Zechariah 14:4-5
In that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley...Then the Lord my God will come, and all the holy ones with him."
The Mount of Olives is east of the city across the Kidron Valley and is higher than the temple mound. Jerusalem becomes the source of living water when The Lord splits the Mount in two and a valley opens up from East to west. And a vast underground river rises up and pours out over the land towards the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean. The Dead Sea is healed and becomes a fishing resort. And Jerusalem will be raised up, elevated above her geographical surroundings.
Zechariah 14:10
"The whole land shall be turned into a plain from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem."
And all the heavens will change. All we know about the universe will change. There will no longer be day or night. No darkness. Only the light of The Lord. One day, neither day nor night, as if time has ended.
And as for the enemies of The Lord?
Zechariah 14:12
"And this shall be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the peoples that wage war against Jerusalem: their flesh will rot while they are still standing on their feet, their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths."
God goes forth and defends his people. And the enemy experiences something akin to the effects of a neutron or nuclear bomb. Is it a literal nuclear attack? Probably not. For me it's no great stretch to imagine God being capable of producing a neutron effect with just a word spoken from his mouth. I mean seriously, think about all the supernatural things that have already happened. He does all these universe transformations of time and space, but now he needs a man made bomb? No...he speaks a neutron effect into being. And eternal death melts his enemies. That easy. This is an easy one for him.
What's Next?
And in that day there will no longer be any spiritual impurity in The House of The Lord. In the Kingdom Come, all things, every aspect of life will become sacred, from the horses to the pots and pans. Everything will become Holy. No longer this idea of separation of church and state. No division between secular and sacred. Everything consecrated and marked as "holy to the lord". That'll be the trade mark. There's going to be banners and bumper stickers everywhere, "holy to the lord", they'll announce. Everything uniquely consecrated.
But not all will be well. The Lord will not force the world to worship him in the millennium age. As he's always done, he will give them the choice. Worship, come to Jerusalem, and be blessed, or don't and experience drought. And some will resist. At some point some will resist because we know that at the end of that 1000 years age, another army comes up against him again. The profane will continue to linger somewhere somehow, until the end of that age. Sin will continue in the earth in some form. And the way that God operates in this regard is found in what we call Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. In these days, to whom does God send rain? God sends rain on the just and on the unjust. But in the millennium age grace will not pour out over all people, wicked and righteous. The wicked will not see rain. And we can see one thing that hasn't changed with all these natural disasters and wonders, people still need water. The people of the Millennium will have great encouragement to obey the Lord and to go up to Jerusalem yearly and worship his Son. And if they don't. Trouble.
How will the wicked, the resistance, survive?
We're not told. But if I had to guess, I'd say they deal in trade with the righteous. Not in Jerusalem, that's clearly laid out as no longer happening in the house of the Lord. But I'm sure the people throughout the lands will agree to provide aid (grace) for price.
But for now, Zechariah ends his prophecy making it clear that God’s way is to make everything that was once common or profane holy instead. And clearly define for all the world to see what holiness is. No more spin. No more propaganda. No more false prophets. No more lies. No more preaching the gospel. Everyone will know what is holy. He makes everything, even the insignificant things, holy.
And the secret for us today?
Realize that all things come from The Lord. All things were created by Him. And he's called his creation very good. Therefore as far as he's concerned, everything is already holy. We profane them. We sin with them. We mark them for destruction. It is our responsibility for the evils of this world. And therefore, if we love the Lord today, we should realize that he expects holiness from his people. And that means everything should be made holy. He's not into compromise.
The trend these days is religious and spiritual people imaging themselves holy as they compromise and profane everything in His name.
Look upon Zechariah 14 and juxtapose it against the modern trends. Is the modern church holy? Are God's people living holy lives? Can it be said that those who profess faith in Jesus Christ are treating every aspect of their lives as holy unto God?
Food for thought. 
Philippians 1:10b-11
"Live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ’s return. May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation—the righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ—for this will bring much glory and praise to God."
Since the fall of man, Adam and every human being that followed, lost the capability to exercise holy reign over the whole of creation. Adam violated the holy command and every generation that followed did likewise. David and the nation of Israel continued this sinful trend. They too were unable to fully manifest God’s kingdom here on earth because of their unrepentant sin. Zerubbabel’s lackluster performance after returning to Jerusalem following the exile into Babylon proved that there always remains a spiritual problem of faithlessness to the law of God, a problem so prevalent that even God's wrath cannot cure it.
