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CHAPTER FOUR

THE TYPE, THE PICTURE AND THE REALITY

in Daniel, Lamentations and the Finale of History

Daniel experienced in his own person, the beginning of the overthrow of Jerusalem, prophesied by Jeremiah, described in jarring detail in the book of Lamentations,  that dreadful development in deserved ruin at the hand of the Babylonians. This was linked to the sad and lamentable decease of active and brilliant reformer Josiah, precipitant to the downfall. Also as foretold by Daniel was the vicarious discard of the body of Jesus Christ.

In these three deaths, and what went with them, there is a series, a sequence of great practical value and instruction.

THE TYPE - Positive, to be Admired

Josiah

First we consider Josiah, one of the most delightful of the kings noted in the Old Testament, zealous, practical, pious, perceptive, discrete, willing to be informed, reformed (II Kings 22:8-20), then reforming, King from a younger age, and at his end, dying in fighting against what he viewed, and not without great reason, as an enemy of his country, though it was not intent at that time on invading Judah as its main task.

In all this, he is revealed as what is often called, a type of Christ: that is, he had some features which with others, reminds one of some of the beauty of what Christ did. It does not of course mean that he is a sort of Christ, but in the sense of reminding one of him in certain aspects or features or actions, he gives a touch of His hand, an impact of what is holy, just and true, in a format and setting that readily evokes some thought of Christ.

Thus, like Christ, he was young in his entire contribution, not very young, but far from old. Again, he was charged to correct, executed great cleansing, in parallel with Christ's work seen in John 2:13ff.,  Matthew 23, Luke 11:52ff., and this he did with enormous care and attention to the scriptures (II Kings 23:4-25, reminding one of Christ's utterance in Matthew 5:17ff., and action noted in Matthew 26:52-56. Josiah  purged perversion and false priests, himself to die in humble form, fighting the enemy, not as a king, but as an ordinary soldier (II Chronicles 35:20-22).

Christ even humbled Himself to manhood from eternal glory,  as seen in Philippians 2.

Again, Josiah’s death reminds one of Paul's insistence, when repeatedly warned even through the Spirit not to go to Jerusalem; for he was nevertheless spiritually constrained and went believing that this was his duty (cf. Acts 20:22, 21:11ff.). This he asked one who thus sought to dissuade him from proceeding to Jerusalem:

"What do you mean by weeping and breaking my heart,
for I am willing not only to be bound,
but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus"

The protestations of danger and coming imprisonment, therefore, while quite true, did not dissuade Paul from paying the price for the prize to be gained by enduring such things. Nor did Pharaoh Necho’s word that Josiah desist, that of an enemy, dissuade Josiah, warned but unwilling to let any evil force come near, jutting from its own land, like spiritual land mines sprinkled around his domain. Devoted to national deliverance and practical restoration to God, he brooked no entries, however phased or phrased.

Similarly, it seems Paul was being urged as to the danger, peril and cost of following Christ into this particular set of fires, which would after quite some time lead to his death: but just as that death did not come before he had wrought highly influential missionary work, warning, test, so it was not in any sense a mistake. Yet it DID mean that the apostle proceeded in full realisation of the cost of his constraint (Acts 20:16), just as Josiah’s fidelity found death its cost. God promised not to let him see the fall and subjection of his land, and so his zeal saved him from that.

Christ was tested in the wilderness, and in the Garden of Gethsemane in different ways; and Paul was tested by the love which surges to protect him, as in Tyre, when his feet were bound, to depict perils ahead. Yet it yields to the constraint that his calling is sure, his responsibility certain and his way as shown to him personally is to be wrought out as directed (Acts 21:13-14). This became accepted. Indeed, the warnings were not in vain, but in love; and their disregard seems to have been not in vanity, but in reality, tearing at his heart, reassuring it of God's divine love in the very midst of turmoil to come, a beautiful reminder when perils numerous and dire, would later test him further! Meanwhile, it was testing to the uttermost Paul's  assurance that it was necessary for him to go there (Acts 20:16).

