JESUS PROPHESIED THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE

Matt. 24:1-3

Morning Meditation 9/24/16

Verses 1-3 say, “And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?”

Several want to hear of our recent trip to the Holy Land. So today I will talk about my impressions and some lessons learned. Most of what you hear will come out in future meditations where a thought is presented and the Lord brings back to my mind something learned that applies to that verse.

The Jews have been a people of the Temple ever since Solomon built the first temple after the death of his father David. There are two things that dominate the average Jews mind. It is just built into his nature. It is the land and the Temple. The land that God gave to Abraham is something a Jew is not going to get away f rom. He may be in another land but he does not think of that land as his permanent abode. When they are out of the land they pray “Next year in Jerusalem.”

The next thing about a Jew is the Temple. To be in the land and not be able to set up the Old Testament worship bothers the Jew. You may ask, “Well why doesn’t he rebuild the temple?” There is a little problem of the Mosque of Omar, i.e., the Golden Dome of the Rock. It is built on the Temple site. Our guide, Avi Shemesh, told us that they have discovered that the Mosque is not built on the exact spot and that there is room for the rebuilding of the Temple. First of all, they don’t want a muslim mosque that close to their temple. Avi said that he believes an earth quake will come and tear it down. If that should happen, the muslims could not blame Israel for its destruction. There are 400 million Arabs (muslims) surrounding six million Jews. Do you understand their caution? They are not afraid of them but they are cautious. The story of Israel and the Arabs today is like the story that is told of the captain in one of our wars in the past. He said to his men, “Men, we are completely surrounded by the enemy. Don’t let a one of the escape!”

Jesus said, “. . . see ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.” He was talking about the “buildings of the temple” mention in verse one. This happened in A. D. 70 when Titus overran Jerusalem. They set the temple on fire, the gold melted and ran down into the foundation stones, and they literally dug the stones out of the ground to get the gold. So, what Jesus said was literally fulfilled. This is the way with prophecy. It literally comes to pass.

If you were to go on this trip to the Promised Land (may the Lord grant you that privilege), you would be introduced to ruins over and over again. Jerusalem has been destroyed so many times that the ground level that you walk on is several feet above the streets where Jesus walked. We were taken down into excavation sites where homes, streets and other facilities are in the process of being unearthed. What will you see in Jerusalem? Ruins. These ruins are being carefully preserved for posterity. Several times as we toured, Jewish children were brought in groups by the same sites that we were at, and they were being taught their history and the importance of remembering their Jewish heritage.

About five feet below the surface, if I remember the footage correctly, we stood on stones that were the surface of a street in Jesus day. So, we stood on stones that Jesus could have stood on or walked on. One of the most sacred shrines of the Jews today is the Wailing Wall. This wall was a part of the temple compound. The stones in the lower part of this wall exist from the time of Christ and remain in place from that time. If you see a picture of the Wailing Wall, you will notice huge stones at the bottom and smaller stones at the top. These small stones are the ones the Turks used to restore the wall during the time they occupied the land. The temple wall was not a part of the temple itself. So, the fact that the stones survived the destruction of Jerusalem in no way takes away from the prophecy of Christ that one stone would not be left on another. To hear a Jew talk (our guide for instance), you would think the wall of Jerusalem was a part of the temple. If this is true, and it is not, then Jesus is not to be taken literally when He said that one stone will not be left on another. There is something else our guide told us (and he is one of the best, if not the best), that the pinnacle of the temple was the southeast wall of Jerusalem from which Satan tried to get Jesus to cast Himself down. If this were true, Jesus would have cast Himself down in the valley of Jehoshaphat and/or the Valley of Gehenna where they meet at that spot. Probably no one would have seen this take place and would not have effectively demonstrated to the leaders of Israel a miracle confirming His claims to be the Messiah. The pinnacle of the Temple was the top of the Temple itself which was seventeen stories high we were told ( there were not seventeen stories to the temple but it was the height of a seventeen story building). That would be a nice height from which to cast oneself and survive the fall. Had He done this, He would have miraculously survived the fall right in the area and at the time the priests were offering sacrifices on the altar that was positioned right in front of the Temple door. This would have been a public manifestation (by a miracle) of His Messiahship which He would have taken into His own hands and thereby tempting God.

The Jew looks at Jerusalem and the Land from the perspective of the Old Testament. Our guide believes that the Bible is the Word of God literally. I’m sure if we would have pressed him, he would not have given the same trust that the New Testament is the infallible Word of God. So the Jews interpretation is from the Old Testament prophets and he continues to look for a Messiah for deliverance from all the enemies and the complete restoration of Jerusalem and the Land.

A lot of the sites to which we were taken are legitimate. Many of them were chosen by the Catholic Church in the early centuries as the places where certain things happened. A lot of the places are totally traditional and have long since been proven incorrect. For instance, for centuries the crucifixion site was said to be inside the walls of Jerusalem and the Catholic Church built a church on the sight and told people that this was the sight of the crucifixion. Well, since that time, General Gordon, an English General, had a house on the wall of Jerusalem near the Damascus gate, and he was looking out one day and saw the mount that forms the face of a scull. He said that this had to be the place of the crucifixion. There was also a garden with an unused tomb in the area fitting the Bible’s description of the site of the crucifixion and burial and resurrection of Christ. We are told that many Catholic scholars have since abandoned “their site” for this one. I believe that “Gordon’s Calvary” is the correct site of the crucifixion. There are certain things like mountains and skulls in the side of the mountains that time and war does not change. So you know that you are in at least a proximity of the Bible place.

Well, I haven’t said much and I am out of room for today. Maybe I’ll continue this tomorrow. There are three things I will leave with you that pretty well describes the land today. Ruins, rocks and restoration. The stones speak out. Scripturally I will leave one thought with you.. The Word of God is infallible and inerrant and all that the prophets have said has or will come to pass literally.

God bless this to our hearts.

In Christ

Bro. White