JESUS ON THE END TIMES: Part 3: Things Do Not Get Better

In Memory of Billy Graham whose message led to my salvation 
 God took His great 20th Century Messenger Home


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BgIUU2gzVc


Mt 24:8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.
 9 Then they will deliver you up to be afflicted and will kill you. And you will be hated of all nations for My name's sake.
 10 And then many will be offended, and will betray one another, and will hate one another.
 11 And many false prophets will rise and deceive many.
 12 And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many will become cold.
 13 But he who endures to the end, the same shall be kept safe.
 14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be proclaimed in all the world as a witness to all nations. And then the end shall come.

 (MKJV)


Mt 24:8 But all these things are the first of the troubles.
 9 Then they will be cruel to you, and will put you to death: and you will be hated by all nations because of my name.
 10 And numbers of people will be turned from the right way, and will give one another up and have hate for one another.
 11 And a number of false prophets will come, causing error.
 12 And because wrongdoing will be increased, the love of most people will become cold.
 13 But he who goes through to the end will get salvation.
 14 And this good news of the kingdom will be given through all the world for a witness to all nations; and then the end will come.

 (BBE)



First, Jesus  talked about all those exterior stones.  Everything the disciples have come to hold dear in their lifetimes.  The Temple will fall. Jerusalem was the center of their universe and the Temple its' center.  The way away from sin would be gone; sacrifices impossible. Wars will abound.  Others will come claiming to be the Jesus they know and the disciples may even be tricked by them.  The way of freedom from sin copied by fake duplicates even as the Temple had been duplicated by frauds.  Earthquakes and starvation!

And this is only the beginning!

Much of  this part  would happen  in their lifetimes related in one way or another to the destruction of the Temple.   He will expand on it later.

But it is the beginning of the cycle of false leader, war, starvation, plague and obliteration of the country or tribe following the leader.  God gives warning after warning.  Country after country will follow the pattern.

But the message is about their lives.  Losing them.  Losing face.

Now comes the largest stone of all:

9 Then they will deliver you up to be afflicted and will kill you. And you will be hated of all nations for My name's sake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oynEWY1Lxug

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnKMj5usQa8

Here again He links their now with the future.  "You will lose your life for me and you (the future disciples) will be hated by all nations, hated as Christians."  Hated for following the true Way.  His vision stretches across the small space we occupy in eternity to the end of time.  He knows the names of the ones destroyed for His cause. Knows the people, the persons even to the hair on  their heads.

10 And numbers of people will be turned from the right way, and will give one another up and have hate for one another

First, we know this is future because there is almost no one following Him at this moment as he has alienated the Jewish leadership and all the "Hosanna" shouts have faded.   While his Way was a movement later on,   still not a lot of numbers in the time of the Temple's destruction. So this sets the prediction as  future events. And as ongoing ones.

2Th 2:1 Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, {unto him: or, around him}
 2 That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.
 3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
 (KJV)

Paul predicts the fruition of this event, begun by Judas' act of betrayal during the end times.  It seems to become complete during the Great Tribulation era.

The great Falling Away.   Though Paul, John and Peter all says it was going on in their lifetimes. it gathered power  with the passing of the Disciples, the ones who knew Him well.  It crept into every institution and into every place churches were founded.  We discussed this more fully in our study on John's gospel: https://mythmisunderstanding.blogspot.com/   In a way, it is really the face of human history.  Nations built on beliefs that were not Christian, aiming to destroy anyone who believed differently.   Nations built on values for the nation and then wrapped in religious suits like the wolf in sheep's clothing.  The 20th  Century saw the nations become larger.  Hitler's Germany claimed to be for the people as it herded Jews and others into concentration camps for slaughter and the value of melted gold teeth. The USSR and Red China were built on concentrated atheism.  In their own camps, the communists slaughtered believers by the millions since they were seen as dissidents.  The government was not God to the Christians  so they had to die along with any others who disagreed with some part or other of the government's plan.  The US which was founded on a belief in God, while being the home of  many great movements for Jesus and keeping the faith alive in pockets of rural life or in the backstreets of cities,  became lost in its other prejudices and in it's European royal traditions.  Wherever there was wealth it seemed, men or women rose to don cloaks of priesthood and used those cloaks to enrich and empower themselves.  Or Men with money and land were seen as God's only leaders.    The idea remains alive today that  churches are places for the well-to-do.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7JbM0qooRg  The idea was fostered by misled churches through \US history and now we see it come to full fruition in teachings about the buying of miracles by giving to a TV ministry and in men in political power saying money and more power must be given to the rich  and then money will trickle down to the poor out of the kindness of the human heart of the rich.  Even as those hearts grow colder.

One example:

https://shaynelooper.com/

Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide?

Posted on February 3, 2018by salooper57

The U.S. Department of the Treasury maintains three gift funds, one of which is known as the “Conscience Fund,” established in 1811. The name stuck after the Civil War when a former Army quartermaster who had misappropriated funds sent a check along with a note that read: “Suppose we call this a contribution to the conscience fund and get it announced in the newspapers, and perhaps we will get some more.”

Most contributions to the fund have come through people who cheated on their taxes. The interesting thing is that gifts to the fund have been declining rapidly. In 2014, people gave over a million dollars to the fund. In 2015, that amount was cut by more than half. In 2016, just $23,000 was given. According to Business Insider, halfway through 2017, only one gift of $1,600 had been given.

What is behind this sharp decline? Some have speculated that people believe it is no longer possible to hide their identities from Big Brother. A darker explanation is that the decline in giving to the Conscience Fund follows a decline in efficiently operating consciences.

The poet Ogden Nash wrote: “There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, and that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all.” One can only hope the reduction in giving to the Conscience Fund is due to the former possibility, and not the latter.

Conscience is not a static system. It can evolve or devolve in the lives of individuals and societies, become more sensitive or less sensitive. It can respond vigorously to certain stimuli in one period, and not at all in another because conscience must be informed if it is to work. There needs to be, as it were, software as well as hardware.

The software running the conscience regularly receives updates. This happens, when we are children, through interaction with parents, teachers, pastors, friends, and a host of other sources. As adults, the sources may change, but the conscience continues to update. It runs on the psychological equivalent of continuously modified open source software.

One suspects that the conscience code is now being generated by different sources than it was thirty or forty years ago. Parents and teachers have been largely replaced by media. Pastors have been discarded and not replaced. Books are less influential than movies and television. And it must be remembered that parents and teachers and pastors are also continuously receiving conscience code updates from all these sources as well.

                                                                                                                                                   

And the source of all that misinformation in the media, both liberal and conservative, lies in John's discussion related to the next part of Jesus' prophecy.

Now notice that Jesus separates the false prophets from the antichrists.  One seeks the open power and prestige of kingship, like almost every king seen throughout history.  He wants to be the tribal chief.  The other always seeks the religious route, the medicine man, the shaman.  He wants power as  the sycophant.  He sees that the chief may be overthrown, but that he, like the Pharisees who outlasted the Herods, may go on for a long time as the power behind the throne. Some commentators have  said the Antichrist and the False Prophet are the same beast. Throughout the Bible says  differently.  The king and his advisor.


Who better than the apostles to deal with false prophets and their way:

1Jo 4:1 My loved ones, do not put your faith in every spirit, but put them to the test, to see if they are from God: because a great number of false prophets have gone out into the world.


One thing I noticed as I began this post, something that eluded me before: John says to test "spirits".  That's plural and it gave me a realization.  God's Holy Spirit is everywhere, can be in many people at once and lead them in a unified effort for God, but what is one thing that is apparent from our studies on Satan and on the texts related to Judas.  Satan can only enter into people one person at a time.  Multiple demons can occupy one person as with Legion.  But when Jesus threw them out he sent them into multiple pigs, THEM, one per pig.  When one is thrown out he may bring others back with him to the "unoccupied house."  But notice none of them has the power to enter more than one person.  There is no one spirit that can be THE Antichrist Spirit.  It takes multiple spirits to inhabit more than one being.  All of them imitating the Holy Spirit.  An able to influence even believers with deceptive spiritual leadings. So when we have an event as discussed below, it can be either the leader of the group encouraging the misuse of a gift or multiple spirits influencing multiple believers  to misuse their gifts, or a crowd frenzy of those caught up in the moment to speak perhaps blasphemies against God in "angelic" tongues (Please don't forget that demons  ARE fallen angels.) because it feels good.