So with Josiah, he too was tested. The voice of an infidel, Pharaoh-Necho, ruler of Egypt, dared to tell him in the name of the Lord, that he should not fight with him, that it was not against himself that he had moved out of Egypt, but that he had another target for which he was coming near Judah (II Chronicles 35:21). Josiah presumably did not trust him, his influence, his feeling of freedom to come into his own sphere, and it would seem that like Paul at Tyre, he proceeded knowing the cost, sensing the commission.

He would also presumably know of the rebuke of Isaiah 31:1-5, written long before, about those pandering to or seeking aid from Egypt, and might well find  it important to oppose the transit of the army of Egypt through his general region. He did not assume royal regalia for this purpose, perhaps because he did not wish to involve his country. Similarly, Christ did not become incarnate as a prince, but as a 'tender root out of a dry ground', and suffered without using divine power over those arresting Him or seeking to kill Him, being willing to suffer as a transgressor, as foretold in Isaiah 53.

In this way, Josiah was spared as promised earlier in his life, when he was appalled at the discovery of part of the word of God, lying in the Temple, and God declared in praise, that he would not be made to suffer being a witness to the destruction to come. His removal was merciful (cf. Isaiah 57:1). On this earth, long life is not so important as good life, godly and God-groomed.

Again, Josiah was loved and appreciated by those who loved the Lord, Jeremiah in Lamentations, written after Jerusalem fell, speaking of him as "the breath of our nostrils", like a refreshing breeze amid the foul and horrendous corruptions of Manasseh, the depraved, preceding King (though he did at last repent) of Judah. As to Christ, His tone, triumphs, miracles, power led to the question, What more will the Messiah do when He comes! concerning Himself, so that, like Josiah,  though not dressed in regalia, His royalty showed as He did the works, in His case, those that only God could do. With Him, these were the ones fitting for the Messiah, capable of being done by no one else.

The words cited were these:

"When the Christ comes, will He do more signs than these which this Man has done ?" (John 7:31,46).

Josiah in his regal position, he also felt in his own domain, as man, the consuming zeal, to protect, to inspect, to reject evil, to enlighten.

He would also presumably know of the rebuke of Isaiah 31:1-5, written long before, about those pandering to or seeking aid from Egypt, and might well find  it important to oppose the transit of the army of Egypt through his general region. He did not assume royal regalia for this purpose, perhaps because he did not wish to involve his country. Similarly, Christ did not become incarnate as a prince, but as a 'tender root out of a dry ground', and suffered without using divine power over those arresting Him or seeking to kill Him, being willing to suffer as a transgressor, as foretold in Isaiah 53.

In this way, Josiah was spared as promised earlier in his life, when he was appalled at the discovery of part of the word of God, lying in the Temple, and God declared in praise, that he would not be made to suffer being a witness to the destruction to come. His removal was merciful (cf. Isaiah 57:1). On this earth, long life is not so important as good life, godly and God-groomed.

Moreover, in both cases, that of Josiah the King and Christ the Saviour, Jerusalem was destroyed some decades later; again, in both cases, the death cleared the way for the desolation of that city. Indeed, the rejection first of reformation and then of the Redeemer Himself, was the open door to the enemy which did not hesitate to use it! as foretold (Luke 19:42ff.).

Thus then, Josiah in his rule,  is a type of Christ, one with considerable affinities in life and place in history, to reform, to challenge, to correct, to inspire, to bring devotion, the one for a nation too set in its evil ways to follow, and too ready to decline at once on his departure, and the other not only for the nation, but for the world, which while it has sometimes been attracted, some nations even becoming involved to a considerable depth, yet now declines with increasing speed from the Lord, ready for its broader parallel to the destruction of Jerusalem.

