Ch. 16 In His Temple

This chapter is based on John 2:12-22

It is a hot potato..because of how the incident is explained/perceived.
It is a matter of inspiration, experience, perception and maturity to even get close to what transpired.....without the aid of an audio visual record.

Notice that Jesus didn't call any of them aside privately and request to discuss the matter.

He didn't ask to see the person in charge and file a formal complaint.

He didn't contact a lawyer and file a lawsuit.

He didn't say..oh vey, Father, this is really disappointing.

This is one of the most interesting chapters of Jesus’ life. For 18 years he lived in quiet obscurity. Maybe he visited the Temple in Jerusalem several times a year as required, or maybe he just hung around Nazareth and didn’t travel. Following his baptism and connection to the Holy Spirit, he does something quite out of character with his gentle nature.

The Great Keepers of Religion, guarding their little nugget of truth, didn’t even understand what little they had. Their religion had degenerated into a set of mostly man-made rules. These “Guardians of Truth” instead used the system of confession of sin and sacrifices for repentance, ordained by God, to make obscene profits from the honest-hearted worshippers who wanted to obey the LORD’s commands.

These so-called Guardians valued money far more than they valued people, because their hearts had turned into stone, one of the symptoms of greed. Oblivious to the importance of the act of confession and repentance, and ignorant that their own thoughts and acts were being recorded in their life records, instead of helping someone who didn’t have enough money to buy a sacrifice, they turned them away.

As he stood on the Temple steps, Jesus could read the minds of those present with Spirit power, and the guilty knew he was reading their thoughts, too. Maybe that’s why he didn’t clear the Temple much sooner, not until he received Holy Spirit power.

Only the Holy Spirit can connect us to God to save us from the curse of selfishness. Only the Holy Spirit can protect us from closing our hearts and minds to revelation. Today, we must be careful not to straight-jacket ourselves into a belief system, making it difficult to accept new truth when it arrives. Then we, too, would completely miss the target, like the Keepers of Religion did, wearing their blinders in days of old.

We can look back at some of Jesus' actions and words to those who opposed him, thinking that maybe he was a little too harsh for our modern sensibilities. One advantage Jesus had was that he already knew who would choose to be a subject of his Kingdom. Having already seen the future before he became one of us, he knew who would never accept his teachings, and who would turn against him, no matter how daintily they were treated. They had already chosen their master.

He had to rebuke the leaders and their practices publicly so the common people would become aware that there was problem with the current system. His rebukes were aimed at leaders with great influence and responsibility. Jesus never treated the common people with any severity at all, only with patience and kindness and gentleness.

The religion had turned into a highly profitable business for the priests and leaders, with little or no spiritual impact. The Keepers of Religion became angry that Jesus interrupted their scamming and profiteering and caused them to lose money. Maybe his attack on the money tables and his release of the sacrificial animals jeopardized their retirement plans.

Their outrage and accusations of blasphemy were only a cover story. He was a threat to their beliefs and practices and income, so they had to find something to prove him wrong and themselves right, typical human nature. We all do that until we become humble.

It probably didn't take long for things to return to "normal", though. Three years later Jesus had to repeat the scene, another reminder that the religious leaders had misread the roadmap to the Kingdom of the Stars, lost their way, and were giving the wrong directions to the people.

The Keepers of Religion and the Temple merchants had no connection to God. All they had were the rules, regulations, and income from their religion. When Jesus read their minds, the guilty attempted to cover their faces, trying to hide from the One who laid bare their selfish motives.

During a long, painful silence, a sense of awe overpowered the assembly, now stopped in its tracks. Jesus' voice thunders, echoing through the Temple complex. It was the same voice that thundered from Mt. Sinai, striking fear into the primitive little Earthlings far below. He picked up a simple whip made of cords, which to the crowd about to flee, looked as deadly as a flaming sword.

Shaken, the merchants, priests, and officials all bolt for the exits. Even his disciples react in fear as the crowd rushes to escape from those burning eyes. After all of the tables were down and the animals were running loose on the streets of Jerusalem, peace descended onto the Holy Site. After enduring a marketplace experience of many, many years, Jesus at last brought silence to the Temple erected in his honor.

This Act of Expulsion was a parable, also. The Temple, so recently polluted by greed and noise and scandal, is like the heart of man, darkened and defiled by evil. When evil desires are removed from the heart, the Spirit of God can make its home within. Only Christ can cleanse the soul temple, the place where our spirit dwells, but only if he is asked. He will remove our evil desires and fill our hearts with hope and purity and peace and healing.

