The Gospel of Glory Filling the Temple (4)

Even Solomon, who had built a beautiful temple and written a part of the Bible, fell miserably in his last days of lifewith acting senile. Solomon’s temple was already filled with idols and garbage.We can measure the Israelites’ spiritual depravation of themselves with their behaviors toward the temple. In the same way,how we behaves towards the words of God, the Bible can be our spiritual measurements.

Josiah appeared like a final flag bearer for reformation in Israel. He becamethe king in his young age, and began to break down idols with the desire for the Godly toward God. During the cleaning up the temple, he had found the Book of the Law, which had been forgotten for years.

By the Law, the king must have always carried a copy of the book of the law: To govern the people thoroughly based on the principles of the Bible. People, who found that during the cleaning up the temple, brought the Book of the Law to Josiah with frightened. And he figured out why Israel had been corrupted with reading through the book. Josiah had torn his robe with a fear and laid his face down in front of God(2 Chronicles 34:8-21). ‘It has turned out as God said! It has turned out as God prophesied!’

Josiah senta group of people to Huldah, female prophet. “Is there hope by any chance?” But itwas too late(2 Chronicles 34:22-28). Although the judgement falls on Israel after all, Josiah executes reformation asking for God’s mercy on the dust. The driving force of the reformation was the Law, or by God’s words(2 Chronicles 34:30-32). God had brought about the last reformation through Josiah.

After Israel was captive to Babylon, God rebuilt the temple through an alien king on the disappeared land of Israel based on the promise, which God gave to Jeremiah. However, even the people who rebuilt the temple with Zerubbabel could not have the experience of sound restoration caused by God’s words in their minds. At last, They had realized that ‘it is impossible as descendants of David, a human being, to recover’ and acknowledged that ‘the true Messiah, has to come!’

Churches in New Testament era had born Roman Catholicism since Jesus Christ appeared, but it even was corrupted because of abandoning God’s words. If we have God’s words within ourselves, we can stand again even though we fall many times. However, if we did not have God’s words within ourselves, the misery of Catholic in Middle Ages would have become a reality within us.

What reformers shouted in the tragedy of Middle Ages was that we must cherish the God’s words. As we, human beings cherish our respected one’s words, we are to cherish Jesus’ words with our whole lives once we love Him. Waldeness of France, who found out the truth of the Bible and werenot afraid of death to live following God’s words, translated the Bible into French. And John Wickliffe, who also translated the Bible into English for spreading God’s words. All the events occurred just around 1300s. The people onto whose minds God’s words were planted could not remainstill. The seeds of the words of God, which they sowed who risked their lives to the Bible were also sown to Martin Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and so on. and still givean impact on us in the world until now.

Therefore, religious reformation would be nothing without God’s words. The words of Godtransforms us completely. When we risk our lives only to the words of God, he who gave the words to us would be the Lord of life. and will call and leadus athis level. No matter

what difficulty churches would be given from the world, they will never collapse as long as the eternal truth stands for.(to be continued…)[Gospel Prayer News]

Missionary Yong-Ui Kim (the president of LOG Mission)