We are on the brink of Hanukkah 5778, which, depending on whether you go by the rabbinic calendar or watch for the sighting of the new moon from Jerusalem to mark the new month, begins on the evening of December 12 or 13 respectively.
Esther was presented to the king on the seventh day of Hanukkah, in the seventh year of his reign. Seven is the number of completion. The days of purification were over for Esther and the days of reigning at the side of the king lay ahead. (Esther 2) When Esther first went through the giant gates of the palace, she apparently ceased to have an impact on the rest of the nation but, a year later, after her preparation was complete, she was assigned a pivotal seat of power and all her actions from that time forth greatly affected the 127 provinces over which king Xerxes ruled.
So what does this Hanukkah season mean for us? For those who are part of the Bride-in-waiting, those with a heart to please the King of Kings, the time of preparation is at an end. The long months of repentance and purifying, the trials that brought the dross to the surface, the obscurity of being the unknown amidst many undergoing similar preparations is finally at a close.
Hanukkah is a time of great change. IT IS A TIME OF MOVING DWELLING PLACES; OF COMING OUT FROM AMONG THE THRONGS OF HOPEFULS TO FINALLY EXPERIENCING WHAT OTHERS HAVE DREAMED OF. It is a time of letting go of all that is connected to the long process of preparation and stepping forward with empty hands to embrace fully what has been prepared for you! It is a time when you taste no longer of hope deferred but desire fulfilled. Never again will you sit under the ministrations of a eunuch, incapable of imparting fruitfulness to you. From now on, you are moving location to the place of great fruitfulness and influence.
Hanukkah is called the Festival of Lights, and each day, another lamp is lit, until finally on the eighth day, the whole candlestick plus the centre flame used to light the others, blazes with light. HANUKKAH IS A FESTIVAL OF INCREASING LIGHT AND REVELATION. Beloved, there is light at the end of the tunnel, the Festival of Lights is here and it is time to step out of the house of preparation and into the dwelling quarters of the King of Kings. IT IS A TIME OF MOVING FROM MEASURED PROVISION FOR SPECIFIC PREPARATION TO LAVISH PROVISION FOR POSITIONING.
And the king made a great banquet for all his rulers and his servants, Esther’s banquet. And he ordered a holiday for the provinces, and gave gifts, according to the state of the king. (Esther 2:18)
Your positioning and the taking of your appointed bridal position triggers the beginning of a feast and the release of gifts to many people. You are not the only one that is blessed by this move to a new chapter of ruling and reigning. The word translated ‘holiday’ in the Hebrew actually means ‘release, rest’. It is the word ‘hanachah’, which sounds very similar to Hanukkah! AT THE CLOSE OF HANUKKAH, HANACHAH IS RELEASED. You go from a time of intense working on the minutest flaws and failings to complete release and rest. Paul tells us that there is still coming a rest for the people of God.
8 For if Joshua had given them rest, He [God] would not speak afterward about another day.
9 So then, there is still awaiting a full and complete Sabbath-rest reserved for the [true] people of God;
10 For he who has once entered [God’s] rest also has ceased from [the weariness and pain] of human labors, just as God rested from those labors peculiarly His own.
11 Let us therefore be zealous and exert ourselves and strive diligently to enter that rest [of God, to know and experience it for ourselves], that no one may fall or perish by the same kind of unbelief and disobedience [into which those in the wilderness fell]. (Hebrews 4:8-11)
It is the naming and crowning of a worthy queen that releases a day of rest from the hand of the King of Kings. Queen Vashti perished because of her disobedience and all those concubines who did not please the king did not experience that rest because they were couped up in the harem under the watchful ministrations of a eunuch. But Esther, who obtained great favor because of her demeanor wherever she went, set in motion a rest for the people, just by the beauty of her presence.
The word in Greek for ‘disobedience and unbelief’ is apeitheia, from which we get the word ‘apathy’. It is the apathy of those who were presented with the necessary steps for repentance and purification in the preparation season that disqualified them from being chosen.
For those who have been faithful during the painful process of preparation, blessing is appointed. Your barns may be still empty at this moment and the fruit of the season ahead not yet visible, but on the strength of the word that proceeds from an ever-faithful God, you can rest assured that a decree of blessing is already being unfurled over you, to be executed in due season. HANUKKAH MARKS THE BEGINNING OF A SEASON OF BLESSING FOR THE FAITHFUL.
