True Centre; True Circumference
True Centre; True Circumference
Too many wannabe prophets are behaving desperately today, hunting for "new" revelations. They are locked in a deadly contest for platform space and money on the Western Church's adulatory and lucrative conference circuits.
Breathless acolytes rush to report the "latest, greatest" prophecies coming out of these pseudo-seers. They turn my stomach and make my blood run cold. As the genuinely great Church Reformer, John Calvin (Switzerland, 16th C) observed, "I consider looseness with words no less a defect than looseness of the bowels."
These prophecies are truly fantastic; uttered by spiritual fantasisers, they are hollow fantasies designed to lure the Body of Christ into shallow water where ship-wrecking rocks of deception lurk beneath the ocean's surface.
If any man or woman should dare or presume to speak on behalf of God Almighty, let their prophesying first of all be anchored and entirely submitted to His Word, the Bible.
"And when they say to you, 'Consult the mediums and the spiritists who whisper and mutter,' Should not a people consult their God? Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living? To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn." (Isaiah 8.19-20)
And secondly, let them be unequivocally, unapologetically and experientially anchored to God's prophetic centre here in this world...The City of Jerusalem in Israel!
"Thus says the Lord God, 'This is Jerusalem; I have set her at the centre of the nations, with lands around her.'" (Ezekiel 5.5)
Jerusalem has been the world's centre so far as God is concerned from ancient times.
- It has been the centre, because it has always been the place of God's Altar. (Isaiah 29.1-2)
- It was there that the Patriarch Abraham offered his only son Isaac...a type and a foretelling of Jesus' redemptive death in that same place. (Genesis 22)
- There King David sacrificed acceptably and so halted God's judgement on Israel. (1 Chronicles 21 and 22)
- Solomon's Temple was raised up in that city (2 Chronicles 3.1)
- and the Lamb of God laid down His life there. (Matthew 16.21)
And it will forever be the Lord's centre here on earth, because it is His Throne too!
"At that time they shall call Jerusalem 'The Throne of the Lord', and all the nations will be gathered to it, for the name of the Lord in Jerusalem." (Jeremiah 3.17)
"And He said to me, 'Son of man, this (v5 the inner court of the Temple) is the place of My Throne and the place of the soles of My feet, where I will dwell among the sons of Israel forever." (Ezekiel 43.7)
"He (Jesus) will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David (in Jerusalem); and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever; and His kingdom will have no end." (Luke 1.32-33)
The Jewish Midrash (exegetical commentary on the Old Testament) has this to say concerning the matter, "As the navel is set in the middle of the person, so is Eretz (the Land) Israel the navel of the world. Eretz Israel is located at the centre of the world; Jerusalem is the centre of Eretz Israel."
And closer to our own day, the English Christian author and essayist, G.K. Chesterton, warned vehemently (early 1900s), "When madness falls on man and they dream in a dark frenzy that Jerusalem is (merely) a town in Palestine (as opposed to being the world's centre) then we know their very minds are in decay."
The circumference of a circle does not create the centre. But the centre does however determine the circumference. For centuries men have attempted to determine the centre of the world; usually putting themselves (their governments and their churches) in that place. Satan forever seeks to alter God's geography by constantly working to destroy the city and its Jewish "first citizens". History in the Last Days will revolve around the devil's last desperate bid to achieve this; God's extraordinary intervention and deliverance of the city; the great revival of the Jews which begins and is fulfilled there.
"I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city will be captured, the houses plundered, the women ravished, and half of the city exiled, but the rest of the people will not be cut off from the city. Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations, as when He fights on a day of battle. And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives...And I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son ... In that day a fountain will be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and impurity." (Zechariah 14.2-4;12.10;13.1)
The central and crucial events in the count down to the Lord Jesus' return to Jerusalem are going to take place in Jerusalem...the centre of the world. Those who choose to ignore or treat this fact of life in a contemptuous manner, will thereby step off the circumference of God's End Times' activity (most especially prophetic discernment and comprehension) which will be scribed and released by God from His centre. No centre, no circumference. It really is that stark. You may be prophesying and dreaming and "seeing" your heart out ... but if you're not on this prophetic circumference formed by His centre, sadly what you say will be little more than gastric noise and flatulence.
"We were pregnant, we writhed in labour, we gave birth, as it were, only to wind. We could not accomplish deliverance for the earth, nor were inhabitants of the world born." (Isaiah 26.18)
"You conceived chaff, you will give birth to stubble." (Isaiah 33.11)
Those who are faithful watchmen of Jerusalem will see the Son coming ... and also accurately observe and note the key stepping-stone events which must precede history's consummation,
"On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen; all day and all night they will never keep silent. You who remind the Lord, take no rest for yourselves; and give Him no rest until He establishes and makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth. Behold, the Lord has proclaimed to the end of the earth, say to the daughter of Zion, 'Lo, your salvation comes; behold His reward is with Him, and His recompense before Him.' And they will call them, 'The holy people, the redeemed of the Lord'; and you shall be called, 'Sought out, a city not forsaken.' " (Isaiah 62.6-7 and 11-12)
"But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then recognise that her desolation is at hand...and then will they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory ... Even so you, too, when you see these things happening, recognise that the kingdom of God is now near." (Luke 21.20-33)
POSTSCRIPT
The same week this essay was posted, millions of Muslims "celebrated" their version of "Jerusalem Day"..."Al-Quds-Day"...vehemently protesting against the City of Jerusalem being the heart of a State of Israel in the Middle East.
In the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini instituted this annual event, and decreed that it fall on the last Friday of the Islamic month of Ramadan. This year's keeping of the "feast" took place on Friday, October 5. Iran's current leader, President Ahmadinejad, maintained his aggressively anti-Israel stance by telling protesting Iranians that "the creation, continued existence and unlimited (Western) support for this regime (of Israel) is an insult to human dignity."
"The Iranian nation and countries in the region will not rest until Palestine is free and criminals punished," the president continued.
And an influential ayatollah, Iran's chief judge, Mahould Shahroudi, told those attending the "Al-Quds-Day" protests that Friday's rallies were "a good start for the destruction of Israel."
For Islam, Jerusalem is considered their third "holiest" city...after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.
