By Dr. Joel McDurmon
Jesus told the chief priest and elders of the people, “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits” (Matt. 21:43). For many people, this verse provides the heart of “replacement theology”—the idea that the Christian Church has replaced the old physical nation of Israel as God’s chosen people and priestly nation (1 Pet. 2:9-10, et al).
Without requiring the use of the label
“replacement,” this is essentially what the verse teaches. It does not
mean that Jewish people can never again taste of God’s grace, it simply
means that the Old Covenant way of God’s witness and work on earth—the
Old Testament Temple ritual system—was being abolished, along with
everyone in that generation who rejected and killed God’s prophets and
Messiah. The Temple was being abolished because it was never meant to be
permanent, but only a symbol that pointed to the reality of Jesus
Christ, the true Temple, the true Emanuel—the true presence of “God with
us.” Those Jews who rejected the true Temple and insisted on clinging
to the Old Testament traditions were thereby committing idolatry just as
grossly as any pagan ritual. The Kingdom had moved on to its greater
fulfillment. Those who refused to embrace the fulfillment found
themselves bereft of the true Kingdom—it would be taken from them, and
given to the disciples of the true and faithful people of God.
Jesus denounced the teachers of the old tradition which led the way
in opposing Him. These were mainly the Pharisees, and Christ’s
denunciation of them appears in Matthew 23 among other places. It
extends to the whole of the physical city of Jerusalem of which they
were representatives in disbelief. Jesus concluded with the prediction
that Jerusalem would fall because she was responsible for “all the
righteous blood shed upon earth” and that she was “the city that kills
the prophets” (Matt. 23:35, 37).
Mystery Babylon
From this sweeping condemnation we can learn that the city called
“Babylon” in Revelation 17 and 18 is not the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar,
but Jerusalem called Babylon because she had corrupted herself and
become like that ancient pagan Empire:
The woman was arrayed in purple and
scarlet [colors of the chief priest and the Temple; Ex. 25-28; 38-39],
and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a
golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual
immorality. And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: “Babylon
the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth’s abominations” (Rev.
17:4-5).
And how do we know this blasphemous Babylonian “mystery” whore is
indeed Jerusalem? Because she is pronounced guilty of the exclusive
crime which Jesus earlier pinned on Jerusalem:
And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood
of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus….. Then a mighty
angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea,
saying, So will Babylon the great city be thrown down with violence, and
will be found no more….. And in her was found the blood of prophets and
of saints, and of all who have been slain on earth (Rev. 17:6, 18:21,
24).
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Thus, it is highly likely that when Peter wrote his first epistle from “Babylon” (1 Pet. 5:13), he was literally writing from Jerusalem, which he had by then already condemned “in these last times” (1 Pet. 1:20) as Babylon. Peter was, after all, an apostle to the Circumcision as Paul said (Gal. 2:7).
It was not uncommon practice in that
window between Christ’s ascension and Jerusalem’s destruction that the
New Testament writers symbolized Jerusalem with the names of the great
enemies of God’s people down through the ages. Thus, Revelation speaks
of “the great city” where the “Lord was crucified”—obviously
Jerusalem—“that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt” (Rev. 11:8).
Some would complain that interpreting
the Great Whore of Babylon of Revelation 17 as Jerusalem is
anti-Semitic. But this is ad hominem nonsense. How anti-Semitic was it
of John (a Jew!)—calling Jerusalem “Sodom” and “Egypt” instead of
praying for her peace as dispensationalists demand we do. The nerve of
him.
Thus it is understandable when Paul
compares the false teachers creeping in the Church to Pharaoh’s
magicians (2 Tim. 3:8-9). Likewise, Matthew 2 presents Jesus as the New
Israel fleeing from the new Pharaoh who kills all the male babies.
Except the roles are reversed: Jesus’ family has to flee into Egypt in
order to avoid this new Pharaoh, who is Herod. Lesson: Old Israel has
become like Egypt, the persecutor of God’s people, and he shall suffer
the plague of Egypt, while Jesus is the true Israel.
Keep in mind, it was Herod who then
ruled Jerusalem and who had rebuilt the Temple at which the Jews then
sacrificed. Once Jesus appeared on the scene as the Final Sacrifice, the
sacrifices at the Temple became idolatrous. It was then rejecting God
to continue that system. It was, in fact, to commit the abomination of
desolation, because it was an idolatrous sacrifice in the Temple which
caused God’s presence to leave that House desolate. Indeed, God’s
presence would forever leave that Temple to dwell in the New Temple,
Jesus Christ and His People. This occurred on the day of Jesus’ baptism,
as we shall see, and was furthered on the day of Pentecost. Within a
generation, the idolatrous, adulterous nation—the great whore temple in
Jerusalem—suffered a final blow from God. It was destroyed into
oblivion.
Thus it is further understandable that
the inspired writers would refer to their persecutors and false brethren
in their Church as “them which say
they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan” (Rev. 2:9).
they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan” (Rev. 2:9).
Conclusion
Modern-day
Christians simply do not understand that when they demand the land of
Israel for the Old Jewish people so that they may rebuild a Temple and
resume sacrifices, they are praying for the rankest and vilest of
idolatries to occur. God destroyed that Temple for that very reason in
ad 70. Why would He now change and desire it to be rebuilt?
You may think that since God did this
once before in the time of Jeremiah, for example—sending His people into
exile with their Temple destroyed behind them, and then restoring them
to the land once again to rebuild another Temple—then He will do the
same again. But with Jesus’ pronouncement of the destruction of the
Temple, it was different. This time the True Temple Himself came as the
rebuilt (resurrected) Temple. This time there would be no bricks and
mortar, but rather a stone cut out with hands (Dan. 2:34, 44-45). The
Old Jewish people were not merely exiled from their kingdom someday to
return. No. This time, the Kingdom was taken from them and given to the
true nation bearing the fruits thereof.
Christ created a new bride. Why would
Christ desire to return to the whore He has cast aside and divorced when
He has a pristine bride descending from heaven, clothed in
righteouness, and uncorrupted by idolatry? He doesn’t. He left that
whore riding her patron, the beast of Rome. And the great mother of
harlots suffered the judgment of her whoredom. She was divorced and
disinherited. The inheritance now belongs to the bride.
Jesus knew all of this ahead of time—at
least from the day of His baptism, as we shall see. He knew from His
many clashes with the Jewish leaders as well as from Bible prophecy that
the Temple would be left desolate and the city in ruin. His final
journey to Jerusalem is the record of Jesus publically exhibiting all
the evidence against what had become an idolatrous, Messiah-rejecting
nation. Jesus was presenting a covenant lawsuit for the divorce of that
idolatrous prostitute.
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