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CONNIE: Jerusalem! It’s a city at the center of controversy. And it’s long been a city at the center of faith for many people. The apostle Paul was one of them—join us as we follow him on a journey to Jerusalem.

Giving God’s trumpet a Certain Sound for 75 years, this is the Voice of Prophecy.

CONNIE: Hello, I’m Connie Jeffery,

LONNIE: and I’m Lonnie Melashenko. You know, Connie, I think that most Christians, Jews, and many Muslims as well have it in the back of their mind that they’d like to visit Jerusalem sometime in their life.

CONNIE: It certainly is a fascinating city—with important sites for people of all three religions to visit.

LONNIE: I was there last in 1999, when we filmed several programs for television and also took a tour group too many other sites in Israel and Egypt. I’ve always been very glad that we went there when we did, because the political tensions since then have escalated dramatically, and many people consider it too dangerous a destination for tourism or filming nowadays.

CONNIE: That’s true, but it wasn’t exactly a safe destination back in the days of Jesus and Paul, either, was it?

LONNIE: That’s one of the incredible things about the portion of Paul’s life that we’re looking at in our program today. You know, personally, I wouldn’t feel terribly comfortable going to Jerusalem right now, but there’s no specific threat against me. No prophet has come to me and told me that I’ll end up in jail if I go there. But that very sort of thing had happened to Paul. And yet he still felt it essential to go to Jerusalem at the end of his third missionary journey.

CONNIE: What was so important about it to him?

LONNIE: Well, just the fact that it was Jerusalem—the site of God’s temple, for one thing. There are other factors as well, but I guess the best answer is just to say that he felt the Lord guiding him to go there.

CONNIE: And that’s what he did, despite many warnings and forebodings along the way. To better understand why, we’ve invited Professor Warren Trenchard to join us. Ken Wade spoke with him. Let’s listen in.

KEN: I want to welcome Dr. Warren Trenchard to our program today. Dr. Trenchard is professor of New Testament and early Christian literature at La Sierra University, Welcome to our program today.

WARREN: I’m glad to be here.

KEN: Dr. Trenchard, we are talking today about Paul and his journey to Jerusalem, and we know that Paul had a lot of premonitions about that, but he still wanted to go. Why did he want to go? What’s going on here?

WARREN: Well, several things here. Paul, had a special relationship, as did all of the early Christians, with the city of Jerusalem, in particularly the church and the Christians there, and saw this as the place where Christianity began with the climax of the ministry of Jesus, in His death and resurrection and the proclamation of His Messiah-ship and soon coming, that we had beginning with the Pentecost experience. So Jerusalem is extremely important in Paul’s experience. Of course, this is where he reflects about persecuting Christians for the first time. Where he went shortly after his conversion to Christianity conferred with religious leaders and had conformation of the experience that he had with the risen Lord…

KEN: So he has a long history. There are some parallels too, of course, with Jesus’ own going to Jerusalem even though He knew that bad things were going to happen to Him there.

WARREN: Exactly. Remember that the book of Acts is the second volume of a two volume work that Luke wrote. First of all, the gospel of Luke, then the book of Acts in which Jerusalem figures as a very important kind of center point in the whole story. In Luke 9:51, Luke says that when his days had drawn near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem, and then begins a long section of the gospel of Luke, some 9 chapters in which he not only details the travel to Jerusalem, but includes many of the favorite parables that we have from Jesus and puts them into that particular section. So the movement to Jerusalem is very important to Luke’s portrayal of Jesus. He also does the same thing with Paul, in chapter 19:21, Paul resolved, Luke tells us, in the spirit to go through Macedonia, Kyiv and then on to Jerusalem, so these are important parts in the story, so that Jerusalem takes on a very specific goal in each of these accounts.

KEN: Once he got there some interesting things happened in relation to his…relationship between Jews and Gentiles, and he actually demonstrates his Jewishness in a very real way, doesn’t he?

WARREN: That’s right! And we might back up and just note that along with the reasons for him going to Jerusalem, and the importance of Jerusalem, he had felt all along that he was sent out on a mission by the spirit to Gentiles, but at the same time he was to keep Christianity locked to its Jewish foundations. So, as he worked among Gentiles it was important for him that Jerusalem constituted a kind of foundation, and the people there were also very poor, and so he decided to collect from his Gallatin churches and from his churches in Greece, a significant monetary offering to bring personally, to Jerusalem, along with envoys from these churches, and demonstrate their love for these Christians in need.

KEN: So, he has a multifaceted mission there, and when he arrives he actually participates in the temple ceremonies, but unfortunately, or fortunately it was all according to Gods plan. He ends up getting arrested anyhow, and the end result really was the ability to go to Rome, wasn’t it?

