A video recently popped up in my YouTube feed that immediately caught my eye.
I attended Zion Bible College (now Northpoint Bible College) from 2002 to 2006 in Barrington, RI. The campus was beautiful, however, most of the buildings were not so much. The exception to that was the castle, which was easily the biggest appeal of the property. Originally owned by a Nazi sympathizer (not kidding, there were swastikas littered throughout the building that couldn’t be taken down due to historical value), the castle was “baptized” by our community and functioned as our school library, faculty quarters, and prayer room. Zion moved from this campus in 2008/2009 and since then it’s sat abandoned while the city tries (and fails) to find someone who can do something with it.
I’ve been back to the campus since Zion moved and saw some of the decay present in this video, but I did not walk into our old buildings. I didn’t see the graffiti. I didn’t see our prayer room defaced with penises. I didn’t see our library filled with social media handles for people to follow plastered on the walls (to be fair, we used MySpace back then). But one of the craziest moments for me was when I saw the fireplace at one of the main entrances, where our class took a group photo (I am conspicuously absent from this picture), plastered with graffiti.


How could a place that felt so holy fall into decay?
My time in college was what you would typically call a mixed bag. I made many lifelong friendships, had incredible times of prayer and worship, and was deeply formed to be closer to Jesus. But I also experienced spiritual abuse and hypocrisy, and ultimately my Senior year was made a living hell because of a breakup that people in leadership thought they could involve themselves in (one of the reasons I’m not in that picture).
I say this not to spill “the tea” but to highlight that the decay we see in the video was present even then, you just couldn’t see it so pronounced. As Scripture says:
“Therefore we don't faint, but though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day.” 2 Cor. 4:16
But even with those awful memories, I remember so many good times that seeing this video is emotionally jarring. How could a place, set aside for the training of Ministers and the glory of God, fall into such despair? I spilled so many tears, tears that God says He measures, onto the floor of that prayer room (especially during my senior year), how could it now be claimed by dust and debris if God says those tears are holy?
After finishing the video, I was reminded of a passage in Nehemiah that shared my sentiments about a holy place falling into decay:
But while all this was going on, I was not in Jerusalem, for in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes king of Babylon I had returned to the king. Some time later I asked his permission and came back to Jerusalem. Here I learned about the evil thing Eliashib had done in providing Tobiah a room in the courts of the house of God. I was greatly displeased and threw all Tobiah’s household goods out of the room. I gave orders to purify the rooms, and then I put back into them the equipment of the house of God, with the grain offerings and the incense… Nehemiah 13:4-31
The prophet sees the Temple of God used as a boarding house. I cannot even imagine what that must have felt like for him. The Temple was the center of Jewish life for centuries and here’s a single guy using it like a frat house.
But the decay was not permanent. The rooms were purified, and the holy items were consecrated and set back to their holy places. The decay is not the end of the story. Chaos, death, and decay can have an end too. And this is the hope Scripture lays out:
“For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.
So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9 So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.
2 Corinthians 5:1-10
May the decay in our lives not cause us to lose hope, but be a source of courage that the decay itself will give way to glory. Zion will one day be the joy of the whole earth again.