God Thinking XXV - The Beginning of Revelation 4

"Two thousand years later, God came to earth as a man, the man Jesus Christ, and what did He find?  Again mankind had taken what God had made and made it into something unholy.  This time it was under the guise of the temple of the living God.  

This time, instead of open and blatant wickedness, corruption and vial behavior, man had tried to disguise their  disobedience under the banner of religious systems.  It wasn’t only the Jews. 

In Central Asia there was an early form of Hinduism.

In Southern Asia there was Buddhism.

In China there was Confucianism.

In China there was also Taoism.

In Japan there was Shintoism.

In Mexico there were the Aztecs.

Of all the religions of the earth, God came to His own people to reveal to them the foolishness of their devices.  They had taken the oracles and precepts of God and turned them into something unholy and utterly contemptible to God.  

I want you to get a feel for the heart of God concerning this matter.  Listen to what Jesus says to the leaders of the so-called religious people of the times.  I am going to read some

excerpts from Jesus’s discussion with the religious people of the day.  Even though He was speaking to the Jews, the truths of what He was saying applies to every religious order

around the world.

Matthew 23:13-39

“But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering in.

V14 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.

V15 Woe unto you, scribes, hypocrites! For ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.

V16 Woe unto you, ye blind guides...

V24 Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.

V25 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.

V27 Woe unto you scribes, and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.

V33 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?

V37 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets,

and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!

V38 Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.

V39 For I say unto you, ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.”

When the veil of the temple was rent, (the moment Jesus died upon the cross), Israel’s house would be desolate until they are forced, by Jesus’s second coming, to bow the knee to the Messiah.

From this time forth, no sacrifice would ever be accepted for the sins of man except the provision made by Christ for sins. 

The temple that once housed the oracles of God, where the priest would enter to offer sacrifices for their sin and the sins of the people would no longer be accepted. 

The holy of holies was rent.  Never again would God destroy man with water, and never again would God allow access to Himself through any religious system.

This time, instead of God destroying man - God destroyed man’s religion."

Excerpt from God thinking XXV - The Beginning Of Revelation by Keith C. Powell Copyright 2013