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CHAPTER 4

PRE-CHRISTMAS SEASON MEDITATION
with the theme of Ephesians 2:18-22 in focus

THE THREE BODIES, THREE TEMPLES,

ONE SINGULARITY

In the beginning, there was one body. It was as with all inventions, the first. Man was his name, before the God who calls as it is, and man he was named, for that was his character. The body was fresh from the mint of heaven. No scars spoiled the mind, and no sins deluded the mind. He was the first zoologist (Genesis 2:19), and set about gives names, recognising the character of the uncursed creatures before him.

The light was good, for God made it too, just as all heavily tooled things have to be made, so that the marks of their tooling may appear, the concepts of their governance and the means to secure this. Massive was the divine investment. Nothing less than freedom had been invented for a heavily programmed matériel. Words of staggering felicity contained the governing commands, now called DNA, reticulating and unifying coded concepts proceeded from the mouth of God. Spirit was added, not as one adds cream to a soup, but as one adds art to a picture, so that instead of being photographic, it has soul, meaning that can be personally discerned for personal reasons in an individual milieu.

Here lived liberty. Knowledge gave power, will was the thrust of decision and body was means, while the mind supplied method. It had to happen: not with the necessity of material necessity, but with the exceeding probability: what did ? It was that some one of these procreative beings would somehow, some time, breach the conditions for liberty and find out in experience what happened next. In short form, man sinned, even the first of this human race; his innocence died, his destiny aborted, his soul contorted, his spirit lapsed and in his judgment lay the hand of God who made him (Romans 5, Genesis 3, Romans 8:17ff.).

Millenia passed. God spoke further and some such as Noah, responded. The era of Abraham was called to be. Prophecy moved. Detail arrived: the divine solution to the deadly fraud, the horrendous failure of man, graceless thanklessness of man who had believed a lie, as if the God who made him had been in competition with him, and was bent on stopping him from becoming great: even he who had invented him, and laid down his laws. The caricature was devilish, and still lurks. This folly has severed millions from felicity, and kept a multitude from the Lord who in mercy, has long propounded mercy through sacrifice and faith to cover sin.

The matrix of what we now call Christmas season's meaning, suddenly arrived as Spring following the depths of Winter. It was another body. It came with the limitations of pain and suffering, as installed into our crib, made into our format, given no advantage but that of being divine (Isaiah 53:2), no easier in the unadorned format of flesh. He lived, incarnation of God, not a merely form or fashion or suggestion or element or trial format; but a definitive triumph, in a spiritual singularity. God had sent God (Isaiah 48:16ff.), the Father the Son, whom He incarnated through a normal but chosen woman (Luke 1:35), who thus made the little sacrifice for sinners at Christ's circumcision time (Luke 2:22-24, Leviticus 12).

He grew to manhood, took the office of Messiah who, unlike the mother, was sinless, for only a pure and unspotted sacrifice could be made, He being without sin (I Peter 1:19, Isaiah 53:9-10, Romans 8:3, II Corinthians 5:17-21).

This was the second body in the grand spectacle for man, that which God took as He entered His own story, the wonder of creation, and mastering man's weakness, granted victory as if a Christmas gift, a change of address for man's citizenship. This was on a personal and individual basis, even the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 7, Philippians 3:20-21), the visa free of charge and the passport unrescindable, being bought by God Himself also personally (Matthew 20:28, Heb. 9:12, 6:19). This second body in the history of man, the one that travelled to the depths of hell (II Peter 3:19), from the heights of heaven being sent (Col. 1:19ff.), was even more important than the first one; for if that had not been covered, corrected, restored, forgiven, it would have been merely worse than useless, like a car that snaps someone's backbone as well as being a write-off!

