Basic HTML Version
around? And today I think there is no non-Jew as much loved and
honored in Israel at Jerusalem, from President, Prime Minister,
and on down, as Christ's chosen Apostle; but only as a type or
forerunner, because verses 1-5 speak only of the second coming
of Christ! So God has raised up someone to prepare the way before
Christ's Second Coming! As John the Baptist, crying out in the
PHYSICAL wilderness of the Jordan River, prepared the way for
the human-born Jesus to come to His MATERIAL Temple. He would,
as we now know more than 1900 years later establish the Kingdom
of God. So John was the type or forerunner of one TODAY crying
out in the SPIRITUAL wilderness of RELIGIOUS CONFUSION, preparing
the way for the spiritually GLORIFIED CHRIST to come to His SPIRITUAL
Temple--His Church (Ephesians 2:20-21), and to a SPIRIT-BORN people
then RESURRECTED, and to actually SET UP the KINGDOM OF GOD!
Brethren that Work is GOING ON, and Satan is trying to DESTROY
IT!
But there is more-even more specific!
Whom did God use to build the MATERIAL temple of stone to
which Jesus came the first time? It was Zerubbabel, governor
of the small colony of Jews sent back to Jerusalem 70 years after
the destruction of Solomon's Temple to build the Temple to which
Jesus came.
It says of Zerubbabel, Zechariah 4:9, "The hands of Zerubbabel
have laid the foundation of this house, his hands shall also finish
it..." (Zech. 4:9).
Speaking of that same Temple, in Haggai 2, but only as a
TYPE of another Temple to which Christ shall come at His imminent
Second Coming, "For thus saith the Lord of hosts, Yet once,
it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens and the earth,
and the sea and the dry land, and I will shake all nations...and
I will fill this House with glory, saith the Lord of hosts...The
glory of this latter house shall be greater than the former."
(Haggai 2:6-9)
WHAT House was God talking about? NOT the one Zerubbabel
was building, for it did not compare in glory with Solomon's Temple.
He was talking of the MORE GLORIOUS TEMPLE to which Christ shall
come at His SECOND COMING--a SPIRITUAL TEMPLE--His CHURCH then
resurrected to spiritual IMMORTALITY (Eph. 2:20-21). God has
been building that Temple since 1933. And Satan HATES IT!
There is STILL MORE about the building of the glorious Temple,
of which the second temple built by Zerubbabel was a type or
fore-runner. That is in the Book of Ezra, speaking of this same
time of Zerubbabel as a type or forerunner of what God is building
through US, my Brethren and fellow-Workers, today! Remember it
is a TYPE OF today's crisis!
It is a historic backdrop against which Haggai and Zechariah
wrote. In Ezra 4:5, the enemies of God's Work actually hired
lawyers (councelors) and went to court with false charges against
Zerubbabel (Verse 12). This resulted in a Court order (by Artaxeres--