The End Time Church: From the Cathedrals to the Catacombs

By Dan L. White

Copyright 2021 by Dan L. White, all rights reserved.

Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (WEB) which is in the public domain.

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Chapter 96

Temple Jumping

Have you heard of bungee jumping?

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Jeremy Markovich, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>;, via Wikimedia Commons

Wikipedia, the wicked encyclopedia, says that ”Bungee jumping is an activity that involves a person jumping from a great height while connected to a large elastic cord. The launching pad is usually erected on a tall structure such as a building or crane, a bridge across a deep ravine, or on a natural geographic feature such as a cliff.”

A number of people have died bungee jumping. Sometimes the bungee broke. At other times the stretch of the bungee was miscalculated, allowing the bungee and the jumper to fall too far.

Have you heard of bridge jumping?

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Jeremy Markovich, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>;, via Wikimedia Commons

officialbridgeday.com says:

“Held annually every third Saturday in October on the New River Gorge Bridge in Fayette County, West Virginia, this is the only day each year thousands of spectators can walk across the bridge and watch as serious BASE jumpers get their chance to fly 876 feet into the Gorge below.”

Bridge jumpers use parachutes instead of bungees, and most of the time, they do open.

Why do people bungee jump, and risk a broken bungee and a broken head? Why do people jump off a bridge 876 feet high, into the dangerous New River?

They get a thrill by tempting fate, as it’s called.

Have you heard of Temple jumping?

Satan tempted Christ by daring Him to Temple jump.

By Jaakov Shoham, self-photographed, public domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1894992

The southwestern corner of the Temple Mount today is a high point. It might possibly be the spot where Satan dared Yeshua to jump. A broken stone was found tumbled below that spot, which said, “the place of the trumpeting.” That was where a priest would blow a trumpet to announce events. So if this high spot was used for trumpeting because of its height, then perhaps…?

Matt 4
5) Then the devil took him into the holy city. He set him on the pinnacle of the temple,
6) and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, ‘He will put his angels in charge of you.’ and, ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you don’t dash your foot against a stone.’”

Satan quoted scripture.

Ps 91:9-12 (WEB)
9) Because you have made Yahweh your refuge, and the Most High your dwelling place,
10) no evil shall happen to you, neither shall any plague come near your dwelling.
11) For he will put his angels in charge of you, to guard you in all your ways.
12) They will bear you up in their hands, so that you won’t dash your foot against a stone.

Notice how Satan approaches these temptations of Christ. In this one, Satan quotes scripture.

That’s right. Satan came on like Billy Graham.

The quote is correct. The application is twisted.

Nearly a century ago women were discouraged from cutting or bobbing their hair. There was even a hit song about it, “Why Do You Bob Your Hair, Girls?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg1TvrZkfEU

This modesty about hair could also apply to wearing the hair down instead of up, as in a bun or top knot on top of the head. An old story, and that’s probably all it is, says that a preacher railed against top knots by quoting this verse from the Bible –

“Top knot come down!”

But the cited verse actually says:

Matt 24:16-17 (KJV)
16) Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:
17) Let him which is on the house top not come down to take any thing out of his house:

If that really happened, Satan could have been really proud of that twisting.

Here’s another example of twisting.

Matt 5:17 (WEB)
17) “Don’t think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I didn’t come to destroy, but to fulfill.

Even though Yeshua plainly said that He did not come to destroy the law, that verse is cited to show that Christ destroyed the law, because He fulfilled it. But when Christ said He didn’t come to destroy but to fulfill, fulfill has to be the opposite of destroy. So Christ did not come to destroy the Commandments and to say He did is a tornadic twisting.

Peter mentioned Christian scripture twisting.

2Pet 3:15-17 (WEB)
15) Regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given to him, wrote to you;
16) as also in all of his letters, speaking in them of these things. In those, there are some things that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unsettled twist, as they also do to the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
17) You therefore, beloved, knowing these things beforehand, beware, lest being carried away with the error of the wicked, you fall from your own steadfastness.

The Greek word “athezmos,” translated