HANUKKAH ALSO MARKS THE RELEASE OF A NEW LEVEL OF AUTHORITY
It is the time when God chooses His appointed signet rings and sets them in place. Bear in mind that 6 years later, Mordecai was given the signet ring of the king (Esth 8:2) and Esther and Mordecai released powerful decrees in the King’s name to counteract all that the enemy had tried to do.
The first day of Hanukkah signifies the day when victory is achieved over an extremely strong attack of the enemy, which has tried to destroy the way you worship God and your faith. It is the day when liberation and rebuilding and restoration comes to the temple of God, which we are. So if you have had extreme attack and defilement of your physical body in the past season, know that HANUKKAH TRIGGERS VICTORY OVER THE ENEMY and you can rejoice that restoration is available to you as you rededicate your temple to the service of the Living God. The enemy has tried to destroy your testimony in the land, to prevent the light and truth of God from influencing those who dwell around you. But you are still here, still loving Jesus despite your suffering, still holding on to His word of hope for all that is ahead and now, even though you feel that you have lost all the anointing you once had and there is only enough oil to serve the Lord for one day, He is about to pour out a miraculous supply of fresh oil within you.
Remember, during the first Hanukkah, fresh oil was being made for the temple, ie. pressing is happening for 7 days away from the site of the temple, while in the temple, the remnant of oil found for one day gave enough light for 7 days!!! Esther had been cleansed and prepared for a year before 1st tevet, 7th day Hanukah. The bride had made herself ready. She had been through her pressing and the fresh oil was within her, even though she did not know it, (like the spare oil of the 5 wise virgins). So she got to go into the bridal chamber and the door was closed to the foolish virgins who did not prepare properly.
HANUKKAH SIGNIFIES THE RETURN TO THE PURPOSES OF GOD
A temple defiled and used for pagan revelry was restored and realigned to God’s standard of cleanliness and holiness. It is very significant that on December 6 at 6pm Jerusalem time, President Trump declared Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel and the moving of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The next day, December 7, he celebrated Hanukkah in the White House (6 days early). The previous year, in that same White House, a president who treated Israel with disdain supposedly celebrated Hanukkah, but this year, the White House was realigned and truly fit to celebrate such a festival.
Tel Aviv is called one of the gay capitals of the world and the move of the embassy and connection away from there to acknowledge Jerusalem as the true capital is to realign with God. It is a move away from uncleanness toward holiness.
Like Esther on the morning of the 1st Tevet, adorned for her husband, the Bride of the Lamb is admired. She is radiant with the glory of God as He is glorified within her, and she is the light of the world. She is presented to the world as she arises and shines while dense darkness is on the world.
HANUKKAH MARKS THE COMPLETION OF PREPARATION FOR THE TABERNACLE IN THE WILDERNESS
The 25th Kislev is also the day when the tabernacles components in the wilderness commissioned by Moses were completed. It was not assembled and put together until 3 months later, but all the preparation work was complete. The woman who flees into the wilderness in Rev 12 is that tabernacle, intricately and beautifully wrought in minute detail. WE are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that God has prepared beforehand for us to walk in. The workmanship is complete, but perhaps the good works have yet to make themselves plain.
If you feel that God has been working very intensely in every small detail within you and yet you are without connection and don’t understand how you fit into the big plan for the days ahead, do not fret. There is a waiting period, a journeying as the cloud moves to the appointed place for the assembling and coupling together of every facet of this amazing tabernacle of His presence in the wilderness. Just be carried along when the cloud moves and you will discover your appointed place soon enough.
Have a blessed Hanukkah!
Author: Christine Beadsworth
Christine Beadsworth lives in Somerset West, South Africa. She is an artist, poet and speaker, also writing and publishing articles under the ‘Fresh Oil Releases’ banner. She has authored several books, which she offers for free on her blog, Fresh Oil Releases. In 2017, she started a new site for posting her podcasts, called Fresh Air Releases.
