Sid: My guest by way of telephone, I’m speaking to him at his office in Tiberias, Israel is Eric Morey. One of the things that I always want, and I always need, many times I can’t even put my hand on it is a Jewish Biblical calendar. Why do I want this? Because I want to know when the Biblical festivals are because there is such insight into understanding what God’s going to do in the future all wrapped into these Biblical festivals. So the last time I was in Israel I was visiting my friends Eric and Terri Morey who run several businesses in Israel. They showed me a calendar which they called “The Zechariah Prophecy Calendar.” I have Eric on the telephone; Eric why did you pick the Prophet Zechariah to revolve with pictures around this calendar?
Eric: Well Sid the prophecies of Zechariah are so timely for today, especially in towards the end of chapters 12 and 14. It’s like reading tomorrow’s newspaper. It’s so incredibly timely…
Sid: Speaking of about tomorrow’s newspaper, I must ask you a question because you’re living in the land. Yet prophets that I respect are prophesying now that there will be a relative calm in Israel as opposed to… almost the daily or weekly suicide bombers. You’re living there, what are you sensing, what are you experiencing?
Eric: Well I have been sensing for some time that the violence is going to reach a climatic period, then it was going to drop off and that there would be a period of relative calm; not that it would be confused with peace. “Peace, peace, peace, but there is no peace.” There can be a calm and I believe that it may not be too far away. I sensed actually back at Passover when there was that horrible homicide, I like to refer to this as homicide bombings, rather than suicide bombings. That horrible homicide bombing at a Passover Seder in a hotel in Netanya, 26 people I believe were killed and many wounded. It was an atrocity above most atrocities you could imagine. The Israeli army then reacted very strongly and went into several of these refugee camps especially Jenin and I believe that was probably the peak in the violence that I was expecting. I expected the period of calm to develop more quickly than it has. We don’t see in it our eyes yet, we are still experiencing suicide bombings, and the threats of suicide bombings, but I really do believe that a period of relative calm could even last for several years is just around the corner.
Sid: I believe that too, I also believe that what a time for Christians to show solidarity to Israel by going on a tour. They’ll probably never have it not crowded as it is, and the prices as low as they are.
Eric: Yes that’s true this is a great time to come. For the next few months if there is a period of calm, and it stabilizes then tourism will… there will be a rush actually to come here. So it would be better to come earlier rather than later.
Sid: I agree. Now going back to the Zechariah Prophecy Calendar I have it in front of me. Some of the things I love about it, and I literally love about this calendar Eric, is: Number 1, right at the start you list every one of the Biblical festivals and you explain from the scriptures what they mean. But the thing that really attracted me, I have to be candid with you, is you just happen to have my favorite scripture on the cover. It’s Zechariah 4:6 “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit sayeth the Lord.” Describe to me the artwork on the cover.
Eric: Well that prophecy by Zechariah was given at a very interesting time in the history of Israel. They had returned from Babylon, or a remnant had returned from Babylon, and they were trying to… they had started to rebuild the temple. Then there had been some controversy and the king, or the emperor of Persia, had ordered the construction to stop. It stopped for 14 years, meanwhile the Jewish people who had returned from Babylon are building houses for themselves and farms and so forth. Zechariah, and also Haggai a contemporary prophet, both began to prophecy that the time had come to build the house of the Lord. To finish, complete the building, only the foundation had been laid. So this… and there were many obstacles to this, in fact the king of Persia had not yet given permission to restart the building. It was one of the obstacles. So it looked like it was a great mountain of obstacles in the way of this building project which was God’s House. Zechariah said “No God will provide the way, but it won’t be by power, it won’t be by might, it will be by His Spirit,” sayeth the Lord of hosts. So the prophecy there at that point in chapter 4 it describes a scene, a very prophetic scene, a very mysterious scene. Many many interpretations of what this means but it has 2 olive trees. Between the 2 olive trees is a beautiful gold 7 branched menorah, candelabra. This candelabra is a kind of perpetual motion machine because connected to it are some pipes that go to a bowl of golden oil. There are 2 pipes coming from these 2 olive trees that feed olive automatically, no human intervention into the bowl and then the bowl feeds it into the lights. You know candelabras in those days didn’t work from candles actually…
Sid: You know most people when they read about the menorah, the candlesticks, in the Bible they don’t visualize what it really looked like. This is really exactly what it looked like.
