Beginning with David, 3000 years ago, there has been a theme that has been as close to a universal intercession as any other.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. – Psalms 122:6
David took the city of Jerusalem from the Jebusites and it was there that the moveable, temporary tabernacle where God’s presence was to be recognized, was replaced by a permanent Temple.
Today we find spiritual insight and enlightenment in recognizing that the tabernacle represent the nature of man. Abraham, for example, had traveled but had built altars and had company with the Living God. Likewise, the gospel brings us the true promises that an individual can find fellowship with God. At the end of 2,000 of institutional Christendom, much of which does not satisfy man’s soul, we often highlight blessings which are obtained, one on one, with God alone.
However, it is valuable to notice that David’s temple was commissioned by God. David’s positioning of the his capitol, and therefore the location of God’s temple, to which Israel would come some three times a year from every border and village, was God’s idea.
Our individual and independent blessings and relationship with God is not all there is. There is a corporate, shared experience. IN this world, today – nothing has changed in this regard. The nations that worshiped idols and practiced every kind of barbaric evil in the area of that ‘crescent’ were defeated and a golden era followed.. for a while.
As an un-moving point on the map, Jerusalem was at the center of the ebb and flow of man’s faithfulness to seeking truth and to a relationship with God. Its people suffered greatly, from time to time, yet today focus remains on Jerusalem.
In the writing of the prophet Zechariah, God says “Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem.” (12:2)
This prophecy has been fulfilled once, and can be again – because the nature of man, and the purpose of God do not change, and there is only one earth and one shared destiny. Conflicts over man’s destiny will and do focus on Jerusalem.
So again, the prayer that has been on the lips of Jews, and should be shared by all humanity in these days…
“Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.”
It is also true that the scripture prophecies, in the book of Daniel, that using the bringing of peace to the conflicted Jews, a covenant would be made that would be broken by “the man of sin”. In days to come, many will speculate that Don Trump fulfills the criteria for this “antichrist”. In the ultimate fulfillment of that prophecy, the Jews accept that covenant, and find it broken by the maker, who is heralded by all the earth as the “man of peace”
Be reminded, you don’t know how to discern these works. You pray for the peace of Jerusalem, and leave the rest in God’s hands. A man destined to bring suffering and ruin and judgement on the world can indeed be a great president. You don’t have the spiritual eyes you think you have, and while “prophetic ministries” have savaged the human mind for more than 75 years, speculating over and over on these matters, its unlikely that most of the world, including Christians who eat this stuff up like comic books, will not be deceived also..
But good friends, be ready, for you know not the time. I leave you, Christian readers, with a reliable quote:
“But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is. For the Son of man is as a man taking a far journey, who left his house, and gave authority to his servants, and to every man his work, and commanded the porter to watch. Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning:
Lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping.
And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.”
-MB