Pentecost 29

Pentecost 29 (Mark 13:1-8)

“Beware that no one leads you astray.”

People react to God’s prophets by hiring false prophets.  Satan reacts to God’s Messiah by inspiring false Messiah’s.  A false prophet follows the money. A false Messiah is filled with self-deceiving pride.

Jesus understood this. History show how the rich and powerful in Israel hired false prophets to confuse people about God’s Law and God’s Plan of Salvation. The motive is very ancient and very contemporary. The motive is the love of money.

Neither the false prophets nor the people who paid them really believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They rejected those aspects of the Law of Moses that inhibited their passion for wealth and power. They rejected the prophetic call to repentance and preparation.

Some forty years after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, in the year 70AD religious extremists seized control of Jerusalem. They claimed to be the true patriots and the true religious conservatives. They drove out the Romans and all foreigners. They took control of the Temple and the government. They instituted a reign of terror in Jerusalem to purge the holy city of liberals, moderates and fake conservatives. They celebrated their victory and waited for God to send an angelic army to defend them. That army never came. The Roman army came instead. And, the Emperor gave one single order to his army: kill them all. And, they did.

The Romans massacred the population of Jerusalem. They destroyed the Temple. They leveled the city of Jerusalem. Then, they excavated the mountain ridge on which the city had been constructed. The current version of the city of Jerusalem is built slightly north of the old site.

Seventy years later, in the year 140AD, a false Messiah, an anti-Christ, arose in Israel. He fulfilled all of the expectations the false prophets proclaimed. He expelled the Romans. He drove out all foreigners. He declared the Kingdom of God on earth. He gathered an army. He promised the people everything the false prophets promised. He waited for God to send an angelic army to defend Israel. Once again, that army never came. The Roman army came. And once again, the Emperor gave one simple command: kill them all. And, they did.

Our Heavenly Father’s Plan of Salvation is Jesus Christ. Jesus summarizes our individual responsibilities in the Summary of the Law. He gives the Church her responsibility in the Great Commission. Most people do not want God’s Plan. People tend to create a plan of salvation routed in political or economic ideas. Secular minded people use the language of sociology, culture or psychology. Religious minded people use the outward and visible forms of belief but reject the inward and spiritual grace of faith.

Satan, who has deluded himself to believe he is the equal and opposite of God, has his plan of damnation. The essence of the Plan of Damnation is: keep people separate. Keep them separated from God. Keep them separated from each other. And, keep them separated from the image and likeness of God imprinted on their souls. The effective means Satan uses to achieve his plan is confusion. The key to confusion is deceit.

In this, Satan learned from the rich and powerful who hired the false prophets. A false prophet does not have to convince. A false prophet only needs to confuse.  Human pride and self-will does the real work after that. Satan does from time to time cultivate a false Messiah to create chaos in the world and in the church. In the church, the beloved apostle John reminds us that any church leader who denies our Heavenly Father’s Plan of Salvation in Jesus Christ is an anti-Christ. St. Paul tells us that such a person follows in the way of the false prophets by preaching a false gospel.

Jesus knew that false prophets and anti- Christs would follow him. He knew that at some point the rich and the powerful would overplay their hands and bring destruction to the Temple, the city of Jerusalem and the nation of Israel. He knew that false teachers would emerge in the church as weeds grow in a wheat field. He knew this because he knows us. He knows what it is to be human because he is fully human. He knows what it is to be lost in separation from God because he himself was never lost in separation until he took our sins upon himself on the cross. He knew the lost by living among us and paying attention to us. And, he observed that the lost do not want to be found.

Only Jesus can find the lost who do not want to be found.  Some of us are lost in a religious culture of rewards and punishments, of judgment and condemnation.  Some of us are lost in a secular culture of entitlement and self-indulgence. Jesus reaches out to us all. He and He alone is the Father’s Plan of Salvation for humanity because he and he alone reunifies divinity with humanity in his own person.

Jesus knows that every generation in the church will raise up false teachers to deceive and confuse the faithful.  Occasionally, a false Prophet will rise to offer a different plan of salvation and lead many people back into law based slavery, fear and conflict. Satan himself waits for the right moment to inspire a false Messiah, an anti-Christ, to use the forms of religion to subvert the Father’s Plan of Salvation.

Jesus warns us: be wary. Test the teachers. Question the prophets. We do this by waking up to the world as it is and to God as he is. We do this by reading the Bible, studying the Bible and memorizing the Bible in the context of the Body of Christ, the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. We do this by immersing our minds, hearts and wills in the highest form of love a human being can experience. That highest form of love is worship.

Be wary. Wake up. Stay close to Jesus. Follow him.