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Articles 2014-2017
”Who is left among you who saw this temple in its former glory? And how do you see it now? In comparison with it, is this not in your eyes as nothing?
A remnant of God’s people had returned from Babylonian captivity and was rebuilding the temple. In comparison with the former one which Solomon had built, it seemed pretty unimpressive. But the Lord had a word of encouragement.
Yet now be strong, Zerubbabel,” says the Lord; “and be strong, Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest; and be strong, all you people of the land,” says the Lord, “and work; for I am with you,” says the Lord of hosts. “According to the word that I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt, so My Spirit remains among you; do not fear!”
None of those present had actually been there when God brought Israel out of Egypt. But His word to their fathers was a word to them; they were a people of destiny. And the Lord was with them by the power of His Spirit as much as He had been with their fathers when He drowned their Egyptian oppressors and brought His people to Mount Sinai.
Though circumstances seemed to indicate that the present work of God was insignificant; it was anything but. The Lord was using this seemingly unimpressive remnant people to prepare the earth for a series of events that would change the world forever. During the days of their fathers, He had shaken:
The heavens by binding the spiritual powers empowering Egypt
The earth by flooding their nation with plagues
The sea by destroying Egyptian military power in the Red Sea, and
The dry land by the earth-shaking events at Mount Sinai.
Now He intended to once more arise in staggering power to deliver His people from their true captors – Satan, his fallen angelic cohorts, and the power of sin. And the rebuilt temple would be necessary for the task.
For thus says the Lord of hosts: “Once more (it is a little while) I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and dry land;
Just like He had shaken the whole creation when He brought His people out from slavery and gave them His Law, so He would require only one more shaking of the creation to establish His rule among men. His strategy would not require two or three more attempts; one would be sufficient.
Sure enough, the heavens began to shake when our God overshadowed Mary and became one of us. Then the religious system began to shake as well when at the age of twelve He confounded the teachers of the Law with His wisdom and insight. Of course, it began to shake even more when He replaced the greedy changers of money in the temple with His own glorious presence and began to heal the sick and proclaim His Kingdom. But even more was the shaking felt when as the manifest glory of God, He walked out of the temple, declared it desolate, and referred to it as their house instead of God’s house (Matthew 23:38). The glory had departed.
Following these events, heaven and earth quaked when He went to the cross and broke sin’s power.[35] When He who knew no sin became sin and then died and rose again, He forever broke Satan’s grip on the nations. With the power of sin broken, humanity could now turn to Him and be freed from the tentacles of darkness.
I do not think that we in Christianity have fully come to grips with the amazing destruction that God inflicted on the powers of darkness through Calvary. Our God did not do a half-baked job. He stripped the powers of their weaponry and left them with nothing but the lie. And though they have been quite successful in the propagation of their lies throughout Church history, an emerging light is increasing in the house of God. This light will grow as He continues to bring among us an increased disclosure of His Son by the power of the Holy Spirit. And the more it dawns on us who Christ is and what He purchased for us two thousand years ago, the more our faith will arise to lay hold of our inheritance. Spiritual success is not about striving for more faith to do miraculous works; it is about our crying out to God that He would arise afresh in the earth for the full accomplishing of His purpose. And He has promised in scripture to do so.
Clearly, Christ successfully became the perfect and sufficient foundation for everything Heaven would do to fill the earth with the knowledge of the glory of God. And since where we are at is still a distance from where He is taking us, our hearts bow before His sovereignty and with godly fear and hope in His amazing mercy, we walk with a growing expectation of an increased insight into His glorious person and purpose.
Too many Christians are looking toward the return of Christ at the end of history to solve what is wrong on earth. And surely His return is our blessed hope. But Christ’s reappearance will be the culmination of His work in history. It was His first coming that established the foundation for His work by the Spirit to bring Heaven’s glory into the nations. In the coming years, we will hear from Heaven a persistent and increasing emphasis on the cross, what was accomplished there, and the ramifications to come among the nations.
One of those effects will be among us an increased faith for intensified intrusions from Heaven. Armed with a growing awareness of just what our inheritance actually is, believers will increasingly speak with an authority over cancer, infectious diseases, and other afflictions that presently weigh so heavily upon us in God’s house. The very activities of Christ our Head done in Israel two thousand years ago will be done through His body in every nation. The kingdom that He proclaimed would emerge slowly on earth like a tree growing in a garden (Mark 4:30 - 32) will begin to flower into the fullness that today we all dream about. I believe that those dreams are not simply from our own souls but from Heaven.
As a result of God’s shaking the whole creation at the first advent of His son, He promised that He would then begin to focus specifically on the nations (Matthew 28:19).
and I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the Desire of All Nations, and I will fill this temple with glory,” says the Lord of hosts.
