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.
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.
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