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Thank you very much christine.when I read this,I wondered..” is this also for me?” I have waited very long,and today, being quiet before the Lord,I said I really could not…anymore.i do hope what you have seen,would cone into the lives of all such as us. Once I had a dream.i was walking by the beach…huge tsunami waves rose on all four sides and I was swept under water,where I was being swirled around in the current.. round and round.i did not break the surface.my life has,for years,been ‘ under water’. I would be so grateful for Deliverance, fruitfulness..a move forward . May this be for me too,please lord. ‘ he took me out of many waters..he delivered me..’ ( Psalms). God bless you.
As one who left church for 9.5 years and went back telling God i’d Go back but not to what I knew, ended up in a messianic congregation and was there 8-9 months before I did a dna test to find out what no one in my family knew. I am Jewish. And this is the second year I’ve done the feasts and as I’ve read about Chanukah and Maccabees and such, one thing that struck me about their revolt again anti Jewsish was how passionate they were for what seemed to be the temple or the Presence of God. Back then they had no Spirit and Yeshuah hadn’t come yet, in flesh anyway, so they fought to regain holiness per say. They fought to regain what was stolen. A place to House the presence of Adonai. And a temple cleaning had to happen before holiness was restored. I thought to myself “how much do believers fight for holiness? What’s the price willing to be paid? How much is paid to House within the Presencd of God as individuals?” Etc … back then the flesh (physical form of the temple) was what they had to work with. Now it’s not a temple made with hands of men but of God and how much is one willing to pay, or obey, or receive for His Presence?
How does a DNA test reveal Jewish ancestry?
A 1999 study titled “Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes” (M.F. Hammer et.al, Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences 6769–6774, doi: 10.1073/pnas.100115997) found that: “Despite their long-term residence in different countries and isolation from one another, most Jewish populations were not significantly different from one another at the genetic level. “Admixture estimates suggested low levels of European Y-chromosome gene flow into Ashkenazi and Roman Jewish communities . . . Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations were not statistically different. The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora.” Note: This is from the peer reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) study. NOT some yahoo or YouTube Video. http://www.pnas.org/content/97/12/6769.full?sid=87fe5eab-25be-450d-8e72-ac3483580c4c A January 2009 study titled “A genome-wide genetic signature of Jewish ancestry perfectly separates individuals with and without full Jewish ancestry in a large random sample of European Americans” (Anna C Need et.al., Genome Biology, 2009; 10(1): R7. doi: 10.1186/gb-2009-10-1-r7) found that “individuals with full Jewish ancestry formed a clearly distinct cluster from those individuals with no Jewish ancestry.” This study showed that in DNA terms, Jews, both Sephardic and Ashkenazim, cluster as a distinct group—something that, if the Khazar theory was true, would be impossible. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2687795/ A December 2009 study titled “The genome-wide structure of the Jewish people” (Doron M. Behar, et. al., Nature 466, 238–242 (08 July 2010) doi:10.1038/nature09103) analyzed individuals from 14 Jewish Diaspora communities and compare these patterns of genome-wide diversity with those from 69 Old World non-Jewish populations in order to “provide comprehensive comparisons between… Read more »
Thanks.
Thank you for sharing this, Christine. What a coincidence as I had just finished reading the last half of Esther about an hour ago, from the point of where she had asked everyone to fast for three days before she went to see the king. What I hadn’t realized is that it has even greater significance for today!
What a great and timely word Christine! I appreciate so much the greater revelation you shared about this important holiday for ALL of God’s children, not just the Jews. Bless you!
Thank you Christine, a relevant and timely post! I am one of the Christians who have been drawn to understand the importance of Hanukkah! John 10:22 tells of the “feast of Dedication” Jonathan Cahn explained that the translation should read feast of Hanukkah! Christ declared himself and the Father as ONE on this feast! I light my menorah and praise my Father for providing Christ the “light of the world” the coming Lion of Judah!! Praise God, even so come Lord Jesus!!
thank you for your comment, Carol, the Bride is hearing and understanding timing through revelation given in dreams at this time and although I can’t find your comment on dreaming about the Bride in connection with Hanukkah, I witness totally with what you were given!! Praise God!
I heard Holy Spirit tell me audibly earlier this year to “keep your wick trimmed and lamp full of oil” — which certainly sounds like part of a Chanukah celebration doesn’t it? I also had a prophetic wedding dream on the first night of Chanukah, where bridal dresses were being delivered to multiple brides accompanied by heavenly trumpet fanfares on December 12, 2017. Yesterday, 12-16-17 Holy Spirit began to download knowledge that we as believers comprise the Third Temple after Christ’s sacrifice for our sins on the cross and the veil in Second Temple was torn as humans no longer needed a mediator between God and man — we have Jesus as our high priest!
