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This study is designed to help us see our place in God’s Kingdom and also to help give us some ammunition in the war against our faith. Let’s begin by taking a closer look at a famous passage in Scripture.
Luke 19:37-40 Then, as He was now drawing near the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works they had seen, 38 saying: “ ‘Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!’ Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” 39 And some of the Pharisees called to Him from the crowd, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.” 40 But He answered and said to them, “I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out.”
Christ makes a bold and seemingly impossible statement here. What exactly does He mean? There are two ways we can view this statement, symbolically and literally. Both are true, but for this study, we’ll mostly focus on the literal view. Crazy right? How can stones literally cry out?
Anyone familiar with granite rocks knows that each rock has little black specks in the rock matrix. If you were to focus in on those with a microscope, you’d see those black specks start to look like the image on the right. This is a super close up of what’s called a polonium halo.
Polonium is a radioactive element, like plutonium or uranium, and when it’s exposed to super intense heat, the individual atoms explode, creating little circles, or halos. Basically, a polonium halo is a microscopic mushroom cloud…
In this picture, on the left we have a famous photo of an atomic weapons test the U.S. did in the 1940’s. The military used radioactive elements, and exploded them, creating an atomic bomb which resulted in a giant mushroom cloud, and this photo is that mushroom cloud from above. Next to it on the right, we have that little polonium halo trapped in the granite. Can you see the similarities?
The amazing thing about polonium halos is that because they are so small, they only last for a fraction of a second and then cease to exist. For these little halos to get trapped in the granite, the rock would’ve had to heat up so hot that it became lava, to make the polonium atoms explode. Then the molten granite would’ve had to instantly turn into sold rock at that exact moment these halos appeared, before they were gone forever.
How could that happen? Scientists, (NOT SCIENCE), teach that it took the earth’s crust tens of thousands of years to cool down enough to be solid, which means those little polonium halos shouldn’t exist, but… the Bible says our God is so awesome, all He had to do was speak …
So that’s one literal way that the stones cry out and testify to our Creator, but let’s look at another…
This is the fossil of a fish called a coelacanth, and for many years, it was taught in universities across the nation that this fossil was proof of evolution and one of the missing links between sea animals and land animals. See the fins that look like little legs. Scientists taught that this fish was one of the first to come out of the water, and believed it had been extinct for a few million years, until…
In 1938, one of those weird looking fish was caught off the coast of South Africa, and it looked exactly the same as it’s great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandpa in that fossil. Today, we know a good deal about this fish that completely contradicts what science once taught as fact. For example, they don’t come on land at all, and those little leg looking things are just weird fins. The fossil of the coelacanth cries out that it was created by God just the way it is now, and it isn’t the only fossil that does this…
and theandthe animals they carry the image of. He formed them. He created them. And His fingerprints are all over His creation. Before we end this study, I’d like to take a peek into the symbolic spiritual aspect of “the stones crying out”.
These are pictures of actual fossils of animals that existed long ago, and under each is the living animal as it appears today. These stones each carry the image of an animal, and the stones are crying out the truth that God created them and the animals they carry the image of. He formed them. He created them. And His fingerprints are all over His creation. Before we end this study, I’d like to take a peek into the symbolic spiritual aspect of “the stones crying out”.
These two verses are connected, and I’d like to invite you to do your own personal study to really unpack that connection, but I would like to share a glimpse into it.
The context of this verse in Matt 3 is John the Baptist speaking to the pharisees. They had showed up to investigate what John was doing in God’s name. These were the religious leaders and temple authorities of their day, and you had this guy dressed in camel skin and eating grasshoppers, baptizing people unto repentance, and none of this was sanctioned by the Temple.
These pharisees were prideful and legalistic and prejudice. They saw the stone worshipping gentiles as beneath them. They saw them as just as hard as the stone idols they worshipped, and just as mindless. So, in a very symbolic way, John the Baptist may not only been speaking of the literal rocks that surrounded them, but also pronouncing a prophecy concerning the stone hearted gentiles that surrounded them, spiritually becoming children of Abraham. And he was right… We’ll end with these verses to connect it all together…
Stones can be used to build up or to tear down. It all depends on God’s will not ours. He could use us to build up the Kingdom of Light, or to tear down the kingdom of darkness. He can use us to stabilize someone’s life, or to stumble up the enemy’s plans. He can take a spiritually lifeless, stone hearted person like me, and turn me into a living stone crying out to Him. We are His, therefore it’s to Him that we look, it’s to Him that we pray, and it’s to Him that we cry out. Amen.