Eric: Well we commissioned these paintings from a Russian artist, a Messianic artist who was trained in classic painting in Russia and she is just an extraordinary artist. She’s able to create in her mind these incredible pictures and I was taking direction from the scripture and giving her input and going back and forth with sketches, and paintings and so forth until this is what came out. It’s this incredible gold menorah with the oil coming out of the 2 olive trees, lighting the, it’s a perpetual light this light will never go out because as long as the trees are producing olives the olive is going into the bowl, the oil is going into the 7 branches of the menorah and the light will be continual. In the background, now we see a building project some stones on the ground and a man holding the plumb line. This man is Zerubbabel because Zerubbabel was the governor of Judea…
Sid: Now what is a plumb line used for?
Eric: The plumb line is an engineering tool and it is used to measure the vertical dimension a building to make sure it is straight. So it’s an engineering tool, it’s an architectures tool. So he is back there getting ready to start the building again. He’s holding a plumb line. A plumb line is mentioned in the prophecies of Zechariah as well. It is a very very interesting side line to this scene because they thought that they could never build this temple because the king of Persia had forbidden it and he never changed the rule. They started building anyway and Zechariah and Haggai had concurred so much that they went ahead and started building again. The Samaritans, the old Samaritans our friends, came down and started to interfere in the building project that had just had they done in the days of Nehemiah, similar story it was a latter period of time than Nehemiah. So as they are interfering they write a letter to the king of Persia, the new emperor it was not the same emperor who had stopped the construction, and it wasn’t the sand who had commissioned it in the first place, it was the 3rd emperor in the line of Persian emperors. They sent a letter to him and said “These Jews are starting to build their temple again and they’re probably going to rebel against you and it’s going to be nothing but trouble. So you better stop it now.” But then they mention in their letter the fact that the original king of Persia, Cyrus the Great had actually ordered the temple to be rebuilt. He had commissioned the temple to be rebuilt. In a sense sends Ezra and Nehemiah back to begin the building project. So they mention this is their letter, the king of Persia had his archivist go back into the archives and pull out this old scroll, I think it was maybe 50 years later, and sure enough Cyrus the Great himself had commissioned the building of this temple. This emperor sent back a letter and said “Look, not only are they going to build their temple but you Samaritan governor are going to supply all the building materials.” That’s how the prophecy was fulfilled, “Not by might, nor by power.” The mountain Zechariah was referring to was overcome so much so, not did they get to build it, not only did the king allow them to build it; the king ordered his servants to supply the building materials.
Sid: You know as I studied that specific prophecy that we’re discussing. Zechariah 4:6 “Not by might, nor by power, but My Spirit sayeth the Lord.” The prophecies in Zechariah about the candlesticks and the 2 olive trees, I think it is very obvious it stands for the 2 witnesses of the last days. But I see it also as a type of the of the One New Man, the Jew and Gentile becoming one and that’s what got me so excited about this cover you have here for your prophecy calendar. This must be an unusual artist that you commissioned Eric?
Eric: Very very talented, and very very well trained.
Sid: What was her training?
Eric: She was trained in Russia in classical painting. They don’t train artist like that in the west anymore that’s hundreds of years ago, but in Russia they still listen to the classical music and they appreciate the classic arts, and they have trained painters in these antique classic painting methods that create these incredible pictures. It’s like a Renaissance painting, it’s like a Michael Angelo, or Leonardo da Vinci paining it’s that style it’s classic.
Sid: Actually someone could actually just probably tear this calendar apart, I hope you don’t do it and frame every one of them they’re suitable for framing.