Remaining behind during the sudden exodus were the sick and the poor, the very ones despised by the Keepers of Religion, Guardians of Nothing, the Teachers of Selfishness and Intolerance.

After those who fled recovered from their panic, the priests and rulers returned to find the very people they despised praising God for being healed. The Poor of Earth are the kind of people who will populate the Kingdom of the Stars, not those who try to control other peoples lives or try to make a lot of money off of them or buy a lot of stuff for themselves.

The Temple of those days was a miniature model of the system used to delete evil acts and thoughts from an individual's life record, located far, far away across space and time. It wasn't the rituals and ceremonies of that time that cleared one's records: It was the prayer of a contrite heart. The Lord instituted the object lesson of confession of repented sins and killing the now-contaminated animals to explain a concept otherwise difficult to visualize.

All who are contaminated by the Virus of Evil must be completely destroyed someday. Anyone free of the virus will have their purified memories downloaded into perfect bodies at the End of the World. Only Jesus can remove evil from our life records, and only if we ask. This is the lesson of the Sanctuary we must understand and share, not as preachers, but as friends.

When Jesus responded to the priests' demands for a sign to prove his authority to clear the Temple of commercial operations, he answered them in a parable, fully knowing that they would misconstrue his words and later use them against him. Even his followers weren't ready to to know that he would be dead in less than 3 years. Only after rising from the dead would his disciples understand what he meant.

The Earthly Sanctuary was just a temporary structure, a primitive copy of something much more fabulous. Both the Priesthood and the Sacrifices foreshadowed his mission. Without Christ, the Earthly Temple and its sacrifices were worthless.

So it is with us today. Without Christ, our wealthy, worldwide organizations are worthless and our churches degenerate into social clubs. Anyone who doesn't work for God works against him, and will be cast into outer darkness, where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

We can read what Jesus wants us to do. If we don't do what he asks, we don't love him, or the Father. If we do what he asks, he will come into us, and dwell with us. We can cling to our precious, stinking Earth-garbage, or throw it away, wash up, and hold our hands out to receive something infinitely better, the Gift of Life.

There's a good sermon on this topic at:

http://www.amazingfacts.org/media/everlasting_gospel.asp

titled "Cleansing the temple".

I listened to the amazing facts sermon linked above and thought it was well said. I'd like to work for that organization. Their evangelistic worker training program is rather costly, though. Sometimes I wonder if more church members=more money, to some.

Lately, I've been thinking about getting baptized. The last time I was baptized was with a group that turned out to be a cult. Its leader, Wayne Bent, is now in Arizona, so I've heard, apparently claiming to be Michael, the archangel.

I hope my thinking is no longer colored by that experience. They were so merciless to those who didn't conform or obey. That's why I was excommunicated: failure to obey their commands, more than 15 years ago. It's a sorry, unhappy existence, when your religion goes amok. Makes me want to stay away from church and preachers.

This has been such a fantastic chapter, Clearing the Temple. Personally, there's still too much space in my own temple occupied by selfishness and negativity. Remodeling is in progress, though. I hope to replace s&n with generosity and positivity as we study this great book and the Bible.

Hey Aliensanctuary, I'm glad you checked it out! That's awesome you want to work with Amazing Facts. They seem like a great organization. As far as the tuition, I believe that they have subsidies for it if it's needed. Hope you decide to get rebaptized. That'd be wonderful.

I think there are three differences between the situation Jesus faced at that time and the situation most of us face today:

1. Jesus was in exceptionally close communication with His Father, and He knew what His Father wanted Him to do specifically. Most of us are not in that position as yet. We don't yet have the prayer life, the complete willingness to take the consequences, or the fixation on what God wants to the exclusion of all other things.

2. Although they didn't realize it, the Jews were at the end of their rope as a nation. When a person is about ready to slip over a cliff or fall into a fire, you do not just speak quiet words to that person - you yell as loud as possible.

3. Jesus had tried everything else to get the Jewish leadership and the Jewish nation to see the precarious situation they were in.

This was one of His last moments to get their attention. Miracles done precisely in the same as in the olden days hadn't done it. Healing the sick of diseases that baffled even the foremost medical authorities hadn't done it. Calming the fiercest forces of nature hadn't even done it. Casting out the worst demons hadn't done it. A "violent" cleansing of the Temple, the seat of the Jewish religion, was all that there was left to do. If that failed, the only other way was to let the Romans have a demolition party, which happened.