What is this parallel to the destruction of Jerusalem, in the case of this entire world ? It has two parts One is the NATION of Israel, in a part of its developing history, at that time set in a downward dynamic. The other ? It received rebuke in the destruction of temple and spoiling of its capital, with devastation of inhabitants. Famed for long has been this horrendous assault, insult and degradation

In the case of this world, what has it in common with that ? This: it is liable, and this progressively so, because of its treatment of Christ Himself, as well as of His commandments. These go together as the mouth with the arm. This is despite His love, for  in this it forsakes its own mercy - for there is no other Saviour or Gospel (Galatians 1). Thus it is now set in a downward dynamic of striking similarity to that of Judah from the time leading to and beyond Josiah's day, following the outrageous miscreancy of King Manasseh, and others, such as Ahaz. For this world now, as for Israel then, there is an arising fury of folly, leading to a come-uppance that dashes down; the one is long past, and the other is soon to arrive.

When this world becomes so savvy, so sophisticatedly aware, so learnedly informed, so monstrously misinstructed that it ignores creation, the judicial flood devastation of the past and sounddoctrine alike (II Peter 2, 3:3-5, II Timothy 3-4), and proceeds to get to itself an antichrist, so disarming, so subtly evasive, so convulsively aggressive when his time comes, that it will scorn all fear of provocation of the Lord, then it at last find its confrontation. It will then by met by the whole array of divine power, and pretence will be exposed much as was Japan at Hiroshima, by a power beyond.

Its 'temple' with its antichrist (II Thessalonians) will be destroyed, nor is that merely any structure: it is the entire structure of thought which will suffer the sentence of reality, seduction will meet its strictures, folly its reward, its fantasising laziness of heart and dissolution of mind, its inward corruption too strong for any remedy.

When it is so fixed that it WILL not, and perhaps at the last, even CANNOT change (as in II Thessalonians 2:10), then it meets judgment, strict, simple, sure, neat, necessary, the ultimate anti-pollutant (cf. Psalm 2).

In this case, however, unlike that of Jerusalem, earlier, and that of the Twin Towers later,  it is no longer a question of destruction by some mere humanly contrived power, using the strength written into creation: for at that coming time, the confrontation is from the Creator Himself, from whom there is no turning away in conflict, nor resolution by barter, compromise or treaty (cf. Isaiah 14:27, II Thessalonians 1:5-10).

Moreover, it is He acting in person (Rev. 19), as the word of God, beyond any hope or  surmise or 'interpretation'. Not only does righteousness exalt a nation, while sin is a reproach to any people (Proverbs 14:34), but indifference damns, since Christ took sin’s rebuke into His own hands, where it is plainly marked upon them, so that for some, this final rebuke could be dismissed, and they could be free in faith, to know and enjoy His loveliness and wonder for ever. Rejection leaves no more sacrifice.

Thus the parallels lead to the sense of Josiah, as one whose actions stir the heart to fidelity, faith to action and wisdom to wake: He is seen as a type of Christ (as were Joseph, and Daniel); but Jerusalem as a picture of what comes ultimately, when spiritual madness becomes the recipient of instruction.

THE PICTURE - Negative, to be Avoided

Jerusalem

The above material shows a type of Christ, with the reformation, inspiration, culmination in death, rapid decline thereafter for the nation; it exhibits the dedication, meticulous attention to details and lack of arrogance in the humble tasks set and appointed. Neither deity, nor saviour, nor lord, Josiah however was in ordinary human nature, so toned and tuned to the Lord, that elements of his life reflect some of His life, who as God came in man's form to man.

It was sin that killed both, in the one case, the aggression of man, in the other, the vicarious bearing of the whole gamut of sin for those to be redeemed by Him. Now we come to new focus. It is this:  the picture of sin. How eloquently and elegantly it is displayed, all the more because of the horror and vast ghastliness of it, in the fall and destruction of Jerusalem. How often were they warned over centuries, how sudden was the destruction when it came, in days!

Jeremiah, in Lamentations brings this aspect home to the heart by his visual graphics, intense grief and surveys of the forsaken scene at Jerusalem. It had to take this, for sin's destiny and dynamic had for so long refused either equity or devotion to the only God, with all candour and love, that its case was almost that of sin, like a cancerous tumour, that essentialises itself as the core of the matter.

