Jesus Departs From The Buildings Of The Temple
Written by Elinor Montgomery – em*********@****co.ca
March 09, 2003
(Matthew 24:1-2) Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple and His disciples came to Him to show Him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said to them, “Do you not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another that shall not be thrown down.”
In the garden, there were two trees, two governments, truth and the lie, life and death. Man has always been required to make the choice between them. Man could either accept the truth in faith and act upon it in righteousness, or he could accept the lie and act upon a belief system in rebellion. Eve was the mother of rebellion, or witchcraft, that birthed men into rebellion – for, as Adam said, she was the mother of all living. The spirit of Satan led her, with the result that man became children of Satan and lovers of the lie, acting under the belief systems of religion.
What is at the center of evil, wars, and corruption? The answer is religion. This is not the heritage of our Western liberty. Our heritage is found in the truth of God’s Word, and in God’s law, which is the basis for the government of liberty. Christianity is religion, and it could never be our heritage, for religion leads to captivity under the systems of men, the government of liberalism, and ultimately to death. Most of Christianity will join with the One World Order of religion that Satan has always wanted. Ecumenicism, or a united religion, is becoming the central focus of Christianity rather than Jesus. What will Jesus do? He will depart from Christianity taking His true church, His bride, with Him. And what will happen? Her buildings, with her hand-hewn stones, will see His judgment as judgment begins on the church, and not one hand-hewn stone will be left standing.
When Jesus commissioned His apostles to lay the foundation of His church, He called them little stones of which He was the Chief Cornerstone. Not a single tool of man formed these stones, but rather they became new creations of God, when His Spirit entered them at Pentecost. This Spirit of life had been replaced in the garden with the spirit of death through man’s own choice. Now, they must experience Pentecost, or the return of the Spirit in their lives to become living stones, ready once more to worship in Spirit and truth. This is the point of rebirth, when man departs from religion and comes into truth again. This is the essential ingredient of a church that will inherit the kingdom.
Why did Jesus choose to give this message to Nicodemus, one of the very respected religious leaders? He wanted man to realize that religion, yes, even Christianity, is the hindrance to life. The Jewish Messiah had taken on a national image of one sent by God to be a religious leader who would cut away Israel’s enemies with a sword. They were the religious who hated the idea of one coming in truth for all mankind to take them out of the sin of religion, and offer in its place a position with God, worshipping in Spirit and in truth. Heaven forbid such a thing, thought the religious. For what about Israel’s salvation, and what of her temples with her priestly robes, practices, positions, and agendas? Even worst still, what would become of the temple? Would this man Jesus not make it and all its religion redundant before he was finished?
John the Baptist had already handed the reins of true Levitical priesthood over to Jesus at the point he baptized Him. That was the end of Israel’s Levitical priesthood, which God established by the law, for it was the pattern only, and John was the last known to belong to the lineage of high priesthood. The temple of Jesus’ day was not governed by Levitical priests. They were a fraud, every bit as much as the Roman priesthood of Catholicism was. They were in cahoots with Rome, not God, and they dearly loved their hierarchy and man-made temples of hewn stone. The temples of Christianity are no different. The Christians love their denominational buildings and their priestly agendas. Do they not aspire to large congregations and the benefits that the governments of the world give to them for keeping their mouths shut in political correctness, as Satan puts his One World Government and One World Religion in place? Oh yes, the Pharisees are very much alive and well in Christianity today. Like all religions, the priesthood of much of Christianity has come to actually hate the name of Jesus, when it is linked with His divinity and the message of salvation. “Give us a nice man, but not a Savior,” they say. “We will try to spiritually kill Him over again, as we drop His name from Christianity and hand the Christian Church over to Satan.”
The temple, my friends, from which Jesus departed, points to the stone structures of the institutional church every bit as much as it refers to the Jewish temple. Even the disciples tried to point to the buildings, for they did not understand that worship would be in Spirit and truth, and that the body was the temple, the very body that rose again after three days and three nights. A prayer shawl is all that is required. Man can go into his own closet and worship, probably with much greater success than in religious buildings that tend to kill the move of the Spirit. Raise your hands in praise? Heavens, no, we sit properly dressed, straight and respectfully erect in our pews. Emotional utterances? Never. We want a beautiful performance worthy of applause. Do we partake of communion? No. Communion is performed by the priests and elders. We are the puppets of the performance, believing in doctrines that have nothing to do with the act of betrothal, which it really is. Jesus hated religion, and He departed from it and its buildings.
What was it that preceded this action? He prescribed woes on the priesthood, the Scribes and Pharisees, calling them names in righteous anger – hypocrites, serpents, and a brood of vipers that keep the people from entering the Kingdom. They have pretentious, long prayers of which we see enough in the Pentecostal flowery language that covers over a heart response, and the liturgy of the Anglican services that are void of personal relationship. They take the money of widows, as is often seen in televangelist promises of returns on the dollars donated to ministries. They evangelize only to make their converts, converts to religion, not to truth. The gold of the temple is fools’ gold, not the gold of worship that covered over the utensils of the tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant. It is the gold of the world that eventually would melt in the fire of destruction, and run between the stones of the destroyed temple for which every stone would be separated as the conquerors clawed for the riches of the world, locked between the temple stones. Yes, these Pharisees pay their tithes while neglecting the things that are of greater importance – justice, mercy and faith.
