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A Retake on St. Mark Chapter Thirteen - Part 2

1 As he went out of the temple one of his disciples said to him, "Teacher! Look! All these marvelous stones and wonderful buildings!" 2 And Jesus, answering, said to them, "Do you see these magnificent buildings? There shall not be left one stone standing on top another, that shall not be thrown down." Mark 13:1-2

The notion that the Lord is speaking about the Jerusalem temple being destroyed 40 years hence (70 AD), while certainly possible, seems implausible. But far more likely to this interpreter the Lord is using the same double entendre here, as he used in John 2:19-22. He is speaking of the temple which is his Body. If so consider what the Lord says here. As the temple was made of earth's most massive and immovable stones; even Jesus is the Almighty Son of God whose life is "indestructible" (Heb 7:15). He is the Rock of our Salvation and no one who builds on him will be moved. And yet his flesh would be torn down until he was no longer recognizable as a man. "Not one stone was left standing on top of another." All this by the ghastly, cruel, grisly, protracted and shame-filled death, "even the death of the cross," that he suffered to propitiate and expiate the sins of all humanity.

Here the Lord speaks to the immensity, the weight, the consequences, the punishment and the otherwise immovability of the of human sin. The life of the Almighty and Good Lord would be torn down by all the powers of earth and hell conspiring together. This is the prize that devil and flesh want like no other: the death of God.

And Jesus, in submitting, like Samson, brought down the house of idolatry. The entire, ancient evil enterprise UPON THEIR OWN HEADS. But Jesus rose again in victory, thus raising the temple on the Third Day indestructible and eternal.

 

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