The spirits must be tested. For example, if Paul tells us not to run about in the aisles of our churches spouting  off in tongues that are not translated, this is the Word of the Holy Spirit.  And if someone preaches otherwise, he or she is speaking in the spirit of antichrist.  Speaking for a misleading false spirit.  This is one simple way to test for false prophets.  And those who obey are equally misdirected by other spirits or by that fallen "old man" inside us all who is always there and ready to do something worldly.  These teachings lead to the further powering of these false spirits and, by the power of media,  they are allowed into millions of homes to be presented as true to people who have not been taught to test them. Is it any wonder the ones preaching them reveal themselves to be about money?  Is it any wonder the people they present on their programs are so often exposed as frauds?  Is it any wonder, since they are part of the spirit of the world, that they succeed?  

Now I have problems with a certain level of this myself in that some of the musical performers  I have presented singing here seem to share some of those beliefs.  I try to be sure that any song comes from actual Gospel message but I can be fooled, too.  If you see something I missed, please tell me.  We all have levels of discernment and the power of deception grows every second at the end times swell for the rebirth. 


 2 By this you may have knowledge of the Spirit of God: every spirit which says that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God:
 3 And every spirit which does not say this is not from God: this is the spirit of Antichrist, of which you have had word; and it is in the world even now.

Now be aware: the spirit that misleads cannot say that of Jesus, but those human beings following it can say so because they have been misled to say it and genuinely believe what they say is of God.  On TV, we can see someone preaching something entirely against the Gospel and the sign "Jesus is Lord" hanging behind them on an altar.  It is true He is Lord.  Just not of those possessed of that false spirit.  And be aware also:  declaring Him Lord does not mean that they honor the resurrection.


 4 You are of God, my little children, and you have overcome them because he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
 5 They are of the world, so their talk is the world's talk, and the world gives ear to them.
 6 We are of God: he who has the knowledge of God gives ear to us; he who is not of God does not give ear to us. By this we may see which is the true spirit, and which is the spirit of error.
(BBE)

Those of the world will not listen to the Word but we are to preach it anyway as we shall see.  If someone preaches off and is warned and they find ways to disobey, as many in modern misdirected  ministers have been warned and have continued to disobey, then we know they are of the world and misled and may be among those Jesus will discuss later.  



But first, for this post, Peter who himself failed a test or two talks to us of being tested:

2Pe 2:1 But there were false prophets among the people, as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly put forward wrong teachings for your destruction, even turning away from the Lord who gave himself for them; whose destruction will come quickly, and they themselves will be the cause of it.
 2 And a great number will go with them in their evil ways, through whom the true way will have a bad name.
 3 And in their desire for profit they will come to you with words of deceit, like traders doing business in souls: whose punishment has been ready for a long time and their destruction is watching for them.

Pause a moment for a time in Acts when Peter met someone intent on using the Gospel for gain:

Acts 8:9-24 New International Version (NIV)

9 Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great, 10 and all the people, both high and low, gave him their attention and exclaimed, “This man is rightly called the Great Power of God.” 11 They followed him because he had amazed them for a long time with his sorcery. 12 But when they believed Philip as he proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. 13 Simon himself believed and was baptized. And he followed Philip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw.

14 When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to Samaria. 15 When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit, 16 because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 17 Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

18 When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money 19 and said, “Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”

20 Peter answered: “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! 21 You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. 22 Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord in the hope that he may forgive you for having such a thought in your heart. 23 For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin.”


24 Then Simon answered, “Pray to the Lord for me so that nothing you have said may happen to me.”

Captive of  sin! 

 "Here's money, show me how to do that!  Can I buy the gift of God from you?  Can I buy and sell salvation? Can I get glory for doing it?" 

Now realize, Simon Peter had fallen into Satan's traps, telling Christ He didn't have to die, telling the Priests that Jesus paid His taxes, betraying the Lord three times that terrible night.  He was familiar with the lures.  Now back to his letter.


 1 Peter 2:4 For if God did not have pity for the angels who did evil, but sent them down into hell, to be kept in chains of eternal night till they were judged;
 5 And did not have mercy on the world which then was, but only kept safe Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when he let loose the waters over the world of the evil-doer 6 And sent destruction on Sodom and Gomorrah, burning them up with fire as an example to those whose way of life might in the future be unpleasing to him;
 7 And kept safe Lot, the upright man, who was deeply troubled by the unclean life of the evil-doers
 8 (Because the soul of that upright man living among them was pained from day to day by seeing and hearing their crimes):

In the past year this blog touched on all these topics and events.  Pete gives us a brief personal  summary of their aim and purpose in Scripture.




 9 The Lord is able to keep the upright safe in the time of testing, and to keep evil-doers under punishment till the day of judging;
 10 But specially those who go after the unclean desires of the flesh, and make sport of authority. Ready to take chances, uncontrolled, they have no fear of saying evil of those in high places:
 11 Though the angels, who are greater in strength and power, do not make use of violent language against them before the Lord.
 12 But these men, like beasts without reason, whose natural use is to be taken and put to death, crying out against things of which they have no knowledge, will undergo that same destruction which they are designing for others;
 13 For the evil which overtakes them is the reward of their evil-doing: such men take their pleasure in the delights of the flesh even in the daytime; they are like the marks of a disease, like poisoned wounds among you, feasting together with you in joy;

Don't miss that.  The sin has its rewards for the flesh for the moment on this earth and in  this reality.  Being in sin, we cannot see beyond that moment's reward.  We are bound by the cycle of temptation and reward not able to see the end result of death and destruction.  That cycle empowers all the evil of the End Times even more because the Holy Spirit is not so deeply  holding it back.  Imagine every temptation of today multiplied several fold and being about for everyone. It was so in every age and will be worse inthe End Times.  Imagine the strength of our brothers and sisters who will endure the time and still be saved.  No wonder there is a special reward awaiting them.


 14 Having eyes full of evil desire, never having enough of sin; turning feeble souls out of the true way; they are children of cursing, whose hearts are well used to bitter envy;
 15 Turning out of the true way, they have gone wandering in error, after the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who was pleased to take payment for wrongdoing;
 16 But his wrongdoing was pointed out to him: an ass, talking with a man's voice, put a stop to the error of the prophet.

Recall we studied Balaam, the false prophet.  Recall, too,  he still was at the side of the evil king when destruction came upon them.  Apparently such people cannot resist the lure of riches. A picture of the Antichrist king and the False Prophet dying together and going to the fire at the same time.

 17 These are fountains without water, and mists before a driving storm; for whom the eternal night is kept in store.
 18 For with high-sounding false words, making use of the attraction of unclean desires of the flesh, they get into their power those newly made free from those who are living in error;
 19 Saying that they will be free, while they themselves are the servants of destruction; because whatever gets the better of a man makes a servant of him.
 20 For if, after they have got free from the unclean things of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again taken in the net and overcome, their last condition is worse than their first.
 21 For it would have been better for them to have had no knowledge of the way of righteousness, than to go back again from the holy law which was given to them, after having knowledge of it.
 22 They are an example of that true saying, The dog has gone back to the food it had put out, and the pig which had been washed to its rolling in the dirty earth.
 (BBE)

We have discussed those who cling to the Bible for it's "values" and social reform yet deny the power of the Gospel as the only way to salvation.  We can be smart and be deceived.  knowledgeable but not wise.  When we fall, as we all do, we must rush back to God.  Find the way back to be in the Spirit.  Flee temptation.


2Pe 3:1 My loved ones, this is now my second letter to you, and in this as in the first, I am attempting to keep your true minds awake;
 2 So that you may keep in mind the words of the holy prophets in the past, and the law of the Lord and Saviour which was given to you by his Apostles.
 3 Having first of all the knowledge that in the last days there will be men who, ruled by their evil desires, will make sport of holy things,
 4 Saying, Where is the hope of his coming? From the death of the fathers till now everything has gone on as it was from the making of the world.
 5 But in taking this view they put out of their minds the memory that in the old days there was a heaven, and an earth lifted out of the water and circled by water, by the word of God;
 6 And that the world which then was came to an end through the overflowing of the waters.

Our sin leads always to destruction,  Our failings always to more failing.  We began this blog with a discussion of Creation.  We mentioned how the atheist scientist now needs to find a "god particle" to justify all the scientific beliefs that should instead lead to the conclusion there is an actual God. 

 7 But the present heaven and the present earth have been kept for destruction by fire, which is waiting for them on the day of the judging and destruction of evil men.
 8 But, my loved ones, keep in mind this one thing, that with the Lord one day is the same as a thousand years, and a thousand years are no more than one day.
 9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his word, as he seems to some, but he is waiting in mercy for you, not desiring the destruction of any, but that all may be turned from their evil ways.

Now Peter goes into his "right living" evangelical mode.  He sees only the end of things after the Rapture and we might well put a gap where I have placed it below.

