Many Bible prophecy watchers know from events in Israel that “the battle for Jerusalem” has begun. But do you know the battle is really for two Jerusalems?

A few years ago, I first walked into one of the oldest synagogues in Jerusalem. There on the wall was a painting of the heavenly Jerusalem in the clouds over earthly Jerusalem. It was painted there when the synagogue was restored following the Six-Day War.

The huge wall mural, over the Holy Ark where the scrolls are kept, at once thrilled me and ignited anew a question I had long pondered: How do the Jews know so much about the Heavenly Jerusalem?

A book I recently found described the mural as follows:

“Today the synagogue has been restored in its traditional form. However, the original decorations gracing the Aron Kodesh have been replaced by modernistic depictions of worldly and spiritual Jerusalem (Yerushalayim Shel Matta and Shel Ma’ala.) [Jerusalem of Below, and of Above.] The houses represent worldly Jerusalem, and the sky above them, with its dove-like clouds – the symbol of peace – spiritual Jerusalem.” ¹

There it was in the mural. Something I’d been seeing and wondering about for a long time. Israeli paintings of the Heavenly Jerusalem! And I could not see how they knew about it from the Old Testament. Most of what we know we learn from the New.

So I started asking questions of the rabbis. Here are some of the things I was told:

• Moses told us. We have it in the Oral Tradition. ²
• Moses went there during the 40 days at Sinai.
• He saw the pattern of heavenly things there.
• Jerusalem from Below is a reflection of Jerusalem from Above.

Two Jerusalems in Scripture
When I questioned them as to where it was in the Scriptures, I was always given Psalm 122, one of the songs of ascent used during the pilgrimage feasts as they went up to Jerusalem.

“Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together:…Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee” (Ps. 122:3,6).

Several sources stated that one level of meaning of verse three refers to the two cities joined together. You can see this in the following quote from a book:

“Jerusalem’s original name was Shalem (Salem), coming from the same root (meaning whole) as (does) Shalom meaning peace. One of the main concepts of Jerusalem is peace, as it is written, “Seek Jerusalem’s peace” (Ps. 122:6). But…this peace is not only in the physical world; it also implies peace in the spiritual world. In the words of our sages, this realm is called “Jerusalem on high,” and is said to parallel the physical Jerusalem.” ³

If you have heard my teaching on “Shalom, the Peace that Comes from Being Whole,” you understand that all Hebrew words come from root words. A usually three-letter root word (all consonants) stands like the hub of a wagon wheel. On the spokes going out from the hub one could write the words built from the root. Just by adding or changing vowel sounds a word family is built. In every word, the three-letter root can always be seen. And the words never lose the original meaning of the root.

Thus, shalom (peace) is built from the root salem (whole). Therefore shalom is the peace that comes from being whole.

When we are told to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, we are told to pray for:

• An undivided earthly Jerusalem, and the peace that follows.
• The building together, compacting together, the joining together of earthly Jerusalem and Heavenly Jerusalem.

The Talmud
Another place my sources pointed me to was this Talmudic reference:

“I will not enter the heavenly Jerusalem until I enter the earthly Jerusalem,” proclaims the Lord. The Vilna Gaon understood this to mean that the physical and the spiritual must go together. Jerusalem is built as a city which is joined together (Ps. 122). ⁴

“Yarushalayim”
When Jews in Israel pronounce the name of the city to which they are mystically and eternally joined, they say Yarushalayim. The sound of the ending is like the dual ending to words indicating things which come in twos, such as Mishkafayim (glasses, spectacles) and Na’alayim (shoes).

Born from Above
Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night, was a ruler of the Jews. As such, he understood Jerusalem from above and Jerusalem from below, when Jesus answered him, “Except a man be born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3,7).

The Holy Spirit wrote through Paul, “But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all” (Gal. 4:26).

The new creation man is born from above and is a citizen now as well as eternally of the Heavenly Jerusalem:

“For our conversation (citizenship) is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body…” (Phil. 3:20-21).

I enjoy saying it like this. I am an alien from another planet. I am an ambassador from a heavenly kingdom. We live now by the laws of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus – the laws of the Heavenly Kingdom. We do our business there according to Hebrews. Consider these wonderful portions from the Book of Hebrews:

“By faith he (Abraham) sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (Heb. 11:9-10).

“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country…. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city” (Heb. 11:13-16).

“But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, To the general assembly and church of the firstborn which are written in heaven…” (Heb. 12:22-23).

