SHARE Magazine July 2016 | Page 31

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