 10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief; (      ) and in that day the heavens will be rolled up with a great noise, and the substance of the earth will be changed by violent heat, and the world and everything in it will be burned up.
 11 Seeing then that all these things are coming to such an end, what sort of persons is it right for you to be, in all holy behaviour and righteousness,
 12 Looking for and truly desiring the coming of the day of God, when the heavens will come to an end through fire, and the substance of the earth will be changed by the great heat?

 13 But having faith in his word, we are looking for a new heaven and a new earth, which will be the resting-place of righteousness.

Here we have John's revelation confirmed.  The era of the Millennium is missing but the final vision lies as truth.

 14 For this reason, my loved ones, as you are looking for these things, take great care that when he comes you may be in peace before him, free from sin and every evil thing.

 (BBE)

And there lies the message of hope. That the evil world  none of us was meant for from the very beginning in Eden, that we have struggled with since our births into sinful nature, will be gone and replaced by a new Heaven that never saw a Satanic rebellion and a New Earth that never saw a Fall.


14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be proclaimed in all the world as a witness to all nations. And then the end shall come.

A passage often misunderstood.  Yes, we are given the commission to preach the Word and raise up disciples in every country.  The late Dr. Graham did it better than anyone, using the gift of God as it was designed to be used. Meanwhile, some people give the TV ministries money to accomplish that goal and as we have mentioned the money can sometimes go to the hosts' BMW or personal air force or the rescue of mining equipment.  We carry out the good work by backing ministries in foreign lands.  The Bible was the first book printed in an effort to spread the Word and it has accomplished much.  Some even believe we are to do that  mission and then Jesus will come.  But, as we saw four posts ago, the mission, if we have placed it properly, will be completed Mid-Tribulation by the angels given that duty.  THEN the end comes roughly 3 1/2 years later since we don't know the exact spot that the preaching occurs.

Next time we will discuss the dual nature of this prophecy seen in the Abomination of Desolation.

Until then consider again the faithful martyrs that have been about  that mission, the anti-false.  Recall that there a many out there in many lands and occupations carrying out faithfully the Call. The antithesis  of the money hungry and unfaithful prophets.  That the faithful  will  be martyred  until the end.  The ones like the disciples. sent to give their lives to bring to the world the only true hope of the Gospel.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csJ-RTrNjGM

                            JESUS ON THE END TIMES-Part 2:The Song Remains the Same

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7XR2yzGX2E

That theme of the stones, of the false temples of our lives runs through the rest of the threads of this tapestry of prophesy.

Again imagine the enormity of what He already told them.  The Temple was the absolute center of Jewish life, of their lives.  One had to go to the Temple to make a sacrifice for ones son.  The priests used the threat of not being able to make that sacrifice to get their way often.  They would use that pressure to get false testimonies against Jesus. People swore an oath on  the Temple as an equivalent to an oath on God.  When Jesus said not to make any oath, He likely had that blasphemous act at least a little on His mind. 

For the Temple to be torn down, Jerusalem itself had to be violated and Jews destroyed because they would give their lives to protect it. 

He just said, "Your world will end soon."

Rather casually and off the cuff.  Like it didn't mean to world to them all.

So asking about the end of the world was more natural than we would think today.

Mt 24:3 And as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? And what shall be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the world?
 4 And Jesus answered and said to them, Take heed that no man deceive you.
 5 For many will come in My name, saying, I am Christ, and will deceive many.
 6 And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled, for all these things must occur; but the end is not yet.
 7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines and pestilences and earthquakes in different places.
 8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.

 (MKJV)


Now place this next to the story of the Four Horsemen


Re 6:1 And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures like a sound of thunder, saying, Come and see.
 2 And I saw. And behold a white horse! And he sitting on it had a bow. And a crown was given to him, and he went forth conquering and to conquer.
 3 And when He had opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, Come and see.
 4 And another, a red horse, went out. And power was given to him sitting on it, to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another. And there was given to him a great sword.
 5 And when He had opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, Come and see. And I looked, and lo, a black horse. And he sitting on it had a balance in his hand.
 6 And I heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures say, A choenix of wheat for a denarius, and three choenixes of barley for a denarius. And do not hurt the oil and the wine.
 7 And when He had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, Come and see.
 8 And I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him sitting on it was Death, and Hell followed with him. And authority was given to them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with the sword and with hunger and with death and by the beasts of the earth.
 (MKJV)


Our Lord gives us a prophecy that will confirm the later Revelation. We can also look at Revelation as confirming Christ if we wish.

Prophecy.  It is a matter of perspective.


Remember God creating the world in six days from HIS perspective.  Human perspective sees it done in millenia.

Recall all the words of all the prophets.

"I will go before you.  The victory is yours"

And an army of multiple tribes brought against Israel wiped itself out before the Israeli army even got there.

Jesus and the Antichrist predicted in one Old Testament passage related to this study and especially to this post:

Da 9:24 Seventy weeks are decreed as to your people and as to your holy city, to finish the transgression and to make an end of sins, and to make atonement for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy.
 25 Know therefore and understand, that from the going out of the command to restore and to build Jerusalem, to Messiah the Prince, shall be seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks. The street shall be built again, and the wall, even in times of affliction.
 26 And after sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself. And the people of the ruler who shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. And the end of it shall be with the flood, and ruins are determined, until the end shall be war.
 27 And he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week. And in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the offering to cease, and on a corner of the altar desolating abominations, even until the end. And that which was decreed shall be poured on the desolator.
 (MKJV)

In one passage.  From God's perspective. The birth and death of Jesus.  The birth and destruction of Antichrist.  If one took human perspective one would see the AC as popping up immediately after Jesus death.  And many have seen it that way.

But God sees George Washington standing in the boat on the Potomac River on a blistering cold winter's night as :Lincoln is signing the Emancipation Proclamation as Kennedy is being assassinated as Wilson's campaign cries "He kept us out of war!" As Ptolomey orders slaves executed as you rush to your job and get a call in the phone and reach for the button on your steering column to get the answer you seek on another job offer as a small child dies of starvation in  camp of immigrates that have no home as Trump dines on  sumptuous feast and Benjamin Franklin enjoys his one bowl of gruel for breakfast as a soldier dies in Rome, in Israel in Chile fighting Aztecs who are shooting AK-47s at Sherman tanks that burst into flame next to protesters in Hungary while Zulu tribesman ster a space capsule toward the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean...

In Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut had his hero Billy Pilgrim "unstuck in time"  trying to sort his own life out and failing as would we all do without God's perspective.  DC comics had the character Doctor Manhattan in an alternate universe with powers very like God and had him driven mad by the perspective, trying to figure out what his godhood meant.  Meanwhile, the real God has known all along who He is.

If God were to put HIS VISION of things into a human mind that notion of us being like God gets the proper perspective.  We couldn't hold any of it long.

We see it in all the prophecies, spilling out just like my little passage, spilling out just like Daniel's passage.

Even if we could understand, where are the words?  Human language remains flawed, a divided and hopeless thing.  I write this now with it translated into another language by BLOGGER's good graces but someone in another place never gets to read it even if the Spirit might prompt them to read it.

We are broken and can understand things only a bit.  Our assumptions work otherwise though.

We seek control of everything.  We want to control our homes, the bigger the better.  Our environment:  fire to furnace, fan to air conditioner,  size of family to actions of the family.  The struggle we seem to live always is for control.  Many of us seek to control a business and even a country.  The richer we are the more we seek that control.  Even to the point of war so even more people will do our will.  Behind that is the simple: "If I had my way things would be different."

But Jesus, the one speaking here of of the future, the one seated in  the grove of olives, smelling the rich earth and the fertilizing manure  and seeing the sunlight between the leaves overhead, lived an entirely different life.  He kept God's perspective always.  He was the servant:

Php 2:1 If there is therefore any encouragement in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any tendernesses and mercies,
 2 then fulfill my joy, that you may be like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord and of one mind.
 3 Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than themselves.
 4 Do not let each man look upon his own things, but each man also on the things of others.
 5 For let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,
 6 who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God,
 7 but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Himself the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.
 8 And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
 9 Therefore God has highly exalted Him, and has given Him a name which is above every name,
 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of heavenly ones, and of earthly ones, and of ones under the earth;
 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
 12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, cultivate your own salvation with fear and trembling.
 13 For it is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.
 (MKJV)

I place this here because this remains the key to God's perspective.  The more we serve, the more we begin to understand how He sees things.  The depth of our service increases that perspective.  Acting in love.

