Temple studies are among the most difficult. Contemporary Christians know little about Israel’s temples and have no modern example from which to draw insight. Our churches today in no way exemplify Israel’s temples. It is unfortunate given the centrality of the temple to Jewish life and centrality of the temple to Scripture. That the word temple occurs 683 times in the NIV and found in most books of the Bible testifies to its importance.
Despite its complexity, we can certainly state that the temple was the place where God met with men and crucially, it was the place where mediation between God and men occurred. It makes understanding the temple of great import. Hence why this study was undertaken.
Introduction
Much has been learned yet its complexity has not been reduced. Rather, complexities have increased. Much of what has been presented is not only completely new to many believers, but mind-boggling, making it easy to dismiss the study without reflection. Some concepts are so mind-blowing that it can become difficult to find relevance to daily Christian living, never mind grasp the concepts. That said, there are some important take-aways for Christians that are worth prayerful reflection.
Ethical Lessons
The Temple as a Model of Creation
Our studies focused primarily upon the ancient idea of creation as a temple. The Ancients conceived creation as God erecting a grand cosmic temple or tent (tabernacle). This point proves important to creation studies revealing that the Genesis 1 Creation-narrative should not be examined as a text explaining the physical, scientific origins of our universe. Rather, it is best understood as a temple-text.
To contemporary Christians this may seem strange. But to the Ancients, all creation pointed man to God. Man’s purpose was to find God amidst his wanderings through our world. Thus, creation was not intended to serve man’s vain and selfish purposes (as is often thought today), but man was to serve God through creation. Man was priest-king given dominion over the earth and He was to mediate for creation before God. To the Ancients, man was given oversight of the earth and as God’s proxy, He was to rule as God would, considering it holy. With creation considered a grand temple, no wonder Paul could declare:
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. Romans 1
Creation witnessed to God’s existence. Everything that happened around man was under God’s control and designed to draw men to Him. It was accomplished through men evidencing acceptable behavior. God’s blessing would freely flow when man lived in conformance with His laws. Fruitfulness was the evidence of God’s blessing – both fruitfulness of descendants and fruitfulness of the land where he dwelt. Proper behavior brought order to God’s creation.
Unacceptable behavior brought disorder and curse-judgments with fruitlessness the evidence. When man had few descendants or his descendants died early, it was judgment from God that brought chaos (disorder) into his life, reflecting the disorder he had brought upon creation. Similarly, when the land was unfruitful due to drought or pestilence, it signaled man was to search his life, repent and make sacrifice in the hope to re-establish order in his family, the land and the cosmos. It provides an important ethical lesson for the church. Sin is not to be winked at. Its out-workings impact all creation. Critically, our purpose as priests is to mediate between God and sinners, which cannot effectively occur if we are mired in sin.
The temple as Christ and God’s People
The Ancients envisioned creation divided into 3 compartments with God above the firmament and man below it, creating tension in the narrative. How would these two entities interact given their apparent infinite separation? This tension is palpable given that man is to image God in his behavior. That question is yet to be answered. It awaits further insight from the Genesis 2 garden-narrative.
But before proceeding to Genesis 2, there may be a hint in the ancient belief of a key individual who has much to do with establishment of the interaction between God and man. The earthly king of the realm often represented that individual. The king envisioned himself as a son of God, fashioned in the image of a heavenly (pre-existent) archetype. One wonders how such a notion developed, but it appears to provide a correlation with the scriptural record concerning the Messiah. It implies that mankind are fashioned after this heavenly archetype.
Later scripture provides a similar idea when are told that Jesus’ followers are being conformed into His image. The language points toward Jesus’ supremacy in creation and redemption. That later Scripture also refers to Him as the cornerstone of God’s end-time temple and as the door to the temple is deeply significant. As the agent of both the first and final creation, He is part of creation as its cornerstone. As mysterious as it appears, that this heavenly man who is God appears on earth in human flesh, provides the answer. He is not just the creator through His redemptive action on the cross, He becomes part of creation in His human manifestation. That He is God and human, provides the perfect bridge between God as a spirit in heaven, and man as a physical being on earth. That bridge is the new birth He grants to His own. As Jesus becomes a physical human being, we as physical human beings have a spirit born within us, and thus we become spiritual. He who was spiritual, became physical while we who were physical become spiritual. He who was God, took on our likeness (human), that we who are human could be transformed into His likeness.
