HAGGAI—A Prophecy for OUR TIME! (Part 4)

This is the final article in a series explaining the end-time application for all God’s people of the book of Haggai. In the first three parts, we learned that a group called “this people” believed it was not yet time to return to and rebuild God’s “House” and to do His Work. They were busy running “every man unto his own house.” The “houses” described were plainly seen to be the various splinter groups that split from the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) during and after the apostasy. Haggai 1 also revealed that God is bringing a seven-fold desolation on these organizations due to their outright rebellion against His government, doctrines and ways. If you have not yet read the first three parts of this series, this article will make no sense to you. Stop now and read them. They provide vital foundational understanding for this concluding article. (Other vital announcements will continue each Friday from here on.)

While Haggai 1 and the beginning of chapter 2 addressed the remnant as a whole (this would naturally include the ministers), the verses we will now examine form God’s specific message to the ministers—the “priests”—who are involved with God’s people. The word priests is God’s obvious code for ministers. God’s Church does not involve a priesthood, and all the reasons that this is not talking about ancient or modern Jews (and thus their priesthood) have been covered in previous parts. This said, the continuing message obviously still also applies in its own way to laymembers. We pick up with Haggai 2, verses 10 to 13, with an exchange of questions that God wanted Haggai to carry out with today’s modern ministry. Each minister reading this series ought to see what follows as God talking to YOU:

“In the four and twentieth day of the NINTH month, in the second year of Darius, came the word of the Lord by Haggai the prophet, saying, Thus says the Lord of hosts; Ask now the priests [ministers] concerning the law, saying, If one bear holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and with his skirt do touch bread, or pottage, or wine, or oil, or any meat, shall it be holy? And the priests answered and said, No. Then said Haggai, If one that is unclean by a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean? And the priests answered and said, It shall be unclean.”