On my varioius jobs, I have found many people I have not liked and a few I deeply disliked and, in every case, my dislike has led to my either leaving a job or being fired from it for actions that were triggered by my actual hatred of someone.  I was seeking control of this one small sector of my life and someone kept rubbing against it the "wrong"way.    They were taking my control and I was losing my self control and, worse, my Spirit-controlled life. After one misadventure after another,  my understanding had to get to this point: I could lose my job because of my anger and my distaste for that person, but far worse, I could lose my contact with God, my relationship for a moment or for a long time, just because I wanted control of that one moment.  I wanted to make that one thing, the small, unimportant job "stone" the monument of my life. when my perspective should have been that my life itself is meant to be a tree grown with deep roots for the Lord.  All those monuments, mine and others,  end up in graveyards of the soul with our names carved in their stone. And they turn to dust at the breath of God.  Do we want our monuments?  Do we love them?  Can we see them from God's perspective?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgXRzjlbbng

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoRkntoHkIE

I say that because it IS a matter of prophecy, that we will live this small, hopelessly tragic life with the Lord giving us chance after chance to see things from his perspective for an instant, to cling to it and be taken home, to see ourselves as we are.

For instance, the disciples came to ask about His coming not as a return from the dead as he had said  MUST happen but too ask when he was coming back in power.  If the Temple was being destroyed, was it because He would rule?  So often we ask God questions based on our limited view and look foolish after we get the answer. 

Now Christ gives them and us  this further gift of prediction, of things that will happen to the Temple in the lifetime of those listening and things that will happen in just a few moments to the rest of us from God's perspective.

And he starts with those monuments that we have built outside ourselves.

The Leader.  The hero.  The big man.  The first horseman.  The Saul.  The Saul who tried to dstroy David.  The public will always demand its' Saul.  It's Barabas, the one it wants while it seeks the death of the One everyone should want.

From God's perspective, those false leaders  are really all the same person, Satan in snake's clothing.  Supple, sly, working their way in anyway they can.  Always deceiving.  Some with ministries that place a plaque saying "Jesus is Lord" and then asking for money for miracles that the true God gives for free.  Some with political parties that espouse love of children by the hatred of abortion then don't pass any laws to stop it despite holding all the offices of the country in their hands and then cutting laws supplying food to hungry children of their own land.  Some espousing love of all life then propounding abortion as a solution for a woman's advancement in the workplace. All subtly distorting God's message.  All deceiving one way or another.  All happening at once.  Destruction of the Temple by the Romans the same as the Antichrist declaring himself god with a false sacrifice because both are the destruction of the Temple, one of the hard temporary stones, the other of the living thing of Godly worship.

Jesus sees them as wearing parts of the same face, just one that we learn will be distilled to one complete form at the End.

One stone monument still standing waiting to fall, that will fall, has always fallen, from the Pharaoh  to Hitler to Stalin to Amin,  on and on.  There's always a Papa Doc out there.

To the nation.

Jesus understood that we deceive ourselves,  Our fallen nature gives rise to rebellion against God and Satan gives rise to the idea of a leader who can lead that rebellion.  Someone we can pin our hopes on INSTEAD OF Jesus.  Stone idols for God, flesh idols for Jesus, the God man.  From our Chieftains to our kings and presidents.  We often create minor gods.  In England, the "peerage" gets to referred to as "Milord."  Catholicism has erected a ladder of sainthood worshipers can choose to pray to for their needs.  The priest becomes the emissary to God.  In our search for some kond of control in lives that clearly have no power, we pursue those in power to help us when we have no power of our own.  this is always the source of deceits.  The monument of self, the first stone Jesus told us to lose.

Lu 9:21 And He strictly charged them and commanded to tell no one this,
 22 saying, The Son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day.
 23 And He said to all, If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me.
 24 For whoever will save his life shall lose it, but whoever will lose his life for My sake, he shall save it.
 25 For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world and loses himself, or is cast away?
 (MKJV)


Meanwhile, several passages about the capstone of the Temple actually circle back to thus:

An architectural term denoting the top stone in a building or wall. If it caps an arch it is called a keystone. The expression is used twice in the Old Testament ( Psalm 118:22 ; Zech 4:7 ). In Zechariah 4:7 it is clearly the capstone of the temple that is in view. The meaning in Psalm 118:22 is less clear ("keystone" JB; "capstone" NIV; "cornerstone" NRSV). The Hebrew is translated by the Septuagint as kephalen gonias, literally, "the head of the corner." This term has made its way into the New Testament five times ( Matt 21:42 ; Mark 12:10 ; Luke 20:17 ; Acts 4:11 ; 1 Peter 2:7 ). Psalm 118:22 evidently refers to the king who was disallowed, but then acknowledged to be the rightful ruler. Jesus makes use of this psalm in a parable referring to Israel and its rejection of him as Messiah ( Matt 21:33-44, ; and parallels). In Acts 4:11 Peter makes use of Psalm 118:22 to defend himself against his Jewish detractors.

In all these passages it must be acknowledged that "capstone" or "cornerstone" would make an equally good translation. It is 1pe 2:7 that tips the scales toward "cornerstone." These three passages ( Psalm 118:22 ; Isa 8:14 ; 28:16 ) are used together to make the point that Christ is supreme, and two of these passages ( Isa 28:16 ; 8:14 ) clearly refer to a cornerstone.

So the Zechariah 4:7 passage is clearly "capstone" but the remainder are probably best taken as "cornerstone, " with the point being that Jesus was rejected by the ones who ought to have known him (builders = Jewish leadership), but God has exalted him to be the chief stone above all, the very head of the corner, on which all else depends.

                                                                                                                                                                 

When the Temple falls, the Capstone falls the farthest and comes down to rest on Earth.  The true capstone lands in His feet and walks frever the leader,  the false capstone merely crashes to Earth, broken and destroyed.

While, as Christ continues, the turning over of power to Earthly beings leads to the famines and the pestilence and the end of all things.

The stones are actually dominoes.  The love of self above everything else leads to giving others power to empower us and leads to human evil corrupting everything, the lesson of Eden, one human's desire for being like God took humans who were already like God in the way He intended and ruined all human hope, showed that even we today, with all our knowledge, just looking back on everything covered in this long blog, with all that knowledge, would still seek after our own good over others, our own way, because this Antichrist thing HAS been going on in one small melodrama after anther since the beginning of time and has accelerated since the arrival of Jesus.

He wants us to look at it as God does, just for an instant.  The same old story, replayed over and over, with the fact that God wants us to make the right choice in our lifetimes.  He wants our bravery to stand against the falling stones of self and nation and good meals and a life free of illness.  He gives us the failed leaders, the starving immigrants, the Joni Erickson Tada's in their wheelchairs to remind us that those stones are already fallen, that, yes, some wildflowers can grown on those stones even as the New Ager Neil Diamond says in that song that begins this post. He begins by telling us that this is the pattern , has been the pattern if we pay attention, will be the pattern until the end because many of us WON'T pay attention.

For those who do, he wants us to resist and not be deceived.  To be brave:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUQsqBqxoR4


Unlike that song, though, He understands that bravery has a cost.  In the US, we think bravery means risking our jobs and livelihood while for so many others in other lands it means the risk of life and limb, our  modern Pauls, beaten, shipwrecked, stoned, left for dead, turned from being Sauls who sought to kill David, to kill his son Jesus, to kill the messenger, even as they slew the prophets, was blinded by the Godly light and turned to love Him and walk with Him.  To preach His name and truth against all the stones erected by all the false governments of self, nation and Satan.

Once blind and stumbling, reaching for the light.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMJUbZrNnA8


Our message must be that the stones in our life have fallen, that we have allowed the Savior to turn them into the dust they are meant to become.  Allow Him to do it in our lives now before we face the crash that is coming for the entire universe.