We are not in the position Jesus was at this time so I don't see how we can justify using the methods mentioned in this chapter.

I just read on the Jews for Judaism website that carrying anything that weighed more than 2 dried figs was against the law, a few thousand years ago, for the devout Jews. I wonder who thought up a law like that?

That whole system of religion had to be confronted and dealt with, lest everyone would think that that was true religion. Of course, there was only one person, an outsider, really, that could show what was truth, and what was garbage. He had to expell the scammers twice, because of the selfishness of human natures, and man's inability or unwillingness to understand or do what God wanted him to do.

Sometimes I wonder if all of the Christian religions must be swept away to be replaced by something more true. The opposite could happen, too, where our religions are replaced by something more false. Actually, both could happen at the same time. The True Churches would probably meet in homes or secluded areas, while the False Churches would continue on as usual. That won't happen until Extraterrestrial Contact is made (with Satan). That's when a false peace comes to earth, and nearly everyone thinks the Messiah has come at last.

Now, is Satan a Flaming, Fiery Serpent (seraph), one of the 4-faced 6-winged Cherubim, or a sun-faced fire-legged Messenger? I suppose his spirit could transfer into any of those creatures, or control them from a distance, sort of like possession.

Now the Sanctuary/Temple is one of the most important beliefs shared by Christianity and Judaism. The Sanctuary and its function doesn't seem to be very important to mainline Christianity, but for the few devout Jews, who long for restoration of the Earthly Temple, it is a great hope.

Somewhere in the future, True Christians and True Jews must unite, if the 144,000 are indeed actual descendents of the 12 tribes of Israel. Belief in a Cosmic Sanctuary, where life records are stored and processed, might be the factor that could unite believers from both camps. This belief could conceivably motivate individuals to purify themselves and remain evil-free until the return of the Son of God to rescue them from the violent destruction of the Earth.

Unfortunately, for those Jews who didn't believe Jesus was the Messiah, the Temple lost its protection and was destroyed along with Jerusalem, back in AD 70. They kept looking for a Messiah who would save their country and bring peace to the entire world.

In the future, those still looking for the Messiah will find one, who will indeed bring peace to the world. But there will be a terrible price to pay for swearing allegiance to the False Messiah, even though it will seem so right to most of the world.

The Imposter possesses the same kind of weapon God used when he vaporized Elijah’s sacrifice, including the rocks that supported it. It would be an easy way to threaten or get rid of dissenters and impress the rest into receiving the Mark of the Beast (one world government ID, tatoo, chip, or something else).

Satan would first need to create worldwide chaos by overpowering, controlling, and directing man's barbaric nature and his propensity to destroy, then, arrive as a savior, creating world peace, fooling many by undoing the diseases and mental madness that he brought upon mankind. It would be his greatest delusion: the False Messiah in the False Temple, controlling the one-world government, leading untold blinded, murderous millions to their destruction.

Just thinking again about the True Temple and the Sea of Glass over the past few days, one of my favorite subjects. (I look up at thick cloudbanks sometimes and wonder if there's something hidden behind the clouds.)

The True Temple on the Sea of Glass is actually the control center/seat of government of the universe, where heads of state (from different planets) meet with God from time to time and major descisions are made. There would be feasts and banquets and holiday celebrations, too, I suppose, not in the Temple Complex, but elsewhere, either on the Sea of Glass, or in the New Jerusalem. There should be plenty of room, since the New Jerusalem is nearly 2/3 the size of the moon in volume.

The Sea of Glass, kind of like our large airports associated with large cities, is connected to the space-based New Jerusalem, where visitors could stay. There's a great celebration in the Sea of Glass, just after the people rescued from earth arrive. After the celebration, all get to go to a great banquet in their honor.

I suppose Satan has a counterfeit control center, too, where he commands his rebel forces, those unwilling to submit to God's rule. He would need to build a replica on earth, the False Temple, in order substantiate his claim to be ruler of the earth. He will control earth through his one-world government. His space-city, called Babylon in the Bible, is doomed to fall from the sky and crash into the sea.

His line that he's been treated badly by God, backed by demonstrations of his impressive technology, will fool far too many people. Many will be surprised to see that the cast of heavenly characters in the Bible all travel in spacecraft (thrones/cloudy chariots/chariots of fire). Only those who know the Bible inside and out, protected by their prayers and obedience to God's Word, will be safe.

