I
In 597 B.C; God allowed
Nebuchadnezzar to take the
people of Judah as slaves to
Babylon because they had been
disobedient to Him.
fear and discouragement caused
the work to cease for almost 16
years. Even though God used
Zerubbabel to rebuild Jerusalem,
after all the excitement of the
exodus faded, he succumbed to
However, just as God caused fear and discouragement.
Pharaoh to let Israel leave
Egypt, after seventy years, He However,
God
sent
the
also caused King Cyrus to let prophets Haggai and Zechariah
His people return to Jerusalem. as
encouragers.
Zechariah
(Ezra 1) The difference between repeated these famous words to
Cyrus and Pharaoh was that Zerubbabel.
Cyrus acknowledged that his “It