The Church of the Living God is born from, is a citizen of, does business in, and has a place prepared in the Heavenly Jerusalem. There are two cities. An earthly and an heavenly.

(The Bible speaks of more than one Zion, as well. Zion can refer to the city of David, earthly Jerusalem, all Israel – or, as in Hebrews 12, it can refer to the heavenly Mount Zion and the Church.)

“For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come” (Heb. 13:14).

In the rapture the Church proceeds to Heavenly Jerusalem for the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19:6-9).

“And there came unto me one of the seven angels…saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife. And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God” (John 21:9-10).

The Hebrews speak of a place and the people of that place as one. For instance, when you say Israel, you can mean the land or the people. Matthew 3:5 reads, “Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judea….” The buildings didn’t go out to see John the Baptist; the people did – and the Bible calls them Jerusalem.

When Jesus said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets…”, He didn’t mean the buildings. No, this is a Hebraism. The place and the people go together.

One who understands this well is David Baron, whom I study and quote so often. He was born in Russia in 1855 and educated under the rigorous tutelage of the Rabbinic training of the period. How I have thrilled as I meditated over these words of his:

We have no portion in the land which God has given to Israel as a nation for “an everlasting possession,” and can never, as we have seen, be alienated from them. But Israel’s earthly inheritance in Canaan is the type of our much more glorious possession – the “inheritance which is incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away,” and which, as sure as God is true, can never be forfeited by those whom He has of His own free grace constituted heirs and joint-heirs with Christ Jesus…our inheritance is safely “reserved” by God Himself “in heaven” for us, and can never be taken from us….

…There is another restoration, or “return” of scattered Israel foretold by all the prophets. (Baron died in 1926 before the rebirth of Israel in 1948.) Not of a remnant only, but of the whole people; not from Babylon, or any one country or district only, but “out of the north country and from all the countries” whither they had been driven, after which “they shall no more be plucked out of their land….”

And the joy and blessedness of returned and redeemed Israel in literal Zion will be a type and reflection also of the even fuller joy and greater blessedness of the ransomed of the Lord out of every nation and people and tongue-which will then be safely gathered unto Him in the heavenly Zion, “the Jerusalem that is above,” of which the literal Jerusalem will, during the millennial period, be, as it were, the earthly vestibule. ⁵

The Battle for Two Cities, “God’s Holy Hills”
Politics in Israel are not political – they are spiritual. The great miracle prophesied and recorded in God’s Holy Word for thousands of years has come to pass. The Jews are home. Earthly Jerusalem became theirs in 1967.

A great battle over Jerusalem – as prophesied in Zechariah 12 and 14, Psalm 83, and elsewhere – will precede the coming of the Messiah. It has begun! But the battle is not limited to earthly Jerusalem. In the mind of Satan, he strategizes to stop the plan for building together the earthly Jerusalem and the heavenly Jerusalem, and all that will ensue.

Daniel the prophet tells us Satan will possess the body of an evil man. He will attempt to set himself up in the Temple as God. Jesus and Paul affirm this.

Lucifer unsuccessfully attempted long ago to ascend to and take the throne of God (Isa. 14). Since Adam gave him the right to act as god of this world, Satan has set up his throne in the heavenlies over certain cities at certain times. Scripture tells us he once had his seat (his throne) over Pergamus. I believe he has had it over Moscow. He will move it over the city through which he will operate during the tribulation period – I believe this to be Brussels. Then, he will attempt to set up his seat in the Temple in Jerusalem.

But that is not his final goal.

From there he would attempt to arise to Jerusalem on High. He has always been after the throne of God.

We must always pray for and support a whole, undivided Jerusalem…they shall prosper that love thee.

Endnotes:

¹ Aharon Bier, For the Sake of Jerusalem (Mountain High Productions, Efrat/GushEtzion/Israel, 1997) pp 55,56.

² Author’s Note: Moses received the Written Word (the first five books) and the Oral Word. The Oral was not to be written but passed from teacher to disciple. And it was for centuries until the Jews were widely dispersed and it was decided to write it down lest it be lost. I used to discount the whole of the Oral Tradition. But I have learned there is a deposit of truth in it. One must rightly divide it as to what came from God to Moses.

³ Aryeh Kaplan, Jerusalem The Eye of the Universe (Nat’l Conf of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, NY, NY)

⁴ Aharon Bier, For the Sake of Jerusalem, p128.

⁵ David Baron, Israel in the Plan of God (Kregal Publications, Grand Rapids, MI 49501) pp 159, 301,302.

Billye Brim Ministries All rights reserved. Used by permission.