"How lonely sits the city ... she weeps bitterly in the night ...
all her friends have dealt treacherously with her ...Judah has gone into captivity..."

Here is the first form of the outcry of the desolate.

"Her adversaries have become the master". As Jesus says, when we look at this epitome of sin and its destiny, "He who sins is the servant of sin..." (John 8:34ff.).

It proceeds:

"All her splendour is departed from her."  

So sin kills splendour in the very act of seeming to fulfil it. It continues with one of the most poignant of pleas:

"Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by ?
Behold and see if there is any sorrow
like my sorrow, which has been brought on me,
which the Lord has inflicted in the day of His fierce anger."  

"How lonely sits the city ... she weeps bitterly in the night ...
all her friends have dealt treacherously with her ...Judah has gone into captivity..."

We can imagine the pagan populaces, unmoved, unmelted, unafflicted with her affliction, coldly noting her downfall, and continuing either to help themselves in her new vulnerability, or to turn away from her immersion in the purest of horror. It is not exaggerated.

"The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground and keep silence;
they throw dust on their heads ..."

There was an immediate cause of all this ? What was it ?

"Your prophets have seen for you false and  deceptive visions;
they have not uncovered your iniquity, to bring back your captives..."

They merely imagine good things, unrealistic, unrepentant, and all grows worse. They are not only blind leaders of the blind; they tend to blind those who otherwise might see (cf. Luke 11:52).

Now ?

"Princes were hung up by their hands, and elders were not respected.
Young men ground at the millstones; boys staggered under loads of wood ...
Woe to us because we have sinned!
Because of this our heat is faint; because of these things our eyes grow dim,
because of Mount Zion which is desolate."

Jerusalem, anointed, appointed, centre for testimony, place of the Law of God, emblem of the Messiah to come in its Temple depictions, clad in gold, immersed in splendour, base for dealing with deity, was it not made magnificent by Solomon, with tender care, drastic work, enormous craft according to pattern set from Moses!

Yet it ceased increasingly to fear God, despised His commandments, acted treacherously, greedily to the poor, with an inventory of gods used for nefarious purposes, even burning children in the religious fires of these fraudulent entities, that are no gods at all (Deuteronomy 32:15-21). Such do we find from such passages as Hosea 5:1-7, 8:7-14, 13:1-2, Amos 4:4-13, 7:1-8. Zephaniah 3:1-4 shows the broad spread into social follies and vicious inequities, just as riches are lavished on sinful associations with gods that are not there.

"Woe to her who is filthy and polluted, to the oppressing city!

"She did not obey the voice; she did not receive correction; she did not trust in the LORD; she did not draw near to her God.

"Her princes within her are roaring lions; her judges are evening wolves;
they do not gnaw the bones till the morrow.
Her prophets are light and treacherous persons:
her priests have polluted the sanctuary, they have done violence to the law.
The just LORD is in the midst thereof; He will not do iniquity:
every morning does He bring His judgment to light, He does not fail;
but the unjust knows no shame."

While the Lord is utterly reliable, never failing to grant the need, man becomes ruthlessly unreliable, not even using the wisdom available.

Isaiah 3:13-15, had long given notice of their calamitous wedlock with gross sin.

            Says the Lord God of hosts."

Thus the cause and the consequence are together like old friends: the continuing cause of the judgment, and the sudden result after long trial, some reformations and final folly.

Surrounded with power, intimately ruined by its exercise, the city is stricken AS WAS CHRIST, when He bore sin, as you see in Isaiah 52:13-14:

             And what they had not heard they shall consider."

Like Jerusalem, Christ's face was marred to the point almost of mashing, buffeting, bruised, beaten, His whole form as if subjected to de-formatting, the lavish lashings on One already stricken. As Jerusalem became near to Sin City, so Christ became Sin Receptor for those who received HIM!

