The Real Jerusalem

According to biblical prophecy and most popular theories, the city of Jerusalem is destined to be the focal point of many extraordinary events during the final days of this age. However, most assume that the latter day Jerusalem of scripture is the same as the historical city recognized by men, which hasn’t been the case for nearly 2,000 years.

This and many other things changed with the advent of Christ: The covenant between God and His people was rewritten and opened to all, the temple was redefined as the assembly of saints adjoined to the Father through Christ and the apostles, and construction of the New Jerusalem began in earnest. Moreover, the physical domain of the future kingdom of God in the world thereafter encompassed the entire world, not just the relatively tiny land of ancient Israel. The New Testament thoroughly accounts for these new perspectives, as do many of the Old Testament prophecies of the Christian era.

The old Jerusalem, temple, and covenant didn’t become irrelevant thereafter, but rather became the foundation and foreshadows of the new, which will ultimately serve the same purposes as the eternal plan of God unfolds. Though many remain fixated on the old city of Jerusalem and even expect another unsanctified temple complex to be constructed as key elements of their prophetic expectations, there is no reason to think Yahweh has anything in particular to do with that city or the Jewish people at this time.

In the context of the New Testament era and beyond, His people, the Jews, are those born of the spiritual seed of Christ, His temple is the living assembly of those people in the world where He dwells, and the city of Jerusalem is ultimately the larger assembly of His people past, present, and future. In the meantime and as a prophetic symbol, Jerusalem is, as it always was, the cultural, political, and economic center of the land(s) occupied by His people, whether standing in His favor or given over to apostasy as the Jews were before being forsaken by God upon the advent of the Messiah they wholly rejected.

Just like anyone else, God’s word can only be correctly interpreted according to His own intended meaning. Thus, when He refers to Jerusalem, His people, His covenant, etc., He means those things to be understood according to His own plainly manifested thoughts on who or what is indicated by these terms. Many have accepted grandiose scenarios painted by popular books and movies regarding the final days of this age that are entirely premised on obsolete definitions of these same terms. As a result, many have been duped into believing that the major events predicted by the biblical prophets are on indefinite hold until things like rebuilding the Jewish temple in Jerusalem are done.

The apostles themselves struggled with these new concepts at times. Even well after His resurrection, the expected Yahshua to overthrow the Roman’s rule over Jerusalem and reestablish the earthly kingdom of Israel as it was under David and his successors. Likewise, they took His predictions of the temple’s destruction and rebuilding as regarding the physical structures of Herod’s temple in Jerusalem, only realizing that He was talking about His death and resurrection as the Chief Cornerstone of the new, living temple after He was resurrected. Fortunately, they left a thorough record of the truth they ultimately discovered, so others would not be so easily duped by the same assumptions.

While biblical references to Jerusalem, the temple, etc. in the New Testament era do not necessarily indicate the ancient city of Jerusalem, neither can many of these be taken as meaning the glorious city described in connection with the new creation set to replace the present heaven and earth in the distant future. What does the word of God mean, for instance, when it speaks of the “holy city” and the prophet Daniel’s “people” in chapter 9 of his book? This prophecy speaks of a nearly five century span of time allowed for them to rebuild the city and establish righteousness in anticipation of the advent of the Messiah’s kingdom.

According to Daniel’s prophecy, the physical work of rebuilding would be somewhat accomplished, but the spiritual restoration would fall short. As a result, great destruction at the hands of the “people of the prince” (meaning the antichrist’s allies) will befall the “holy city” inhabited by Daniel’s people in the world at that time. This compels a view of not only what Jerusalem is to God, but what it historically represents in the world as the political, religious, and economic center of the land occupied by His people. In modern times, this most naturally relates to the nations of Western Europe, North and South America, and other predominately Christian nations of the world. Of these, there is only one universally recognized chief, and that is the one hosting more Protestants, Catholics, and Jews than any other in the world – the United States of America.

In historical terms, this rise of the U.S. to global prominence could be very easily analogized to the plight of the children of Israel from Egyptian slaves to great world power in the land given to them by Yahweh. They were forbidden to freely worship their God by the Egyptians, as Christians were for most of the first 1,500 years of the founding of the Church by the Roman Catholic oppressors. By great divine intervention, the Israelites escaped their captors, as did the subjects of the Pope and Roman Emperor through the Reformation that began in 1517. Many years later, they occupied the land, conquering its pagan inhabitants in the process, as did those who migrated to the new world of the American continents. They were given the opportunity to build a nation and lives His people in lands rich with natural resources, and they consumed the abundance they were given while forsaking the ways of the Giver. In the Jews case, they suffered total annihilation, loss of their land, and captivity as a result of their betrayal of God, and America and the rest of Christendom in the world seems to be headed for a similar fate.

What is really alarming about this scenario is that Daniel’s prophecy very specifically cited a 490 year period of time for God’s people in the latter days of the Christian era to do exactly as they have been doing since the Reformation, and that started 489 years ago. So, here America sits facing the consequences of its betrayals of its Lord like Jerusalem surrounded by Nebuchadnezzar’s army in Jeremiah’s time, defiantly shaking its fist at its enemies as though God is on their side rather than their unbelieving enemies. (Nebuchadnezzar was a polytheistic pagan with a history of inflicting unmerciful violence; he was also Yahweh’s “servant”, as those who will cause the latter day destruction of Jerusalem will be.) Interestingly, there were 42 kings between the northern and southern kingdoms of Israel’s descendants before they fell, and America is currently on its 42 president if you don’t count the one who won two separate terms twice.

One final twist to introduce is the connection between Jerusalem and Babylon as symbols in biblical prophecies pertinent to modern times. Key to this is the revealing statement in Revelation 11 that relates the “great city” of John’s narrative to symbolic representations of Sodom, Egypt, and Jerusalem in its worst state of apostasy, when they murdered Yahshua. Elsewhere, this great city is symbolically related to Babylon and painted as a “great harlot” who sits at the pinnacle of glory and power amongst nations in the world facing a sudden and devastating fiery attack at the hands of the “people of the prince who is to come” who Daniel said would destroy the “holy city”.

Obviously, finding the United States in biblical prophecies symbolically represented as Babylon, Jerusalem, Sodom, and Egypt requires much more consideration than given here, but the possibility has the potential of shining a great deal of light on numerous passages pertaining to current and future events in the world. Inspired by God, the prophets used examples of what they knew to describe the distant future in ways that would speak directly to those who would witness the objects of their metaphors…and cared enough to know. In so doing, they preserved the word of God as though sealed until the manifestation of the things they described began breaking those seals.