Chapter 28 — The New Ark of the Covenant and the Cursed Water

DTT.01_028,01 Joram said, “I would not yet regard that as settled. Time brings counsel, and if Solomon is right that all in the world is vanity, this prophecy of Yours might also come to nothing, and we might yet put Your advice into practice. It truly deserves to be taken to heart. Several of us already agree with You. We are admittedly a very small part of the Temple community, but we are among its highest-ranking members and should therefore carry weight. What do You think?”

DTT.01_028,02 I said, “Things have stood thus in this house before, often and at times much better, yet the better party never prevailed. It was always the crowd that knew how to make the most noise. But I tell you this, and everyone who thinks as you do and acts accordingly, for even among many evildoers a single righteous person will not go unnoticed before God:

DTT.01_028,03 “You as a body had a new Ark of the Covenant made and procured a new vessel to keep the ‘Cursed Water’, which no prophet recommended and which is a most wretched invention and innovation of more recent times. Truly, neither ark nor vessel was needed. Why did you not instead renew your hearts in God by true repentance and turn your old worldly outlook into one of true love and mercy?

DTT.01_028,04 “Truly, the old Ark of the Covenant, full of the Spirit from God, stands before you in Me and tells you plainly to your faces that in your new Ark there is not a speck of God’s Spirit, no larger than dust in a sunbeam. There is, however, an abundance of the old and most evil spirit of fables bred in your hearts. The Cursed Water is the evil tears you shed over worldly losses from which you had hoped for the greatest gains. Those who betrayed you to the Romans, when you got them into your clutches, mostly died miserably from that Cursed Water.

DTT.01_028,05 “From now on the water, cursed a thousand times over itself, will do you no good. It was once agreed that those who betrayed the divine matters of the Temple to Jehovah’s enemies, such as the Philistines and similarly wicked, benighted Gentiles of old, were to be given the evil water of the Dead Sea to drink. If the water did them no harm they were to be considered innocent. If their bellies swelled, they were deemed guilty and left to their harsh fate, to perish from the effects of the dead water. But how long ago that rule changed into something quite different!

DTT.01_028,06 “How many thousands have already died from your newer poisoned water without having betrayed the least thing that was purely divine in the Temple to any wicked Gentile! Why did you not drink the dead water yourselves, when it was you who so often secretly opened the Holy of Holies to Gentiles to see it, for a great deal of gold, of course?

DTT.01_028,07 “Look, this and much else goes on in the Temple. What is meant to be God’s house on earth has become a true den of murderous robbers. There is no abomination that has not been committed in it repeatedly. Do you really think such a place could still be fit to give the Lord God a dwelling? Truly, never go into battle with a sword stained with your brother’s blood. An old curse already clings to it, and with it you will never win a victory.

DTT.01_028,08 “You could still cleanse your hearts if you truly wanted to, but these walls never again. You yourselves have a law according to which a whole country, a house, a field, a domestic animal or a human being can be defiled for ever by a gross sin against the Spirit of God. Why not this Temple, where the greatest abominations, crying to heaven, have been committed again and again?

DTT.01_028,09 “I tell you that this Temple and the whole land have long been defiled beyond all measure, beyond rescue or cleansing. Soon the Gentiles will trample them underfoot, and they will become a dwelling for robbers and ravening beasts.

DTT.01_028,10 “I have given you My opinion quite frankly. Do with it what you will. I shall soon leave you. I have spoken these words before you alone and no one else, though I have always known how things stand with you. I shall speak of this to no one else, for it would be fruitless. You could still change the matter if you wished, but these walls would still be of no use. Do you understand?”