                                               JESUS ON THE END TIMES: Part 1-STONES

(As the End Times close in, think of a prayer sung by Godly people:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz4toSf-xQU)


On our way back to the Judgements:

Mt 24:1 And Jesus went out and departed from the temple. And His disciples came to Him to show Him the buildings of the temple.
 2 And Jesus said to them, Do you not see all these things? Truly I say to you, There shall not be left here one stone on another that shall not be thrown down.
 3 And as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? And what shall be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the world?
 4 And Jesus answered and said to them, Take heed that no man deceive you.
 5 For many will come in My name, saying, I am Christ, and will deceive many.
 6 And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled, for all these things must occur; but the end is not yet.
 7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines and pestilences and earthquakes in different places.
 8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.
 9 Then they will deliver you up to be afflicted and will kill you. And you will be hated of all nations for My name's sake.
 10 And then many will be offended, and will betray one another, and will hate one another.
 11 And many false prophets will rise and deceive many.
 12 And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many will become cold.
 13 But he who endures to the end, the same shall be kept safe.
 14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be proclaimed in all the world as a witness to all nations. And then the end shall come.
 15 Therefore when you see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place (whoever reads, let him understand).
 16 Then let those in Judea flee into the mountains.
 17 Let him on the housetop not come down to take anything out of his house;
 18 nor let him in the field turn back to take his clothes.
 19 And woe to those who are with child, and to those who give suck in those days!
 20 But pray that your flight is not in the winter, nor on the sabbath day;
 21 for then shall be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world to this time; no, nor ever shall be.
 22 And unless those days should be shortened, no flesh would be saved. But for the elect's sake, those days shall be shortened.
 23 Then if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ! Or, There! Do not believe it.
 24 For false Christs and false prophets will arise and show great signs and wonders; so much so that, if it were possible, they would deceive even the elect.
 25 Behold, I have told you beforehand.
 26 Therefore if they shall say to you, Behold, He is in the desert! Do not go out. Behold, He is in the secret rooms! Do not believe it.
 27 For as the lightning comes out of the east and shines even to the west, so also will be the coming of the Son of man.
 28 For wherever the carcass is, there the eagles will be gathered.
 29 And immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from the heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken.
 30 And then the sign of the Son of man shall appear in the heavens. And then all the tribes of the earth shall mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of the heaven with power and great glory.
 31 And He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.
 32 Now learn a parable of the fig tree. When its branch is still tender and puts out leaves, you know that summer is near.
 33 So you, likewise, when you see all these things, shall know that it is near, at the doors.
 34 Truly I say to you, This generation shall not pass until all these things are fulfilled.
 35 The heaven and the earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away.
 36 But of that day and hour no one knows, no, not the angels of Heaven, but only My Father.
 37 But as the days of Noah were, so shall be the coming of the Son of man.
 38 For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered into the ark.
 39 And they did not know until the flood came and took them all away. So also will be the coming of the Son of man.
 40 Then two shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
 41 Two shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
 42 Therefore watch; for you do not know what hour your Lord comes.
 43 But know this, that if the steward of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched and would not have allowed his house to be dug through.
 44 Therefore you also be ready, for in that hour you think not, the Son of man comes.
 45 Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his Lord has made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season?
 46 Blessed is that servant whom his lord shall find him doing so when he comes.
 47 Truly I say to you that he shall make him ruler over all his goods.
 48 But if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delays his coming,
 49 and shall begin to strike his fellow servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken,
 50 the lord of that servant shall come in a day when he does not look for him, and in an hour which he does not know.
 51 And he shall cut him apart and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
 (MKJV)



(You can let this play behind your reading if you wish:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2HatItuBqc


He  looked out at the disciples who had asked him questions about the Temple.  It was bright and shining and tall and solid and would seem to be made to endure forever.  True, it was built by a false king, Herod the Great, to impress the Jewish people whom hated him,  and housed a false clergy, only some of the proper bloodline, the assent to Chief Priest assured by a human bloodline, not by Godly approval and held a ruling body, the Sanhedrin who had no Biblical reason to exist.  But it was sure big and grand.


On the Temple:

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/archives/guzik_david/studyguide_mat/mat_24.cfm

After the destruction of Solomon's temple, this temple was originally built by Zerubbabel and Ezra (Ezra 6:15). Herod the Great (who ruled when Jesus was born) greatly expanded and improved it. This temple was the center of Jewish life for almost a thousand years - so much so, that it was customary to swear by the temple (Matthew 23:16), and speaking against the temple could be considered blasphemy (Acts 6:13).

i. "Josephus the Jew (Antiquities 15.14) tells us that for eight whole years together he kept 10,000 men a-work about it; and that for magnificence and stateliness, it exceeded Solomon's temple." (Trapp)

ii. After Herod's work, the temple was huge: nearly 500 yards or meters long and 400 yards or meters wide. Herod's plan for rebuilding started in 19 B.C. and was only completed in A.D. 63, taking more than 80 years. The temple was finished only seven years before it was destroyed.

iii. But the Second Temple wasn't just big; it was also beautiful. The Jewish historian Josephus said that the temple was covered with gold plates and when the sun shone on them it was blinding to look at. Where there was no gold, there were blocks of marble of such a pure white that from a distance strangers thought there was snow on the temple.

c. Do you not see all these things? The disciples wanted Jesus to look at the beautiful buildings; Jesus told them to turn around and take a good look at those things.

i. "These things, not building, implying indifference to the splendours admired by the disciples." (Bruce)

                                                                                                                                                              


But it was the stones that mad them marvel.  Jesus had just had it out finally with the priests and Pharisees and was facing his death barely hours away and they were marveling at stones, in a way worshiping the work of human hands.  It was a kind of idolatry, IS a kind we all sometimes fail to recognize.   Previously in Matt 23, He  harangued the priests for getting so into their worship and thinking their worship was a construct of their own, letting their flesh speak for them instead of the Spirit and letting their prejudices influence their Godly deeds. They made great show of their religiousness and the disciples now burst out with admiration for a temple constructed by Herod to show his religiosity, one built on top of a temple constructed by true men of God to show their worship.  The way false prophets and antichrists try to build their own construction of religion and salvation on the reality of Christ himself.

Chuck Smith on this moment:

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/smith_chuck/c2000_Mat/Mat_023.cfm

So they were showing Jesus the buildings, this fabulous building that was built up there on the temple mount by Herod.

And Jesus said unto them, You see all of these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down (Mat 24:2).

This prophecy of Jesus was literally fulfilled some forty years later, when Titus came into Jerusalem with the Roman troops set fire to the temple, which was the last stronghold in Citadel, in which the inhabitants of Jerusalem were holding out. And so they set fire to the temple, actually against Titus' order. He wanted to preserve the temple, but some drunken soldier shot a flaming arrow, the temple caught fire, the people inside were cremated. The gold in the dome melted and came down in these crevasses. And so they threw down the temple stone by stone, to get the gold, until finally not one stone was left standing upon the other.

Today in Jerusalem near the Western Wall just east of the entrance into the temple mount by which you go up to Al-Aqsa mosque, as you look down on the right hand side to the old Roman road, which is down at the bottom of the valley there that has now been excavated, you can see some stones lying just as they fell, just as they were pushed by the Roman soldiers in 70 A.D. when they sacked Jerusalem. And they believe that some of these stones were actually from that temple of which Jesus spake. And you can see the rubble down there in the bottom of the valley, as these stones were just pushed over, and cracked, and broken, and are still lying in disarray in the bottom there on the street, broke these great pavement stones of the street as they fell. But the prophecy of Jesus was literally fulfilled, so that not one stone of Solomon's temple was left standing upon another. They have all been thrown down.

                                                                                                                                                            



So now our Lord leads them right over to the Mount of  Olives.  The olive presses are nearby, maybe even work going on then.  The smell of the olive trees.  The smell of olives everywhere if there is pressing being done.  The smell of spilled olive oil over the years seeped into the soil.  The smell vastly different from what Americans have come to expect from smelling olives preserved.  The smell of the trees' bark, of their leaves, a deeper hue of green than some trees.  Gnarled perhaps, no doubt some scars from trimming and pruning them to keep them fruitful   Yes, we do the same to fruit trees here.  And, yes, to grape vines.

http://www.sabor-artesano.com/gb/christianity-olive-oil.htm

Both olive oil and olive trees are elements that possess great significance in the Christian religion. The olive tree is a symbol of peace and reconciliation in its identification with the dove who returned to the ark with a olive branch in its beak after the huge flood, signifying God's reconciliation with man.  Likewise, when Jesus of Nazareth entered Jerusalem, the Jewish people recieved him with olive branches. This is a tradition that has continued up until today and is remembered every Palm Sunday when the people attend the church to bless their olive branches. Previously they also used to hand olive branches from their balconies or from the headboards of their beds, as a religious symbol.

The death of Jesus Christ and the drama of Calvary are also related to the olive tree given that he was taken prisoner while he was praying in the Garden of Olives, called Gethsemani in hebrew, which means "olive press".  This place is known by Catholicism as a place of redemption, when Jesus understood that God was by his side and accepted his passion inside him.  In Christianity the olive tree is also identified with the victory or triumph of life over death, this is why the early Christians would decorate their tombs with olive branches.

                                                                                                                                                               

Yes, He couldn't have been more aware of His own crucifixion as he sat there.  And we can't be more aware of the connection with anointing oil and the Holy Spirit.

I want you to picture for a moment, He has taken them from this massive stone monument not to God but to Herod and has led them to a grove of trees men have fertilized and pruned and tended so that they may reach their potential for service to man as God intended.  And the ones caring for the trees were engaged in what Theodore Spurgeon termed "Slow Sculpture" though referring to bonsai.   In this case, the careful, concerned worshipful design of something God given for a God given purpose. 

