CHAPTER 12: WAS JERUSALEM REALLY A HOLY CITY?

CHAPTER 12: WAS JERUSALEM REALLY A HOLY CITY?

Matthew 27:53 states that the OTW "went into the holy city". It is assumed that this phrase "the holy city" means the actual city of Jerusalem during the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The actual term "holy city" is used only twice in the Four Gospels. The term is mentioned only in Matthew. The description is used in:

Matthew 4:5 Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,

Matthew 27:53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many:

The dead were seen entering the "holy city". This "holy city" in Matthew 4:5 is the place that Satan used as a setting for the temptation of Christ in the wilderness. Jesus was taken by the Devil to the "holy city" where Satan "setteth" Jesus upon a "pinnacle of the temple" to be tempted by him to commit suicide.

Both of these descriptions of the holy city can be applied to either a natural or spiritual setting.  You can use either of these terms to refer to Jerusalem or to the New Jerusalem.

In various interpretations of this passage, there is a popular doctrine called the Doctrine of Satan that teaches Matthew 4:5 is referring to either a natural or spiritual Jerusalem in times of spiritual temptation.

However, when teaching the Doctrine of the OTW, these teachers conclude that Matthew 27:53 is describing a natural city, the physical Jerusalem, in a natural condition.

Even if the testing of Jesus in the wilderness was physical in nature, the Devil did physically take Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple. However, the testing was conducted on a mental plane during a spiritual confrontation. The term "holy city" was used as a spiritual description of a very vile city of sinners governed by two very vile godless empires.

The description used as the "holy city" in Matthew 4:5 or Matthew 27:53, would not have been an accurate spiritual description of the natural city of Jerusalem during the time of Jesus Christ. Before and during the time of Jesus, the city of Jerusalem was occupied and controlled by the Roman Empire, which was an idol-worshipping empire ruled by Godless heathens. The Empire of Rome appointed Herod the Great, a half-Jew who complied with Roman rule, as King of the Jews. The very fact that Herod was an imposed King by the Romans meant the city of Jerusalem was far from being a "holy city" during Herod's rule of Judea from 37 BCE to 4 BCE.

1400 years before the appearance of Jesus as the Messiah, the Captivity of Egypt had produced idol worship within Israel lasting until the Babylonian captivity and destruction of the First Temple by Nebuchadnezzar II. This captivity brought to an end the physical worship of idols.

But another ideological idol became the God of the Jewish Nation. The rulers of the Nation of Israel forgot their "First Love" (God), and were not committed to the commandments of the Law of Moses, but were using traditional interpretations of the Law, as the law.   

Israel had become worshippers of their scrolls of the Law, turning them into fictitious idols. Jesus clearly denounced this for which he was subsequently murdered by crucifixion at the hands of the Jewish nation. Their open denial of Jesus as their Messiah was likewise a denial of All Father God.

Long before the occupation of Rome, the Prophet Nehemiah, King David and the Prophet Isaiah had called Jerusalem a "Holy City”. Jerusalem was indeed holy because of its significance as the Place of Solomon's Temple, the holding place of the Ark of the Covenant.

Yet, the First Temple had been destroyed, and the Arc of the Covenant had disappeared. In 587 BC, the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple. There is no record of what became of the Ark in the Books of Kings and Chronicles.

Then came the building of the Second Temple called "Herod's Temple". This was the temple building, not sanctioned by God and without the Ark of the Covenant. This would have been the Temple in which Jesus and the OTW would have been associated. This temple did not make Jerusalem the "holy city".

Jerusalem had also been called an adulteress by the Prophet Hosea 3:1:

Hosea 3:1 Then said the LORD unto me, Go yet, love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress, according to the love of the LORD toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods, and love flagons of wine..

Ezekiel 22:2 calls Jerusalem a "bloody city”:

Ezekiel 22:2 Now, thou son of man, wilt thou judge, wilt thou judge the bloody city? yea, thou shalt shew her all her abominations.

In the 23rd chapter of Ezekiel, Jerusalem is accused of whoredom and misconduct:

Ezekiel 23:3-4 And they committed whoredoms in Egypt; they committed whoredoms in their youth: there were their breasts pressed, and there they bruised the teats of their virginity. And the names of them were Aholah the elder, and Aholibah her sister: and they were mine, and they bare sons and daughters. Thus were their names; Samaria is Aholah, and Jerusalem Aholibah.

Malachi 2:11 denounces Jerusalem as “idol worshippers”:

Malachi 2:11 Judah hath dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah hath profaned the holiness of the LORD which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange god.