THE REALITY - Unlimited, to be Sought

Jesus Christ

Sin city, Jerusalem at those times could almost be named, and like Christ’s face, as described in Isaiah 52:13ff., that self-same city became almost unrecognisable. There is the picture of sin, strained, refined in its accuracy, for He who knew no sin, bore it, and hence it is here without intrusion or admixture, seen in the crushing of His face, form, features, the abuse of His limbs, arms, hands, the desolation of His outline, against the skies that showed no mercy, later to that city likewise.

What then ? This, Jesus the Christ arrives incarnate from heaven, reforms amid chronic evil, suffers in a lowly format, such as Josiah adopted in his final battle against his enemies, and felt to the full even in advance the grief to climax on the Cross. Heavy in anticipation (Luke 22:39ff.). Then in utterance, as forecast in Psalm 22, a millenium earlier (Matthew 27:46), is heard the cry so like that of Jeremiah. Here in Christ extremities, it is noble with an infinite, intimate vastness, for the concord with eternity is for a moment broken, as sin whips the innocent, and guilt is born by the pure: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me!"

The infliction of such torment renders the soul so troubled, it cries out as under the force of many mountains! Sin separates from God (Isaiah 59:1ff.), and bearing it does it no less. There in Him, is One with the title deeds to life absorbing without sin, the sentence for sin, to release life to those divesting their lives of a specious sovereignty, while yielding to Him in surrender, receiving His as Creator and Redeemer (John 1:1-3, 5:19-30).  

This time, it is not a city or a nation which receives its due reward, though alas for the nation which rejected Him, long would it be before that time when they return in heart (as in Zech. 12, Ezek. 37), and great the travail within it!  Now it is the whole world, rejecting the counsel of Christ and the offer imprinted on His hands, as if to make a more crucial signature of His love, even than before: as in Isaiah 49:16 - 

"Behold, I have graven you upon the palms of my hands;
your walls are continually before me."

Thus Daniel 12 has a stark but more contrasting focus. This comes after the almost interminable seeming horrors of deceit, violence and aggression shown in things large and small, paraded in Daniel 11. That leads to the climax of world history, amidst the negativity, the darkness, the writhing ruin of this world as it approaches the day of resurrection, when those with everlasting joy upon their heads, rejoice as those with the sun shining boldly on them, the weeds removed from their field of life! (Matthew 13:41-43, Daniel 12).

Matthew 24 and Luke 17, 21 show the extent of the winds searing the world, the changes that like clanging bells, haunt its offices, disrupt its armies, make it totter (cf. Isaiah 2:10-21, Isaiah 24:17-23).

"The earth is violently broken," we read, "the earth is split open,
the earth is shaken exceedingly.

"The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard,
and shall totter like a hut.

"Its transgression shall be heavy upon it,
and it will fall, and not rise again."

Jesus the Christ, in Luke 17, draws the parallel with the past judgments, as in Sodom and Gomorrah and in the flood of Noah's time, a thing modern man is so reluctant to receive, asking thereby for judgment by fire, not water! though the flood evidence thunders (cf. News 1). This time the case is consummate (Matthew 24:21-22, NASB):

"for at that time there will be great tribulation,
such as has not been since the beginning of the world until now,
nor ever will be.
And if those days had not been shortened, no one would be saved;
but for the sake of the elect they will be shortened."

The violations of the structure which, as for Jerusalem in the day of Lamentations, left it doomed, now are mirrored in those of the whole earth (cf. Revelation 6:4,8, 8:8,11). Yet people, as in Luke 17, will continue building and marrying, as if blind to the need to be more realistic than simply to continue; but as with Sodom, as with those when the flood came, habit and culture, custom and labours continue as if by sedulous ants, over whom a reservoir of water is about to break.