Not like stones.  Not like the cold, hard rigid surface of stone.  One men must take chisel and hammer tto to shape and fall to their will.  Their will.

When God had stone tablets He etched HIs Law on the stone.  Men kept it in an Ark and somewhere along the way that all disappeared and we eventually got a film about an actor chasing after it and the US government hiding it once he found it.  The truth behind it was that the Law, ritten on stone, even on something we see as imperishable as stone, was only eternal once it was written on the hearts of men and women.  Was only powerful so long as the Holy Spirit was there with it.

Those priest of Jesus' time had it on scrolls and could read it whenever they wanted, but it became stone in their unsaved, unrepentant hearts.  It was written on the stone of those hearts carried in bodies created by God, and just as effective for God's purpose  there as it was lying in a chest created by God's specific design and and for His purpose.  It only served so long as the proper men carried it.

That truth remains today.  The Word can be written on hearts that are on fire for the Lord, who want to take what He has given them, listen to His Word, to His Spirit and shape the message by word and action to serve God, to serve His people. 

Words like: "This is what we are, broken and crippled and disobedient.  We are like those stones, chiseled and hammered and drilled by human hands.  We are like the more modern Mormon Tabernacle, honed to perfection, built superbly without a nail, with glorious dimensions, and all for the glory of a false god.  So that the edifice then shapes the believer."

We have pounded out idols and the idols have then pounded us out.  They become the shape of who we are and it in our hands to allow the Spirit in to rule and excise and refine.

 Human hands can make stones sing.  Michelangelo could carve David and leave us in awe, of his skill and in the detail of the human form. 

In the end, God can blink and melt David and every stone He created that we have formed.  Or He could let the soldiers come and rip it all down saving Himself even that effort as He rests. 

When the Bible sets that moment of the Temple, the product of man's hands made to supposedly worship God but really to gain man's admiration, against the backdrop of man about to kill his Redeemer, we can realize that that is what idolatry has always really been about: the killing of the redeemer.  In our hearts.

That that is what murder has always been about: The killing of the redeemer's image in every human being.

That that is always  what the false prophets and antichrists have been about: The killing of the Spirit of the Redeemer by quenching it in our hearts.

That all the hatred, tribalism and nationhoods no matter how they say they are designed to serve the Master, are really about erected stone edifices to the worship of man and his abilities to rule and reign and claim divine heritage or Karmic blessing or demonic privilege. 

Many of my fellow believers in the End Times scenario and many who don't seem to believe miss this.  We become so head up in the destruction of the Temple being the point of this discourse, in the times Jesus is talking about, in the meaning of "coming back soon" that we miss the point:   everything we have constructed is in some way tainted.  Even those things we have done guided by the Spirit, even the way we have tried to mold our lives for Him.  Some element of sin still remains.  It gets amplified into giant stone blocks laid together so well others are in awe, but it is still tainted.  We are only made pure, our offering is only made pure, by the sacrifice of Christ. 

If He must and it seems that He must, God will loose the barbarians on our foolish edifices and rip them down to let us know that that edifice was only a shadow of what was to come.

The disciples would only realize later something Jesus had said earlier:

Joh 2:18 Then the Jews answered and said to Him, What sign do you show us, since you do these things?
 19 Jesus answered and said to them, Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.
 20 Then the Jews said, This temple was forty-six years building, and will you rear it up in three days?
 21 But He spoke of the temple of His body.
 22 Therefore when He had risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this to them, and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said.
 (MKJV)

Recall that the original Temple housed the Holy of Holies and only the High Priest could enter.  This false Temple housed a false Holy of Holies and this was the greatest sin of all.

While Jesus housed the Holy Spirit who would become available to all once He accomplished his own mission.  He knew that the false will always rise up to destroy the true.  It cannot abide truth any more than Satan, the creator of all those idols of all the stones that build over the true temple, can abide truth.

In the Tribulation things go from bad to worse for a reason.  The false god, Satan, becomes more and more visibly intolerant of the Truth and therefore he is more and more revealed and, at the end, even those once lost will see who they followed .  It will be evident to all when He enters his own false temple as he has shaped so many human beings into false temples,  and then the Jews know and then any edge of their seat Christians know and  the Muslims who have heard of Christ will know.  And then the real war, the one hidden behind the stones of idols will be evident and will be one for 3 and 1/2 years. 

But you say: "Jesus predicts this.  How can Satan who we know reads the Bible and quotes it, go on and do all this?  Doesn't he know he will lose?"

Perhaps in those stones lies an answer.  I think Satan keeps building his false Temples and seeing them torn down only to build again because he may believe his own lie.  He must have once glowed with pride at being so close to God, perhaps seeing God build this world, one less than heaven, and yet bless it with His presence was too much fo that angel's pride.  Perhaps God told the angels of His love for them and Satan thought it meant of His love ONLY for them.  He may believe God lied so he has the right to turn it around.  He may have misread God's Word even as he misleads us in reading it.  It doesn't matter all that much that we seek the explanation for his love of stones.  He believes he would make a better god even as we believe we would make one. We know only that he fell and landed on this"third rock for the Sun."

We need to heed the caution here and not let our own longings and beliefs shape our lives as so many  in power over the centuries have and let the Word shape us, let God's true temple stones replace the ones made of our own hands.  Anyone like me trying to prepare words on His Word needs to take special heed.  I sometimes show off my research skills given me by God  more than emphasize the Word.  That will be taken away by His hand and only what I have done precisely for Him will remain.  I thank God for that: that He reshapes the message even after it is out there, that His People can sort it for themselves as well by the Spirit.

Because fire is coming to melt the stones.  The false stones will go away.  The temporary Temples will be replaced by the Living God, the one they were designed to prepare us for. 

One more thought on stones.  Gemstones exist.  For centuries people have honed and shaped them, They firm religions on them, think they can be charms against evil or charms to cast spells, evil or good.  One scientific hand too them and discovered you can focus light through those stones and it can become a beacon to carry a message or a powerful tool for cutting and shaping. The laser was born.

God's word is the light of the world and his stone for focusing that light and turning it into a precise laser is the Word.  We have to handle it with care or it can be used to shape things in ways God did not intend.  We have to be aware of the power.  but we have to also realize that it was given that power by the Creator to be used. 

Read his Word above, consider it and we will go on.  We will spend some time here because I want us to see it is not those End times battles that are so important.  It is realizing their reason for even being. 

Spend time considering the stones of our lives.

Oh, yes, and consider this too about those gems, from the description of the final Jerusalem, the city descended from Heaven at the end of our story, at the end of all these battles:

  Re 21:17 And he measured its wall, a hundred and forty-four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of an angel.
 18 And the foundation of its wall was jasper; and the city was pure gold, like clear glass.
 19 And the foundations of the wall of the city had been adorned with every precious stone. The first foundation, jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, chalcedony; the fourth, emerald;
 20 the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, topaz; the tenth, chrysoprasus; the eleventh, hyacinch; the twelfth, amethyst.
 21 And the twelve gates were twelve pearls. Respectively, each one of the gates was one pearl. And the street of the city was pure gold, as transparent glass.
 22 And I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty is its temple, even the Lamb.
 (MKJV)


With all this End Times thing, this video and the song sum up the face of stone mountains we must sometimes climb and  the way God lets us climb them even when He has made them huge.  Even in  the face of this world melting into something new and barely defined for us by God, we can look at the Spirit He has given you and I and feel the truth lift us against even a tsunami.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwgr_IMeEgA)

                                                          FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9ujBoud26k


   
On our way back to the judgements:


Battles occur on every level where warfare is possible.  This  section of war began years ago.  In the place the Russians have consistently treated like their personal domain to abuse at will:  the Ukraine.

https://www.wired.com/story/russian-hackers-attack-ukraine/


The Cyber-Cassandras said this would happen. For decades they warned that hackers would soon make the leap beyond purely digital mayhem and start to cause real, physical damage to the world. In 2009, when the NSA’s Stuxnet malware silently accelerated a few hundred Iranian nuclear centrifuges until they destroyed themselves, it seemed to offer a preview of this new era. “This has a whiff of August 1945,” Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA, said in a speech. “Somebody just used a new weapon, and this weapon will not be put back in the box.”


Now, in Ukraine, the quintessential cyberwar scenario has come to life. Twice. On separate occasions, invisible saboteurs have turned off the electricity to hundreds of thousands of people. Each blackout lasted a matter of hours, only as long as it took for scrambling engineers to manually switch the power on again. But as proofs of concept, the attacks set a new precedent: In Russia’s shadow, the decades-old nightmare of hackers stopping the gears of modern society has become a reality.

