God calls His people to represent Him to others who don’t know Him. When, through unbelief, these mediators forget that God is in charge, not them, they become ‘squatters’ in God’s house. They act like they own the place and mistreat God’s true children.

God sends messengers, prophets, to warn them. If they don’t listen to the warnings, He replaces them altogether. We observe this situation with Ahab and Jezebel, whose seizing Naboth’s family property by murdering him described their national sin in microcosm. This was Naboth’s children’s inheritance, and Ahab’s job was to protect it, not seize it. Shades of Eden.

Of course, Jesus called first century Judah a ‘Jezebel’ because she was oppressing those she was supposed to shepherd, and stealing their land. Eventually they would kill Christ as Naboth outside the city, and their own words would be applied to them in judgment:

The chief priests and leaders answered, “He will kill them in some horrible way. Then he will rent out his vineyard to people who will give him his share of grapes at harvest time.” – Matthew 21:41

The Babylon of Revelation was this Jezebel. Just as God spared Ahab and let the judgment fall on the next generation, so He would do the same in the first century. “This generation” was given one more chance.

The Reformers called the Roman Catholic church the “mother of harlots.” Their interpretation of Revelation was wrong, but their application was right on target. The church leaders were lording it over God’s people for their own gain, and there was another Exodus from a church that became Egypt.

Do we see this today? I have heard that established but dying churches in Britain are making it tough for new evangelical churches, refusing to allow them to use their buildings and facilities, and accusing them of undertaking “unauthorised” worship within their parishes. To these Ahab’s and Jezebels, “parish” means a territory they control, not one they are responsible to serve.

This is hardly persecution, but the principal is the same. Once these squatters have had their chance to repent, God will deal with them. We have already seen one very large denomination here in Australia ‘implode’.

Babylon’s children are always cut off, and the true Jerusalem is always rescued from barrenness.

“…and I came to Jerusalem and discovered the evil that Eliashib had done for Tobiah, in preparing a room for him in the courts of the house of God. And it grieved me bitterly; therefore I threw all the household goods of Tobiah out of the room. Then I commanded them to cleanse the rooms; and I brought back into them the articles of the house of God, with the grain offering and the frankincense.” Nehemiah 13:7-9

After the failure of Israel’s kings and their adulterous priesthood, God established new worship in the “wilderness” of Babylon under Daniel and Ezekiel. When Babylon fell, He brought His new Jerusalem, like a pure bride, back to the mountain of God.

In Ezra, opposition to the building of the Temple was overcome. But the returned exiles were sitting ducks without a city wall, and this is what distressed Nehemiah. In its last chapter, Nehemiah describes the expulsion of Tobiah from the Temple, one who had previously opposed restoration; the Canaanite 7-day traders are also locked out of the city on the Sabbath, and the children of mixed marriages who speak foreign languages are struck and have their hair torn out. Hardly a model of tolerance.

This new Jerusalem, like the old, was a new garden of Eden. The sin pattern of early Genesis is reversed. Tobiah the serpent was cast out of the garden by ‘Adam.’ The Canaanite ‘false brothers’ were prevented from polluting the Sabbath in theLand, and the children of the “daughters of men,” future “mighty men” were terrorised before a harvest of bloodshed in the world.

Then Nehemiah reminds them that this last sin brought the downfall of Solomon’s kingdom. Which brings us to the New Testament, and Revelation.

“But when you see the abomination of desolation standing where it should not be (let the reader understand), then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains.” – Mark 13:14

“Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God.” – 2 Thess. 2:3-4

Like Nehemiah, the first century builders of the walls of New Jerusalem were troubled by false prophets as Jesus had predicted. The later epistles make this final apostasy plain. It was to separate those who were approved before the final harvest. But the point is, there was once again a man who had opposed the restoration of Jerusalem now living in God’s house — King Herod and his puppet High Priest, twin horns on a lamb-faced dragon — a false Solomon.

Like Nehemiah, Christ expelled this predatory squatter from the house of God (2 Thess. 2:8), locked out the Canaanite traders (Zechariah 14:21; Revelation 18:11-15; Revelation 22:15) and wiped out the “mighty men” children of spiritual adultery, the Judaisers and Jewish rebels, in a flood (Daniel 9:26).

The New Worship was established in the wilderness, replaced the earthly city and now mediates between heaven and earth with walls of pure crystal. One day, like Nehemiah’s city, she too will descend upon the mountain of God.