Walking up 306 stairs to enter a Buddhist temple,
as I turn to my left, this is the first thing I see.
A row of statues of Buddha.
As a walk around the temple, statues are all around, most of them overlaid with gold.
On one end there is a statue made out of pure jade.
And there before my eyes, people are bowing down before this graven image
made of stone and precious metal.
As I continue on, I see a separate room with another giant carving of Buddha, and off to the side a monk teaches and blesses as others bow to pay their respects.
This is the first time in my life that I have seen such blatant idolatry. I didn’t even know it existed before in such overt fashion.
We talk about other things being idols such as materialism, sex, money, power, etc. We idolize people or things in our hearts.
I have even seen things in the Christian Church that I have questioned if it is idolatry in a more subtle fashion.
But this is clear, unavoidable, to a false god.
As I walked around this temple and saw these things and these people, this was no longer a tourist site to visit or appreciate.
This became a battlefield. Here I am, a Christian, knowing the One True God, in a temple to another god. These people neither know YHWH nor worship Him.
So I start to pray. I begin by taking a step back and sensing what the spiritual climate is in this place. I expect to feel and encounter spiritual forces at work, to feel evil around me. I am prepared to pray vehemently again the demonic activity in this place. But as I seek the spiritual atmosphere, I become overwhelmed with a sense of grief.
The verse comes to mind, “Do not grief the Holy Spirit.” And that is the very thing I sense in this place: the grief of the Spirit of God. I was expecting anger, not sadness. But I cannot help but be overwhelmed by the Father’s grief over these people.
After a few more times of walking around this temple praying, I walk outside the temple and come upon a row of bells.
I see three young children walking from bell to bell ringing them. I heard the sound these bells made as they rang out a cacophony of noise–not of praises that ring out to the Eternal YHWH (our Father God, The Holy Spirit, and our Lord Jesus Christ), but just of noise that fills the air in vain and only serves to obstruct the Voice of God.
And that is when God broke me. I began to cry to myself quietly over these children. They neither have a relationship with their Maker and Heavenly Father nor know Him. These children live estranged, orphaned lives. That is the grief of the Father that I was feeling.
Perhaps these people here just do not know the Good News of Jesus Christ. Perhaps some, even if the do hear, may never chose Jesus but will continue to live in their own ways.
As I was walking up those 300+ stairs to reach the temple, I was thinking how that purposefully and so perfectly symbolizes the differences between our God in Jesus Christ and all other religions of the world:
to espace the profanity of this world
in order to ascent the hill of the gods
in hopes to do enough
to attain the favor in their eyes
and the possibility of eternal life,
Our God decended from on high.
He humbled Himself from His perfect, lofty, holy state,
and came down to dwell with us as a man.
He paid the cost of our sin for us
so that we would not have to,
so that we would not labor in vain,
since we could never hope to be able to attain purity in His perfect, holy Presence.
He offers this gift freely to us.
When all other gods demand gifts from their worshippers,
Our Heavenly Father provided the sacrifice for us,
so that we might have the gift of Life with Him.
This is our only repsonse:
will we accept the Gift of Truth in Jesus Christ,
or will we continue to try to labor in vain?
The choice is yours.
He does not force us to chose Him,
but still we much choose.
You either choose Him or you don’t.
So choose Life,
that you may live.
