Monarch Stories

I want give you a “follow-up update” on an article I wrote in March in which I told you about the possibility that the Jewish Sanhedrin might sacrifice a Passover lamb on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Several of you have e-mailed me wanting to know my sources for that article and whether or not the sacrifice actually took place. The main source for much of my information came from the March edition of “Prophecy in the News” magazine. I checked the validity of the information in that magazine and found several confirming articles about the Korban Pesach event in secular Israeli newspapers such as the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz. From what I can glean from Israeli news sources to date, the sacrifice did not take place. A lawsuit was filed seeking to bar the Sanhedrin from carrying it out and a judge granted an injunction on the day of the event preventing it on the basis of “security concerns.” I appreciate all of you who have keenly been following this story and have shown such interest! Even though it did not happen, the very fact that it almost did, illustrates just how close we are to meeting our coming King!



Each spring in our daycare, our kids get a chance to be eyewitnesses to a miracle. Our director purchases “butterfly kits” – jars filled with tiny fuzzy worms… with worm food included! The children (and their parents!) become fascinated, waiting and watching each day as the tiny little caterpillars rapidly grow, attach themselves to the ceiling of their enclosure, seal themselves into a cocoon coffin and, after many days, finally emerge, miraculously transformed into beautiful butterflies! The word biologists use to describe this process is “metamorphosis.” That is also the word Paul used to describe and encourage a change that needs to take place in us. “Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world but be transformed (from the Greek: “Metamorpho”) by the renewing of your mind!” (Romans 12:2)

Jesus was the first – he died and was placed in a tomb (cocoon) then, on the third day, He rose again with a new glorified body never to die again! Because he died and rose again, someday we will literally have a “caterpillar to butterfly” metamorphosis! Those who believe, even though we may lie dead in the dust of the earth, when the trumpet call of God sounds we will break forth from our cocoon graves and go from being “worm food” to butterfly-like flight - meeting Him in the air in the twinkling of an eye!

But that change is not the one Paul was referring to. We will indeed someday have a literal physical metamorphosis at the last trump, but the change Paul was talking about was one that is spiritual not physical –a change that comes from embracing our new identity in Christ. “If any man is in Christ he is a new creation. The old has passed and the new has come!” (2Cor. 5:17) This inside-out transformation begins at salvation and deepens as we “offer our bodies as living sacrifices.” In other words, when we yield completely to Christ, “dying to self.” See the cocoon? When we yield to Him and allow our mind to be renewed by the living word of God, we “put off the old man and put on the new man which is being made in the image of Christ!” (Eph. 4:22-24) See the butterfly? This transformation just as spectacular and no less miraculous than the metamorphosis that our little caterpillar friends are experiencing right now under the wide-eyed scrutiny of preschoolers witnessing God’s hand in action!

Now, what would you say about a butterfly who chose to live a caterpillar existence? Never spreading his beautiful wings, never taking flight to soar and smell the roses, he just continued to live like a caterpillar crawling around with the worms. I’d say that butterfly was allowing the world, his peers, his circumstances and his old identity to mold, shape and conform him into the old pattern. Many Christians do the same. Behavior flows from identity; we act like who we believe we are. So, who do you believe you are? Are you a saint? Are you a holy one? Are you chosen and dearly loved, forgiven, transformed, enabled, competent… more than a conqueror? The Bible says you are all that and much more in Christ!” Are you living out of your new “butterfly” identity or is your behavior flowing from your old “caterpillar” one? I suppose sometimes even butterflies feel like they are still ugly caterpillars, but their feelings are not the reality. The reality is: they have been changed forever…and so have we! So, regardless of how we feel, let’s quit worming around and spread those beautiful wings that Jesus paid so much to give us!