Weep Between the Porch and the Altar – Part 3
Welcome to the third and final part of this series! I would encourage you to read Part 1 and Part 2 to get the background and setup for this concluding piece. However, to briefly recap…
In Parts 1 & 2, we are introduced to the verse in Matthew 23 where Jesus says to the Pharisees, “upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.” I then go on to explain the differences in opinion on which Zechariah Jesus is referring to and my reasoning behind choosing the Zechariah found in 2 Chronicles 24 who we find was stoned in the temple court. We then linked this with the verse in Joel 2 where the prophet sends forth a call to the priests to “weep between the temple porch and the altar” – the exact same location as Zechariah’s brutal murder. We see the strong connection between the sins of our forefathers and the need of the present generation to acknowledge, repent for, and turn from these sins.
For the Pharisees that Jesus was talking to, they honored the prophets of old whom their forefathers had killed, believing they would have acted differently had they lived in those times, not recognizing the darkness of their own hearts and the spirit of murder within them which would lead them to crucify Jesus. Yet Jesus promised them that they would be proven guilty and that the state of their hearts would be exposed as he sent them prophets and teachers whom they would persecute and kill, thus filling up the measure of the sin of their forefathers. This would seal their judgment for eternity and would occur in response to the cries coming from the blood of every righteous person slain. So how does this apply to us today?
I have found it quite significant that recently a billboard advertising campaign has been launched across Canada that is bringing attention to the issue of abortion in our nation, asking the question, “Have we gone too far?” AbortionInCanada.ca is putting this issue in front of our eyes, reminding us that we cannot ignore this injustice in our land, for currently the unborn have no protection from being aborted right up into the 9th month of gestation! According to AbortionInCanada.ca, “more than three million unborn babies have died from abortion since 1969, when abortion was first decriminalized in Canada”with the annual average being somewhere around 100,000 abortions. On Wikipedia’s article for Abortion in the United States, they quote the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) as saying “there were 854,122 legal induced abortions in the US in 2003″. The Bound4Life website says that in the USA “an estimated 48 million babies have been aborted since 1973. Approximately 24% of all U.S. pregnancies end in abortion”.
Is it possible that the same thing Jesus was rebuking the Pharisees for is occurring today in North America? How many prophets, teachers, evangelists, worship leaders (or to sum it all up – prophetic messengers of all types) have been sent to us by the Lord to preach the message of Joel 2, “Return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning”? And how many of these messengers have been killed before they even saw the light of the sun or said one word? How many millions of aborted babies and aborted destinies are crying out for justice, even as Abel’s blood cried out from the ground, and are testifying against us in our perceived innocence? How can our generation think we are any different than our forefathers who condoned slavery and persecuted and killed out of racist hatred, when at our core we are just the same – maybe even worse – for on our hands is the blood of countless babies?
But if their blood is crying out for God’s just judgment to come to our land, what is our hope? Can we escape or lessen the judgment that is surely coming? Can we appeal to the heart of Jesus that longs to gather us under his wings, if only we were willing? As he said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.” (Matthew 23:37) Can we touch the heart of God who declares Himself to be “gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and [who] relents from sending calamity”? (Joel 2:13) I believe we can.
The message of Joel is for us today – both the church and unbelievers are being called to return to the Lord with all our hearts, with fasting, weeping, and mourning, to rend our hearts, to gather in solemn assemblies, consecrating and purifying our hearts (Joel 2:12-16). Yet we as the church are called specifically, as priests (for we are a “royal priesthood” – 1 Peter 2:9), to weep and mourn in the place of identifying with the sins of the shedding of innocent blood. Between the temple porch and the altar, where a prophetic messenger was slain, the priests were to cry out to God, “Spare your people!” (Joel 2:17) In the same way that Nehemiah wept, mourned and fasted on behalf of Israel, confessing the sins of his forefathers, his own generation and himself personally, appealing to God for mercy, we can stand in the breach between our nation and God’s wrath (Psalm 106:23).
While we may or may not be able to go directly to the location of the abortion clinics, we can go there in the spirit and operate in this priestly function, interceding for our nation and taking a stand for life. We can ask the Lord to give us the spirit of travail and to impact our hearts with this burden, that we would be able to weep and mourn with the heart of Jesus over these lost lives and destinies. For “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express” (Romans 8:26). Even as Nehemiah was praying before the Lord day and night, this is the kind of response Jesus is looking for to the injustice in our land, for he said in Luke 18:7, “And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night?”
Some of you may have a feeling or know that this is something you are called to do full-time, to be a priest that ministers before the Lord in the temple – or in more modern-day terms, to function as an intercessory missionary in a house of prayer. This is just one of the ways God is raising up the prayer movement across the globe, but regardless of whether you are being called to this kind of role in a full-time capacity, we all have a responsibility to pray and be willing to be a voice on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves. A simple way to start is to make the Bound4Life Covenant to Pray, Vote, and Obey.
- PRAY – There is a simple 22-word prayer you can pray whenever the Lord brings this topic to your remembrance, or whenever you see the LIFE bracelet, should you choose to get one. The prayer goes like this: “Jesus, I plead Your blood over my sins and the sins of my nation. God, end abortion and send revival to [your nation]“.
- VOTE – Covenant to vote for candidates that are actively pro-life. We cannot pray for abortion to end and promote those who support it.
- OBEY – Covenant to obey God as He leads you into works of compassion and justice. We must always be willing to be the answer to our own prayers.
For me, this has become very personal lately, being pregnant with my first child, whom we have chosen to name Justice (you can read the story of how we chose this name here). It feels so real and there is such a conviction in my heart that this little one could be one of these prophetic messengers that the Lord is sending to my nation to call the people to return to Him. This has put such a resolve and a fight within my spirit to pray for the protection of the unborn from the spirit of this age that would seek to “kill, steal and destroy” (John 10:10) these precious lives. So will you join with me? Will you weep between the porch and the altar?
(For more resources on the issue of LIFE and ideas on how you can get involved through prayer in the courts of heaven or through action in the courts of the earth, check out some of the sites in the LIFE category on my Links page.
