Category Archives: Eschatology

The Impossible Possibility: Heaven

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One day the impossible possibility will finally be possible in consummate form. Faith will become the concrete sight that it is even now, but in its fully living bodied-color. The dead grass will blow away once and for all, and all that will be left standing is the enduring and eternal Word of God (Verbum Dei manet in aeternam). And all those in participatory union with the Logos of God; indeed, all the saints, both militant and triumphant will finally come together in eschatological bliss, in the One who is blissful for us, the Eschatos of God, Jesus Christ. The brokenness, the woefulness, the despair, and angst, the doubts and anxieties, the unbelief and its heartache, will finally be put under the Savior’s feet; indeed, as He declares ‘the last enemy, death,’ is dead. The futility the unwilling world was put under will be doused by the springs of eternal life as they flow freely from the belly of the Son of Man for us, for the world. Even though we will, even though we do experience tragedy upon tragedy, thlipsis unimaginable in this fallen and broken world; take heart, Jesus says, for “I have overcome that world.” New creation has come, is coming afresh anew, and will finally come! Maranatha

The Christian Existence: Contra Systemic Dualisms

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The right and left binary represents a dualism that genuine Christian theology rejects. Dualism generally says that there are equal and opposing forces, light versus dark, in a cyclical battle of yin and yang. The Kingdom of God is grounded in the reality of God become [hu]man. There is no dualism, no competitive relationship between the fallen and unfallen; all of reality is subsumed within the singular person of Jesus Christ. Thus, Christianity, the Gospel comes with different expectations. The Christian is not in a loggerhead with the darkness, per se; the Christian moves and breathes from within the atmosphere of the heavenly Zion. This reality is not of this world, and thus not of the dualisms that often frame this world system. We are emissaries of the living God in the risen Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. In that sense we move differently than others, not being shaped by what the world optically presents to us as if it gets to determine reality by brute presence.

The aforementioned should have an impact on the Christian existence in this world. It should keep us moving towards and from the upward call in Christ Jesus. Politics, culture wars, and the like should never be defined by the whims and whams of the base person, the profane systems of thought progenerated by this world system; the evil age. Jesus is already reigning at the right hand of the Father (see 1 Cor 15), and will come once and for all riding on His white steed with the sword of God proceeding from His mouth. Maranatha

On Ethnic Israel and Jesus

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Given what’s going on with Israel and Iran I jotted down some thoughts (elsewhere online) on Israel and how ethnic Israel continues to relate to the Man from Nazareth, Jesus Christ.

There is a right-wing movement among some so-called MAGA people who are highly antisemitic, or we could more accurately say: supersessionist. They have bought into the old rhetoric that Israel as a nation ceased to exist in 70AD, never to reunite again. But her ethnicity has always been vouchsafed in the Man from Nazareth (see Jeremiah 31). Her ethnicity transcends itself in its purpose as the Messiah bearer for the world. And yet, the promises made to the fathers remain irrevocable (see Romans 11:29). If the nation of Israel, as a people group ceases to be, this would entail that the Man from Nazareth, the Son of David, would cease to be. But since He cannot cease to be in his particularity as a regionalized man, then neither can the nation that bore him cease to be in its perdurance before God. And this is why, I would suggest, that whether leftist or rightist, antisemitism has continued to exist down throughout the ages. The Enemy of our souls seeks to kill, steal, and destroy anything that stands for the ultimate purposes of God; including the Jews. Rightists are just as malevolent as the Leftists, and of the spirit of this age; in the kingdom of darkness rather than in the kingdom of the Son of His love. The pattern has always been: “to the Jew first, and then the Gentile.” That motif has never changed.

Jesus is the true Israel; the Jew from Nazareth. The church is only the true Israel for supersessionists and some Catholics.