We could all do that.

It might be quite convincing to humans if an extraterrestrial, Satan, arrives here in dazzling magnificence, claiming to be our creator who didn’t use magic words, but highly advanced technology to generate life. So here's Satan in person, but where is God at this time? I suppose that's why we need to know the Bible inside and out, so we can detect falsehood. I’m sure God will provide evidence of his power, though, to those who believe in him and love him and follow him.

I wonder what will happen to all the books on evolution after Satan arrives, debunking the entire concept by his lying assertions which contain some truth.

In reality, Satan is the God of Death. That's the god that fanatical religious groups worship, those who delight in blowing up or shooting their unsuspecting victims, not to mention kidnapping followed by decapitation ceremonies. The world is relatively silent on this, until the fanatics' political leader, an ex-dictator, is photographed by their opponents in his underwear or prisoners are photographed in naked poses. Is that the worst America can do? Perhaps Christianity has made most Americans softer hearted than Middle-Eastern religion practitioners, who hate their own lives enough to destroy themselves and anyone else who doesn't agree with them.

Of course, they do believe that after killing themselves and as many others as possible for their God of Death, they can expect to receive 72 virgins to rape and abuse at will in the afterlife. They will, I expect, be in for a most unpleasant surprise. They’ll wake up in the Second Resurrection, meet their God of Death standing before a great city of light, now claiming to have just resurrected them so they can help him overpower it. There’s so many of them outside, uncounted billions, how can the city resist?

Back to Nico and Sid's opening comments.

If we point out someone's faults or errors directly to them, we will probably make an enemy. If we can illustrate the problem and solution with a story directed at a much larger class, we may get our point across without a hostile reaction. That's kind of the way Jesus usually operated.

To rid the Temple of scammers and unbelievers required direct and explosive action. I think that should be our course of action, also, if we see scamming leaders and preachers polluting the church with false doctrines or schemes involving making money. Really, it's OK to be excommunicated if such a thing happens. Your work will enter a new field.

The people in Jesus' day ate the poison of false beliefs, making it nearly impossible for them to wake up and believe that Jesus came from God. Today we must be diligent, too, to reject the poison of unbelief and false belief so prevalent in our churches, lest we too become anesthetized and unable to defend ourselves against alluring Satanic forces arrayed against us.

We'd be far better off forming neighborhood groups to study the Bible and engage in doing good for others, such as help with the children, help with the elderly, being friends by calling new acquaintances from time to time, sending something of interest to a sick person, adopting a long term care resident to give companionship or clothing to, etc., than by plopping down in a church pew for 2-3 hours, period.

The Bible emits a powerful beam of light, illuminating our minds, when we study it by ourselves or with friends and ask, "What does God want me to do?" This beam of light connects us to the Spirit of God, which in turn connects us to God himself. The Bible is the only book on earth, that I know of, that has that kind of power.

If we do the work God wants us to do, by removing evil and selfish acts and thoughts from our lives, and living to bless others, then we no longer need to be afraid to die, because our consciences will be clear and so will our life records. After life on earth is over, it will then be up to the Father and the Son to determine who will receive Everlasting Life, and who won't. Only the Pure and Unselfish will have a place in the Kingdom of the Stars.

May God have mercy on us all.

I'm getting another idea about the temple in "heaven", in space, really. (Heaven means "lofty", or "up".) There are these flying mountains mentioned in the Bible, "great and high". Mt. Zion is one of these, I believe. It may be very large, maybe 50 miles across at its base. Located on it's flat top, a square maybe 5-10 miles across, is the temple complex. On this upper area is the Sea of Glass where John saw the celebration of the arrival of the 144,000 from Earth.

After rescuing the righteous and leaving Earth, Mt. Zion journeys across space to the New Jerusalem, the huge starship city, then docks with it. After the ceremony and celebration, the 144,000 enter the city through the airlocks (gates). The much smaller craft, the "thrones" described by the prophets, are parked on the Sea of Glass in a hollow square surrounding Jesus and God on their "throne". This is beginning to make a little more sense to me.

We have a picture of God blazing away on Mt. Zion, his home out in space, somewhere. He releases so much energy that his subjects must be shielded by the Cherubim when he is within view.

Spirit can be defined as breath, or wind. I'm wondering if the tremendous amount of energy that God emits is his Spirit, the creative/healing/life-sustaining force that permeates the universe. Maybe it's just a one-way transfer of energy, so his Messengers must return to him with information that interests him. Maybe if God stopped emitting energy, all life in the universe would cease.