Over the last two thousand years our God has shaken the nations in many different ways. We have seen wars, rumors of wars, economic booms and busts, geological quakes, and the rise of many false religions. Through it all, He has been extending His rule among men. And many have come to Him. Scholars tell us that the word “Desire” above is plural and is better translated as “the desirable or choicest things”. The English Revised Version phrases it this way – “the desirable things of all nations shall come.” What is it that is desirable from the eternal perspective? Is it not the souls of men?
When nations shake, many turn to the Lord. When multitudes lose their footing and find their whole lives in upheaval, God opens doors for His people to share the Good News of His unshakeable kingdom.
And in order to facilitate the whole procedure, God would fill with His glory the specific temple of Haggai’s day, the one that seemed unimpressive in the light of the house that Solomon had built. The Lord wanted Haggai’s generation to understand that the project they were involved in was not only significant and strategic; it was absolutely necessary to His overall worldwide plan.
And though silver and gold seemed in short supply compared to what had been available to Solomon, the people were not to worry about such things. The wealth of the whole world belonged to God anyway.
”The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine,” says the Lord of hosts.
They were not to focus on what the world thought of as wealth; they were to think in terms of a greater glory yet to come.
”The glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former,” says the Lord of hosts. “And in this place I will give peace,” says the Lord of hosts.
The glory of the former house had been God revealed in a cloud; the greater glory to come would be the same God revealed in a body of flesh.
And the Word (Christ) became flesh (human, incarnate) and tabernacled (fixed His tent of flesh, lived awhile) among us; and we [actually] saw His glory (His honor, His majesty), such glory as an only begotten son receives from his father, full of grace (favor, loving-kindness) and truth.
(John 1:14 Amplified Bible)
And the peace that He revealed in the temple was clearly not an external one – the absence of conflict (think in terms of Him driving out the money changers); it was His own presence manifest in the midst of conflict. Wherever the Prince of Peace walked, He manifested the peace of Heaven.
Turning to the New Testament, we find in the book of Hebrews a reference to Haggai’s prophecy about the “once more” shaking of the whole creation.
First, we see that the recipients of the epistle to the Hebrews, the Jewish believers of the first century had not come to a physical mountain like their fathers had at Mount Sinai.
For you have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire, and to blackness and darkness and tempest.
But they had all come to a spiritual mountain.
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.
Simply put, Mount Zion was now to be found wherever the Church of Christ gathered. Here was the city that Abraham had been looking for, whose builder and maker is God. Here would be found the activity of many angels, and the hearts of righteous men who had matured by the power of the Spirit. And the gateway of entrance into this Heaven-constructed city was the cleansing blood of Christ.
What began in physical Jerusalem as recorded in Acts Chapter 2 would now be found in every nation on earth. But God was issuing a warning to the Jewish believers of the first century.
See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven, whose voice then shook the earth; but now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven.”
Many believers have read this warning and concluded that Scripture is referring to an event in our future. Someday, God will again shake heaven and earth. But the writer was quoting Haggai. And to Haggai, the shaking of heaven and earth was future.
But God had now arisen and shaken the creation through the life, death, and resurrection of His Son. And the Hebrew believers needed to be reminded of the all-encompassing nature of what He had just done. Some had begun to lose sight of what the Lord was birthing in Israel as well as in the Gentile nations and had begun forsaking assembling together with other believers (Hebrews 10:25). Perhaps they had come to believe that meeting in simple homes was not as impressive and effective as meeting in the glorious temple. But as Jesus had prophesied, the Roman armies were soon to come and destroy Jerusalem, put an end to the temple, the Aaronic priesthood, and the sacrificial system connected to it (Luke 19:41 - 44, 21:5 - 6).
The system that had been put in place to be a shadow of Christ and had then been corrupted by men was beginning to shake and was about to be removed.
Now this, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain.
What was it that was breaking into human history that would endure forever?
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace (Greek, ECHO CHARIS – “lay hold of grace”), by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire.
The consuming fire of God’s judgments would soon be released through the Roman armies. A fearful time for Israel was dawning. Now was not the season to be forsaking times of assembly with others who were filled with the Holy Spirit, who were walking in intimacy with the Lord of heaven and earth. Rather, it was time to lay hold of God’s grace. He was supplying the grace necessary to love Him, to walk with Him, and to resist the pressures from their society to go back to thinking that Old Covenant sacrificial practices were sufficient for receiving God’s forgiveness.
Those sacrifices never could take away sins. But Christ through His one eternal sacrifice had made the way open for all who believe to enter God’s holy dwelling. Therefore, believers were to draw near to Him with true hearts in full assurance of faith (Hebrews 10:11 - 22).
Let us hear from these verses the call of God to draw near to Him in our day. Darkness is arising and nations are shaking. But grace from Heaven is available for those who will humble themselves before Him. Here is where we will discover the wisdom on how to walk in what is unshakeable in a time when much is being shaken.
Donald Rumble – August 2016
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