“And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation” (Luke 19:44).
TEXT —Luke 19:41-48
Message
A couple of times in the holy Scriptures, God laments the ignorance of His people concerning weighty matters. Proverbs 29:18 says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish” while in Isaiah 5:13, God says, “…my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.”
Our Lord Jesus talked of the same theme as He wept for the ignorance that had enveloped the people and their leaders. They did not foresee the doom ahead, when according to prophecy, Jerusalem and its temple would be razed by the invading Roman forces. God foretold this in Daniel 9:24. But the people of Israel still lived in ignorance in the days of our Lord, when during a private discussion with the disciples, He spoke of a time that “there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down” (Mark 13:2).
Rather than take note of the Lord’s prophecy and make changes, the children of Israel compounded their impending woes by defiling the temple. Swiftly, Jesus moved in to cleanse it and cast out the agents of filth.
Spiritual defilement and subsequent death arise from lack of knowledge about the true nature of the Kingdom of God. The vacuum where the laws of God should be seated in the heart is filled by false doctrine. This drives a person into sin and a misleading sense of security that Jesus will not come again. The Lord’s expectation is that such would repent and turn to God. But this divine patience and mercy would not be forever. Today’s believer should also not be ignorant of the fact of the imminent return of Jesus. They must prepare for Him by living righteously, preaching the word of God to sinner and taking the DAWN (Discipling A Whole Nation) project seriously.
Listed among “500 most powerful people on the planet” by the Foreign Policy magazine in 2013, Pastor (Dr.) William F. Kumuyi is the founder and General Superintendent of the Deeper Christian Life Ministry (DCLM) headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria. DCLM started in 1973 as a 15-member Bible study group right in Kumuyi’s apartment at University of Lagos where he was a lecturer. His revolutionary Bible teaching on personal holiness and commitment to evangelism soon gained so much traction and resulted in a widespread revival.