WARREN: That’s correct. When Paul wrote to the Romans he said, I must first go to Jerusalem and deliver these gifts that I have collected. I want you to pray that they will be accepted, and I want you to pray that I will be delivered from unbelievers both in the church and outside the church, and from people that would misunderstand his mission to the Gentiles. Then he said, I’m going to come to you and bring the gospel and share the gospel with you, and at the end of Paul’s experience in Jerusalem, he had an experience with the risen Lord. The night after his appearance in the Sanhedrin, the Lord spoke to him and said, “Keep up your courage, for just as you have testified for me in Jerusalem, so you must bear witness in Rome. So, there was this conformation that he recived from the Lord that his trip to Jerusalem, even though everyone knew it, would end with his arrest, was part of God’s plan for the extension of the gospel.

KEN: In all, God was leading. Well, thank you Dr. Warren, we really appreciate your comments on Paul’s trip to Jerusalem.

WARREN: My pleasure!

“The Holy City”, Jaime Jorge and Elvin Rodriguez, from We Shall Behold Him CD.

CONNIE: The Holy City! Jerusalem has been known by that name for millennia, and we thank Jaime Jorge and Elvin Rodriguez for that selection from the famous song by the same name.

LONNIE; If you’re familiar with the words to the song, you know that it goes through the history of Jerusalem, from the days of Jesus, through the destruction by the Romans, but then looks forward to the time when the New Jerusalem will come down from God out of heaven and will abide forever. And that of course is based on the vision of John recorded in the book of Revelation.

CONNIE: There is a lot of Bible prophecies about Jerusalem, aren’t there?

LONNIE: Yes, and unfortunately just about as many different interpretations as there are prophecies. And that’s why I like to recommend Voice of Prophecy’s Focus on Prophecy Bible course to our listeners. These study guides take a comprehensive look at Bible prophecies focusing not only on Jerusalem, but on the whole world.

CONNIE: You can study the Focus on Prophecy Bible Guides right at home, via correspondence, or via the Internet. Details are available on our web page at vop.com, or you can call 1-800-872-0055 and ask to be enrolled in the free Focus on Prophecy Bible course. We’ll have more information about later, but right now let’s listen to Lonnie’s message, “Jerusalem! Jerusalem!”

Jerusalem! Jerusalem!

“‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!’ ” (Matthew 23:37, NKJV)

These are the words of Jesus as He looked out over the chosen city—the place where God had met with and spoken to His people for a thousand years. It was a holy city, set apart by King David as his own city and the place where the temple of the Lord would be built. Through the years countless kings and prophets had called it home. Armies had marched forth from its massive gates on missions of conquest and on forays to defend its hallowed precincts.

Massacres had happened there, as well as miracles.

But always it stood, in the minds of God’s chosen people, as the symbol of the power and the right of God to rule.

Gleaming on its highest hill stood the Temple.

Not just any temple, but the temple of the Most High God. It had stood there in one form or another almost continuously since the days of Solomon. And now it stood in its greatest glory ever. Unequaled in magnificence anywhere in the Roman Empire. The total renovation that Herod the Great had begun nearly 50 years earlier was still going on, and the white marble and golden spires of the building were enough to take your breath away.

A few days earlier, as He approached the city, Jesus had paused to look on its splendor and to ponder its fate, and He had wept over the city. How He wished He could save it. But He knew it was not meant to be. The very city that was intended to demonstrate God’s love to the world would turn on Him and make Him the brunt of all humanity’s pent up anger at God. A tragedy was brewing. He wished He could avert it. But even God couldn’t stop it, because it was part of His great plan of love for the world.

Jesus knew that the city held only torment and death for Him. And yet He was drawn to it. Inexorably the Spirit moved Him to Jerusalem, to the temple, and finally to Calvary.

And now, twenty-five years later, the apostle Paul felt the same irresistible moving of the Holy Spirit, urging him to go to Jerusalem.

To take his gospel to the center.

He knew that trouble awaited him there. Writing to the church at Rome before he ever left Corinth on the trip to Jerusalem, he appealed for prayer support, as we read in Romans 15:30-32: “I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love that the Spirit gives: join me in praying fervently to God for me. Pray that I may be kept safe from the unbelievers in Judea and that my service in Jerusalem may be acceptable to God's people there. And so I will come to you full of joy, if it is God's will, and enjoy a refreshing visit with you.” (TEV)

To understand the depth of Paul’s commitment to the journey to Jerusalem, you only need to look at a map. From Corinth you could take a ship to Italy and be in Rome in a week’s time. Jerusalem laid several weeks’ journey in the exact opposite direction. But Paul wanted—needed—to go there before going to Rome.

He had been collecting offerings from the churches in Macedonia, Greece, and Asia to help the needy church members in Jerusalem, and he wanted to be present when this generous gift was delivered. No doubt he longed to see the fruit of his efforts to strengthen the ties between the “mother church” and the Gentile congregations the Lord had raised up through his efforts.

But something more than the desire to deliver donations powered his pilgrimage. Others could have done that as well as he could.

For Paul, Jerusalem still represented the center of God’s ministry to Planet Earth. It was the place he needed to go—he needed to see the Temple and worship there at least one more time. And this fact is key to our understanding of the gospel. It seems to me that many Christians see the gospel as something opposed to the revelation of God that had gone on in His temple for a thousand years.

And some of us even quote Paul as justification of that viewpoint.

