A Terrible Warning
A Terrible Warning
"Is it not written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations'? But you have made it a robbers' den." (Mk 11.17)
The Lord Jesus' "cleansing the Temple" (Mt 21.12-13, Lk 19.45-46, Jn 2.16) was the fulfillment of Malachi's prophecy (uttered at least 400 years earlier).-
"The Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple...the messenger of the covenant...He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver." (3.1-4)
At first glance, it is "those who were buying and selling in the temple" who seem to cop it. But the real target of the Lord's prophetic "rampage" is the priesthood...and most especially the high priestly family and their coterie of religious power-brokers. Thus.-
"The chief priests and the scribes heard this, and began seeking how to destroy Him." (Mk 11.18)
The "little guy" wheelers and dealers may well have been back running their enterprises the very next day? After all, observant Jews still needed to buy kosher animals for their offerings, and "purchase" official half-shekels to pay their Temple tax. (Ex 30.11-16) It was really the "big boys" who were in the Lord's "sights"! The market stalls which were the focus of Jesus' "attack" were called the "Bazaars of Annas", and were "the private property of the family of the (then) High Priest of that name"!
But even this particular piece of religious real estate, was yet only symptomatic of the underlying and core issue which the Messiah was gunning for...i.e. religious and spiritual proprietorship! This phenomenon, by which some believe they can actually "own" the Church, was identified by the Lord as being "antichrist" in the Matthew 21.33-41 "Parable of the Landowner".
In this parable, the "landowner who planted a vineyard...sent to the vine-growers to receive his produce" to no avail! After many failed attempts "he sent his son to them", but "they took him out of the vineyard and killed him". Now note, the rationale of the vine-growers.-
"This is the heir; come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance."
And once again, no one was left in any doubt about this parable's intended audience.-
"When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, they understood that He was speaking about them"! (v45)
I say that this is the demon antichrist, for its mission is not only to oppose Jesus' government of beloved Israel and his Church, but also, if possible, to usurp and replace Him as our Head. This parable's vine-growers seriously (insanely?) believed that by killing the owner's heir, they could claim ownership and thereby take control of the vineyard and all of its revenues.
Do not for one minute think that this evil spirit's work has yet been stopped. Over the past 40 years, I have either been employed by or ministered in almost every part of God's (Western) vineyard, the Church...in parts which cannot/will not recognise each other. Upon reflection, I would have to say that 99 percent of all the most heartbreakingly tragic and destructive events I have witnessed have been caused by Christians who believe that in some way, shape or form they "own" a local church, a movement, or even a denomination! It is also worth observing that these "owners" are not necessarily the visible leaders. Such can and do lurk, "hidden" within the Body, not unlike a spiritual "mafia"!
They too are the (unwitting?) victims of antichrist, but must bear responsibility and are culpable for their actions.
Now, here's the point! When our Lord went on the offensive against antichrist and religious proprietorship in Israel, He quoted two prophets...Isaiah and Jeremiah.-
"For My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples." (Is 56.7)
"Has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of robbers in your sight? Behold, I, even I, have seen it, declares the Lord." (Jer 7.11)
And it was His employment of Jeremiah's words which should have sent immense shock waves and a dense chill into the hearers' hearts. For with his very next breath, the great "prophet of wrath" continued with the terrible warning.-
"But go now to My place which was in Shiloh, where I made My name dwell at the first, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of My people Israel." (7.12)
Jeremiah's "audience" could be in no doubt what he was warning by mentioning the fate of Shiloh, where God had once dwelt amongst His Israel. On a later occasion (26.7-9), the prophet again warned that the Temple would become "like Shiloh". The implications were crystal clear.-
"The priests and the prophets and all the people seized him, saying, 'You must die! Why have you prophesied...This house will be like Shiloh and this city will be desolate, without inhabitant?' "
In the midst of the God-fuelled riot in the "Bazaars of Annas", Jeremiah's fearsome warning re-echoed off the great House's majestic pillars.-
"Get down off your thrones! Relinquish all and every claim you have ever made over God's House and People...or like Shiloh, you will quite simply and starkly stand to lose everything!"
As a nation, Israel did not heed the warning. In fact, they finally took the Son and "threw him out of the vineyard and killed him"...and themselves were brought "to a wretched end"!
At the time of His first Visitation, Israel's Messiah and the world's Redeemer looked for His People to be "a house of prayer for all nations". He knew very well that if they were so, they would be healthy. But He discovered them mortally ill. That is why, in this hour of preparation for His second (and final) Visitation, the prophets are crying out for a reformation of the Church which eclipses all previous renewals. We have to cease being an organisation for meetings, and become an organism of prayer; not a corporation, but a company of pilgrims; not a business, but a Body which exists to worship and adore; beseech and intercede.