The whole Kingdom of Christ is contingent upon the fact that Jesus is the Son of David. That’s where his free election to be human was and is situated. Jewishness wasn’t abrogated by the ascension of Christ, Jewishness was amplified by the expansionism of becoming the one (Jesus) for the many in the organic fulfillment of both the Abrahamic and New Covenants, respectively (and all the covenants in between, Davidic in particular). The nation or eretz (Land) of Israel today isn’t the Kingdom, per se; but it is a foreshadowing and demonstration that God remains faithful to His promises; for the Jew first, then the Greek. Political Israel today isn’t the Kingdom of Christ, but it is a demonstration of God’s faithfulness to His Word; which He willingly descended into in a Jewish body by design and grace. Only a Gnostic or Marcionite could think that God emptied His “human shell” at the ascension. No Christian of canonical principle would ever affirm that ethnic Israel was superseded by the coming of the Son of Man. Lots of rubbish being pushed around in the “Christian” church on this.

Problematizing a Development of Sacra Doctrina within the Church: With Reference to Peter of John Olivi

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Bernard McGinn writes the following with reference to the apocalyptic-theology-of-history present in the mediaeval theologian, Peter of John Olivi’s (c. 1248—1298) thought:

The invective Olivi directs against the evidences of the carnal Church is concerned not only with the ecclesiastical abuses of the day, especially with avarice and simony, but also, like Bonaventure before him, with the use of Aristotle in theology. The Provençal Franciscan also expressed belief in a double Antichrist—the Mystical Antichrist, a coming false pope who would attack the Franciscan Rule, and the Great, or Open Antichrist, whose defeat would usher in the final period of history. Characteristic of Franciscan apocalyptic is his emphasis on the role of Francis as the initiator of the period of renewal and his hope for the conversion of all peoples in the course of the final events.[1]

Olivi was a student of the infamous mediaeval theologian, Bonaventure. But I thought this treatment by McGinn on Olivi was telling. Telling in regard to the patterns and thematics of theological development. Telling, in regard to how theologies and emphases often repeat themselves in various and all periods of theological development throughout history. As McGinn highlights, Olivi was concerned with a “carnal Church”; he was concerned with the imposition of Aristotle’s categories upon Christian theology (which of course Thomas Aquians was famous for doing). We also observe, that for Olivi, according to McGinn, he saw that the Catholic church itself had corruption riddling it throughout; he saw the Antichrist coming from within the Church, not without. This latter development is interesting to me because it reminds me of Martin Luther’s view that the office of the Pope would finally produce the Antichrist (the Lutheran Church Wisconsin Synod still holds to this position in their confession). And then, we see in Olivi, a belief in something like a postmillennial understanding of the very end of history. He believes, according to McGinn, that the whole world will be Christianized prior to the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Many things stood out to me in this one paragraph on Olivi’s theology. The primary hook for me, and this won’t be surprising to my readers, is that Olivi was critical of Aristotle’s presence in the development of the sacra doctrina within the Church. Olivi, like his teacher, Bonaventure, believed that Aristotle could only serve as an artificial grammar for articulating Christian doctrine. Such sucralose, in the minds of Bonaventure and Olivi, respectively, had no place in affecting a theology for the Church, insofar that Aristotle himself thought a construct of God as a pagan.

It is important for Christian folks in the 21st century to get beyond theology purely sourced from Twitter/X and other social media platforms. What the genuine student finds, if they study the books, is that things are much more complex and less concretized than they might want to think. There have been various strands of development, various traditions cultivated in the Church’s history that transcend the parochial and sectarian and absolutized divides we see today on the interwebs. I think this one paragraph alone on Olivi helps to illustrate that point.

Within evangelical/reformed theology today there is a movement towards retrieval. And yet what this has come to mean, especially through the work of someone like Matthew Barrett and Craig Carter, is that what is really being retrieved is one strand of development that is Aristotelian/Thomist heavy; as if ‘Christian Aristotelianism’ was the only development present within the mediaeval and early and post Reformed churches. This simply is not the case; again, as our passage illustrates.

