Churches, Mosques, And Gravestones - What Do They Have In Common?

“And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart, And was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.” (Matthew 17:1-2 KJV)

When Jesus took Peter, James, and John to a high mountain to show them this amazing moment where He was transfigured and glowed with such brilliance that He outshone the sun, Peter's reaction was very earthly.

Peter wanted to build tabernacles in places where people could come and worship where this event took place. It's almost like, let's build a church where this event took place. Let's build some edifice or reminder or marker of some holy event that took place.

Men have been doing this same thing since time immemorial. Thus, we have huge churches and mosques all around the world. Somebody decides that we have to make places to draw people to the place where something was supposed to have taken place.

Jesus never asked us to build a single church, a single tabernacle, a single house of prayer. In fact, for the Christian Church, the first 100 years of its existence, it didn't meet in any public place. It met from house to house.

In fact, not even the Jewish temples, which God once instructed Israelites to build, will be built again in the future, because during all eternity there will be no temples, only God and man living together. Or, as Revelation says, the tabernacle of God is with men.

Man's penchant for building shrines and houses of worship around any or all supposed revelations from God is probably why it didn't take long for them to build their edifices, now known as mosques, after the seventh-century revelation of Muhammad, having his so-called Gabriel-induced vision from God (which to many around the world seems like just so much hokey pokey). Still, it is just man making religion out of things that are questionable.

Jesus commanded us to make a connection, not to make a cathedral.

That connection between God and our heart, when we open up to God, becomes the pathway to being born again. It is letting the solid connection between us and the earth go away, fade away, because it's not permanent anyway, and a new connection is opening up between us and God in heaven.

It takes place when we acknowledge that we are sinners and we give our sins to Him to be hung on the cross and die with Him. It takes place in a moment in time when we finally yield to the grace that He has given us.

The Scriptures tell us clearly that God is not building a church, a temple, or a mosque for us. He's building a city, an eternal city, which has no need for a temple because God is present there - everywhere. See it for yourself.

“And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.” (Revelation 21:22-23)

But whether it's the stones of the church, the stones of the mosque, or the stone we call the gravestone, we are always looking to some dead, inanimate, solid, weighty marker to prove that we've connected to heaven.

The connection actually comes to a soft place when it is conditioned to be humble and believing. That place is the human heart. The church, the mosque, and the grave are not a promise leading to the presence of God; only the experience of one human heart given over to the very heart of God in faith is the connection to God.

God wants hearts that are pliable, alive, and receptive. Hearts of stone are like churches, mosques, and gravestones.

“And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh: That they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do them: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.” (Ezekiel 11:19-20)