What do you fear the most? Would the sudden and permanent rejection of your love top the list? There is a reason for the expression “broken hearts”. There is even a physiological condition that can pair with that expression so extremely it can actually kill you. It is said that Jesus died of a broken heart while on the cross. The separation from His Father was so intense while He bore the sin of the world, it killed Him. And this fear of rejected love is something our God understands very well. For it is God who suffers a rejection of His love from His creations, despite how passionately He feels about us. When we tell Him no. When we keep pushing Him away, until finally our time expires and the sleep of death cements the longevity of our rejection. This is a fate for His children that our Father never wants to see, and our enemy simply revels in. Satan is able to wound the heart of God by seducing His children away from His love to pursue happiness another way, a self-centered way. These wounds may always be in the heart of our God who is incapable of forgetting the child He loved so much, but was unable to bring back to His side forever. And the central tenant that underlies an eternity of life, or death, is love.
For those who embrace submission of the heart to Jesus Christ, maintaining that submission is all that matters. As Jesus re-creates who you are, how you love becomes job one. Shifting your love away from self to others, and then deepening it beyond all reason, and you will begin to see what harmony with God looks like. Anything that might interfere with that life altering love, that transformation that only Jesus can bring, must be considered the enemy of souls, more specifically of your soul. So when Jesus looks at world events, from the time of His disciples, until the end of all things – He is not worried about “when” the end will be. He is worried that we might turn our hearts away from Him as time ticks by. He is worried about the loss of even one child who decides there is a substitute for Jesus, another way to get to Nirvana, a different path to God – that all may sound good, but as they lead away from Jesus, they cut us off from the only transformation we are ever offered that works. Jesus works. His transformation will re-create you from who you are today, into who Jesus can envision you can become. The “other” paths are distraction that lead nowhere, but to pain, and eventually death.
An eye that can see all of time in an instant, sees only the loss of His precious children, and seeks to take that loss down to zero. The disciples asked for signs in the gospel of Matthew chapter 24. But Jesus seeks to keep hearts in a path that will lead to His Father. Anything that would distract from that, are the conditions, the prophetic warnings, He must relay to us – in hopes that by telling us what is happening, and what will happen, we will be warned against the distractions and keep our eyes ever on Jesus alone. He picks up relaying a series of events that span our world’s history but share a common theme. It begins in verse 15 saying … “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) [verse 16] Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:” Matthew when he writes this gospel already sees signs in the exploding Christian Church of problems that were not apparent when Jesus spoke these words.
The “abomination of desolation” has meaning even in the days of Matthew. For it will precede the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem. But it is not, as his contemporaries will reason, the desecration of the Temple by Roman actions. Nor is it, as we might reason, the condemnation of Jesus by the Temple priests and leadership. It is a more insidious thing, a more cancerous virus, that spares not men, nor women, nor children. It is an abomination of hearts. It is the seeking of power over love, of hierarchy instead of one-on-one leadership by Jesus to every believer. It is the attempt at making salvation personal, by taking personal control over it, wresting it away from the hands of Jesus, and placing it in our own. Making statements that “we” must do “our part” before God will do His. It is the ceding of a pure gospel of 100% dependence upon Jesus, with the insertion of self into every facet of the gospel. We put self on the throne and bump Jesus into the “co-pilot” chair. It is stone hearts that understand a lust for wealth, and are mystified at those who would give every penny they have for another in need.
The abomination of desolation puts man ahead of God, and it comes in a variety of forms. From the audacious who believes he is the “vicar” of Christ; to the Islamist who venerates Jesus as “great” but not God. It happens in modern protestant churches as we proclaim our responsibility for ending sin, instead of looking for that from Jesus alone who is able to see it done. That phrase, that fear of God, had meaning to Matthew, but it had meaning during the dark ages, and it still has meaning today. It remains a desolation of hearts that should strike fear into us all. For we are its target, and may well already be under its spell, looking away from Jesus for the things that only Jesus could ever see accomplished.
