The Festival of Purim 2025 - The Blood Moon & The Mystery of Aliyah

**Opening Prayer and Song**

Bow down your ear, Lord, from your everlasting throne. Hear my prayer, Lord. Today decree your verdict my way — I am in a time of need. To my voice graciously I pray to you all day long, singing your praise with your songs. Arise, oh Lord, arise, oh Lord.

Lift me up under your review. Examine me, Lord, through and through. Lord, I stay my cases to you; my petitions are faithful and true. My enemies seek my life, filled with anger and strife. You are gracious and merciful and true — Savior to the servant who trusts in you. Arise, oh Lord. You are Mighty God. You are my eternal Rock — my eternal, forever. I praise your name in your holy name.

I am calling on you. Cast them under your footstool. Your eyes are on all the earth, defending all the righteous. You are the Sovereign Judge. Strike your gavel and expound your verdicts. Show me a sign for good, oh Lord.

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**Welcome and Introduction**

Shalom, everybody. My name is Chadwick Harvey. Thank you very much for joining us tonight as we celebrate the Festival of Purim, and also as we look at the historical, the personal, and the prophetic understanding of this wonderful festival on God's calendar. We have a blood moon coming over us tonight around 2:00 a.m. Eastern time, and we will also be tying in the prophecy we are seeing pick up speed again in Jeremiah 16, which flows into Ezekiel 38. So we have a great deal of important information for you tonight. Thank you again for joining us.

This is, I think, a somewhat somber Purim — and that is fairly clear when you look at the Middle East, at Israel, at what is going on with the hostages, and at everything happening within the government and the nation as a whole. It is more of a somber Purim than normal. That is not to say we cannot celebrate personally and within ourselves, but we must understand that the Jewish people are going through a very difficult time right now. I am not sure how much celebration is going on in Israel beyond thanking the Almighty God for the deliverance of the Jewish people through Esther and Mordecai.

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**Why Christians Should Observe Purim**

One of the main reasons I encourage all of my Christian friends to observe and celebrate this festival is this: if it were not for Esther and Mordecai rising up against Haman, conquering him, and stopping the annihilation of the Jewish people, the Jewish people would have been wiped out — and that would have meant the Messiah could not have come from the Jewish lineage.

This is a critical point for Christians to understand. The Abrahamic Covenant, the Davidic Covenant, and the New Covenant all work together. Festivals like Hanukkah and Purim are not peripheral events. If it were not for the Maccabees, if it were not for Esther and Mordecai, then the pure royal lineage leading to Yeshua our Savior would have been broken. Every promise God ordained would have been undone. That is precisely why we should be celebrating this festival — we do it in honor of him.

Yes, this is a Jewish festival, but he is the God of Israel. He is the King of Israel. Yeshua is Jewish, and that is reason enough to be in alignment with what he calls important. And my friends, it does not get more important than tonight, with a blood moon over the skies on this Festival of Purim.

We are going to get into the prophetic understanding — which is really vital given what we are seeing with the nations, with Israel, and with anti-Semitism rising higher than it has in our lifetimes, higher than any time since 1948. We also will cover the personal and the historical. Tonight we will not read the entire Book of Esther; we will summarize it, then move into the personal understanding of the festival for each individual, and then into the prophetic.

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**Historical Summary: The Book of Esther**

There was a king in Persia named King Ahasuerus — also called Xerxes; you will find different names depending on the translation of the Book of Esther. He held a grand festival to which essentially the entire world of the Middle East came. He wished to display Queen Vashti, his wife, before his guests, and she declined to come. In those days that did not sit well with the king, so he exiled Queen Vashti.

He then had all the young virgins of the kingdom brought before him. Queen Esther received favor from God and was elevated to her position for such a time as this. Around that same time, Mordecai — her uncle — uncovered a plot to assassinate the king. He reported it, and it was recorded in the royal chronicles, which becomes important later in the story.

Then an evil man rose up named Haman. He was a descendant of Agag, and ultimately an Edomite — his lineage traces back to Esau, to Amalek, to Agag. Think of King Saul and the ancient enemies of Israel: they all come from that line. Haman, this ancient enemy of Israel, deceived the king into issuing a decree — sealed with the king's signet ring — to kill all the Jewish people throughout the Persian Empire, because Mordecai had refused to bow down to him as he rode through the city.

