For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 Corinthians 5:1.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God says:
There was a time in His ministry on earth as one of you, that during the day Jesus was teaching in the temple, but at evening He would go out and spend the night on the mount that is called Olivet, and there He would spend time with Me. And all the people would get up early in the morning to come to Him in the temple to listen to Him. Luke 21:37-38.
On one of the days while Jesus was teaching the people in the temple and preaching the gospel, some were talking about the temple, that it was adorned with beautiful stones and votive gifts, but Jesus said, “As for these things which you are looking at, the days will come in which there will not be left one stone upon another which will not be torn down.” Luke 21:6.
Temporal things, no matter how permanent they look, are not forever. Now spiritual and eternal things are forever. Therefore, do not lose heart. Though your outer man is decaying, yet your inner man is being renewed day by day. For no matter what you are going through or what effects of aging you see in your body, it is actually only momentary light affliction that is producing for you an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison. Do not focus your attention on the things which are seen, but on the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18.
Trust Me to keep you in good health and to give you a long vigorous life with continual renewal, and help Me out with this by not abusing your flesh with food, alcohol, drugs, and lack of exercise, but you will age. Moses attained 120 years and he was still vigorous and strong with undimmed eyes. But he did not look like when he was twenty. You are fashioned from the dust of the clay and your earthly flesh, due to Adam’s fall, is corruptible, and for now that earthly tent is your house on earth, but when it is torn down by physical death, that is not the end for your spirit and soul which it houses. You have a building from Me wherein you will dwell, a heavenly glorious immortal body, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in your present house of flesh, you groan, longing to be clothed with your dwelling from heaven, inasmuch as you, having put it on, will not be found naked. For indeed while you are in this tent, you groan, being burdened, because you do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, and seeing yourself aging can be disheartening if you do not understand that metamorphosis is soon to take place. So that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life. Now I prepared you for this very transformation and gave to you the Spirit as a pledge, a guarantee of life eternal in a perfect glorified body, beautiful beyond all you can ask or imagine but still looking exactly like you. 2 Corinthians 5:1-5. “Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him.” 1 Corinthians 2:9. But I have revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even My deepest thoughts. 1 Corinthians 2:10.
David understood that he would go the way of his ancestors but he told his servants when the first baby born to Bathsheba died “I will go to him, but he will not return to me.” And in Psalm 103, David sang, “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him. For He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust. As for man, his days are like grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. When the wind has passed over it, it is no more, and its place acknowledges it no longer. But the lovingkindness of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him.” Psalm 103:11-17.
Jesus told Martha near the tomb of her brother Lazarus, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.” John 11:25-26. Absent from the body, present with Me. Forever for those who believe in My Son, for He is the resurrection and the life, and when you believe in Him, I seal you in Him by the Holy Spirit and I have commanded Him to raise you on the Last Day. What is mortal will be clothed in youthful immortality. A glorified body is beyond all you can ask or imagine. And that is yours in Christ Jesus pointing to the good things to come.
Paul, to whom I showed the third Heaven, told you, “Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord— for we walk by faith, not by sight— we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.” 2 Corinthians 6-10.
Now, I will go back to Jesus at the Temple with His disciples where I started today’s Manna. The disciples questioned Him, about the destruction of the Temple that He had predicted, saying, “Teacher, when therefore will these things happen? And what will be the sign when these things are about to take place?” And He said, “See to it that you are not misled; for many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am He,’ and, ‘The time is near.’ Do not go after them. When you hear of wars and disturbances, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end does not follow immediately.” Luke 21:8-9. Here I am showing you what is to come, so pay attention. Then He continued by saying to them, “Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be great earthquakes, and in various places plagues and famines; and there will be terrors and great signs from heaven.” You should not be unaware at what you are seeing even now. Plagues, earthquakes, wars, famine. These are stepping up for the devil knows his time is short. The leasehold dominion that Adam gave to him is coming to an end and soon My Son will break the seven seals of the title deed scroll in Heaven.
But for the disciples the age in which you are living was 2,000 years away. So Jesus told them that before all these signs there would be persecutions of the early church and other things taking place. He foretold, “They will lay their hands on you and will persecute you, delivering you to the synagogues and prisons, bringing you before kings and governors for My name’s sake. (This you see in the life of My apostle Paul.). It will lead to an opportunity for your testimony. So make up your minds not to prepare beforehand to defend yourselves; for I will give you utterance and wisdom which none of your opponents will be able to resist or refute. But you will be betrayed even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death, and you will be hated by all because of My name. et not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.” Luke 21:10-19.
And that was the first wave of Satan’s attacks against the newborn church, the Body of Christ. But he has never let up on his attacks.