The third body is different. When Christ rose from the dead, this was HIS resurrected body. He who made the earth and man could readily make a renewed body for Christ, raising His only begotten Son, not from a broken arm, by splint and healing, but from a quitted life which could not rot (Acts 2:24,31)! That was His resurrection body (Luke 24:39). But for the rest of mankind, for the present, we have a different sort of body, the third type, to be used until the resurrection comes (I Corinthians 15:38-52), in its own time, just as the second body, that of Jesus Christ came in its own time (Galatians 4:4), so that after first showing the love, compassion, pity and power of God (John 1, 3), He could pay our bills for each individual receiving the cheque, not in the post, but in the heart (Romans 10:9, Ephesians 2:15). This death came at the TIME which Daniel had predicted, namely in the vicinity of 30 A.D. in our time scale (cf. Christ the Citadel ... Ch. 2), a grand arithmetical prediction for all time, made from half a millenium back. Christmas commemorates His coming, this second body with the second person of the trinity, sent as in Isaiah 48:15ff., Psalm 40, MIcah 5, into our midst to reveal God directly. No small wonder is it that we rejoice in the season set aside to commemorate His birth. If Easter commemorates His going, great is the day for His return. This now lies open as an uncovered heart for open-heart surgery.

When the time comes, which is now near (Luke 21:24ff., Answers to Questions Ch. 5), He will come back to collect what He has bought (Matthew 24, I Thessalonians 4), opening the very gates of heaven (Revelation 19, I Thess. 4) to and for His people to join those already there for the same reason, on the same passport. Then (I Cor. 15), the old body we now have, pockmarked with sin, is replaced with the new body which He gained, because He came and suffered and rose and departed till the time comes to roll up into one in Jesus Christ, the manifold history of man (Ephesians 1:10).

In the meantime, now some 2000 years, but its end is a carefully guarded secret of God (Acts 1), we live in another sort of body, which may be called the third type prelude, awaiting the resurrection. This is a spiritual and aggregate body, the substitute till the resurrection removes it in glory, in fulfilment. It is the body of Christ, not the one actually and literally raised, but one where He as Head, rules, and people instead of having blood, have the Holy Spirit, in a way which is figuratively suggested in the vision of Ezekiel 1. It is as in Ephesians 2:17-22.

It is LIKE a body in that it has many parts, people with many gifts. Paul laughs at the idea that all have the same gifts, asking what would it be like if all the body were an eye (I Cor. 12:19-21, 29ff.). If that were all, where would the body be! Are all apostles ? God forbid (cf. Acts Ch 1). Do all speak with tongues ? Equally absurd. Are all part of the foundation (Ephesians 2:20) ? How ludicrous can you get! Such is the word of God.

If so, where would the building be! We recently saw amazing pictures of a girl, now around 30, born without arms, one who is now beautifully athletic, and can drive car without special equipment, and even fly an aeroplane! But if there were neither legs nor arms nor head, what then! Those who want all to speak with tongues, some even misled enough to seem to want all to show their conversion by this grossly anti-scriptural method, are met and confronted with the other question about ALL: Are ALL apostles (of course not), do all speak with tongues, or heal! Paul continues to mock the misconception. Of course not. People who try to make a vocation for all out of one part of the body are merely ruining the whole proportion and contradicting scripture mutliply.

Truly it is not a matter of having this or that gift, God Himself deciding to whom to give what (I Corinthians 12:4-6), and needing no prompting, but of love in and between the redeemed parts (I Cor. 13), like the smooth mutual functioning of parts of your physical body, with specialist members co-operating and co-ordinating, each with the other, in a holy unity which, while as with the body, it may have pain at times, when things get out of order, yet has its proper place and method of operation (Ephesians 2, 4). That is one reason for church discipline on the one hand, and liberal forgiveness of each other on the other (Colossians 3:13). Thus we are to be "bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another: even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do."

THE THREE TEMPLES

Similarly, there are three temples. God having chosen Israel as the first expositor of His truth, through the prophets (Ephesians 2:20, II Timothy 3:16), the time came when in stupendous magnificence, a temple was built, with King David the starting provider and King Solomon the finisher; and it represented the way to mercy, symbolising with sacrifice and wonder, the gift of grace by God (cf. Psalm 32). This is parallel, if you will, to the first body, that of Adam, in our symmetry.

The second temple is that rebuilt under Ezra, with Nehemiah, after the destruction of the first temple. Because Israel had for hundreds of years, despite wonderful times in between, increasingly played the fool, with formalities and dysfunctions, distortions and cruelties even children slain for idols being added, this crowned b y social corruption (as in Amos), the time came for this doom. Even idols were set in their hearts (Ezekiel 14:1-8), as well as in the Temple of all places. It was like setting arsenic in your milk, and then giving this loaded beverage to other members of your family! (II Chronicles 36). In Ezekiel's vision, the glory of God was then seen, not long before the devastation of the Temple, moving first from its threshold, and then away from it altogether; for God is longsuffering, but man A.W.L., has left his post, and there is no place for pretence. God is the God of truth (John 14:6), and cannot walk with lies (Titus 1:3), for there is no iniquity within Him (Deuteronomy 32:1-4).

