Mansion in the sky

"This month’s back-to-back heavy rain was especially distressing for three multimillion-dollar mansions on the edge of a bluff in Dana Point (CA), a stunning and pretty wealthy city, where the average home value is more than $1.5 million and the median household income is almost $120,000," reports Fortune magazine, posted to Yahoo News today.

A doctor by the name of Lewis Bruggeman owns a home on Scenic Drive, closest to the landslide. He told a local CBS station, “The house is fine. It’s not threatened. It will not be red-tagged.

“The city agrees that there’s no major structural issue with the house right now,” Bruggeman said.

"His home is a really valuable one. It’s estimated to be worth roughly $16 million, according to several publications. On Zillow, the four-bedroom, six-bathroom, and more than 9,700-square-foot home is estimated to be worth approximately $14 million (on Redfin, it’s more than $15.5 million)."

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John 14 begins: [1] Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.

[2] In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
[3] And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

"When Christ says He goes to prepare a place for you, He’s not saying, ‘I’m going to heaven to build a bunch of houses for you,’ " explains Richard Jordan. “We sing that old hillbilly song, ‘Just give me a cabin in the corner of glory land,’ and somebody will argue, ‘No, I want a mansion over the hilltop!’ which is from another old hillbilly song.

"One of my favorite old gospel songs was, ‘And I shall go to dwell on Zion’s hill': Some day beyond the reach of mortal ken,

Some day God only knows just where and when
The wheels of mortal life shall all stand still
And I shall go to dwell on Zion's hill.

“But there’s a lot of stuff in the hymn book that isn’t good doctrine. When Christ says, ‘I go to prepare a place for you,’ He’s not talking about going to heaven and working for 2,000 years on building you a house to live in, like another old song goes. I know, that’s sentimentalism, but it’s unscriptural sentimentalism that turns into superstition.

“Think about how foolish that. The second person of the godhead could step out on the platform of nothing, speak a word and a universe is created. Why would He need two thousand years to create a home for you?! The sentimentalism is just kind of foolish. People argue, ‘Yeah but, He’s designing an intricate . . . ’

“How could He design anything more intricate than the creation you live in? Study the atom; study the science of our creation. The deeper scientists are able to dig into creation, or biologists into biology creation, the more complicated it becomes. It doesn’t get simpler. And there’s that creative complexity that’s designed in creation.

“When He says ‘in my Father’s house are many mansions,’ He’s talking to His apostles about the temple He’s going to build in the kingdom and the fact there’s a group of people who are going to dwell with Him in that temple—those who come out of the Great Tribulation and go to this temple and serve there.

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"If you go back to John 11 you see the word ‘place’ is not always used in a geographic sense. It can be used in a moral sense or, in this case, a spiritual sense.

John 11:47-48: [47] Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles.
[48] If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.

“They’re not talking about how they’re going to come down and kick us out of ‘our house.’ They’re talking about their position of rulership in the nation Israel. So when Christ is talking in John 14, He’s using that word place in that kind of an idea: ‘I’m going to go create a position for you.' The fact He’s not talking about a physical location is demonstrated in the verses that follow.

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"The temple the apostles are seeing is called 'my house' in Ezekiel 43-45. When it says ‘in my Father’s house,’ there are many mansions in that house. The reason he says that, if you look at Ezekiel 40, is because that’s exactly what’s in the house.

“Ezekiel 40: 2-3: [2] In the visions of God brought he me into the land of Israel, and set me upon a very high mountain, by which was as the frame of a city on the south.

[3] And he brought me thither, and, behold, there was a man, whose appearance was like the appearance of brass, with a line of flax in his hand, and a measuring reed; and he stood in the gate.

“The frame of the city is that thing Psalm 104 talks about; the beams of His chamber being laid. But at this point, after the Second Advent, those beams are now exposed. The city hasn’t come down yet, but the foundation is laid out for them to get there.

“Ezekiel begins to measure the environs there and lay out the measuring line and the measurements. Verse 9: ‘Then measured he the porch of the gate, eight cubits; and the posts thereof, two cubits; and the porch of the gate was inward. And the little chambers of the gate eastward were three on this side, and three on that side; they three were of one measure: and the posts had one measure on this side and on that side.’

“Notice that concept about the little chamber? You go down through this passage and you find there’s all kind of little chambers being built in this house and these chambers are little cubicles built into the wall.

“You can see it in the tabernacle of Solomon in I Kings 6. The people who ministered in the temple had their living quarters there.

"I Kings 6:5: [5] And against the wall of the house he built chambers round about, against the walls of the house round about, both of the temple and of the oracle: and he made chambers round about:

“You remember how John the Baptist’s daddy lived off in another town and had to go up to Jerusalem (when his course came) to serve in the temple for that week?

"David divided the priesthood up so every tribe of the two sons of Levi went twice a year to Jerusalem to work for a week in the temple. They’d come in on a Sabbath and leave the next Sabbath in the order of their course.

“Well, they didn’t have to go rent rooms at the downtown Hilton while they were there. They had rooms provided for them in the temple—those little chambers. But they weren't chambers like a Motel 6.

"These things were decorated with cherubim and gold. They were mansions, gorgeous places befitting the temple of the God of all the earth; the God of Israel.

“When they rebuild that temple in the Millennium they’re going to have those chambers in there. They’re going to have all these dwelling places. . . A mansion is where a ruler lives."