resurrection. A multitude of seeds, each individually covered in a blood red pulp, rest inside a symbolic womb. Each seed comes out of that womb both individually and as part of the collective fruit once the pomegranate is broken open. All the seeds are “born” into eternal life at the same time. That is the resurrection.

The olive tree is Israel. The olive tree is a conundrum because where does the trunk, Yeshua, end and the branches begin. Does anyone know? Of course not. The trunk of the tree is nothing without the branches and the branches cannot exist without the trunk. Yeshua our God and King must have a people and His people must have their God and King.

These items, the vine, the fig trees, pomegranate and olive trees are metaphorical for YHVH renewing the covenant relationship with the 520 BC Jews as the Israelites they were, even without the other tribes. For the next 500 years, they would function as “Israel”. That ended when that future generation in the 1st century murder their husband and King. But until then, the Jews were Israel.

Let’s understand in our generation what previous generations have not. Those who discarded Yeshua in favor of keeping the Law of YHVH in their flesh and those who discarded the Law in favor of only “the Spirit of grace”, whatever that is because no one truly knows since the “Spirit of grace” cannot exist apart from the Law.

The Law of YHVH is for the purpose of bringing our flesh to real repentance and submission to Yeshua, the Lamb. That’s why the blood of the Lamb on the doorposts in Egypt gave birth to the baby, Israel. We cannot be saved by putting red heifer ashes on us for corpse impurity. That only cleanses our flesh for ritual purpose. And we cannot be saved by keeping the Law in our flesh without also having YHVH’s Holy Spirit within. The 520 BC Jews, like almost everyone still today, did not understand this.

It is time for us to understand this. The final time period is almost upon us.