Jesus begins with an answer to the original question the disciples asked, the destruction of the temple as He continues in verse 17 saying … “him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house: [verse 18] Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes. [verse 19] And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! [verse 20] But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day:” These words reflect a sudden desolation. The destruction of the Temple foretold by Christ would come with devastating effect. The Romans would march angry over continued Jewish attempts at rebellion, looking to forever crush the residents of the Holy Land. They would kill everything they touched. They were not there for mercy, they were there in an angry state of revenge. No amount of blood would be enough. So it is in that context that Jesus warns His believers not to prize belongings over their very existence. Take what you have on you. Trust me. And flee for your lives. He offers sympathy to those nursing mothers, and asks us to pray that it does not come in winter, or on Sabbath.
The destruction of the Temple would happen many years after His death. And yet Jesus is still asking us to pray that the flight from it would not happen on Sabbath. Clearly, Jesus still cared about His Holy day. It was not nailed to a cross as some have conveniently tried to argue. And all of the activities one would have to do while fleeing for their lives would prevent them from enjoying the Sabbath as it was intended with their God. So if flight happened another day, it would be better. Not happening in winter allows for the fact that the person in the field was to simply drop everything and run. No time to get extra coats or clothing. True believers in Jesus Christ have always faced persecution, and have generally always run from it. The running has the side effect of spreading the gospel to new places and so in that sense not a horrible thing. But Jesus tells us that persecution because we love is something we are going to face, it is the way of things.
Jesus then seems to look across time from that time to this and sees a common tragedy as He continues in verse 21 saying … “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. [verse 22] And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.” There was great persecution in the days of Rome, enough to turn the color representing the church from white to red in John’s prophecies. It would continue and get worse during the dark ages. And if the world had not opened up by the discovery of the Americas it might have extinguished those who look only to Jesus all together. So do these days of persecution still lie ahead of us, maybe. But there is certainly enough of it behind us to hope it is now in our past until He comes. One thing is certain though, the devil will not go quietly, so as time moves closer to the end, you can expect his fury to grow to match the fire of people truly beginning to rediscover what it means to encounter Jesus personally.
Jesus then goes back to His earlier warnings, that even while He looked over a wide span of time were still ever present. He continues in verse 23 saying … “Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. [verse 24] For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. [verse 25] Behold, I have told you before. [verse 26] Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not. [verse 27] For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. [verse 28] For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.”
One of the biggest remaining fears for Jesus across all time, is our tendency to put man in the place of God. From false folks who claim directly to be Christ, to false prophets powered by the dark side of the supernatural world. Their signs and wonders are great, but their message similar, a distraction from Jesus. For those who value a “show me” mentality looking for supernatural proof of God, these false leaders will have great appeal. But it is not the great acts that change the thinking, or create passionate love where there was none before. Those are responses to a still small voice that changes the heart of each of us as we submit ourselves to Jesus alone. Humans are only distraction to that, especially humans we begin to follow in place of Jesus (or in partnership with Jesus). At some point the vultures will gather over the corpses created by looking away from Jesus. A fate Jesus wants every one of us to avoid.
It is the desolation of our hearts that comes from putting man between us and God. Our pastors should be admired and supported in the work they do – but not as a supplement or replacement of Jesus Christ. We should not look to our pastors for an example. We should look to Jesus for transformation of “our” hearts. It is our heart that is important. Not a collective reference to the hearts of men, but our particular heart that is important to our God. Yes He feels this passionate for each of us. But that does not diminish how He feels about me, or you, or the loved ones around us. Each one extremely important to Him. Each one, a child He wants back. A child He desperately does not want to lose. Because He loves us just that much. As we look through the lens of Jesus across time we see Him desperately fighting for His children. To keep each of us locked on Him, and safe because of it. Looking anywhere else is a surefire recipe for disaster.
But His counsel was not over yet …
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