This is one of the most appropriately now words I have read on this site. Thanks for taking the time to share His prophet insight into this most Joyful season.
Shalom!
“The 25th Kislev is also the day when the tabernacle’s components in the wilderness commissioned by Moses were completed. It was not assembled and put together until 3 months later, but all the preparation work was complete.” This rings true. I am am also looking forward this year to Nissan 1 as pivatol and like you Christine looking for gracious provision in the interim. Thanks for sharing this word.
I Maccabees 4:59: states that December 25th is the day that Hanukkah (the Feast of Lights) should begin to be celebrated: “Judas, with his brothers and the whole assembly of Israel, made it a law that the dedication of the altar should be celebrated yearly at the proper season, for eight days beginning on the twenty-fifth of the month Chislev, with rejoicing and gladness.” This is a type and shadow of our bodies (the temple of God) fully cleansed of all filtiness of flesh and spirit resulting in the day star rising up within each member of the body of Christ…. Oh what wonder! What illumination! The Feast of Lights on Dec. 25th (Christmas) is the celebration of Christ risen in us! 💥🌟‼️
1 Maccabees 459 does not mention the 25th of December (solar gregorian calebdar) but the 25th of Kislev which is the lunar calendar. They should not be confused.
The Feast of Purim is stated in the Book of Esther to be celebrated on the fourteenth and fifteen day of the month Adar. Which ever calendar is used for this feast day or Hannakah, the date is specific. It doesn’t negate the written record, does it?
I don’t understand what the reference to purim has to do with the discussion on Hanukkah? The 25th of Kislev falls on the 13th December this year.
I was using the date for the Feast of Purim to point out the fact that specific dates are established in the written record. Yes, the 25th of December according to the calendar the Jews use is the thirteenth of December and falls on different days in following years. The practice and tradition of the Jews does not alter the truth that the written word for both Purin and Hunnakuh states that the celebrations are to take place on the 13-14 days for Purim and on the 25th of December for Hanukkah. These dates don’t change- they are explicit.
Michelle,
I think you may benefit from more teaching on dates. Jonathan Cahn has great teaching on YouTube, explaining Hannakah’s timing. Check him out. Best to you…
Dear Carol,
Thank you so much for bringing Jonathan Cahn’s teaching to my attention. Yes, it was most beneficial!! Best to you, too❤️
Hi Michele. Please refer to this site when converting dates, it may clear up the confusion:
https://www.hebcal.com/converter/
Type in 25th Kislev 5778 in Hebrew side
Dear Christine,
The Hebrew calendar is not of God- Its roots came about after the Jews returned from exile in the 5th century BCE and is of Babylonian origin. I discovered many sites on line that confirmed this when I typed in “Where did the Jewish calendar come from?” and found thie account of the history given by Mosaic magazine to be most thorough and informative:. https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2015/07/where-did-the-jewish-calendar-come-from/
Dear Christine,
I was so focused on the Jewish calendar not being of God, that I did not look up the site you gave me. I was wrong not to do this and in stating that the month of Kislev is December. It is not! My belief concerning Christmas and Hanukkah having the same day of celebration was error and am thankful for a forum like this and you for being instruments to correct me. I am also grateful for Carol’s pointing me to Jonathan Cahn teaching in which he said Hanukkah was like Christmas. It is but it is not Christmas as I had believed.
God bless and bless you for continuing to communicate with me until I got the truth and learned to not dismiss other’s input assuming that I was so right. By God’s grace, I shall look things up that are given to me in the future. Sigh!I it is GOOD to be corrected‼️❤️Michele
Thanks for clarifying that Christine.
What is Maccabees? I don’t see that in King James Version.
1st and 2nd Maccabbees are part of the Septurangint (the Alexandrian canon). They are included in the Old Testament used by Catholic and Orthodox churches.
I have apologized for being in error when I wasn’t in error. Kislev IS the month of December- the 25th of December IS the time Hanukkah is supposed to be celebrated. I am so sorry for the confusion.