Peter in Acts 2 and 3 gives the challenge to all in whatever place, to receive the remedy for human sin, portrayed, displayed and effectually provided, when Christ who knew no sin, became sin for us (cf. I Peter 1:22ff., II Corinthians 5:17ff., Acts 2:22ff.,37ff.,  3:14-16). It is, as he attested, a remedy even to the point of bodily resurrection; for the body of Christ, not rotting as foretold in Psalm 16, becomes the guarantee for those who from Him receive the eternal life which this feat showed, and which He had offered so unremittingly.

Now therefore, it is not a Jewish remnant to return from the site of Babylon, place of exile, to rebuild the temple in the 6th century B.C., which is the focus, but another remnant when the Lord brings them back "a second time" (Isaiah 11:11ff.) on the way to His return, many of these to find Him. That is a sub-section of divine deliverance, as in Romans 11, starting with 11:25.

Grand is design is the ultimate both in conjunction of Jew and Gentile believers, and in verification and vindication of the divine pattern, through the prelude of the Temple, the advent of the incarnation, to the consummation of the glory of His return for all His people.

Indeed, it is now a universal remnant of all peoples,  returning to the Lord and how they will be hunted! Yet on the Rock, Jesus Christ, they will be founded - Revelation 12:13-17 & 13, I Corinthians 3:11. At a point amid these woes, the time shortened for God's elect, and the site secured for them in heaven, to this they are they removed, ‘the marriage of the lamb’,  till the Lord soon comes with them, His armies indeed in attendance, to blot out the belligerence of untamed anger, uncontrite hearts and saucy endeavour to defeat the Lord Himself in battle, as if in their ignorance and blindness they could rule anything, even their own hearts! Indeed, as Proverbs tells us, better is he who rules his own spirit than the one who conquers a city (Proverbs 16:22).

Small wonder then that Daniel, is his coverage of the times to the Messiah, in Daniel 9, after the rejection of the Messiah as forecast by him as by Isaiah (49:7, 52-53), speaks like this:

"And on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate,
even until the consummation which is determined,
is poured out on the desolation."

The one making desolation seems lifted up as on a very wing of the Temple, flying high, ruining, almost like the case of the Temptation of Christ to cast Himself down from such a height! But here the man mounts so high that when amid desolations which he causes, he so rises, then desolation is poured out on the whole scene, thus desolating not only the ruin he makes, but him who ruins: the desolation of the desolator is thus accomplished in the contemptible rumbling and  crumbling (cf. II Thessalonians 1).

Dark indeed without relief is this scene, not now merely for Judah in discipline, but for the whole world for neglect.

Finally, in the field of comparison and parallel, let us look for one moment at the Church as these times of the end of the Age approach. Just as Ezra and Nehemiah were chosen to act in the rebuilding of Jerusalem and its Temple, amid cunning fakes, specious frauds, deceptive delinquents dressing up as something better, and they continued with prayer and building alike, so in this time to the return of the Living Temple, Jesus Christ, the Church must be valiant, strong, fearless, take heart, realise its traitors (II Peter 2), avoid them by removing them or converting them, and continue faithful (Romans 16:17ff.).

Peter was stirred up to warn the Church in his day (II Peter 1:12-22), of a time which is in our own, the 'last days'! It is good to heed the prescient provisions of God, in His wisdom saying near the first, the words for the last! He spoke before the time of the Advent of the Saviour, and He speaks again before the time of the insurrections near  the climax, and in both cases, the people of God are instructed in advance, warned and spoken to, as is a football team at interval by its coach; but this Coach, He does it in advance, inscribing centuries before the time, the words not only for that time, but for the time to come. This, it is apt for One who invented our sort of time, and in it, sorts out the things to be. We therefore must take care. 

Consider the enduring satanic strategies! Look at the rebuilding of the physical temple and nation in the day of Ezra and Nehemiah.