Conversely, I am anti-Aristotelian myself (no shocker there!) Some might think that this is because of my appreciation for the theologies of Barth and TF Torrance alone. Again, this is not the case. I was anti-Aristotelian way before I ever read Barth and TFT. I was exposed to the Bonaventure-Olivi thread of development twenty-three years ago in seminary. This thread was developed further with the sparker of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther; he looked back to such threads in the via antiqua through his direct mentor, Johann von Staupitz, and before him, Jean Gerson.

Anyway, this post is somewhat of a smorgasbord of hits on various issues; something like a Miscellanies. But I hope, at least, the reader might be able to better appreciate the “problematized” nature of doctrinal development within the Church of Jesus Christ. In other words, I hope that folks might be alerted to the problem of reducing and then absolutizing one’s pet positions. Surely, we ought to be convicted about the theological things we believe. But those convictions ought to first take shape (in a spiraling and continuous way) through the caldron of toiling with the sources (ad fontes) of the history of interpretation and development of the sacra doctrina.

[1] Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 205.

Contra a Christian Nationalist Christendom and the Crusades

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A few weeks back there was a debate on X with reference to the Crusades. Unsurprisingly there are certain Christian Nationalist groups who are promoting the legitimacy and value of the Crusades (and not Billy Graham’s); attempting to justify them in the name of Christ. This all makes sense in the sense that these folks want a resurgence of a certain type of Christendom, primarily of a Protestant hue. I responded thusly,

The Crusades were a function of a Catholic ecclesiopolitical state. They were ostensibly carried out in the name of Jesus Christ; and for the preservation of the Gospel and all its entailments. The last thing Muslims saw, as the sword came crushing through their skulls, was the cross on the crusader’s shield. This was not done in the name of Christ, ultimately; but in the name of a sectarian Latin church who asserted that its authority was simply a prolongation of the incarnation of God on earth. This assertion is neither Christian, or Holy; and therefore, cannot be justified in the name of Jesus Christ.

On Amillennialism: Against the “Replacement Theology” Caricature

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The following is something I wrote in and around 2007; I was still a dyed-in-the-wool dispensationalist when I wrote this. But I was attempting to be as a critical as I possibly could be towards a hermeneutical system, and biblical eschatological position, that I had always been told was heretical and even antisemitic. I was told, by dispensationalism’s best teachers, that amillennialists engaged in a purely allegorical and idealistic interpretation of Holy Scripture; especially when it came to the theology and book of Revelation. And yet as I continued to study and press in further this simply was not the case whatsoever. Maybe some within the amil camp operated or operate that way, but that is not the majority report among amillennial exegetes; nor is it the historic position amongst amillennialists. I might qualify a little bit of what I wrote so many years ago (but not in substance). I turned amil publicly probably fourteen years ago now, and for many exegetical reasons (especially with the help of Richard Bauckham’s work on the book and theology of Revelation).

Some in my old church circles label anything that is not their hard classical dispensationalism—pretrib-premil—as ‘replacement theology,’ or more technically it has been called supersessionism. This is the idea that all the promises made to ethnic Israel, once Christ came and the church was established, were taken over by the church spiritually; and of course this would be antisemitic, and thus antiChrist and heretical (since Jesus is the forever son of David, the forever Man from Nazareth). But this is not what historic amillennialism has entailed; at least not in the Protestant appropriation of it.

Let me add one qualification before I reshare what I wrote years ago: I take the Bible, in principle, to be intensively and radically about Jesus Christ (the One for the many); so did Jesus in His teachings found in John 5 and Luke 24, respectively. As such, the whole point of ethnic Israel’s existence (just as the whole point of creation’s reality in general) is in fact to mediate Christ to and for the world. To elevate human history to a level that makes Jesus an abstraction vis-a-vis ethnic Israel completely inverts the whole inner reality of everything; that makes the nation of Israel the point of salvation and creational history, and not the triune God in the scandal and particularity of Jesus Christ is to end up in another form of replacement theology, another type of supersessionism wherein the nation of Israel replaces the person of Jesus Christ as the reason and being for all of history. It is a false dilemma dispensationalists offer when they assert that it is either all about the nation of Israel or the person of the Christ. It is a false dilemma because Jesus is continuously the Jew, and thus the fulfillment and reality of what it means to be Jewish before God in an ultimate way. The Christ is the second and greater Adam, which entails the notion that to be in the eternal and heavenly Adam, come to earth, is to be participants in an elevated and life of primacy which is Christ’s for the world. In other words, was Adam an ethnic Jew; was Abraham even an ethnic Jew (see Rom 4)? God’s purposes are ultimately creational/re-creational; they are cosmic, not sectarian; they are concrete, not abstract and dualistic; they are to see this time and God’s time (“eternity”) as coterminous through the analogy and reality of the hypostatic union of God and humanity in the Logos ensarkos (the Word [of God] enfleshed).

