Not One Stone Upon Another
Not One Stone Upon Another
1 Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of the temple.
Matthew 24:1
Matthew 24 is very important to Adventists. It is a chapter in Matthew that is focused on prophecy and the End Times. Before all that however, Jesus talks directly about the temple. Verse 1 is strange because it says that the disciples went to show Jesus the different buildings of the temple. Did they think that Jesus had never seen them before? No. Any good jew would be very acquainted with the temple. What this suggests instead is that the disciples went to show Jesus the temple to gloat about how marvellous Judaism was. They wanted to uplift themselves and their religion to Jesus. What Jesus sees is very different.
2 And Jesus said to them, “Do you not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”
Matthew 24:2
While the disciples see the current beauty Jesus sees the soon destruction and ruins of the temple. Their gloating is quickly turned to shock. How could this be? How could God allow the temple to be destroyed yet again?
Unfortunately, the Jews of those days were more preoccupied with the physical buildings, and their own physicalness (their riches, power and prestige) that they never took time to deal with the inside. Daniel had made it very clear that the Jews were on a timeline of grace before Jesus would no longer protect them as he once did. Just as the temple would be destroyed, so would the people and the country.
It’s interesting to note that what Jesus said about ‘not one stone shall be left here upon another’ came very true. When the Romans threw fire to destroy the temple, all the gold that filled the rooms were melted and molded in-between the stones. Because of this, the romans pulled apart the temple, stone by stone, to be able to get all the gold out for themselves.
Jesus could very clearly see the temple’s future just as saw our future which we’ll see in the next few weeks as we read through Matthew 24.
God bless,
Pr. Steven Couto