As the car slowly turned to go up the hill, I craned my neck to get a better view of the building. Its columns soared skyward in dark brown beautiful symmetry. “The Steel Triangle. What a fantastic building, fitting into the three rivers, with the rest of the Pittsburgh skyline enhancing rather than dominating it,” I thought. “What a lovely brown that steel is—my favorite shade,” I remarked.
Our friend who knew a lot about this United States Steel building began to tell us some of what could not be seen. “See those columns? They rise to a height of 841 feet, and there are eighteen of them. Each column is made up of hollow sections and contains a total of about 400,000 gallons of water plus antifreeze.” He went on to say, “This water is to protect the building during any possible outbreak of fire. Without the water, the columns would lose their strength and collapse.” Poured-in protection! Beauty, strength, and purpose easily seen by one who looks at this especially fine modern building. But also a hidden protection, poured in to stay, ready for any sudden attack of fire.
What a good illustration of the marvel of the “water” with which God has promised to fill those who are a part of his building, his people! “Jesus answered and said unto her, “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:13, 14). “In … that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, if any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly [his innermost being] shall flow rivers of living water. (But this he spake of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive; for the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:37–39).
Water! Life-protecting water will be poured into and will flow out of those who believe on Jesus. The Holy Spirit will be given to everyone who becomes a Christian. And in addition to refreshing us, the Holy Spirit is to be a protection to us in times of special “heat” or “fire.” Ephesians 6:16 speaks of our quenching the fiery darts of the evil one by using the shield of faith. But as I looked at those brown columns filled with water, I felt a special comfort in knowing that the Holy Spirit was filling each of us, too, as a protection against those fiery darts. Satan’s fiery darts come from unexpected angles, but the water of the Spirit is there. We have His cooling system as we feel the heat of the attack.
We’re also told in First Peter 4:12, “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you.” Fiery trials—suffering, tribulations, disappointments—could cause us to buckle and collapse if we had no help. But we have been given help. “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16). Each one of us who is a Christian is a special building, a temple of God, filled with the water of the Spirit.
Like every other illustration, this one cannot be carried out to the nth degree. Unlike the U. S. Steel building, we who are temples of God can communicate with our architect, God the Father, who has sent his Son to enable us to become a temple and who has sent the Holy Spirit to be poured into us. We can communicate as individual persons with the Triune One and ask for special help in times of fire and heat.
The Steel Triangle stands unique in Pittsburgh as a building protected with water-filled columns. But each of us as a Christian “temple” or “building” has another kind of strength, the strength of being together with other buildings, forming a complex, not just in one city, not just in one country, not just in the whole world at any one given moment of history, but throughout all geographic space and all history. “For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God: and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone, in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit” (Eph. 2:18–22).
The whole company of believers, no longer strangers and foreigners, belonging to the same country and the same family, are also described as a building, with Jesus as the corner stone, a building where God dwells “through the Spirit.” The Holy Spirit indwells each believer, but there is also the special thing of his indwelling the whole building of all of us “framed together,” built together in a special structure. The Holy Spirit, whom Jesus called “rivers of living water” in John 7, is to fill the entire body of believers to protect them against fiery attacks.
Martyrs are not failures. Martyrs are not twisted, buckled pieces of steel, destroyed by the fire. Martyrs are those who have withstood the fiery darts, have stood firm because the water cooling system “worked.”
We may fail in our response at times. We may not ask for help when we should. We may disappoint our architect by not sending forth an alarm, or not using what he has given us for keeping communication open. But one thing is sure: the “living water” was poured into the column that is you or me, and it was poured into the “building framed together,” the entire combination of believers. “Fear not, O Jacob,” God says in Isaiah 44:2: “for I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring.”
After Jesus died as the atonement Lamb, the Temple was destroyed, but only the physical building. God’s spiritual building continues through the ages. All hell cannot prevail against it. There is a poured-in protection in the columns—living water. Thank God for the truth of his promises.