And the blackouts weren’t just isolated attacks. They were part of a digital blitzkrieg that has pummeled Ukraine for the past three years—a sustained cyber­assault unlike any the world has ever seen. A hacker army has systematically undermined practically every sector of Ukraine: media, finance, transportation, military, politics, energy. Wave after wave of intrusions have deleted data, destroyed computers, and in some cases paralyzed organizations’ most basic functions. “You can’t really find a space in Ukraine where there hasn’t been an attack,” says Kenneth Geers, a NATO ambassador who focuses on cybersecurity.



These cyber attacks then led to:

But over the past decade and a half, Moscow’s leash on Ukraine has frayed, as popular support in the country has pulled toward NATO and the European Union. In 2004, Ukrainian crowds in orange scarves flooded the streets to protest Moscow’s rigging of the country’s elections; that year, Russian agents allegedly went so far as to poison the surging pro-Western presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko. A decade later, the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution finally overthrew the country’s Kremlin-­backed president, Viktor Yanukovych (a leader whose longtime political adviser, Paul Manafort, would go on to run the US presidential campaign of Donald Trump). Russian troops promptly annexed the Crimean Peninsula in the south and invaded the Russian-­speaking eastern region known as Donbass. Ukraine has since then been locked in an undeclared war with Russia, one that has displaced nearly 2 million internal refugees and killed close to 10,000 Ukrainians.

“Russia will never accept a sovereign, independent Ukraine. Twenty-­five years since the Soviet collapse, Russia is still sick with this imperialistic syndrome.”

From the beginning, one of this war’s major fronts has been digital. Ahead of Ukraine’s post-revolution 2014 elections, a pro-­Russian group calling itself CyberBerkut—an entity with links to the Kremlin hackers who later breached Democratic targets in America’s 2016 presidential election—rigged the website of the country’s Central Election Commission to announce ultra-right presidential candidate Dmytro Yarosh as the winner. Administrators detected the tampering less than an hour before the election results were set to be declared. And that attack was just a prelude to Russia’s most ambitious experiment in digital war, the barrage of cyberattacks that began to accelerate in the fall of 2015 and hasn’t ceased since.

Yushchenko, who ended up serving as Ukraine’s president from 2005 to 2010, believes that Russia’s tactics, online and off, have one single aim: “to destabilize the situation in Ukraine, to make its government look incompetent and vulnerable.” He lumps the blackouts and other cyberattacks together with the Russian disinformation flooding Ukraine’s media, the terroristic campaigns in the east of the country, and his own poisoning years ago—all underhanded moves aimed at painting Ukraine as a broken nation. “Russia will never accept Ukraine being a sovereign and independent country,” says Yushchenko, whose face still bears traces of the scars caused by dioxin toxicity. “Twenty-­five years since the Soviet collapse, Russia is still sick with this imperialistic syndrome.”


                                                                                                                                                                   


The Russians became invested in the two separatist terrorist groups in the east and seem to be arming them as well as backing their try to get international recognition and financing through the World Bank. Russia desperately wants that buffer of countries between them and the rest of Europe.  Putin sees the chess match of possible war and wants the "castling move" to put pawns in the way of any physical attack.  Plus he want protection for the rulership of subjected Crimea and the Odessa port city.  As the scenario of the End Times closes in and Asia becomes increasingly unlivable after the nuclear limited war that one small port becomes a source of lifeblood to Russia and the loss will become unthinkable.


Back to today, the US has authorized the sale of new rifles to the Ukraine which will upgrade their army's ability to defend itself against ground war and against the terrorist Russian eastern parties.  This act is linked with Congressional actions that begin with economic  sanctions on Russia that the President who owes so much to Putin signed only to look good as Trump complained about it all the way:


https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/29/politics/russia-sanctions-treasury-department-report-cnntv/index.html

The stage gets set for that coming battle of the AC to subjugate all of Europe with a USA that is either crippled by it's own political stupidity or the results of it.

                                                                                                                                                               

There are discussions among experts about the order of the battles in the End Times.

The Gog-Magog war with Russia involved is seen as the first by many.  The one proviso is that Israel will think itself safe.  There will be a treaty of some sort negotiated by someone, perhaps even the Antichrist in his early persona.  the form of it can be seen now as Israeli leaders seem intent on reaching a peace pact and the current President of the USA has established himself as their good friend and is completely sure of his own powers to negotiate "the best deal in the world" on anything despite the fact he has no experience in the political arena and has shown no interest in learning.

But there are others who see a second Middle Eastern War, an attack made by powers without Russian assistance.  Some see that as the trigger war.


Ps 83:1 A Song. A Psalm of Asaph. Keep not silence, O God; do not be speechless, and be not still, O God.
 2 For lo, Your enemies roar; and those who hate You have lifted up their head.
 3 They take shrewd counsel against Your people, and plot against Your hidden ones.
 4 They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation, so that the name Israel may be remembered no more.
 5 For with one heart they have plotted together; they have made a covenant against You--
 6 the tents of Edom, and the Ishmaelites; of Moab, and the Hagarites;
 7 Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek; the Philistines with the people of Tyre;
 8 and Assyria has joined with them; they have helped the sons of Lot. Selah.
 9 Do to them as to Midian, as to Sisera, as to Jabin at the torrent Kishon;
 10 who perished at Endor; they became as dung for the earth.
 11 Make their nobles like Oreb, and like Zeeb; yea, all their princes like Zebah, and like Zalmunna;
 12 who said, Let us take possession for ourselves of the houses of God.
 13 O my God, make them like a wheel; like the stubble before the wind.
 14 As the fire burns a forest, and as the flame sets the mountains on fire,
 15 so pursue them with Your tempest, and make them afraid with Your storm.
 16 Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek Your name, O LORD.
 17 Let them be ashamed and troubled forever; yea, let them be put to shame, and lost;
 18 so that men may know that Your name is JEHOVAH, that You alone are the Most High over all the earth.
 (MKJV)


Now understand, many do not see this as a prophetic passage,  they see this as something God already accomplished,  Jamieson et al commentary:

Psalms 83:9-11. Compare the similar fate of these (2Ch 20:23) with that of the foes mentioned in Jg 7:22, here referred to. They destroyed one another (Jg 4:6-24; 7:25). Human remains form manure (compare 2Ki 9:37; Jer 9:22).


2Ch 20:23 For the sons of Ammon and Moab stood up against the people of mount Seir to completely kill and destroy. And when they had made an end of the people of Seir, everyone helped to destroy another.
 24 And when Judah came to the watchtower in the wilderness, they looked at the multitude. And behold! They were dead bodies fallen to the earth, and none escaped.
 (MKJV)


Now we already studied this earlier but I repeat here since Jamieson mentions it:


Jg 4:6 And she sent and called for Barak the son of Abinoam out of Kedesh in Naphtali, and said to him, Has not the LORD God of Israel commanded, saying, Go and draw toward mount Tabor, and take with you ten thousand men of the sons of Naphtali and of the sons of Zebulun?
 7 And I will draw Sisera to you, the captain of Jabin's army, at the river Kishon, together with his chariots and his multitude. And I will deliver him into your hands.
 8 And Barak said to her, If you will go with me, then I will go. But if you will not go with me, I will not go.
 9 And she said, I will surely go with you. But the journey that you take shall not be for your honor, for the LORD shall sell Sisera into the hand of a woman. And Deborah arose, and went with Barak to Kedesh.
 10 And Barak called Zebulun and Naphtali to Kedesh. And he went up with ten thousand men at his feet. And Deborah went up with him.
 11 And Heber the Kenite, of the sons of Hobab the father-in-law of Moses, had separated himself from the Kenites and pitched his tent toward the plain of Zaanaim, near Kedesh.
 12 And they told Sisera that Barak the son of Abinoam had gone up to Mount Tabor.
 13 And Sisera gathered all his chariots, nine hundred chariots of iron, and all the people with him, from Harosheth of the nations to the river of Kishon.
 14 And Deborah said to Barak, Up! For this is the day in which the LORD has delivered Sisera into your hand. Has not the LORD gone out before you? So Barak went down from Mount Tabor, and ten thousand men after him.
 15 And the LORD struck Sisera, and all the chariots, and all the army, with the edge of the sword in front of Barak, so that Sisera got down from the chariot and fled on his feet.
 16 But Barak pursued the chariots and after the army, to Harosheth of the nations. And all the army of Sisera fell by the edge of the sword. There was not a man left.
 17 And Sisera fled on his feet to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite. For there was peace between Jabin the king of Hazor and the house of Heber the Kenite.
 18 And Jael went out to meet Sisera, and said to him, Turn in my lord, turn in to me. Do not fear. When he had turned in to her into the tent, she covered him with a rug.
 19 And he said to her, Please give me a little water to drink, for I am thirsty. And she opened a skin of milk and gave him a drink, and covered him.
 20 Again he said to her, Stand in the door of the tent, and it shall be when any man comes asking of you, saying, Is there any man here? You shall say, No.
 21 Then Jael, Heber's wife, took a peg of the tent and put a hammer in her hand, and went softly to him, and struck the peg into his temple, and beat it into the ground. For he was fast asleep and weary. So he died.
 22 And behold, as Barak followed Sisera, Jael came out to meet him and said to him, Come and I will show you the man whom you seek. And when he came into her tent, behold, Sisera lay dead, and the peg was in his temple.
 23 And on that day God subdued Jabin the king of Canaan before the sons of Israel.
 24 And the hand of the sons of Israel went on, and pressed hard against Jabin the king of Canaan, until they had destroyed Jabin king of Canaan.
 (MKJV)

Please recall that this took place before the Psalms prayer so it is hardly an indicator of a later destruction.  The tribes were still enemies of Israel in David's time.

