Now Jesus, going up to Jerusalem, took the twelve disciples aside on the road and said to them, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and to the scribes; and they will condemn Him to death, and deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock and to scourge and to crucify. And the third day He will rise again.” (Matthew 20:17-19, NKJV)
Upon reading the above BibleGateway’s Verse of the Day on the first weekend this month, I was struck immediately by two apparently unrelated verses:
- Jerusalem being trampled down until the Gentiles’ ‘Day’ is fulfilled (Luke 21:24)
- with the Lord 1 day is as 1,000 years, and 1,000 years as 1 day (2 Peter 3:8).
And right away came an insight connecting all the verses and which may indicate Jesus was not only predicting His trial, death and resurrection, but also implying the time that would elapse until His, as yet unannounced, return in full glory as King of Kings!
That is, on the first day He’d be tried by the Jewish authorities who’d then hand Him over to the ruling Gentile power for execution. Thereafter, the Jews would regard Him as dead and gone but Romans guard His corpse on and from the second day. In other words, the Jewish people relinquished their connection to Jesus as Messiah but Gentiles had supervision of His body – not only in the natural but also the spiritual body! Also, Jews would lose all connection with Jerusalem and their land of Judea after the holy city is destroyed and the people driven into exile across the Roman empire, and remain so for two ‘Days’.
Thus, their holy capital would be ‘trampled upon’ by non-Jewish peoples until the modern state of Israel was born in 1948 and Jerusalem later captured during war with surrounding nations, and brought into Israel in 1967 Anno Domini – ie. in the 2nd millennium since Christ, or ‘Day 2’
Thus, I perceived an intriguing contrast as possibly alluding to the rise of the Church over ‘2 Days’, as indicating 2,000 actual years of church growth and predominance until the dispersed Jews return to their homeland, become a nation and inhabit and rule in Jerusalem.
Moreover, as 2,000 AD marked the start of the third millennium then we are now at the beginning of ‘Day 3’ – ie figuratively at its ‘dawn’. That was when Mary Magdalene and her friends visited the tomb only to discover Jesus’ corpse was missing – BUT THEN he appeared to her ALIVE and spoke to her! An utterly awesome moment.
So, I was strongly impressed that this numerical equivalence is pointing to the possible repeat of Jesus’ Presence drawing very close to and thus empowering His future Bride in our time, preparing us for His actual return in person, as promised and prophesied.
CONFIRMATION
On Monday 4th April we attended the inaugural meeting of the Hants-Surrey area hub of the New Carmel Prophets, as announced herein and foretold by Veronika West. In his brief introductory speech Revd Yinka Oyekan drew attention to our normal concept of time being very different to God’s and how it functions in the heavenly realms.
Therefore, it was most encouraging to hear this ‘God-incidence’ very soon after having such a peculiar notion drop into my mind about the possibility of Jesus having hinted at the duration of time before His return in all His Holy Glory.
Meanwhile, may you and your dear ones have a thoroughly blessed ‘Good’ Friday, Passover and Resurrection weekend and holiday Monday. I trust the special posts scheduled for publication will be of inspirational interest…
After a prolonged but useful delay in chatting with telecoms engineer in our street (after a month of blocked outgoing email with ISP TalkTalk) am back at the desk catching up and find Veronika’s latest is on the above news, as posted on her 
LAST NIGHT (6pm US time – click image to read)
Richard's Watch 