You’ve Sown Much But Bring In Little. God’s Message Through Haggai, Could This Be True?
The message of Haggai, (and Zechariah and Malachi for that matter), are completely prophetic, and targeted towards an end time people of God, whose eyes will be opened to understanding it, at the exact moment in God’s timing, but probably not too much before, except for the ones He intends to learn it first, so that they may teach it to those with eyes to see, and ears to hear. Although there was a previous occurrence of these things anciently, they were “types”, of a greater, more significant reoccurrence in the latter days. It is a very deep concept, but an example would be the message of Malachi. It was a very serious message to God’s priesthood (which are a “type” of His ministry), who were in place just before Christ’s first coming, and then prophetically, it is a very serious message to His ministry, who will be in place, before His second coming. Mr. Armstrong touched on some things in Haggai and Zechariah, but it wasn’t the time for full understanding. Consequently, things did not come together for him in his time. And how could they? There was no apostasy yet, no falling away, no break up of the church etc etc. God uses so many methods to “cover up”, for a time, or, to accomplish the revelation of it when He wants to. He is the total, perfect “director and choreographer ” of events. Sometimes He uses hind sight also. That is, we see and understand something via hindsight.
I will try and remember some of those things that Mr. Armstrong stopped at, as he studied Haggai and Zechariah. I think the greatest thing he left me with, was that he adamantly said that these books were prophetic. And although that didn’t help me much to understand them very deeply at the time, it did help me not to view them as strictly just “Jewish history”, but something else. An example from Mr. Armstrong’s comments on Haggai for instance, is in Haggai 2. God draws a contrast between the temple built by Solomon, and what we’ll call Zerubbabel’s temple, implying that this second one is obviously nowhere near the level of glory that the first temple was. And He asks, who among these returnees remembers, because there were some old Jews there that did remember. But notice in 2:9, God makes a proclamation, that this temple will be more glorious than the first one. Perhaps you will remember when Mr. Armstrong read that, knowing how much less glorious Zerubbabel’s temple was, (combined with many other curious things said), that this must be speaking of a spiritual temple, not a physical temple.
We will be looking at that, but that is an example of what I’m talking about. Please once again, follow along with this article very closely with your bible!