When we come out of our board meetings with yet more "vision" statements and strategies, we are sick. When we get up off our knees drained of all the adoration and thanks we have to offer the Holy One, we are healthy. When we lick our lips seeking the sugary taste of the "success" of bigger meetings, larger offerings and "fame", we are diseased. When we hourly savour the sweetness of the dust beneath His feet, then we are well.
"The Lord is good to those who wait for Him...Let him put his mouth in the dust, perhaps there is hope." (La 3.25&29)
"My souls cleaves to the dust; revive me according to Your word." (Ps 119.25)
It is all very well quoting "cleansing the Temple" texts admiringly...the Lord dealing to the naughty Jewish shopkeepers, and a cutsy-pie exhortation to pray a bit more thrown in? I don't think so!
It was a prophetic event of ultimate import, accompanied by a terrifying warning which was ignored and then fulfilled some 37 years later, when the brutal battalions of Rome massed about Zion's ramparts to "unleash hell"...their speciality! And it is still today a terrifying and ongoing warning. Any sense at all that God is now calling the whole Church to become "a house of prayer for all nations" must be unequivocally yoked to the implicit, fiery "threat"!
It is not merely a case of the Church becoming more prayerful for the Last Days. It is about God's People so re-constituting themselves according to His Will, that they are not sick, but healthy; not vitiated, but robust; not spiritual bureaucrats or religious professionals, but Believers at full-stretch and mature stature (Eph 4.13) when upon their faces, "night-and-day", within the Holy Place!
That is why I say (over-heatedly?...over-excitedly?) it's time to "Pray together or perish!" (Read www.thetribulationchurch.co.nz) There is going to be nothing moderate or even-tempered about antichrist's final, desperate and nihilistic lunge for all of this world's "thrones" (both sacred and secular) simultaneously. This is satan's last chance...and he knows its.-
"Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, knowing that he has only a short time." (Rev 12.12)
So, why is it that so much contemporary Christianity has in the main made such a virtue of "balance", temperance, sedateness. We admire Francis of Assisi from a safe distance as he shakes 12th C Europe with the Gospel. But what would really become of a young person today, if during an "altar call" they got naked as well as saved? (I can hear the deacons' knees knocking already!) Francis' impact was extreme...as was his passion for Christ, for prayer, and for unconditional obedience.
Bernard of Clairvaux (11th C) was 24 years-of-age when he founded and led a prayer house in France. During his life-time (directly or indirectly) he "planted" a further 170. To our "cool", modern ears his language can sound almost hysterical.-
"Prostrate, see Thy cross I grasp/ and Thy pierced feet I clasp/ Gracious Jesus, spurn me not"
Bernard wrote a 4-volume commentary on the Song of Songs, recruited followers from the hangman, and reminded snobbish, upper-crust church-goers (in a sermon) that they too had been "born amidst faeces and urine"!
Perhaps today the Cross is more of a doctrine to which we assent...rather than an event we embrace and live. And thus we dare not risk losing everything, because we have yet to actually lay down our lives in its shadow? We do not know how to live, because we do not know how to die in Christ! Under the threat of antichrist in Germany in the 1930s, the martyr, Edith Stein prophesied.-
"More than ever the Cross is a sign of contradiction. The followers of the antichrist desecrate the images of the Cross and they make every effort to tear the Cross out of the heart of Christians. All too often they have succeeded even with those who once vowed to bear Christ's Cross after Him."
In order for the Last Church to become what we are not yet ("a house of prayer for all nation") we will have to die to all that we have ever been...and still cling to so fondly and desperately. But we are going to perish in the faecal-storm of the final tribulation unless we can discover our pathway into " 'a well ordered and well regulated common life' hinging and pivoting upon prayer."
Sometimes this will inevitably involve blind-faith, "unwise" risk-taking, humiliating failures! But then the King and Head of the Church did not in fact guarantee success, fame, happiness, prosperity...a Cross-denying culture vast numbers of Western Christians currently worship. But He did promise us.-
"If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me...whoever loses his life for My sake will find it." (Mt 16.24-27)
The authentic Christian life is "life from the dead" (Ro 11.15), according to "the power of an indestructible, endless life". (Heb 7.16)
The "house of prayer for all nations" Church is going to appear for The End, arising out of the redundant and the expired which we have voluntarily demolished...or it will come up through the ashes of that which is destroyed, around our deaf ears.
As frightening as this responsibility may seem, we still do have the choice.
"I am disturbed with an uneasy sense that we sophisticated, modern folk, with out pitiful timidity and our persistent self-seeking are living in darkness and misery when we might follow the supreme Sufferer through suffering into light and joy." (1)
(1) "Theism & the Modern Mood", W.M. Horton (SCM Press, NYC)