If the description of Jerusalem in the New Testament as the "holy city" were factual, then in Matthew 27:53 the term is a false description of an actual vile city.

The description would have been a far stretch even if meant as a spiritual description of this vile city. The dead would not have gone into a "holy city" but would have "went" into a very unholy city.

Jesus used a parable to describe the condition of Israel in Matthew 12:45 in which Jesus said that that evil generation would take on 7 plus 1 evil spirits, meaning the nation of Israel was devil possessed.

Matthew 12:45 Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.

There is the possibility that "holy city" was a description of a spiritual condition, as the place where Jesus was tempted. Likewise, the place of the resurrection of the dead in Matthew 27 would have been in a spiritual setting.

Consideration of these specific saints that were seen by many and that walked into the "holy city"were those who were actually walking into the New Jerusalem, the one hundred forty four thousand, the Bride of Jesus Christ. And the only way to enter into the New Jerusalem is to have the Holy Ghost...which the OTW did not have prior to the Resurrection of Matthew 27:52-53.

Jerusalem being described as a "holy city" can only have a spiritual meaning if we are to understand Matthew 27:52-53 and Matthew 4:5. The "holy city" is a place of metaphoric heavenly conditions.

Considering the term "holy city" mentioned in these two scriptures is metaphoric for a spiritual place or spiritual plane of existence, is there any text proof for such a condition like this biblically to be taken seriously?

The Book of Revelation certainly uses the term "holy city" as a metaphor for several understandings other than the actual physical city of Jerusalem, Israel:

Revelation 11:2 But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.

Revelation 21:2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

Revelation 21:3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

Revelation 21:9 And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the Lamb's wife.

Revelation 21:10 And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God,

Revelation 22:19 And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

The Book of Revelation describes the "holy city" as the Bride of Jesus. Revelation 21 gives a full description of the spiritual city of "holy Jerusalem" as an actual dwelling place of God.

The metaphor "holy city" is a description of a spiritual existence or plane of spiritual reality in God.

To worship God we are told that we must worship him in spirit:

John 4:24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

As we read of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness by Satan, the term "holy city" was very metaphorical for the place where Jesus faced a high-level spiritual confrontation. As well, the account of the OTW walking into the "holy city" is a very metaphoric term for saints moving into a spiritual place and a description of the Bride of Christ.

Hebrews 11:10 For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

Hebrews 11:10 states that Abraham was on the lookout for a city. This statement was written from the Apostle Paul’s perspective. It is a spiritual explanation of what Abraham was spiritually searching for. However, Abraham was looking for something a tad different.

In Abraham's case, the place he was looking for was a country. Abraham,Isaac and Jacob were looking toward being with God, literally being with God in the afterlife. They wanted to be in that spiritual land prepared for them by God himself, in which God (unknown to them) was going to be preparing for them a city...the New Jerusalem: the Bride of Christ. Abraham,Isaac and Jacob did not know they were looking for the Bride of Christ.  But in looking for a better country, they were likewise going to find the New Jerusalem.

The text proof for this is in Hebrews 11: 13-16:

Hebrews 11:13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

Hebrews 11:14 For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country.

Hebrews 11:15 And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned.

Hebrews 11:16 But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly: wherefore God "is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city."

Hebrews 11:16 states that the Worthies were not looking for an earthly country, they were looking for a better heavenly country in which God (unknown to the Worthies) had prepared a city for them, which in New Testament terms, would be a heavenly city in a heavenly country. The city, by the time any of the OTW get there, the city will already be built, functioning and complete in every way.

All of the OTW of Hebrews 11 were looking for a country in which they would live forever; they were not seeking Jerusalem. The real promise to Abraham was a land eternal. The saints were seeking heaven, and God would provide that rather than a better country.y will also be given a heavenly city, the New Jerusalem, which is the Bride of Christ.

This is the spiritualization of what a "better country" would mean for the Worthies, if they claimed to have their entire inheritance saved. This city was never taught in the Old Testament; this city is only and specifically taught as a New Testament teaching.

Paul added the teaching of a city, the New Jerusalem, to Hebrews 11, as a detail of spiritual explanation as to what "looking for a better country" literally and totally meant.

Revelation 21:1-3 clearly reveals what city is prepared for all men in the last days and the beginning of the New Earth.

Revelation 21:1 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

Revelation 21:2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

Revelation 21:3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

The OTW, after their resurrection in the Second Resurrection, will be in the country for which they were looking and there they will find the city: New Jerusalem, the city God has built for all righteous men and women.