And I suppose this is why many Israelites rejected Jesus as the Messiah. His earthly mission was to inaugurate the kingdom and restore ...
Isaiah 5:18-19
"What sorrow for those who drag their sins behind them with ropes made of lies, who drag wickedness behind them like a cart! They even mock God and say, 'Hurry up and do something! We want to see what you can do. Let the Holy One of Israel carry out his plan, for we want to know what it is.'”
The soul believes that God is. The hearts believes that Jesus is the truth and full of grace, the heart believes that he's telling us the truth. And the Spirit through the word of God reveals the truth about grace and brings that truth both into recognition and into remembrance, making that truth clearer and more relevant for the believer. Spirit, soul, and body. By the works of these supernatural forces, faith comes to the hearer. Christianity then becomes what that hearer does with that truth and grace.
Today, there's a dichotomy of worldly ideologies surrounding the Christian church. The polarization is split between progressivism and bigotry. Neither is a good thing. Neither is a Christian worldview. The progressives starting ...
Zechariah 1:13
“In that day a fountain will be opened for the dynasty of David and for the people of Jerusalem, a fountain to cleanse them from all their sins and impurity."
Nothing is sacred about a moment.
Nothing is sacred about a relic.
Nothing is sacred about idols.
Zechariah 13:2
“And on that day,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, “I will erase idol worship throughout the land, so that even the names of the idols will be forgotten."
A man desires God's presence he's lost. He creates an idol to make a remembrance, and that idol becomes his god.
That lost blessing?
He's forgotten it, too busy remembering his idol.
In that day, the Lord himself will do battle against the AntiChrist. His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, and a fountain will open up. A new creation. A new river will spring forth from Jerusalem and cleanse the land and its people.
Ezekiel 36:25
"I will also sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and all your idols."
...
Matthew 1:16
"and Jacob fathered Joseph the husband of Mary, who gave birth to Jesus who is called the Messiah."
Joseph and Mary were engaged. In the Hebrew culture this was the first of three steps in the marriage process. This engagement is basically an arrangement to be married. This could have taken place very early in their lives, even as small children. Engagement was usually arranged by the parents. Espousal followed this arrangement period and lasted about a year in the case where the couple are of age. This espousal stage was considered to be marriage to a certain degree, but the couple were set apart to prepare themselves for full consummation and so they were kept apart sexually. In fact the father kept tokens of his daughter's virginity in case any questions arose later on. It was at this point that "it was discovered before they came together that she was pregnant from the Holy Spirit." (Matthew 1:18b)
Joseph was a righteous man, a Nazarene, a descendent of David. And he didn't want to disgrace Mary and open her ...
Matthew chapter 1
"This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham..."
From Abraham to the Messiah, by his seed (Abraham's), some 42 generations later, the birth of Jesus Christ (the Messiah) came to pass. Jesus' earthly father Joseph, the descendant of king David by the line of David's son Solomon, bore the genealogy of a cursed royal line because of Jeconiah. And yet Luke looks to Jesus as the son of Mary who traces her lineage from Nathan the son of king David, though Nathan is not of the kingly line, but he's also not cursed by the sin of Jeconiah. It seems that Jeconiah birthed quite a bit of trouble, I'm thinking about his grandchild Zerubbabel who was particularly problematic. Looking back to the minor prophets we've recently studied, maybe we'll recall, that Zerubbabel tried to lead a messianic movement for himself. Whether or not he did indeed try to lay claim to Messiah status is a little unclear, but he was indeed involved in the coming of Christ. Both Matthew and Luke list ...
Yesterday I wrote an article/devotion about Nostra aetate and the notion that some hold that there are many paths to God, or that all religious paths lead to the same cross of Jesus. The impetus was the Pope's recent comments about his belief in what I believe is a heretical doctrine.
Today, I want to address what's really going on here for so many in the Catholic Church and in Christian universalism in general. It's really about evangelism, or the lack thereof. Maybe you could say, if you were Methodist, it's about prevenient grace. The desire is to open doors for evangelism. I get that. I also know it only ever really opens the window, but hardly ever the door.
Why?
Why doesn't it work to convert and disciple the worshippers of other "gods" to just meet in ecumenical mingled worship?
Simple answer:
They aren't making disciples, they're making excuses.
And unfortunately this Nostra aetate universalist notion has bled out into all the many Christian communities. And the result is, evangelism and disciple making has been nearly eliminated in most Christian ...
