The true Jewish worshippers are found in the inner section of the Temple, close to the altar, just as the true Church is found as a nucleus, a holy remnant, within the many churches and denomination of Christianity: the visible (outward church-organisations, church-structures) and the invisible Church (the body of true believers within every one of these churches). There are and always will be in Israel the ‘seven thousand’ who have not bowed the knee to Baal.1 A holy remnant is always present within Israel, together with the final generation when ‘all Israel’ that shall be saved, Romans 11:26. Corruption, decay, moral decline, following seduction both physically as well as spiritually, penetrates deeply, however, both in Israel and in Christianity at large. Many worship the ‘beast’ and bear his mark. However, those who are sealed from the Jewish people and ‘the multitude no one can count’ who are overshadowed by the Lord’s Tabernacle,2 are there too and they are protected by Him. They always will be.
A literal Temple must be fenced off in meters and centimetres, but a spiritual check is also required through John’s prophetic actions. The operation of measuring with a standard is ‘graphic teaching’, teaching by demonstration, like the ‘graphic teaching’ the prophets in the Old Testaments also had to do.3 The Temple, the altar and the worshippers therein meet the requirements of the standard, because the separation (literally the ‘throwing out’ in Greek) of the Court of the Gentiles would make no sense otherwise. The Gentiles push through into the outer court and trample the Holy City underfoot for a period of forty-two months. And that is the period in which the two ‘beasts’, the satanic world leader(s), with their political and their ideological propaganda and slogans reign.4
The Lord pits the revelation of His saints against the revelation of extreme unrighteousness. It has always been like this, throughout the centuries, and it will be so too in the intensified time of the end, when everything will come to a climax. We do not know now how they will be able to survive and continue to worship when the ‘man of lawlessness’ finally sets himself up to be worshipped in the ’Temple’. The Lord will make this clear, no doubt. The Book of Revelation demonstrates time and again that there are still believers in all the stages that it describes. Some die as martyrs during the disasters, trials, and tribulations and judgments, but many are often protected as well, as promised in Revelation 3:10. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord—no other creature, no other person, no created fallen angel. Nothing can.5
Will the ‘abomination that causes desolation’, when the anti-Christ set up in the ‘Temple’ be found in a wing of the Temple, so that the believers’ worship is still able to continue?6 Or does Paul mean, believers at large can still worship? We do not know. However, the taking by the Redeemer/Goel, Who breaks the seals of the scroll that was in the hand of the One Who was sitting on the throne (Revelation 5) is an act of redemption. He has started to set free the world and its inhabitants that became in the hands of Satan and his angels, demons, and other kinds of ‘powers of darkness’, to bring it back into the hands of the rightful Owner: the Creator of Heaven and earth. Part of this process of redemption is redeeming His Church on earth as well. John measures the area dedicated and sanctified to the Lord. This part has already been ‘legally’ withdrawn from Satan’s power by John’s prophetic act. The holy ones, in the sense of: separated from the rest, the sanctified, are his main focus. Do we belong to that group?
• There was already both a true and a false church in John’s day. There was already a ‘standard’ too, a ‘golden rule’ set up to distinguish the true believers from the false believers. And the prophetic ‘distinguishing of spirits’7 had to take place as well. There always have been ‘antichrists’, as forerunners of the last and final ‘anti-Christ’, throughout all ages.8 During centuries past, the ‘true believers’ had to be separated from the ‘hypocrites’, ‘fake believers’ ‘fake’ and ‘pseudo’ believers as well.
• 2 Timothy 3:1-7 “But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people. They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.” “For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.”9
• ‘Goel’ is a Hebrew term which comes from the word lig’ol (“to redeem”), hence meaning “redeemer”, which in the Hebrew Bible and the rabbinical tradition denotes a person who as the nearest relative of another is charged with the duty of restoring the rights of another and avenging his wrongs. When ‘Goel’ is used in contexts involving revenge for wrongful death, English-language translations of the Bible generally refer to a ‘Goel’ as an “avenger of blood”. In the Book of Isaiah, God is called the redeemer of Israel, as God redeems His people from Captivity; the context shows that the redemption also involves moving on to something greater. In Christianity, the title ‘Goel’ is applied to Christ, who redeems his believers from all evil by offering Himself as the Paschal Lamb.
Bible References:
1.Romans 11:4 2.Revelation 7:15, 13:6 3.For example, Ezekiel 37:16–28 4.Revelation 13:5, 11–12 5.Romans 8:38–39 6.Daniel 9:27 7.1 Corinthians 12:10 8.1 John 2:18–25 9.2 Corinthians 11:13-15
