Born To Win Podcast - With Ronald L. Dart

It seems odd, in a way, that Satan is not mention more than he is in the Old Testament—at least by name. There may be other references, but the word Satan appears only once in all the historical books of the Bible, once in the Psalms, 11 times mentioned in the book of Job (but he’s a major player there in the whole drama), and in all of the prophets the only prophet that ever refers to Satan is Zechariah.When you read Zechariah, it’s useful to know where you are in the history of the Old Testament. Israel is beginning to drift back into Judah and Jerusalem after their long exile in Babylon. According to Ezra, two men—Zerubbabel and Joshua the high priest—rebuilt the altar and laid the foundation of the temple and began to build. Their work was stopped by opposition—according to some, by persons who remained in Palestine during the exile and did not actually go captive. Why they stopped it isn’t exactly clear, but Darius granted permission for the Jews to continue rebu

The next-to-the-last book in the Old Testament—the next-to-the-last of the Minor Prophets—is a man named Zechariah.In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, came the word of the Lord unto Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo the prophet, saying, The Lord hath been sore displeased with your fathers. Therefore say thou unto them, Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Turn ye unto me, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will turn unto you, saith the Lord of hosts.Zechariah 1:1–3Now, if you are just reading this to yourself you may not pick up on this. But if you were reading it aloud, with this repetition of sayeth the Lord of Hosts, you begin to understand that this is a poetic structure. So many of these prophecies, like the Psalms, are musical and may actually have been intended for performance. They are, in a way, the protest songs of their generation. A significant clue to this arises in an incident many years before this involving the prophet Elisha. We find it in 2 Kings 3.

Several years ago, I was driving through an area the weekend after a tragic mass shooting had occurred there. I listened on the radio to the people who lived nearby as they responded to being put in a goldfish bowl for the whole country to watch. I couldn’t help but reflect along with them about how unfair the whole thing was.Every special interest group had their spokesman on television telling us all why this tragedy had taken place. It was guns, of course. Someone noted that crime in the cities was going down while crime in rural areas was going up. He blamed the availability of guns for the problem. The poor fellow obviously has never lived in the rural south. I grew up in northern Arkansas, and I can tell you that guns are not a new arrival there. As a boy, I don’t think I knew a family—especially a rural family—that didn’t have guns and that didn’t teach their kids to hunt. We grew up playing war around the barns, pretending to shoot one another, and faking a fall out