This is a truly radical idea. But it is not the only radical concept. That Jesus is the the true temple of God and its cornerstone is unexpected. Yet He claimed to be the fulfillment of Jacob’s dream, the ladder connecting heaven to earth (John 1:51; cf. Genesis 28:12). It means that Jesus provides the missing connecting point between God in heaven and man on earth. It makes Him God’s temple, the place where men meet God and enter into His presence.
Nebuchadnezzar’s prophetic dream adds a critical element to this picture. The rock that was carved out without human hands is Jesus. That the rock grows into a mountain reveals that believers become part of this new temple. Believers are where God is to be found by unbelievers. Unbelievers are to experience an interaction with God when they come in contact with believers. It again emphasizes the importance of personal purity and holiness among God’s people.
This is a radical change from the old temples of stone. But upon closer examination, it is not so surprising, explaining why the temple was the center of Jewish life. When Israelites loved and honored the temple with their presence, it gave a reflection of God’s people as the temple. When Israelites brought foreigners into their community, they experienced God’s presence through Israel and her temple. Israel’s temple interactions anticipate the New Testament belief in Christ and His followers as the church.
Eschatological Lessons
The Transformation of God’s Cosmic Temple
We observed a radical transformation of God’s cosmic temple reducing from three compartments to one, allowing God to freely dwell throughout His creation. The transformation begins with the destruction of the firmament, the separating barrier between God and men, and ends with the destruction of the outer court (the deep, the Abyss). The elimination of the firmament allows believers direct access into God’s presence – His heavenly Holy-of-Holies, while the Abyss is emptied and destroyed as part of the last judgment on those who have rejected Christ. Critically, Jesus’ body is described as the firmament. It is through His broken body (sacrifice) that the door to God’s presence is opened.
John’s parallel picture of God cleansing His cosmic temple reveals a cosmic struggle envisioned as a military campaign with the forces of Christ in opposition to the forces of Satan. We are in the middle of a cosmic conflict where we must take sides and bear our responsibilities to partner with God. We must conduct spiritual warfare against the de-creative powers of Satan who seeks to destroy God’s new creation (the church) by deceiving as many as possible. There will be countless victims whose wounds the church must dress, extending spiritual refuge, another redemptive picture.
There is irony in the transformation. God, who brought order to chaos by creating and separating three spaces, is later seen destroying the separating barriers and conflating the three spaces into one. This action however, is not anti-creative or a source of chaos. In God’s economy, the separating barrier can be eliminated in an orderly fashion as God’s people are separated and purified in Christ. True order results in that we are now transformed into the likeness of Christ, preserving us and keeping us from falling. [1]
The End of the Age False Temple and Priesthood
In the cosmic conflict John envisions, the powers of chaos are personified as beasts who wreak havoc upon creation and particularly upon God’s saints. It illustrates the extent of damage incurred by sin, both by unbelievers and some in the church (see Revelation 17:6;18:4). Resisting and opposing sin and evil are the heart of spiritual warfare. Though these forces are part of the unseen world, their actions impact the world we see. They seek to deceive, blind and delude men to the truth. Resisting is achieved through prayer and spoken testimony, binding and loosing on earth, assured God will correspondingly bind and loose in heaven (Mathew 16:19; 18:18).
