Michele Downing

In my research I found that this was God ordained! Of course, God had touched the heart of of King Cyrus to free them. According to my research after about 70 years of captivity in Babylon they were given the opportunity to return to their homeland, The Promised Land. Out of the two or three million Jews that had been deported from the Land, only 50, 000 decided to return and that's a very small percentage. In fact, it is only about 2%. However they did return and in the days of Ezra they rebuilt the temple and laid a spiritual foundation for Israel once again. So the reason that the others did not return was because they had no desire because they had settled in the land and were quite comfortable and had no desire to return. It is said that they still followed the God of their Fathers, but they did it their in the settled land. The other reason was because they did not want to leave their possessions. Some of the characteristics were that the people that returned were only counted by the heads of the household. So in essence it could have been more or less that actually returned. The ones that did return had a desire to return to their homeland and they had a great respect for God. The people that stayed in Babylon had settles and were apparently happy there so they had no real desire to return to their homeland. They also did not want to leave their possessions as things were going pretty good for them. Some folk have a hard time answering the call of Christ because they feel inadequate or they feel like they would have to give up too much to follow Christ; when in reality their lives would line up with the WILL of God for their life. I believe that once you answer the call your purpose comes into focus and your walk with Christ is more defined. Characteristics of True Disciples: Loves Jesus above everyone and everything, selflessness and sacrifice, humility and modesty, dedicated to following Christ and the commandments, is not easily influenced by the world, has self-control in their emotions and actions, lives the Word, Profess the Word regularly and effectively, Lives as Christ did, Recognizes that they need God's strength to be a true disciple.