Anyone who thinks this world is perfect, that we are at peace and secure, and that Jerusalem will be built, as Blake required, by our hands is a fool. The data is graven in today’s paper. We are not heading to a time of progress, but a crisis.
A deadly gun battle broke out between security forces and terrorism suspects holed up in a north Paris apartment building, as French authorities intensified their hunt for those responsible for Saturday’s attacks on the city.
Soldiers took up positions in the suburb of Saint Denis and explosions were heard in the raid, whose target was the suspected mastermind of the attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud.
One suspected terrorist was shot dead, another died when her suicide vest detonated, and four police were wounded in the battle which began about 4.30am yesterday (4.30pm NZT) and continued for some hours. At least one of the terror suspects remained barricaded in the apartment last night.
But Blake was wrong. Jerusalem will not be made in this world. We cannot make a pure city. There can be no utopia: the word translates as no place, and even the most religious of communities: populated by monks, nuns and priests, can and often does turn into a cesspool of politics, if not lust, greed and envy.
We are fallen. We need our churches and our disciplines and our rituals, for we have have not been cleansed and made pure.
The enemy at the gates at present has two parts: one is the aggressive secularists, and the second are teh foolz of the Jeehaaad. The second group gets more of my pity and my prayers. That they repent. That they turn from Allah. That they find Christ. For without him, they will be found to be unclean, and they will never be allowed into the city that is to come.
And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
I need to repeat this: if you are not of Christ you will never enter this city. No chant, no war, ho hashtag, no prayers, no piety, no personal righteousness will earn you entrance. We are all fundamentally broken. We are all filthy. It is only through the blood of Christ in our place that we are accounted righteous.
Turkey fans BOO during minute's silence for victims of Paris attacks and chant 'Allahu Akbar' before Greece friendly https://t.co/cUOOZuPwPi
— Andreas Fagerbakke (@afagerbakke) November 18, 2015
The nations may storm and rage. The elite may say that we can build Jerusalem. But we cannot. The end of this world is coming. Christ will return. And at that time, every knee will bow: either in praise or in shame. And if we are ashamed of him now, he will be ashamed of us then.
So stand, man and woman of God. Take confidence. It is a crisis. But your lives, even your arrest and death, will bear witness to God.
And let all others consider their paths, and turn to the light. Death lies in the lies of the Dark.