But the notable names in the Psalms text are:

 6 the tents of Edom, and the Ishmaelites; of Moab, and the Hagarites;


https://www.gotquestions.org/Edom-Obadiah.html


Edom was an ancient people group that inhabited the land south of Judah and the Dead Sea. The Edomites, also called Idumeans, descended from Esau, the twin brother of Jacob (Genesis 36:1). They were of great historical importance as descendants of both Isaac and Abraham. The word Edom in Hebrew means “red,” a reference to Esau’s reddish look at birth (Genesis 25:25). Yet, despite their shared ancestry, the Edomites and Israelites lived in almost perpetual conflict. Edom refused to allow the Israelites to pass through their territory en route to the Promised Land (Numbers 11:14-17). They fought with King Solomon (1 Kings 11:14-25), opposed King Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 20:22), and rebelled against King Jehoram (2 Chronicles 21:8).

This kingdom had developed a government led by kings long before the monarchy arose in Israel. Genesis 36:31-39 lists the eight Edomite kings up to that time, delineating a long line of political leaders during the years in which Israel lived in slavery in Egypt.

A prominent city in Edom was Petra. This city, accessible only through a narrow canyon within cavernous mountain walls, was featured in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. In the fifth century B.C., a people called the Nabateans defeated the Edomites and removed them from Petra. The Edomites were forced to move south of Israel in an area that would become known as Idumea. In the New Testament, Herod the Great, who commanded the murder of all boys two years old and younger in Bethlehem (Matthew 2), was an Idumean.


In Obadiah, Edom is mentioned twice by name (1:1, 8). Yet the focus of the entire book is on Edom’s destruction as God meted out His judgment on a historically rebellious people.


Ishmael and Hagar we have met. Abraham's mad and her son by him.  Released into the wilderness and preserved by God to a special heritage even as Jacob was given his heritage by God.

Moab:

Moab (/ˈmoʊæb/; Moabite: 𐤌𐤀𐤁‬ mʾb; Arabic: مؤاب‎ muʾāb; Hebrew: מוֹאָב‬, Modern Mō'av Tiberian Mōʾôḇ; Ancient Greek: Μωάβ Mōáb; Assyrian Mu'aba, Ma'ba, Ma'ab; Egyptian Mu'ab) is the historical name for a mountainous tract of land in Jordan. The land lies alongside much of the eastern shore of the Dead Sea. The existence of the Kingdom of Moab is attested to by numerous archaeological findings, most notably the Mesha Stele, which describes the Moabite victory over an unnamed son of King Omri of Israel.^[1] The Moabite capital was Dibon. According to the Hebrew Bible, Moab was often in conflict with its Israelite neighbours.

Most important, Petra was located in the Moab territories.  the place of eventual refuge for the People was in an area held by their enemies,ones god told them to destroy. Moreover, the Palestinians  were given lands in Transjordan by the 1948 pact that recreated Israel.   Jordanian governments have consistently forgotten  this small detail.  


But the previous three mark this as the "cousins" war.  This idea comes from the Bedouin societal system:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedouin

"A widely quoted Bedouin apothegm is "I am against my brother, my brother and I are against my cousin, my cousin and I are against the stranger"[19] sometimes quoted as "I and my brother are against my cousin, I and my cousin are against the stranger."[20] This saying signifies a hierarchy of loyalties based on the proximity of male kinship, beginning with the nuclear family through the lineage and then the paternal tribe, and, in principle at least, to an entire genetic or linguistic group (which is perceived to akin to kinship in the Middle East and North Africa generally). Disputes are settled, interests are pursued, and justice and order are dispensed and maintained by means of this framework, organized according to an ethic of self-help and collective responsibility (Andersen 14). The individual family unit (known as a tent or "gio"[clarification needed] bayt) typically consisted traditionally of three or four adults (a married couple plus siblings or parents) and any number of children.

"When resources were plentiful, several tents would travel together as a goum. While these groups were sometimes linked by patriarchal lineage, others were just as likely linked by marriage alliances (new wives were especially likely to have close male relatives join them). Sometimes, the association was based on acquaintance and familiarity, or even no clearly defined relation except for simple shared membership within a tribe.[citation needed]

"The next scale of interaction within groups was the ibn ʿamm (cousin, or literally "son of an uncle") or descent group, commonly of three to five generations. These were often linked to goums, but where a goum would generally consist of people all with the same herd type, descent groups were frequently split up over several economic activities, thus allowing a degree of 'risk management'; should one group of members of a descent group suffer economically, the other members of the descent group would be able to support them. Whilst the phrase "descent group" suggests purely a lineage-based arrangement, in reality these groups were fluid and adapted their genealogies to take in new members.[citation needed]

"The largest scale of tribal interactions is the tribe as a whole, led by a Sheikh (Arabic: شيخ‎ šayḫ, literally, "old man"), though the title is refer to leaders in varying contexts. The tribe often claims descent from one common ancestor—as mentioned above. The tribal level is the level that mediated between the Bedouin and the outside governments and organizations. Distinct structure of the Bedouin society leads to long lasting rivalries between different clans.[citation needed]


Bedouin traditionally had strong honor codes, and traditional systems of justice dispensation in Bedouin society typically revolved around such codes. The bisha'a, or ordeal by fire, is a well-known Bedouin practice of lie detection. See also: Honor codes of the Bedouin, Bedouin systems of justice. Urbanized Bedouin are less likely to continue such traditions, instead opting for the codes of behavior that govern the wider settled community to which they belong.




http://christinprophecy.org/articles/the-wars-of-the-end-times/previous 

The psalm states that the immediate neighbors of Israel will launch a war for the purpose of “wiping out Israel as a nation” (verse 4). The nations described as being a part of this nefarious effort are those with a common border with Israel today (verses 6-8). The rest of the psalm is a prayer for the victory of Israel (verses 9-18).

The outcome of the war is not stated, but we know from other scriptures that Israel will be victorious. For example, in Zechariah 12:6 we are told that in the end times Israel will be like “a firepot among pieces of wood and a flaming torch among sheaves, so they will consume on the right hand and on the left all the surrounding peoples…” Also, in Amos 9:15 we are told that once the Jews are re-established in their land, “they will not again be rooted out from their land.”

Bill Salus believes this war will result in an overwhelming victory for Israel, resulting in great territorial expansion and enhanced national resources.


 My personal belief is that this occurs at the beginning of the Great Tribulation, the last 3 1/2 years of the Tribulation period  when the Antichrist has unveiled  himself as god.  There is a brief time before this.  The Antichrist does battle with the two witnesses, kills them and they lay dead for three days on display for everyone to see and  with the world celebrating their death.   (This scene makes me suspect they were there at a lot of the scenes of tragedy and disaster warning of human failing and were treated with anger and hatred as the Old testament prophets were hated. )  But the AC also receives a death blow to the head.  This event the spark for him to recover miraculously and claim his godhood.  The Bible says it is at this point the Satan overshadows him.


I believe this second war will ignite after his death.  He will have swept through the Mideast and upper Africa and made Babylon his city of faith.  His power in league with Israel and its forces, with the remnant of American power and the EU has been overcoming and his willingness to let every nation who capitulated keep its belief system since all were correct, has made him lived almost everywhere.  But fundamental Muslims retained their hatred of this idea and have been arming in preparation to rebel against him and his alliance with the hated Jewish nation.

And his apparent death sparks them to begin,  His resurrection and claiming a place meant only for Allah means  the final insult and this war ignites.  Lead by the AC this force is also dispelled, helping cement his claim to godhood since God was the one to dispel the first Russian powered invasion force.

You may notice that I leaped ahead of all the bad stuff .  But this was an intro to another section of Scripture also dealing with wars, also dealing with prophesies, these issued the our Lord.  Matthew 24.


Next time.