WE will build with you! or let us build with you, said fakes and frauds to the newly returned Jews (Ezra 4 and consider News 121,  122!). FAR FROM IT, came the sensible reply. It reminds one of the USA trying to co-operate at the first with Afghanistan in order to annul the menace posed by the insatiable bin Laden. How could they be even slightly sure that convinced Moslems would not betray them, with double minds or single vision, in order to keep the acclamation and harassment of Islam going! It now appears that the Army has been deeply infiltrated with traitors, especially in the intelligence sector, so that plans are able to be discovered and so escapes wrought.

The world, now trying to share the light of Christ for a time, now to be shaded by it, now to subvert, now to mock it, continues in a gross darkness, such as Israel knew before the advent of the Messiah (cf. Isaiah 8:19-9:7). Its Great Light has already come, and now is the time of its arrogant and heady neglect, not just that of the commandments, but of Christ Himself; and it is this which is its avenue to cumulative evil. 

It is this of which we now read, so that one can see the tension and distress, as when one says on a boat, 'It is fishing which saves my sanity.' If it is hard already, as in the Battle for Britain in World War II, so here the cost is colossal; but the end is both certain and sure, and with such a Commander as Christ, what is there to fear ? Eternal life is His gift, glorious presence is His grace (I Peter 4, Colossians 1:17), commission from Him is privilege, and work in His name is the fashion of the Almighty in His mercy.

What then is to be ? At the climax of evil comes both deception by the deviously dextrous antichrist^*1 , and ruin, till compulsion and direction become the dictatorial horror such as Stalin sought to make for the world, Mao for one part of it and Hitler for more. All came to power with a very different mien and message than that which they left, in the ruins of time, the degradation of human personality and the endeavours to subvert the spirit of man to an alien address.

Each of these, however,  is to be surpassed in depravity, if that be possible, and certainly in evil attainment. This one is beyond them all, the finale after Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin and Mao, having learned not to despise religion. Indeed, this puny and peremptory potentate has his own religious beast to help,  as did Hitler with Dr Goebbels - as seen in Revelation 13:11-2. It is an astute and debased model,  in form like a Lamb but speaking as a dragon; and it is this which becomes the Darkness Central for the time of the end.

Thus the dénouement is not a babe of humility and holiness, such as awaited Israel,  as in Ezra,  after it was rebuilding the temple symbolising His work - Isaiah 7, 9. Rather is it now a bad and infuriated man in centre stage, an evil shepherd, with no more Christ to kill, no more sacrifice to mar, occupied with killing, containing, controlling, harassing, abasing Christians, Jew or Gentile, as in the depiction of Rev. 12:13ff. and the principle of John 16:2. So he sates sin.

As to Israel, its people voted for a murderer, not for the Christ (Matthew 27:15-26), and they gained their desire; but it was not only one murderer, not Barabbus alone: it was his kind greatly multiplied that they obtained, voiding the covenant of mercy. The Gentile world, too full of itself to value Christ, now receives the result of its own scorn of redemption; for if there is one thing that burns, it is the spiritual wood that is dry, and refuses to be built into the living body which God has provided (cf. Ephesians 2, 4, Luke 23:31).

Yet in this world, there is travail in the building of another and blessed Temple, which Christ may inhabit (cf. I Peter 2:4ff.), and for which He will bring glory, this greater than Solomon, in a structure never to be taken down, a temple of living stones, from Jew and Gentile alike (Ephesians 2), a spiritual dwelling dedicated to praise and adore, delight in and know God, in a kingdom never to be destroyed (cf. Daniel 7:9ff.).

Let us praise Him now, intact and entempled, precious stones bought with a colossal price, filled with a light not our own, but grant of One dazzling in His beauty, suffusing us from the grace of deity (II Corinthians 3:17-18). In Him, we rejoice (Colossians 1:27), awaiting the consummation that removes the evil, and leaves the Lamb, the Lord, the salvation, the righteousness irremovable (Isaiah 51:6, Romans 5:17, 3:23-27), granting the salvation not to fade away, reserved in heaven (I Peter 1), outcome of the operation of faith, the gift of eternal life, the goodness of God.

NOTE

*1

See:  Highway of Holiness Ch. 2 and Ch. 2 above.