But the powers of evil should not be underestimated. The deception is achieved through execution of an anti-redemptive program that parodies God’s redemptive plan. There is a false god – comprised of Satan as false-father, the beast from the sea as false-son (it had a fatal wound that healed, [Revelation 13;3]), and the beast from the earth as the false-spirit. There is also a false-priesthood – those taking the mark of the beast, making them the image of the beast. This false-priesthood serves in a false-temple that is part of the Antichrist’s system (see Table 1). The one-to-one correspondence between the dragon, beast from the sea and beast from the earth can be seen to represent an anti-temple within which their anti-priesthood serves. It is debased in that the dragon, having lost his position in heaven, must be worshiped on earth. Also, his false-son, comes down not from heaven but ascends from the Abyss (Revelation 11:7; 17:8). It is the source of all anti-mediatorial chaos and evil that will be loosed upon God’s people and God’s creation. [2]
Table 1: The Parody of Satan’s Anti-temple
| Beast | Position | Anti-Temple Responsibility |
| Dragon | Parody of God the Father (Worshiped) Revelation 13:4 | Leads the false kingdom. His Place in Heaven lost after defeat by Forces of Jesus Revelation 12:7-13 |
| Beast from the Earth | Parody of Holy Spirit (Performs Miraculous Signs) Revelation 13:13 | Sets up Image of Beast from the Sea, Gives Breath to the Image, Leads worship of Beast from the Sea Revelation 13:14-15 |
| Beast from the Sea or Abyss | Parody of Jesus the Son (Fatal Wound Healed) Revelation 13:3-5 | Authority over all the Nations (e.g. the outer court), Persecutes the Saints Revelation 13:6-7 |
“Not One Stone” – An Eschatological Pointer to the Church’s Destruction?
In end-time studies, most expositors emphasize the triumph of the church in contrast to the failures of Israel. Many though, are careful to warn of the Beast’s “apparent” success in conquering the church (Revelation 11:7; 13:7). If one views the two witnesses as symbolic of the church (a position most expositors hold), then God’s church is martyred, leaving at best only a remnant of survivors who would have gone into hiding.
The great conflict forces the world to choose between worship of the true God and idolatrous worship of the beast. It appears to be a recapitulation of the Edenic test (Genesis 3:1-7) but with inversion. Worship of the true God assures death rather than the promise of life. But for those who know the Lord, the inversion is merely a devilish ruse. The choice of death to this world through martyrdom assures eternal life with Christ in a true paradisal Eden (Revelation 1:7). The life the beast offers in exchange for idolatrous worship is a false-Eden, a “garden” of bloodshed, evil and idolatry that oppresses the world and sheds the blood of the saints. Critically, the “life” the Beast offers is Faustian. It is transitory, ending in physical death that brings certain jdugment and spiritual death.
The choice seems to destroy the church – at least what is visible to the world. With the death of so many saints, the church no longer functions in the world. Such an outcome seems truly apocalyptic [3]. Yet it seems likely the church’s destruction is in judgment for her sins (Revelation 17:6; 18:4) and for her purification. It is as if “not one stone” of the visible church “will be left upon another”. But in the greatest of irony, God will vindicate the saints at the resurrection, giving them spiritual bodies:
1 For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. (2 Corinthians 5)
The “tent” represents the visible church on earth which will be completely destroyed, making way for a better temple, an eternal house (our spiritual resurrection bodies) at the Parousia. That house is pure, erected by God’s hand. It suggests this Edenic choice is a separating test designed to bring purification, while also bringing to fruition our long-awaited union with Christ in resurrection (2 Corinthians 5:4) where we will finally be the glorious eternal, redeemed temple God has promised.
[1] An insightful parallel is found in our being conformed to the image of Christ, much as the earthly tabernacle was in the image of the heavenly temple. The latter points to the path of the former from temporary tent to permanent House.
[2] The contrasts are striking and comprehensive. The dragon (anti-God), the beast from the earth (anti-Spirit of God) and the beast from the sea (anti-Christ) all work in an anti-temple with their anti-priesthood to birth an anti-kingdom that brings anti-mediatorial chaos and demands anti-redemptive allegiance from their followers, leaving them anti-tabernacling in the Lake of Fire with evil demons.
[3] That the prophets such as Jeremiah described the destruction of Jerusalem and Solomon’s temple using apocalyptic language is very important. It shows that the sins of God’s people can bring judgments that are apocalyptic to God’s people. Failure of God’s people brings apocalyptic judgment. To think that God simply turns a blind eye to our failures is unsupported by Scripture. It must be borne in mind in our age, when so many are quick to teach God’s forgiveness without mention of consequences. Scripture testifies God will forgive Israel, but her history shows the apocalyptic consequences upon her for disobedience. Since sin destroys God’s new temple and new creation, apocalyptic consequences should be expected. For God will not tolerate those whose impure lifestyles destroy His new temple and new creation.