Here is how I described amillennialism so many years ago now:

Monergism.com, some years back, picked up a little summary description I wrote somewhere (on-line) on what Amillennialism entails as an interpretive system. Here’s what I wrote:

The Amillennialist affirms that the people of Israel have not been cast off or replaced, but rather, that the Gentiles have now been included among the Jews in God’s Covenantal promises. In other words, not replacement but expansion. God’s redemptive plan, as first promised to Abraham, was that “all nations” would be blessed through him. Israel is, and always has been, saved the same as any other nation: by the promises to the seed, Christ. Amillennialists, do not believe in a literal 1000 year reign of Christ on earth after His second coming. Rather, they affirm that when Christ returns, the resurrection of both the righteous and wicked will take place simultaneously (see John 5), followed by judgment and and the eternal state where heaven and earth merge and Christ reigns forever.

Strong points of Amillennialism

1) It is highly Christocentric: it makes Christ the center of all the biblical covenants (even the “Land” covenant or Sinaitic)
2) It notes the universal scope of the Abrahamic Covenant (as key) to interpreting the rest of the biblical covenants
3) It sees salvation history oriented to a person (Christ), instead of a people (the nation of Israel)
4) It emphasizes continuity between the “people of God” (Israel and the Church are one in Christ Eph. 2:11ff)
5) It provides an ethic that is rooted in creation, and “re-creation” (continuity between God’s redemptive work now, carried over into the eternal state then)
6) It emphasizes a trinitarian view of God as it elevates the “person”, Christ Jesus, the second person of the trinity as the point and mediator of all history
7) It flows from a hermeneutic that takes seriously the literary character of the Scriptures (esp. the book of Revelation) [see the quote at Monergism.com here]

One more point of clarification: I am not, of course, your normal Covenantal theology amillennialist. Mongerism [dot] com is. I am “Barthian covenantal,” which is a completely different creature; particularly as that is funded by Barth’s reformulated doctrine of predestination (election-reprobation).

Disruptive Grace as Protology and Eschatology

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Grace was disruptive in the protology (beginning Gen 1:1ff) just as Grace is disruptive in the eschatology (the ‘end’ II Cor 5:17 etc). As such there is no stable creation (nature), there is only its enduring Word of upholding wherein stability is found. The continuity of the creation, and its various “properties,” is not based in an inherent independence of its own (waiting for discovery abstract from God’s intensive witness in the Christ), but upon the Grace of God’s Word that continuously gives it life, even in the face and reality of its certain death (Rom 8:18ff). That is to say: creation is a creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing), which entails that its value and meaning is always contingent upon God’s Word as He presences (parousia) Himself, afresh anew, through the hovering breath of the Holy Spirit. To look to creation/nature as if a means of grace, is to confuse the creation with the Creator who is the Christ.