Is the church not doing its thing today, fiddling as Rome burns, so to speak? The law of God is crumbling around her in the land, and children are being taken over by witchcraft. Yet, she remains behind walls, worshipping, dancing and having dinners as liberty in the nation disintegrates, during which time her voice is not heard. While the church is busy straining doctrine and practices, she is in the process of eating up the monster called religion, with blind guides as teachers. It is the message of the gnat and the camel. Jesus accuses the Scribes and Pharisees of being like whitewashed tombs – outwardly clean, but rotting inside. Has there even been a greater picture of all of this, than is seen in the Catholic priesthood today, where we see the most abominable practices with priests parading in their robes of black that cover over the evil? They hold conferences to decide just how much sin is allowable before they take action. They think of their positions, while, at the same time, damaging children’s lives forever. Double woes upon them! What kind of priesthood is it that teaches about the prophets, sets up its system of sainthood, and then kills Jesus over again with its own idol worship and religion? Is our institutional church anything more than the sons of Israel, the same family that killed the prophets before her, feigning to revere them today, yet continuing to kill them?
Upon the religious will come all the blood shed from Abel to Zechariah, son of Berechiah. Abel represents the prophets of God who made the perfect sacrifice, the ones who gave their lives to bring a nation back to God. But where were they murdered? Between the temple and the altar. While they were indulging in religious worship to God in the temples of man and offering sacrifices for their sins on the altar, they were killing the prophets of God, sent to bring them His messages. They were killing the very messengers of God, sent for their own good and salvation. As was the case, and always had been, Israel would accept the lies of Jezebel much more readily than the Word of God. Nothing has changed since Eve chose rebellion over obedience. God took a nation called Israel out of the captivity that sin placed on her to show the world He would replace the famine of that sin by leading her to a land flowing with milk and honey. But Israel preferred the idols of other nations to God, and chose to return to Egypt at every opportunity. The prophets tried to explain, showing her the error of her ways. So, God sent Jesus and the New Covenant for the second company of Israel, and this time, the gates of Hades would not prevail against the church, to which the keys to the Kingdom were given.
Jesus wept over Jerusalem for her daughters, the first woman Israel. He wanted to gather her to Himself and to protect her. He wanted her as His bride, but she rejected Him, preferring to play the harlot. So He made her house desolate and she became a pathetic wanderer among the nations. He promised that the nation would see Him no more until she finally would fall on her knees and say, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.”
Now, what follows is all-important. It is known as the Olivet Discourse. Jesus goes into the details of the signs of the coming tribulation. He tells of the judgment that is coming, that is going to destroy religion, as the nations of believers and the bride, the over-comer, are saved. The believer may still fall prey to the religious deceiver, but the bride of the church must not, for she will overcome him in the Spirit, as did her bridegroom in the wilderness before her. The nation of Israel will be returned to the land. And why is that so? It is not because they are going to be blessed for having been God’s little darlings. It is because they are going to feel the judgment until they are ready to get down on their knees and say, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” They are going to have to reach the same desperate place as the half brothers of Joseph did, when they were driven by famine to go into Egypt and appear collectively to plead before their scorned brother for his bread of salvation. Like them, Israel will come before Jesus and openly weep for Him, Whom she thought dead at the evil work of her hands. At this point, believer and nation come together like two sticks becoming one, when the nation is willing to die to the spirit of religion, and once more embrace the Spirit of truth. At the same time, the two sisters, Oholah and Oholibah, the harlots of the two companies of Israel shall bear the penalties of their lewdness and harlotry, for they have chosen to forget God and cast Him behind their backs, in their abominable behavior.
The gates of Israel will be open to all of those who are ready to worship in Spirit and truth, while the religious will be swept away in the judgment of God’s wrath. There will be no excuse for anyone to reject the Lord, for the whole world will see His coming. But only the tribes of Israel will receive the blessings of the Kingdom. As with the tabernacle, the bride and the high priest shall dwell at the center with her bridegroom, and the nations of believing Israel shall dwell around the city whose gates are ever open to them. Theirs is a blessing less than that of Benjamin, the full brother, the bride, and the son of the second company, but theirs is the blessing of the choices they made in this world. All shall be saved, and there will be tears no more. Nor will there be seawaters or darkness. Only the light of the Lord God shall light the Kingdom, and her street shall be paved in gold, the good gold of Havilah, the gold of the covering of the Ark of the Covenant, the gold of worship, which is only in Spirit and in truth. The gold the world has worshiped will go down with religion as the harlot is burned up in the fire of burning.
It is all seen here in Jesus’ Words – the budding of the fig tree, which points to Israel once again back in the land. He speaks of the days of Noah and the times to come being as wicked and full of violence as they were then when God’s judgment was unleashed on the world, but this time in the finality of fire. He warns of the conditions that will exist with signs in the weather and rumors of wars. The signs are all here, as the world prepares for the great judgment of the tribulation. There are two companies of servants. What is scary about this is that they are all called servants of the Lord. They have all been required to feed the household food in due season. The true church was called to be a voice for the truth of the gospel, and not for religion. She was called to be this, while not compromising with the world; a voice for the Kingfisher of men, fishing for men. She is going to be made ruler over the master’s household. Make no mistake! This is no religious body of compromise. The Master of the household will cut the body in two, and as the Pharisees were called hypocrites, so will the religious body of the institutional church be appointed its place with the hypocrites.
And so, the religious plotted to kill Jesus, as the institutional church of Christianity is in the process of doing today. Listen to the message of the stones, for not one will remain standing that is not thrown down.