Saturday, February 17, 2024

CHRISTIANS TEARING DOWN THE CHURCH

The Temple was God’s House that God never even wanted! It was a house for kings and priests to show just how progressive and righteous they were!

King David desired to build a House for God since he had a grand one for himself (1 Chron 17:1). Although Nathan the prophet agreed with David, God sent word by Nathan unto David, “Thus saith the Lord, ‘Thou shalt not build me an house to dwell in’” (1 Chron 17:4).

Why did God not want a House of His own?

“For I have not dwelt in an house since the day that I brought up Israel unto this day; but have gone from tent to tent, and from one tabernacle to another” (1 Chron 17:5). God always was with the people, and a House would make Him further from the people.

Before, He had appeared on the Ark of the Covenant, behind a curtain, and only the clean and holy chief priest could see His throne and hear His Voice, but in a sense all the people had walked with God who appeared as a cloud by day and a fire at night (Exod 13:21).

God’s ‘House’ had been a mobile Temple, and a building would only constrain Him. Symbolically, the Exodus was Him going to the ‘Paradise’ to deliver His people from Egypt, symbolic of Hell and Pharaoh Ahmose I, the devil. [1]

As such, tabernacle worship would represent the godhead — the fire and cloud the Spirit of God, the Existence on the Mercy Seat the Paternal aspect of God, and the tents of skin the flesh of God.

Furthermore, Tabernacle worship was very much like the arrangement of the Trees with their natural canopies circled around the Tree of Life in their midst as the Tabernacle of God. So, from the beginning, God was with His people and without a building.

God never wanted a House, but David did. Because of the grievous sins of David, although a man after God’s own heart, Solomon would be selected to build the House for God. It may be that God never wanted His Temple associated with David, nor the ‘Son of David,’ Jesus; that would have made the Davidic Temple too prominent, so the immediate son of David was selected to oversee the building of his House for God.

The Temples were for the builders. It was Solomon’s Temple and Herod’s Temple which had been started in the days after the diaspora and authorized by Persian King Cyrus. Thus, the Second Temple was Cyrus’s House for God, technically, and it was not finished in the days of Herod.

Again, technically, Josephus relates that Herod’s Temple was built on the foundation of the Second Temple and if that is true, the third Temple has already been built and destroyed! Apparently, Herod ruined the Second Temple and built a new one from scratch where the two preceding temples had stood.

Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel mentioned another temple but did not call it a third one (Jer 31:31-34 & Ezek 36:26–27). The ‘Temples’ in both of those two sources are much the same, the latter being, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you and bring it about that you walk in My statute and are careful and follow My ordinances.”

Therefore, the so called “Third Temple” was built by Herod, and the last Temple built by God Himself by His ‘Handyman’ Jesus.

The material for the Last Temple are Christians themselves. The Last Temple is the invisible Church wherein God lives in His people.

I submit that the Temple of which Jeremiah and Ezekiel wrote was not a House at all but an invisible structure: 

Now therefore you are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief Cornerstone; in whom all the building fitly framed together grows unto an holy temple in the Lord(Ephes 2:19-21)

 It was never a House for Himself that God wanted all along, but a holy ‘Household” for His people, built not on the ruins if those Temples, but upon the ‘Cornerstone’ Jesus — “The Stone that the builders rejected” (Mat 21:42).

The so-called Third Temple has already been built and it was built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Jeremiah and Ezekiel saw the plans for the Temple of God, and it was not a building at all, but a spiritual construction wherein the ‘blocks’ are ‘lively stones,” to wit: 

You also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. (1 Pet 2:5)

 The Third Temple (the Fourth in my estimation) has already been built after Herod’s Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. by the Jews themselves (Titus tried to save it, according to Josephus). The Romans needed buildings for their gods; Christians would not!

The Jews accused Jesus of heresy, saying, “Forty and six years was this Temple in building, and will you rear it up in three days?” (John 2:20), and that He did when He arose from the tomb after three days, laying the foundation of the Church and the House of God. Many times, beginning with the Jews, then the Romans, and then devious men like Stalin and Hitler, they tried to tear down the Invisible House of God but to no avail.

They did remove buildings, doctrines, and people, but after 2000 years the Church remain standing and will remain so for perpetuity!

Those buildings that you see, many with Sunday partying in progress; those are not the Temples of God. Jesus identified them beforehand when He recalled Scripture, “It is written, ‘My House shall be called the “House of Prayer;’ but you have made it a den of thieves. (Mat 21:13).

Not to be mean, but look at the Temples that have been built. The worst of the worst are Islamic because it was not built on the Cornerstone, Jesus.

The Roman Catholic Church was built on the bones of Peter (beneath St. Peter’s Basilica) and their ‘cornerstone’ is Peter, not the ‘Stone,’ but the ‘Pebbles,’ of Peter.

The same goes for Protestant Churches. They meant well, but soon they began to burn the separatists. Each Christian burned at the stake by either Catholics or Protestants were removing one lively stone at a time until the churches became unstable.

Then came the restorationists who literally removed all the stones at one time and built a church with one wall, so to speak. Only they are the true Christians and all those who died for Christ before deserved their fates. As such, their church has become their god and water its foundation.

The original Church was described in total by the seven churches of Asia, and just as Jesus predicted, even those who met wherever had among them thieves.

As such, all churches have imperfect components because the people have become the ‘cornerstone.’ It is not what God Wills for His people, but what they desire for themselves.

The modern-day Churches of Christ has rebuilt the Roman Catholic Church very well and on the cornerstone of Alexander Campbell. Now, they are very ‘catholic’ all the while damning them all!

By now, most of the Church are dens of thieves, and money the object of their affection. I believe the last thing in the world that churches need is more money. Money is most often to build things even for God, but we often forget it is not a House that God wants but a Divine Household.

I see many huge so called 'Houses of God' but within few people. I see others with great temples but not based on prayer. What have the people done with God's Church? The last thing that we need is not more money or new buildings, but more prayer.  Just like the Jews who were always the root cause of destructions of their Temples, it seems to be Christians that destroy the Church. 

 


 



[1] Ancient sacred literature points more toward Ahmose and the ‘brother’ of Mose (Egyptian) or Moses in the English. Ahmose-Ankh, next in line to be Pharoah by the law of primogeniture, was a prince but never made it to Pharoah. He was superseded by his younger brother, Amenhotep I, indicating that something happened to Ahmose-Ankh. I suggest that the latter prince was the one who died in the first Passover, further validating the Pharaoh of the exodus was Ahmose I. Therefore, Moses does not mean ‘water’ but according to Wikipedia, “The Egyptian root msy ('child of') or mose has been considered as a possible etymology, arguably an abbreviation of a theophoric name with the god's name omitted. As such Mose was just the son of with no known father or mother and Ahmose was the son of Ahotep I, his mother, a matronymic whereas Mose is theophoric for possible ‘son of God.’

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