Destruction of Idols and False Prophets

Sprinkling. On many a day already spoken of, with clarity, regarding others it will be so: every place in the house of David in Jerusalem will be opened, a movement occurring toward a divine sprinkling.

But the place being opened in the house of David is the inspired Scripture, especially that before the coming of the Savior;ce being opened is this Jerusalem, which is the heavenly and the mother of the righteous, existing as the 'city of the heavenly God of the living.'

In these things, the place to be omitted is not the body that circumscribes and limits, but that which divides into propositions and problems. The intellect will see a movement of these thus-treated places from the letter toward the spirit and from the shadow toward the truth; and, having summed it up, one might say, from the temporal toward the eternal, from the visible and low things toward the high and invisible.

And what follows the movement, or a pouring-over bringing perfect purification? This sprinkling is accomplished by the blood of the Savior, concerning which writes Peter, the most preeminent of the apostles, addressing those to whom he sends the epistle, saying: 'Grace to you and peace be multiplied, for the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ' (1 Peter 1:2).

The divine blood sprinkles the conscience of those worshiping the living God, 'redeeming from the empty manner of received tradition' (1 Peter 1:18) those who are performing it, as the wise instructor presents in the same epistle, thus: 'Knowing that not with corruptible things, silver or gold, were you redeemed, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot' (1 Peter 1:18-19).

Those pouring over toward the acquisition of a pure heart, repeatedly and continuously entreating toward the ability to desire purity, as one says: 'Wash me, and I shall become whiter than snow' (Psalm 51:7). Toward this purity, 'being a pure and undefiled worship' (James 1:27), the holy word exhorts: 'Wash, that you may become clean' (Ezekiel 36:25), it advises.

If the love of this spoken pouring-over enters even us, let us hasten to dwell as citizens in the intelligible Jerusalem being ruled by David, so that every interpreted place may be opened to us, having been moved from the shadowy toward the original and true wise contemplations.

On that day, the Lord says, 'I will destroy the names of the idols from the earth and they shall no more be a memory; and the false prophets and the unclean spirit I will remove from the earth.'

When the previously foretold movement becomes a sprinkling and the truth, the various forms of the heterodox, called idols tropically, shall be destroyed from the earth, no longer deceiving men, the tropical idolatry being exposed by the revealed truth and all false prophecy being annulled and the unclean spirit working it, being present in man before the faith into Christ.

It is also possible to say concerning the sensible idols and the demons concerning them that they shall be destroyed from the earth. But that the statues are indicated by this designation, it is possible to learn from the hymn-singer saying: 'The idols of the Gentiles, silver and gold, they have feet and they do not walk' (Psalm 115:4), and the following. That the demons defiling their shrines are called by the same name, the prophet Isaiah teaches beginning from there: 'Demolish, the carved images in Jerusalem and in Samaria; for in the same way as I did in Samaria and with its carved images, so will I do to Jerusalem and to its idols' (Isaiah 2:18).

In demolishing idols, both carved and cast, it is not the works of craftsmen that are being demolished, nor things that are natural to be demolished; for the energy is breathing life into them. For the demolition is a meaningless sound emitted by an animal by a passion of the soul. This meaning has been demonstrated in many ways in the memoirs concerning Isaiah, with the testimony of Solomon the Wise, having it thus: 'For equally hated by God are the impious man and his impiety; for what has been done with the doer shall be punished' (Wisdom 1:13).

These things were said to the wise man concerning a carpenter man and carved wood by him according to the form of an animal, and just as it is not able to demolish that which does not have a soul, as it was called a mere shadow, so it is not able to be punished effectively. Therefore, let these things be taken up concerning the demons wandering about with the soulless statues. While the idols are being destroyed from the earth, the false diviners and those who once promised false predictions are removed from it, false prophets in judgment by the divine.