A Burdensome Stone

July 17

"I will put in Jerusalem a stone that causes people to stumble, a rock that makes them fall. Anyone who trusts in Him will never be disappointed." Isaiah 8:14, 28

A HOLY MOUNTAIN

If you stand on the Mount of Olives and look toward Jerusalem, you have a wonderful view of the Old City and some very spiritually and historically significant holy sites.

The Dome of the Rock is the third holiest site for Islam, third only to Mecca and Medina. Muslims believe Mohamed ascended into heaven from there. The Dome of the Rock sits on Mount Moriah, where Abraham offered Isaac up for sacrifice, and on which the Jewish faith were built. So together with its significance to Christians because of our heritage going all the back to the Old Testament, you might say it's the holiest spot on earth!

If you're ever in Jerusalem, make it the most important stop on your tour! -- Mike Huckabee



In a recent blog (July 7, 2013) President Lincoln is quoted as having said regarding their consecration of the Battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania that nothing that they said there could further sanctify the ground.

As I read Governor Huckabee’s comment about Mount Moriah, a similar thought crossed my mind. If that ground is sacred because it is where Abraham set about to sacrifice his son in obedience to the Living God, there is nothing any subsequent event in any succeeding generation can do to augment the reality that what Abraham did there made it holy ground.

Neither the assent Christians give to the veracity and holiness of Abraham’s obedience nor the muslim assertion that their prophet rose to heaven from that spot can consecrate the spot beyond Abraham’s resolve to obey the command the Lord had given to him or the Lord’s provision there of a lamb whose sacrifice took the place of the offering of his son.

In fact, what makes Abraham’s act significant at all in a time when child sacrifice was routinely practiced by pagan religions is the fact that it is a ‘type’ or ‘shadow’ of the greatest sacrifice ever to be made on the planet—the offering up of Jesus as the substitutionary death for every human who has ever lived!

Let us not trivialize that momentous act of Abraham that foreshadowed the most important event of history by the suggestion that any other purported occurrence approximates it in significance. And let us understand that the hallowing of our precious faith with its exclusivity of truth and God-authorship is precisely why Jerusalem is today a ‘burdensome stone.’