The Eschatological Nature of Christian Theology

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There is no reason to absolutize any period of theological history, per se. In other words, every season of theological development, within the Church’s history, is open for engagement. The Lord Himself said He would build His Church, and through Paul continued to say that He would, in particular, provide pastors and teachers, so on and so forth. This ought to teach us that Christ has been present, all along, in His Church. He hasn’t abandoned it or left it as orphans, but has provided His Holy Spirit to presence Himself and sacra doctrina among those who fellowship with Him in the triune life He shares with the Father and Holy Spirit. So, it is possible, and really necessary, to approach the development of theological dogma within the open frame that is provided by the esse of the Church itself. If we do this, as we ought, we will not elevate one period of ecclesial doctrinal development as sacrosanct over others, per se. This is not to say that there aren’t some fundamental inflection points in the Church’s development of essential doctrine, particularly when we think in terms of the catholic developments surrounding Nicaea, Constantinople and Chalcedon, that have helped to regulate the grammar the Church uses in order to speak God in intelligible and articulate ways. But even so, these inflection points in the Church’s history, should not be absolutized in a way that they remain closed off as if final words on the way the Church understands and relates to Christ. They shouldn’t be abandoned, but because of the eschatological nature of the development of Christian theological discourse, things always ought to remain open; finding their anchor point in the anchor of the Church’s soul as the High Priest is seated at the Right Hand of the Father always living to make intercession for those who will inherit eternal life. We only are able, because we inhabit these bodies of death still, to see through a glass dimly, even as our proximate knowledge of God in Christ gives way to fuller and deeper understandings of Him, as we are transformed from glory to glory; from Christ’s full glory for us. We keep pressing into the reality of our life in Christ, growing in His grace and knowledge for us.

Being Robed in the Eschatos of God’s Triune Light

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For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
And for Jerusalem’s sake I will not keep quiet,
Until her righteousness goes forth like brightness,
And her salvation like a torch that is burning. -Isaiah 62:1

“Arise, shine; for your light has come,
And the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
 “For behold, darkness will cover the earth
And deep darkness the peoples;
But the Lord will rise upon you
And His glory will appear upon you.
“Nations will come to your light,
And kings to the brightness of your rising. -Isaiah 60:1-3

I will rejoice greatly in the Lord,
My soul will exult in my God;
For He has clothed me with garments of salvation,
He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness,
As a bridegroom decks himself with a garland,
And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. -Isaiah 61:10

And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. -Genesis 2:25

 

A quick reflection on the Eschaton. The thought just occurred to me, once again, of just how self-incurved we are as fallen, yet redeemed, creatures still. We suffer from an unquenchable thirst for attention. We inherently desire, as creatures of the sin, that we would be accepted by others; not for the others’ sake, but for our own self-incurved fantasies. When we walk by a pane of glass, lit-up by the sunshine, we often look at ourselves to make sure we still look good; with our brand-new kicks in tow. We often compare ourselves with others and think: I might not be a supermodel, but I’m definitely better looking than that guy or gal. We are born with vain hearts that are disorderedly in love with themselves. In our very hearts, as fallen creatures, we seek our kingdom, and our righteousness; and all these other things are ultimately lost unto us (as King Solomon and so many others have learned by experience over the millennia.)

But what of the glorified bodies that we will put on at the second coming of Christ? The Prophet says we will be, and are in fact, robed in the garments of salvation, the robes of righteousness; indeed, Christ’s righteousness. Moses by the Spirit says that Adam and Eve were both naked and yet were not ashamed. They were literally naked and weren’t stumbled by the physical form in the perverted ways that fallen creatures now are. We see the Prophet refer to God’s Light for us, in a radically eschatological sense. I would suggest, that even beyond what Adam and Eve experienced, we will be, and even are now (by eyes of faith), so shrouded about with the Life of God’s triune Light for us, that in the Kingdom-sense we simply are radiating the Light of Christ’s life; that our bodies are ensconced in the Light of Christ, as we are participants in His life, that it is not possible but to evince and emote His Light; that we have become, in Christ’s resurrected and ascended vicarious humanity, witness bearers, to the nth degree, of God’s Life, as we have become encapsulated in His radiating Light. In other words, when we finally receive our new glorified bodies, like Christ’s, we could be naked, and not be stumbled because we will so effuse the life of God, indeed as God’s triune Life, is in fact our life, by the adoption of grace, that we will no longer have the capacity, nor the desire to focus on ourselves any longer. We will indeed be like our Father, in the Son, by the Holy Spirit. We will be so other focused from within God’s being (ousia), just as He is as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that self-consumption in an abstract fallen sense will no longer be a possibility. We get a taste of what this might look like on the Mount of Transfiguration:

