Prophetic Word: ‘Wake Up, Esther! Your Kairos Moment Has Come!’

In the New Testament, Jesus was constantly having altercations with the Pharisees.

One consistent rebuke of His against them was their inability, or perhaps, their unwillingness to discern the times. If they were true followers of God, then surely they would have recognized Him to be the true Son of God. If not through His miracles, at the very least, they should have been able to determine they were standing right in a kairos moment of time, based alone on the prophecies surrounding the Messiah that offered details about the timing. However, for all their apparent wisdom and knowledge, they knew nothing, and Jesus rebuked them as such.

In Matthew 16:1-3 (BSB), a conversation ensues between the Pharisees and Jesus:

Then the Pharisees and Sadducees came and tested Jesus by asking Him to show them a sign from heaven. But He replied, “When evening comes, you say, ‘The weather will be fair, for the sky is red,’ and in the morning, ‘Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but not the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation demands a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” Then He left them and went away.

The Greek word Jesus used for times, is indeed, kairos. This word can also mean “coming to a head.” Could this warning stand for us today? I believe so. Everything around us is coming to a head, we are in a kairos. We are living amid a wicked and adulterous generation, and they too are demanding a sign, saying, “Show me your God is real. Give me proof that your ‘sky Daddy’ isn’t some fictious character.” What’s alarming is that Jesus didn’t distinguish that the Pharisees were any different from the wicked generation; but rather, gave the connotation that they were one and the same. Why? Because they didn’t discern the times.

This tells me that not only discerning the times but responding to the times is of imperative importance. How so, you may ask. Jesus mentions Jonah in His rebuke to the Pharisees for a reason. Jonah was sent to a wicked city to call out the evil and then urge the people to turn away from their wickedness and turn back to God. Jesus mentioned Jonah here because His desire is that you and I would go out into the darkest places of the earth and compel people to repent and turn to Him, for the hour is short. It is His desire that no one perish.

Yet the Pharisees did not care for the lost, they cared only for their reputation. The sign of Jonah would be that without repentance, destruction would come. A kairos demands our discernment and our response. We cannot sit idly by while the world around us is on the pathway to hell. We cannot be like the Pharisees who were only concerned with themselves. They ask, “What good will it do if I help anyone? Isn’t the Messiah supposed to be returning soon, anyway? I’ll just wait for Him to beam me up.” The warning here is that God does not look kindly on our inability to discern the times, nor on our choosing not to respond.

When Jesus instructed us to “occupy” until He comes in Luke 19:13 (KJV), He was telling us to “get to work.” The Greek word for occupy is pragmateuomai, which means “to busy oneself with a necessary matter, to make exchange, to trade, and to make gain.” Occupy is the opposite of being fruitless by choosing to play it safe. This is not an hour to play it safe, this is an hour in which to fully engage, and we must exchange the darkness for the Light.

Interestingly, when Vashti was deposed, the king turned to his wise counsel. The upheaval and transition of time demanded wise discernment and a response. Esther 1:13 (BSB) tells us: “Then the king consulted the wise men who knew the times, for it was customary for him to confer with the experts in law and justice.” Upon reading this, I knew there was something more in the messaging, so I began to study into the name meanings of the wise men. What I found was initially perplexing. Almost every name has a double meaning. Then I realized the names of the wise men themselves point to two differing messages: “His closest advisors were Carshena, Shethar, Admatha, Tarshish, Meres, Marsena, and Memucan, the seven princes of Persia and Media who had personal access to the king and ranked highest in the kingdom” (Esther 1:14 BSB).

Carshena means a lamb and sleeping. Shethar means searching and despised. Admatha means a testimony to them, and a cloud of death or mortal vapor. Tarshish means white dove, searching for alabaster, courage, subjection, and breaking. Meres means a boundary and defluxion or imposthume. Marsena simply means bitterness of a bramble. And Memucan means certain and true.

What I drew from their name meanings are two different scenarios. One is speaking of the awake and alert bride that carries the Lamb; like John the Baptist, she is the one crying out in the wilderness, “repent, prepare the way of the Lord.” The other is the sleeping bride. Collectively, I’ve pieced together like a puzzle the meanings of their names for the awake bride. This is what the Holy Spirit led me to write through the names of the wise men that discerned the times: “She is searching for the lost, declaring a testimony to them; with courage she cries out at the boundaries of the city square; look to the Lamb, the One caught in the bitterness of a bramble (the lamb caught in the thicket from Genesis 22:13, bramble and thicket are similar words), He is certain and true, your rescue.”

Then there is the sleeping bride. She does not carry the Lamb to the lost, and thus her actions are despised of the Lord, just like the Pharisees. Her slumber allows a cloud of death and a mortal vapor to rest upon the earth around her. The wise men in these verses are, in essence, a warning and a picture of the parable of the ten virgins (Matthew 25:1-13). Five fell asleep when the hour was critical, and the other five went and bought oil. Is it any coincidence then, that the names of these wise men who discerned the times were prophetically pointing to Esther, and subsequently to you and me today?

Amazingly, one of the names also means “search for alabaster.” In the coming chapters, I’ll explain why this is so profound. They were prophetically anointed to search for the daughter, Esther, who would carry the sweet perfume of Jesus (albeit, a foreshadow of Him), to the kingdom around her. They were searching for the one who would carry the Lamb in a moment of time who needed discernment and response.

Daughter, you are that Esther—the kairos hour we are in is one of peril, and this is no time to sleep. This is the time to buy oil and to stand, and cry out as John the Baptist:

Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world! Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand (John 1:29,36; Matthew 4:17; Matthew 12:41 ESVUK).

This kairos hour declares: This the hour of the Lamb, for such a time as this.