This second temple can be seen as parallel to the failure of man in his first body, and its ruin as the ruin of the body of Christ, the sin being sent to Him through the faith of those who receive Him, Himself paying (Matthew 20:28). Its rebuilding is parallel to the resurrection of Christ, but this, instead of being a painfully slow process as under Ezra (but one divinely empowered for all that!), was wrought as so often foretold, in three days, a fact quite as important as the raising at all, since God is a God of power and precision, fulfilling all He says (Matthew 5:17-20, 16:21, Luke 24:21ff.), even to the smallest letter, and the smallest difference between two letters (jot and tittle).

What, finally, of the third temple (II Thessalonians 2:4ff.). It is this in which "the man of sin," the focus for the antichrist (I John 2:18) is to stand, parading and admiring himself before being stricken like a cancer suddenly cut out, as if after it had been, glorying in its power to overcome all else! Once it was thought this could be the pope or the papacy, one standing in the midst of the visible Church, taking on a forbidden personal authority (Matthew 23:8-10), and proceeding like a dictator in inquisitions which he did not cause to fold, or to be condemned, so enforcing an alien mind, extending the hand even amid Christ's very flock.

However that - though not inept in polluted style, for we are to crucified with Christ (Galatians 2:20), not companions of torture programs, the exact opposite - does not match Revelation 17, and the events there depicted. This end-time folly, approached in part and in one place by Hitler, by Stalin and by Mao, each of whom is reported to have killed millions of people, and is seen to have sought a personal power to smash and to elevate almost without limit, is yet to come to fruition, though the preludes to it mount like a threatening wave.

Will there be a literal, physical temple ? It is impossible to know, but it would seem most probable, since the surrounding language does not seem poetic in kind. If so, it is just conceivable that it may be the mosque in Jerusalem, on the temple site; for many in Buddhism and Islam, following Christ and the prophets, the latter through the spirit of Christ (I Peter 1:10ff.) speaking of this long before the very genesis of Buddha and Muhammad, have expectations of one who will come in power. It may well be that such as these will surrender to the antichrist, or many within them, for his deceptive powers are monumental (II Thessalonians 2:9).

Whatever, however, the milieu, the reality is the most important, and this is deception, lying, pretence, pretension, devilish dynamics and a power like that of the big three murderers mentioned, but beyond it, bringing in a totalitarianism before which others by comparison have almost been a mere hint! It will involve massive financial controls (Revelation 13), such as Europe, the biblical venue for this power, is now beginning to opt to have!

So the third temple, it is on the negative side, a site of spiritual strangulation, with a kind of kinship to Auschwitz, but this on an international, multi-racial scale. On the positive aspect, it is the Christian Church, not the mutating deceivers of which Christ and Peter have warned us (Matthew 7:15ff., II Peter 2:1ff), but the comprehensive, spiritually mutual body of believers in whatever land or place, which make up the living body of Christ. As in I Peter 2:4-8, in temple terms, these are spiritual stones, living ones; and as living, they have dual operation as priests who can offer up praise to God, sacrifices of service, like a charismatic cathedral in which the very walls are living, and the symbolism is self-interpreting! It is as if they abide in the structure on the one hand, and as called, become spiritual activists, perform their duties and then return to their part in the walls of solidity, a striking structure indeed.

Praise God for the third temple, the spiritual one, and its Head; for the second body and its heir (I Peter 1:3-7), the body of Christ, and for the third body in its time to come, when it is raptured to realisation in the coming of Christ, when for each believer (II Cor. 5), this mortal becomes immortal, and this temporal becomes eternal, fitting then in form as well as spirit, for eternity in the presence of the loving and most merciful God. Christmas ? It is the season of the second body, that of the Messiah, who becoming flesh, acted as God and for God to do what only God could do. Praise God and rejoice, and having a joy which is not to be discouraged (John 16:22), rejoice again! Do not cease to look forward to the consummation in the resurrection, for as it was for Christ, so will it be for His people!