THE FOLLOWING IS AN UPDATED POST ABOUT JERUSALEM by Roger Harned originally published on
TALK OF JESUS .COM
APRIL 14, A.D. 2014
about Palm Sunday in Jerusalem
Do you with eyes to see Jerusalem as it is and was in the time of Jesus see it?
It is not unlike today.
Jerusalem is no longer Holy to the Lord!
The dome of the false prophet boasts victory over the Jesus of the Jews.
Christ did not claim the city or the mount or the Temple.
The Messiah King of the Jews did not win the battle of the day.
AND thus far, JESUS has not won the battle of this day!
~ A.D. 30
Jerusalem had been taken by Rome, as it once had been conquered by Babylon.
The enemies of the Jews have their own gods. Stone idols, Myths, false prophets who are mere mortals from their cultural past, men and women who are and will remain dead.
The enemies of the Jews of Jerusalem have their own cities with their own gods.
For two millennia since that notable kingly entry of the Son of Man worshiped as He approached Jerusalem, anti-Christs have opposed their own Savior, the Messiah and Eternal King of not only the Jews but a KING of KINGS over all of the world for all of time into eternity.
You must understand that these are battles for God.
These are battles AGAINST God in every generation until the last.
CLAIM to Jerusalem is important
Is it an international island of Palestine?
Does Jerusalem legitimately reclaim its nation of Israel bequeathed once more to it by a United writ of the Nations which had opposed Zion’s rule for millennia?
Not even David ruled in Jerusalem for many years of his reign.
Yet as it is now, and in certain prescribed seasons, the hills of Jerusalem rise into a yearly international spotlight of the world. It was during one of these great feasts that the Messiah of Israel approached its gate on what Christians now call Palm Sunday.
פֶּסַח
pesaḥ [Passover]
Why do the Jews make pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover?
What were all the Jews commemorating?
And let us not forget that Jesus was a Jew - a son of man born to the line of David - the Messiah Savior of Israel making His way there on Palm Sunday.
God had saved the Hebrew people from Egypt and led them by His promise to Israel. Jerusalem was Holy to the Lord for the chosen people of the Lord.
Moses did not build the Temple.
THE TEMPLE
Built by Solomon and completed ~957 Before Christ,
King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon destroyed Solomon’s temple around 586 or 587 B.C.
Putting aside the false claims of the false prophet (that Jerusalem was not given to the Jews, but belongs to Arabs), God had a personal relationship with the Hebrew people. Moses had met with God in the Tabernacle — a tent of worship and forerunner of the Temple.
God would make His Presence known at various times… in the Tabernacle and in the Temple.
King David brought the Tabernacle to Jerusalem.
Yet the LORD commanded that The Temple would be built by King Solomon. This was at a time when the Lord blessed Israel with great power and might for His own glory.
AND of course no good Jew would neglect a reverence and respect for:
- Moses who had led them from slavery in Egypt,
- David who had conquered most of the people and lands of Canaan (Palestine) and
- Solomon, who not only built the TEMPLE but conquered vast surrounding lands, nations and peoples who then sent great riches to Israel.
(But all that had been before great division and disobedience to the LORD by generations of Kings who mostly did ‘what was evil in the sight of the LORD.)
- Therefore the LORD’s Temple built by Solomon had been destroyed, Jerusalem captured and then both eventually restored on a much smaller scale.
Israel’s false client Kings, The Herod’s
The Temple itself (we ought to remind ourselves) is NOT the Temple Solomon built which was completely destroyed.
The Temple also was NOT the Temple Nehemiah rebuilt, but a prideful project of Herod to build back bigger than the LORD’s intention.
A.D. 70
Herod’s Temple would be destroyed by the Romans just 40 years after Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, crucifixion and resurrection.
Christ’s entry into Jerusalem and history remain controversial even to this day in the year of our Lord, 2023.
Jesus had been rumored to have fed thousands in the wilderness just like Moses had fed the Hebrew people by the hand of God for forty years.
Word on the street had it that Jesus was approaching Jerusalem, again. AND, as always, the crowds gathered.. this time along the road from Bethany where rumor has it that this JESUS, the Galilean of Nazareth and Capernaum, had raised a man from the dead and told him to follow with the funeral crowds to Jerusalem’s Passover feast.
This time the crowds (under the watchful eyes of their Roman captors) would pour into the city as Jesus would enter like the conquering King David, look around (doing nothing) — and then leave.
But the overall purpose of the LORD God (which no mortal man understood at the time) was worship through a NEW COVENANT of grace and a personal filling of the Holy Spirit of God.
Jesus brought not the Tabernacle of God to Jerusalem, but the Very Presence of God.
Roger@TalkofJesus.com
Jesus was coming into Jerusalem for the Passover feast. Everyone would be there… waiting for their King and Savior.
- Did He really have the power of God?
- Is He the promised one, as John the Baptizer had preached?
One more thing about Jerusalem and its buildings:
Llike any city, people lived there, people worked there, people visited there.
(Tourism was and still is big, especially during the big religious holidays. And of course the out-of-town tourists here for the festival are NOT all acceptable to our ‘religion‘ which celebrates this feast.)
Like anywhere else, the rich ran things and the poor just got by.
The rulers of the city were the leading Jews: Priests, Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, Temple guards and Temple police, officials of Herod’s household and officials of Herod’s governments of the city and of the region.
All of these had their role to play. And not so unlike today the religious establishment managed the money of their patrons well.
The King IS here. He IS in the Temple.
This particular Temple was built by Herod, grandfather of this King Herod. With Rome’s help the Great King Herod had been the great builder of many great buildings in Jerusalem and the surrounding area.
As a point of fact, the Temple (of any era) was just another Grande building used as a place of worship.
Imagine the grandeur of the present-day Vatican and you will have an image of Herod’s Third Temple, where Jesus would soon make a scene after riding triumphantly to the Gate of Jerusalem on a donkey.
Yet a church or Cathedral without Jesus is just a building.
The Temple without God was just a building.
BUT THIS WAS NEVER GOD’S INTENTION!
THE LORD’S VICTORY IN JERUSALEM
WAS NEVER INTENDED FOR A PALM SUNDAY PARADE.
For this Celebration of Christ’s Holy Presence
Was just a prelude to His victory
Of the Cross.
إشعياء – Isaiæ – Ησαΐας – יְשַׁעְיָהוּ
56:7 וַהֲבִיאוֹתִים אֶל־הַר קָדְשִׁי וְשִׂמַּחְתִּים בְּבֵית תְּפִלָּתִי עוֹלֹתֵיהֶם וְזִבְחֵיהֶם לְרָצוֹן עַֽל־מִזְבְּחִי כִּי בֵיתִי בֵּית־תְּפִלָּה יִקָּרֵא לְכָל־הָעַמִּֽים׃
That’s it (for the Palm Sunday procession of Israel’s Messiah to Jerusalem).
On Monday of HOLY WEEK the Lord Jesus will have something to say about Scripture. Jesus’ ACTS in the TEMPLE will fulfill it.
Even those I will bring to My holy mountain
And make them glad in My house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on My altar;
For My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples.”
Isaiah 56:7 LSB
To Be Continued…