But the verdict was turned around. The edict was reversed and fell back upon Haman's own head. He had built gallows for Mordecai — and it was Haman who was hung on those very gallows. Queen Esther fasted for three days and three nights and went before the king, where she found favor and successfully overturned the decree. The lot had been cast in the month of Nisan and fell on Adar 13 — that is today, the day the Jewish people were slated to be annihilated in Persia. Instead, the verdict was overturned, their enemies were defeated, and Haman and his ten sons were hung on the gallows in place of Mordecai.

I am not saying I have captured every detail; please read the Book of Esther for yourself to receive the full conviction of the story. But that is the essential history: God raised up Mordecai and Esther in a unique way so that they could participate in the salvation and deliverance of the Jewish people — and all of this occurred in the aftermath of the Babylonian captivity under Nebuchadnezzar, through the reigns of Belshazzar, Darius, and Cyrus, as the Jewish people were still waiting and longing to return to the land — Aliyah — back to Jerusalem.

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**The Prophetic Significance**

The prophetic anointing of this festival is really going to manifest over the next year or two and beyond. We have another blood moon coming next year on this same festival. We have to understand the festival, its anointing, and what God is showing us in the heavens. We are seeing the prophecies of Jeremiah 16 flowing into Ezekiel 38 begin to pick up speed again — and all of this is unfolding in the context of what is happening in the Middle East, in North Africa, and across the world as anti-Semitism rises to levels we have not seen in our lifetimes.

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**The Personal Revelation of Purim**

On a personal level, this festival is profoundly important. Diving into God's calendar and into what each festival means personally — for you, for me, and between you and him — creates a genuine connection. So we really must move past the idea that "this is just a Jewish thing," because we love the King of the Jews, the King of Israel. He is Jewish. And we are going to be observing Jewish things in the millennial Kingdom — Passover, Unleavened Bread, Purim, Hanukkah. The fast days will become feast days. That is a beautiful reality my friends need to get used to, because he is coming back as the King of Israel, the Holy One of Israel, and Torah will govern the millennial Kingdom — including the feast days. As Christians we need to identify with that, come into alignment with it, and step into the Commonwealth of the Kingdom of Israel and out of paganism.

If you have been with us since Yom Kippur and you have journeyed through this calendar with us, you understand why I say the calendar is your accountability partner. Yes, the Holy Spirit is your guide — but the Holy Spirit will lead you to his calendar, because it is the calendar the Lord himself is marking with signs in the heavens. So we must be familiar with God's calendar in order to stay in alignment with him, and when we reach a moment like this one, we can understand where he has been tracking — and track with him.

If you know what Yom Kippur is — the Day of Atonement, the day when verdicts are sealed for delivery — you also know that ten days before it you have the Feast of Trumpets. Let me walk through this briefly to keep things connected. In the fall — think September — you have the Feast of Trumpets. That is when the books are opened: opened for the nations and for the individuals. Joseph was released from prison on the Feast of Trumpets, in Genesis 41, after two full years. Nebuchadnezzar was exiled on the Feast of Trumpets. Both of those fell in Shemitah cycles, though that is a separate conversation. The critical point is that on the Feast of Trumpets the books are opened — for individuals and for nations. When Yeshua returns, the verdict will be rendered. He is coming to deliver Israel; the books will be open for Israel and for all other nations, and the verdicts will follow. This is something many of us have experienced personally, many times.

The books are open on the Feast of Trumpets. For ten days we all wait in the balance. Then the books are sealed on Yom Kippur. Now here is something important: Yom Kippur is also called Yom Kippurim. If you speak with many Jewish rabbis they will say "Yom Kippurim." Consider that name — Yom Kippurim. There is a profound connection between Yom Kippur and Purim embedded in the very name. Yom Kippurim contains the word Purim within it.

If you were with us during that ten-day period of prayer and reflection leading up to Yom Kippur — if you were praying, fasting, and seeking your righteous rendered verdict — you were looking for your turnaround. You were looking for...