By: Samuel Calvelage
The year was 1821, and for the Greeks, the time had come for revolution. After centuries of rule under the overbearing Ottoman Empire, the Greek people had reached a breaking point. They wanted their independence, and they wanted it now.
They moved quickly. Greek revolutionaries successfully took over the capital, Athens, forcing the Turks to retreat to the highest ground in the city: the Acropolis.
To the world, the Parthenon—the temple built on the Acropolis—was a masterpiece of ancient architecture; to the Greeks, it was the soul of their history. Originally a temple for the Greek goddess Athena, it had been an Orthodox cathedral for centuries before the Ottomans converted it into a mosque and, eventually, a fortified garrison.
The Turks had turned this sacred site, perched atop a rocky outcrop, into a fortress by lining the ancient walls with cannons. But as the weeks of the siege dragged on, the Turks began to run out of ammunition.
Desperate for lead to cast into bullets, the Turkish soldiers began chipping away at the Acropolis’s Parthenon columns. They were searching for the lead joints used by the ancients to hold the massive stones together. They were quite literally dismantling a wonder of the world to keep the war going.
When the Greeks realized that their enemies were destroying the temple to create weapons, they faced a radical choice. Under the suggestion of Kyriakos Pittakis, they did the unthinkable: They sent the Turks bullets.
They provided ammunition to their own enemies. Why? To stop the destruction of the temple they loved so dearly. They would rather be shot at than watch the foundation of their temple be torn apart piece by piece.
This story causes us to ask: Do we have a temple in our lives? Are we sending the enemy bullets to keep our temple from being destroyed?
The Greeks were willing to endure enemy fire in order to keep their temple standing. In our lives, we might have the same problem. The devil goes around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8). And just like the Turkish soldiers, he often pulls his ammunition from the foundation of our lives. When the devil uses our own shaky foundations to shoot at us, we may be so attached to them that we’d rather send him bullets to shoot back at us than see them destroyed. We can, by holding onto a weak foundation, give the devil the ammunition he needs to take us out.
James 1:14-15 (NIV) warns us that we are tempted when we are drawn away by our own desires. “But each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.”
When we give in to sin instead of surrendering to Christ, we are building a shaky foundation and essentially handing the enemy bullets that he can use to fire right back at us.
As Christians, we are told in Ephesians 2:19-21 (NKJV): “Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.”
In The Desire of Ages, Ellen White tells a story from the building of the first temple. A stone of “unusual size and peculiar shape” was brought to the quarry. Because the builders could not see where it fit, they rejected it. It sat in the sun and the storm, an annoyance in their way.
But when it came time to lay the cornerstone—the piece that would bear the weight of the entire structure—every other stone they tried crumbled under the pressure.
Finally, they turned to the rejected stone. It had survived the elements without a crack. It was brought to its position, and it was an exact fit.
If our lives are built on the shaky foundations of this world, the enemy will always find lead in your columns to use against you. But when you have a good foundation in Christ, the enemy is left empty-handed. He has nothing to use, because Christ is the solid Rock. A life built on Him is impenetrable, with no loose stone for the enemy to chip away and no metal for him to forge into a bullet.
If Christ is not your solid Rock today, your temple is at risk. You don’t have to keep arming your enemy. Surrender yourself to Christ today. Let Him be the foundation that cannot be shaken, the Cornerstone that holds every piece of your soul together. Stop providing the ammunition for your own destruction and stand firm on the only Rock that survives the storm.