We too, have spirits, but a different kind than God's Spirit. It's main function is memory storage, but it can also be accessed by Messengers and the Spirit of God. It works like spyware...they can read our thoughts unknown to us. That's how God knows what we need even before we ask him.

Seems like there would be a time lag if a Messenger had to return to God with our requests, say for healing. Maybe they can travel very, very fast, or, they know a short cut in traveling great distances. When Jesus healed someone, it was instantaneous, or nearly so. My imagination is unable to come up with any other explanation about the Spirit of God at this time.

Maybe a repentant human is so rare that that's why the Messengers rejoice over it so much. It's probably very sad to them, to see so many humans waste their lives, oblivious to the wonders waiting for them because they don't believe, or don't do what they know is right. I'm ashamed of myself at times, because of the words that come out of my mouth. I can't give up hope, though. I just need to study the Bible more and talk less.

Disobedient, selfish people would not fit in well with God's crew. They would find fault with others or with God, perpetuating the cycle of Evil. It's an act of mercy, I suppose, that everyone who doesn't repent of their evil thoughts and acts are not permitted everlasting life. It would be an everlasting life of misery for them, and everyone else who had to be around them.

The Real Mt. Zion where God lives probably looks like a flying greenhouse. Its crew would have to grow their own food unless the travel time between inhabitible worlds is realtively short. I assume they eat, since Jesus ate food after he received a new body following his resurrection. The Temple Complex on top of the Real Mt. Zion has a lot of trees and plants, too. There's probably a circulating hydroponic watering system, containing all of the essential elements to keep the vegetation growing.

Everyone on the New Earth and the real Mt. Zion looks alike, a lot like the resurrected Jesus. I think they're all clones. Their stored memories were wiped clean of all memories of evil, then downloaded into these cloned bodies. They each have a secret password key, maybe to ID themselves, to track them, or to permit/restrict access to certain areas.

There would need to be classes to teach the people rescued from Earth the new rules, new concepts, and new skills for living on the New Earth, the New Jerusalem, and Mt. Zion. I'm thinking the 144K, who will join the crew of Mt. Zion, will each have an encounter with a Messenger (angel) to prepare them for the Great Time of Trouble during the final days of life on Earth. That would be enough to convince anyone of the reality of the Good News. Then, death would be preferable to sin.

Sometimes the Messengers look like humans, sometimes they look like machines, something resembling a space probe, really (feet of fire, polished metal). Maybe they can have their memories downloaded into different bodies or even machines. That's probably how Satan is able to change forms. He just transfers his memories into another victim. That victim then becomes him: Fiery Serpent becomes Angel of Light. Maybe the Good and Evil Angels operate that way, too. They can overpower human minds and cause them to do or say whatever they want.

It's OK for the Good Messengers to prompt us to do good things for others. We need to protect ourselves so the Evil Messengers can't prompt us to do evil things to ourselves and others.

We can learn a lot about the State of the Dead and the removal of evil from our life record by studying the Sanctuary service in the days of Moses. It's really sad that humans throughout time never really did comprehend it. They hated the only One who tried to set them straight.

Jesus became an ant to save the ants, but the ants were too stupid to understand it, so they ganged up on him and tried to pick fights with him. They finally beat him up, dragged his little ant body through the streets, and stapled him to a little stick poked into the ground and sneered and taunted him until his little ant body gave out and he died.

When the Supremely Bad Ant captured the Earth and made it his own territory, he demanded a ransom, one life for many, one Good Ant for all of the Bad Ants. When the One Good Ant turned himself over to the Supremely Bad Ant, the Bad Ants killed him.

But the Good Ants' Father gave him back his life. Someday, the Father and all of his helpers will fight one last battle to re-capture the Earth and restore it to its former glory. Then, the One Good Ant will be its good king, and all of the good little ants will be happy, forever.

We can all be good little ants who are always kind and helpful, who never lie or steal or cuss, who would even give up their own lives to save a fellow ant.

7= Earth, as in the 7 sectors or divisions of Earth, or, something directed at or concerning Earth

10= Satan's Kingdom on Earth

12= God's Kingdom

Perhaps the 7 lampstands which stand before God at the real Temple on the real Mt. Zion are the source of the Holy Spirit, which is directed at and encompasses the whole Earth.