“JESUS GATHERS YOU”
Saint Matthew 24: 15-28
3rd Last Sunday (Propers 25th Sunday after Trinity): 8 November Anno Domini 2015
Father Jay Watson SSP
Weird Dispensationalists and kooky Millennialists—heterodox sectarians, focus on misreading Daniel and/or upon socio-political numerology that harmonizes with Zionist fantasies. Bored Christians and Lutherans, who really want to be Calvinists, also look too much to obscure points of history and archeology. The history is The Lord’s. The life of Daniel the great Prophet is Christ’s life in type.
Jesus comes to you through His Word that you might fix your eyes on Christ crucified for your deliverance.
If the greatest confessional scholars and the blessed Church Fathers are not in total agreement on just what the “abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet” is; then you would be ill advised to pontificate too much on what some article or book might opine.
Hear the Messiah’s warning. When the holy place is defiled flee to the mountains. O wait…you’re not living in Judaea. The Temple, the Holy Place of The Lord’s visible ministry, no longer exists. What to do with another interesting 2,000 year old historical bit of trivia: NOT!
The Holy is The Lord. All that The Word made was Holy—separated and selected from nothing for Himself. Pre-fall Eden was Holy and was filled with a Holy Man and a Holy Woman. All that ruined and despoiled the garden—that drove your kin out of Paradise—was unholy, an abomination. Your daily trespasses cause abomination. Your fallen natures rot everything they come into contact with. Man without God, with God’s Church, is nothing BUT desolate. Hell is desolation to the nth degree!
Jesus did not place you in 1st century Palestine but in His 20th and 21st century sheepfold. You’re not in the made-up social construct of the modern invention “state of Israel” but in the true Israel of His one, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic communion.
Because Jesus did not flee but confronted unfinished commandments, you are given forgiveness. He loved His Father absolutely and He loved his enemies perfectly, and because of it, you are forgiven for not doing so. You may now confront error and falsehood IN HIM and His Word, but you can also heed His warning to flee evil and sin in yourselves. Flee that which is in the world, the devil, and your own “old Adam” and go to the mountains. The mountain of Sinai (the Commandments) will prepare you to flee (to be carried in the arms of the Holy Ghost) to the Mountain of Calvary (the Gospel) to be bathed in Christ’s fountain of Blood. You flee to His Ascension Mountain, His font, pulpit, and communion rail, where He is Present to fill all things.
The Lord has pulled you out of the prison pit by letting Himself be killed and buried deep into its hellish abomination. He has placed you on the roof top, the balcony of hope where with the eyes of faith you can see the heavenly mansions. Do not return into the mammon rooms of the house of self and shame but set your eyes on the things above—the things in His Word and Water and Altar top!
Mystics of both east and west go into the desert but end up looking and meditating only upon the barren and waterless inner heart of sinful self. Christ doesn’t desire, nor has He ever asked or commanded, that one leave the Family Table to traverse the wilderness again looking for the roaring lion. Jesus survived the desert assault and obeyed where Moses and the Israelites, and you, don’t and can’t. Be in His Word with your brothers and sisters and stay wet + and green while you wait with eager expectation of the End, and your deliverance. Look not to the “lightnings” of exciting and emotionally driven shows of religion—numbers, wealth, jazz & pizzazz. Jesus will call you by Himself—The Gospel. He has His Holy Ghost even now assembling you round the carcase—not a dead man but a living God/Man. Come fellow eagles of light and life: you are gathered—
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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