“The president of the United States is lashing out at Israel just like Haman lashed out at the Jews.”

 
That assertion was made by American-Israeli rabbi, Shlomo Riskin, speaking at the Jerusalem Great Synagogue last Saturday (3-28-15). He was comparing the story of Esther in the Bible to the present day drama being played out before the eyes of the world, the clash between Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu.
 
The Jerusalem Post reported on his speech ~

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, chief rabbi of Efrat, on Saturday night compared US President Barack Obama to Haman and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Mordechai […]
 

Just as Mordechai was focused on saving the Jews of Persia from destruction, he said, so Netanyahu is focused on saving Israel and the world from destruction.

Revisiting the Book of Esther to better understand the rabbi’s analogy, John MacArthur’s commentary on the story caught my attention ~

Esther could be compared to a chess game. God and Satan (as invisible players) moved real kings, queens and nobles. When Satan put Haman into place, it was as if he announced “Check.” God then positioned Esther and Mordecai in order to put Satan into “Checkmate!” Ever since the fall of man, Satan has attempted to spiritually sever God’s relationship with His human creation and disrupt God’s covenant promises with Israel.

 
Haman, the man Rabbi Riskin likened to Barack Obama, was Persia’s King Ahasuerus’ second-in-command. His ancestors were the Agagites, a people with an historical animosity to the Jewish people. Haman convinced the king that the Jews should all be destroyed because “their laws are different from all other people’s, and they do not keep the king’s laws.” (Esther 3:8)
 
We can think of Haman as an early Nazi. He actually came up with a “Final Solution” before Adolf did.
 

Why thousands of years of anti-Semitism?

 
The world’s ongoing hatred for the Jewish people throughout millennia simply cannot be attributed to any logical cause. As Dr. Michael Brown explained recently, it is the longest, most widespread, most virulent, most irrational hatred in all of human history. It can only truly be explained if we realize that it is a supernatural hate.

 
That’s why MacArthur’s analogy of a chess game is so appropriate.
 

When Mordecai was trying to convince Esther to approach the king and plead for the lives of her people – even at the risk of her own life – he asked her, “who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14) Indeed.
 
God had placed His queen exactly there, in the king’s palace at that precise moment in history, to definitively block Satan’s next move. Convinced to relent, the king reversed his decision and instead ordered Haman hung on the very gallows he himself had erected to murder Mordecai.
 

Rabbi Riskin’s remarks about Obama/Haman and Netanyahu/Mordecai last week were a reminder of the Grand Chess Tournament being carried out in a dimension we can’t yet experience with our natural senses. But we can certainly see it manifested throughout history – and today, in the growing chaos around the world.
  
As we draw nearer to the end times, Satan is getting ever more desperate. He’s determined to destroy not only God’s covenant people, but Christians as well. At times it’s tempting to believe that he’s gotten the upper hand.
 
But be comforted. God already has all His pieces firmly in place. And we know Who wins in the end.