But really, nothing could be farther from the truth. The Bible is one book—Old and New Testaments form a single unit that reveals God to the world. Paul was not opposed to the religion practiced in Jerusalem. He wanted very much to be a part of it as well as to have a part in Christ. He wanted to the two brought together. So much so that he was willing to risk life and limb to try to strengthen the bonds between them.

As he journeyed toward Jerusalem, he was warned by prophets and others that trouble awaited him there. He told his friends in Ephesus; “now, as a captive to the Spirit, I am on my way to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there” (Acts 20:22, NRSV).

When Paul arrived at the seaport of Caesarea on the coast of Palestine, the highly-respected prophet Agabus came down from Judea, and according to Acts 21:11-12 “He . . . took Paul's belt, bound his own feet and hands with it, and said, ‘Thus says the Holy Spirit, “This is the way the Jews in Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles” ’ ” (NRSV).

But even this warning from a prophet couldn’t turn Paul aside from his mission. He looked around at the church members who had been deeply upset by Agabus’ message and said “ ‘What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be bound but even to die in Jerusalem for the sake of the Lord Jesus’ ” (Acts 20:13, NRSV).

Sounds a bit like Jesus, doesn’t it?

Luke 9:51 says “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, [Jesus] set his face to go to Jerusalem” (NRSV).

It was essential for Jesus to go to Jerusalem, to carry the gospel to the very place that God had set His name upon for so many years. So that the gospel could challenge the moribund miasma of misinformation about God that dominated the religion practiced there.

And now it was essential for Paul to go to Jerusalem to assure that the gospel, which had been made available to all peoples of the world, would not become bound only to the Jewish race. He wanted to make sure that the church would be composed of both Jews and Gentiles, and that all would stand on equal footing, regardless of their genetic makeup.

And when he arrived in Jerusalem, it quickly became clear that his influence was needed there. Rumor and innuendo had been flying about the city, among the Christians, and he and his Gentile converts were in danger of being labeled second-class Christians.

He met with the church leadership and reported on the great success God had given him in winning Gentiles.

News about this had obviously arrived ahead of him, and it had stirred up controversy in the church, because the elders responded by praising God, but then bringing up a problem:

“‘You see, brother [Paul],’ ” they said, “‘how many thousands of believers there are among the Jews, and they are all zealous for the law. They have been told about you that you teach all the Jews living among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, and that you tell them not to circumcise their children or observe the customs’ ” (Acts 21:20-21, NRSV).

Attitudes toward the Law of God as given to Moses threatened to create a giant rift in the early Christian church, with the Jewish members being zealous for the law, while Paul’s Gentile converts, not having been raised to follow all the law’s dictates, gave it less heed.

Paul’s response to this potential problem reveals the depth and breadth of his understanding, and of his love for the gospel. He could have argued back, reminding the brethren that their own council a few years earlier had validated his ministry to the Gentiles, and that they had sent him out with a letter saying that he didn’t need to require his converts to follow all the uniquely Jewish practices.

But rather than arguing, Paul chose to demonstrate his loyalty to the law of God. He undertook to participate in one of the most Jewish of rituals—the vows of a Nazirite—showing his solidarity with those who held that the law still had a part to play in guiding the lives of Christians.

Paul joined four other men who had taken Nazirite vows, and “having purified himself, he entered the temple with them, making public the completion of the days of purification when the sacrifice would be made for each of them” (Acts 20:26, NRSV).

Paul was no enemy of the law, or of the rites practiced at the temple. Christianity was intended to unite, not to divide—to bring together all who would accept God’s grace. Paul himself wanted to do all he could to bridge the gap between the two groups within the church.

His efforts demonstrated his loyalty to his Jewish roots, but some of the Jerusalem Jews falsely accused him of bringing a Gentile into the temple, and that sparked a riot, and that led to Paul’s arrest.

You might say he was taken into “protective custody” because the Romans had to arrest him to rescue him from the mob. Nonetheless, the prophecy of Agabus was fulfilled to the letter, and Paul found himself bound with chains and delivered into the hands of the Gentiles—his Roman rescuers.

But what did Paul do? Did he lament his loss of freedom and feel sorry for himself, questioning why God had brought him to Jerusalem to be faced with such trials?

Hardly. Even while in Roman custody, being led away to jail, he seized the opportunity and turned it into a time to share his faith in Jesus! Turning to the tribune who had arrested him, he said “I beg you, let me speak to the people” (Acts 21:39, NRSV). And having received permission, along with a military escort, he climbed up onto the temple platform and gave his personal conversion testimony to the mob that only moments before had been trying to beat him to death! You can read the story and his testimony in Acts 22.

Paul’s heart of love yearned for his fellow Jews. And though he had been appointed by God as apostle to the Gentiles, he seized every possible opportunity to witness to his brethren.

Oughtn’t we to do the same?

Wherever God has placed us. Whatever our background. It’s our privilege to share with others what we know of Jesus, how we’ve experienced His love in our lives. And to lead them to faith, just as Paul did.

“Each One Reach One”, Steve Darmody, from Constant Refuge CD.