Six days later Jesus *took with Him Peter and James and John his brother, and *led them up on a high mountain by themselves. 2 And He was transfigured before them; and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light. 3 And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him. 4 Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, I will make three tabernacles here, one for You, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 5 While he was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice out of the cloud said, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him!” 6 When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground and were terrified. 7 And Jesus came to them and touched them and said, “Get up, and do not be afraid.” 8 And lifting up their eyes, they saw no one except Jesus Himself alone. -Matthew 17

I long for the day when faith is swallowed up by sight. When we will no longer have this inherent penchant to constantly be self-consumed, and only be consumed by the life of the triune God, and all those participant in that life. I can’t wait till this body of death is finally put under Jesus’ feet, as the last enemy that it is, only to consummately be risen afresh anew with the glorified body of our Lord’s.

When you think about it, all of the world’s ills are formed by the incurved heart, the “Enlightened” turn to the subject. We want and do not have, and so we either literally kill, or figuratively kill, to get what we don’t have, but want. May Christ have mercy sooner than later! Maranatha

Jesus, the Israel of God

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I was going to write a post on Jesus as the Israel of God; on Jesus as the new humanity of God, who in fact is the Son of David, in all the scandalous particularity that ought evoke. But as I began to index the various passages I might use to make this case I thought it more organic to simply lay them out, with the emboldened sections intended to highlight how I might make the case for Jesus as Israel. He is not some transcendent extra, some Gnostic ethereal demiurge, some link between heaven and earth (as merely an instrument of God). He is the promised King of Israel; He is the One for the many; He is the fulfiller of all the promises of God (made to Israel); He is the substance of the shadows; He is the One upon whom all the governments of the world rest upon His shoulders; He is the sacrificial Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world; He is ethnic and spiritual Israel, indeed, that has always been of apiece; He is the new humanity of God for the world, first for Israel, then the Gentiles. But to be sure, He is the ontology (being) and teleology (point) of Israel; just as sure as He is the first fruits of God, the firstborn from the dead for all of creation. Maybe you will be able to see how I might proceed in making the above case from the following pericopes of Holy Scripture.

11 See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand. 12 Those who desire to make a good showing in the flesh try to compel you to be circumcised, simply so that they will not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. 13 For those who are circumcised do not even keep the Law themselves, but they desire to have you circumcised so that they may boast in your flesh. 14 But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. 15 For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. 16 And those who will walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God. –Galatians 6:11-16

11 Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called “Uncircumcision” by the so-called “Circumcision,” which is performed in the flesh by human hands— 12 remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, 15 by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, 16 and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity. 17 And He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near; 18 for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, 20 having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, 21 in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, 22 in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit. –Ephesians 2:11-22

16 Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. 17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. 18 Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, 19 namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. II Corinthians 5:16-19

13 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 And He found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. 15 And He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables; 16 and to those who were selling the doves He said, “Take these things away; stop making My Father’s house a place of business.” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for Your house will consume me.” 18 The Jews then said to Him, “What sign do You show us as your authority for doing these things?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It took forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” 21 But He was speaking of the temple of His body. 22 So when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken. –John 2:13-22

22 I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. 23 And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb. 24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. 25 In the daytime (for there will be no night there) its gates will never be closed; 26 and they will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it; 27 and nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. –Revelation 21:22-27

39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; 40 and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life. 41 I do not receive glory from men; 42 but I know you, that you do not have the love of God in yourselves. 43 I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, you will receive him. 44 How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God? 45 Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. 46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. 47 But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” –John 5:39-47

9 Then he *said to me, “Write, ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’” And he *said to me, “These are true words of God.” 10 Then I fell at his feet to worship him. But he *said to me, “Do not do that; I am a fellow servant of yours and your brethren who hold the testimony of Jesus; worship God. For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” –Revelation 19:9-10