Today is the 11th day of August. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible.

I am Brian. It is wonderful to be here with you today as the summer bakes us here in

the Rolling Hills of Tennessee. I'm excited that we can be together here around the Global

Campfire and take another step forward in our journey through the Scriptures. And our

journey today brings us into new territory, sorta kinda. We finished the book of Ezra yesterday,

which brings us to the book of Nehemiah, although Ezra and Nehemiah were at one time one

manuscript. When now we have the two books of Ezra and Nehemiah. And Nehemiah is a book that

is a part of a larger grouping of books, known as The Books of History. And as we begin Nehemiah,

we're picking up pretty much where Ezra left off. In Christian tradition Ezra is thought to be one

of the authors of Nehemiah because Ezra and Nehemiah were at one time, one single manuscript,

which is said. So Nehemiah was one of the Jewish exiles. And he was in Persia and had been following

the story of the return of some of the exiles who were given permission to go back to Jerusalem and

rebuild the temple. So he had been following this story, watching God's favor upon the people.

And he was able to keep up with the story pretty closely because Nehemiah was a direct servant

to the king of Persia. And what we'll see is that Nehemiah begins to have a dream, not like a

sleeping dream, but he begins to dream of something, it gets planted into him and it begins to

germinate and grow, which leads to a lot of consideration, a lot of thought, a lot of prayer

and intercession. Because Nehemiah was thinking about this new temple of God being built in Jerusalem,

the temple of the Most High God, the icon of the Jewish people like the symbol, the place

where God would meet with mankind. And he's thinking about it being rebuilt in Jerusalem,

standing there completely undefended. And so a passion, a dream inside of him begins to germinate,

that the walls around Jerusalem need to be rebuilt to protect the temple of the Most High God,

...