Avoiding Temple Desecration Series

I would say God was indignantly upset with the children of Israel. In 2 Kings 25 the fall of Jerusalem finally occurs. In 587 BC, 380 years after the construction of the temple, the Babylonian king destroys Solomon’s temple.

“In him (Christ) the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” (Ephesians 2:21-22) Learning from the past gives us an advantage to keep from desecrating the Lord’s temple. We study history so that we do not continue the mistakes of the past. With Christ as the chief cornerstone, the temple does rise to become the holy dwelling of God. The cycle of history easily traps and if we are not careful, we will have done what the Israelites did. They desecrated the Lord’s temple. Will we, also, desecrate the temple? History will be the judge of that.

It is obvious how personally we desecrate our temples. Accordingly, Christians categorized some acts as sin because of this reasoning. Anything that you place within the body that brings harm is a sin. These sins are such things like smoking, excessive drinking, gluttony, etc. According to a congressional testimony given April 16, 2002 to the House of Representatives, 160,000 Americans die of lung cancer a year. The overall cure rate for lung cancer is about 10%. 85% of the lung cancers found are late stage and are essentially incurable. Tobacco addiction is the number one cause of lung cancer. In addition, tobacco addiction is responsible for many other premature deaths. Smoking is a sin, because you are destroying the temple of God.

In cirrhosis of the liver, scar tissue replaces normal, healthy tissue, blocking the flow of blood through the organ and preventing it from working, as it should. Cirrhosis is the eighth leading cause of death by disease, killing about 25,000 people per year. It is true that cirrhosis of the liver is cause by multiple items, but chronic alcohol consumption is the leading cause for the ailment.

The desecration of your body is serious business; it never should be taken lighthearted. There were testimonies concerning cirrhosis of the liver case of which I encountered that grabbed my heart. Let me though tell you about one of them. Lorraine started experimenting with drugs at the ripe old age of 15. By 17 she experimented with heroin and at 21 she was selling her body on the streets of Glasgow, England -but at 34, Lorraine McEwan was told she only had three months to live. After almost 20 years of drug addiction, Lorraine had advanced cirrhosis of the liver and desperately needed a transplant. Her kidneys were also failing. Thankfully, she chose to turn her life around by admitting herself into a detox center. By getting off the drugs her liver would return to working order. My point is this: smoking, drugs and alcohol are all sins, because they destroy the temple of God. Be wary of the consequences of either of these addictions.