And he also went after Jerusalem, Rome attacked close to the year A.D. 70 and Jesus’ prophesy was fulfilled with the destruction of My Temple. “But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then recognize that her desolation is near. Then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains, and those who are in the midst of the city must leave, and those who are in the country must not enter the city; because these are days of vengeance, so that all things which are written will be fulfilled. Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days; for there will be great distress upon the land and wrath to this people; and they will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” Luke 21:20-24. All this took place just as Jesus foretold. The Jewish people who had rejected My protection in Christ and gone with the Caesar’s of the world as their king found that they had made a poor choice. But I heard their cries as I did in Egypt under the slavery of Pharaoh, and I took them back to their land when the times of the Gentiles were fulfilled. The Gentiles had filled up the cup of their injustices to My people and I was justified to rid the land of them.
But this is where you are now. The times have been fulfilled and all is lined up for the most glorious time for the church and the worst time for those who have aligned against the Body of Christ that history has ever known and will never know again, for soon the end will come, and, as I told My prophet Daniel, after a period of desolation, the court will sit for judgment, and the evil one’s dominion will be taken away, annihilated and destroyed forever. Then the sovereignty, the dominion and the greatness of all the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be given to the people of the saints of the Highest One; His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all the dominions will serve and obey Him.” Daniel 7:26-27.
And I gave Daniel the timing of events for the end times as well. The prophecy of the weeks as years that you find in the ninth chapter of Daniel. “So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress. Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined. And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.” Daniel 9:25-27. Jesus came on Palm Sunday into Jerusalem right on the day predicted and then was crucified. And in A.D. 70, the Roman army, led by the future Emperor Titus (the “prince who is to come” that Daniel foretold), with Tiberius Julius Alexander as his second-in-command, conquered the city of Jerusalem and tore down the Temple.
And My final words to Daniel’s questions about all these things to come? “And there will be a time of distress such as never occurred since there was a nation until that time; and at that time your people, everyone who is found written in the book, will be rescued. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt. Those who have insight will shine brightly like the brightness of the expanse of heaven, and those who lead the many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.” Daniel 12:1-3. “But as for you, go your way to the end; then you will enter into rest and rise again for your allotted portion at the end of the age.” Daniel 12:13.
And let us go back to Jesus as He prophesied to His disciples that day long ago on the Temple mount, “There will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth dismay among nations, in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting from fear and the expectation of the things which are coming upon the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. But when these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Luke 21:25-28. When you hear that trumpet blast, in the twinkling of an eye, I will catch you who believe up to meet My Son in the air. He has rescued you from the wrath to come.
Then Jesus told them a parable: “Behold the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they put forth leaves, you see it and know for yourselves that summer is now near. So you also, when you see these things happening, recognize that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I say to you, this race (the Jewish people, the descendants of Abraham according to the flesh) will not pass away until all things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.” Luke 21:29-33. Jesus told you that the Jewish people from whom He took flesh and the recipients of My Word and covenants of blessing will be the pivotal people in the end times. And you see that now. It is all centered around Israel and the forces are lining up. The Hebrews people have not taken Jesus as Messiah as a race yet, so they will stay till the end. They will all be saved in the tribulation. For I do not want you to be uninformed of this mystery—so that you will not be wise in your own estimation—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved. Romans 11:25-26.
And how did Jesus finish up His prophecy that day on the Temple Mount? “Be on guard, so that your hearts will not be weighted down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of life, and that day will not come on you suddenly like a trap; for it will come upon all those who dwell on the face of all the earth. But keep on the alert at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are about to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.” Luke 21:34-36.
Many of you are wasting your time weighted down with the worries of life, worries of temporal things at your job, in your family, divisions, squabbles, taking offense, divorcing, blaming, shaming, sending nasty emails, tattling on one another at work or school. Why? Where will this get you in the end? Believers are saved but you will come before the judgment seat of Christ for your rewards. And as My beloved John put it, “Watch yourselves, that you do not lose what we have accomplished, but that you may receive a full reward.” 2 John 1:8. David said his inheritance was fair to him indeed. And I told Daniel he would receive his allotted portion. I told Abraham his reward would be very great. Paul said a merited crown awaited him. Mary said all generations would call her blessed. Selah. What have you been doing during the quarantine of the plague of Covid-19 (Jesus told you that plagues would come) as My good and faithful child? Have you been like Daniel and had revelations from Me? Have you spent your time as David did praising Me and leading his companions in magnifying me together as he hid in caves from the fury of Saul? Have you been speaking to the mountain? Have you been interceding for souls each day with Jesus your great High Priest? Have you been in fellowship with Me and been encouraging and doing good, sharing with those in need? Or are you like the unfaithful servant that wasted his time in sinful pleasures and spent his time abusing those of his household? Or have you spent your days in fear and trembling without a bit of trust in your good Shepherd to provide for you and lead you out so that you have withheld your tithes, offerings, and help to the poor? I am still your healer, you know, I have not changed My Name. And your good Shepherd has promised never to leave you.
I love you. Do not worry so hard about the temporal things, cast those cares on Me because I care for you and do what I show you, but raise the eyes of your heart to the eternal, and walk in the Spirit with Me. Your outer man may be decaying but your inner man is renewing day by day as you walk in newness of life. And what is inside will work out.