Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” (John 2:19)

Every one of God’s houses throughout Bible history has a “former days” and a “latter days.” Each goes through a process of death and resurrection, a “purification by fire.” Following the Bible Matrix, the central “slaying” of every row has a Day 4 symbol, something related to “the governing lights,” the all-seeing eyes of heaven.

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NOTE: THIS POST HAS BEEN REMIXED AND INCLUDED IN GOD’S KITCHEN.

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[1] See Pass-over and Pass-through.
[2] See The Context of Drawing Near.
[3] There are no longer any Gentiles to graft in. Paul’s references to this process were priestly. The wall was the one which, both legally and symbolically, kept Gentile believers out of the Holy Place. The process of ingrafting was completed in the first century. Since the end of the Temple, there are no Jews or Gentiles any more in God’s economy. Christians who think unbelieving Jews are God’s people are grossly mistaken. [/s2If]

Picture is from Darren Doane’s Genesis Redux – Part 1.

“Then all the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid. But many of the priests and Levites and heads of the fathers’ houses, old men who had seen the first temple, wept with a loud voice when the foundation of this temple was laid before their eyes.” Ezra 3:11-12

Doug Wilson writes (Less Glory Is More):

The Bible teaches us that the times of the new covenant are attended with a greater glory than the old covenant, as well as with a greater simplicity. In effect, that simplicity is part of the glory.

The arrival of Jesus the Messiah was not a signal for us to lapse into some kind of second-rate old covenant observance. The old covenant was glorious, in its time, but when we try to imitate the types and shadows, we are dragging the lesser glory into something inglorious.

This applies to many things—the sacrificial system, the practice of tithing, our observance of the Lord’s Day, and so on. In place of the entire Mosaic economy, we have two sacraments. In place of a year of calendar obligations, we have one day of obligation, recurring every seven days, and that recurrence is for the sake of our relief and rest. In place of bloody sacrifices, we have a cup of wine. In place of meat on the altar, we have a simple piece of bread.

The glory of the new covenant is simpler, but this simplicity is not to be understood as a downgrade. This simplicity is a relief, and an ornament of grace. It is not that we are barred from the glory that our old covenant brothers enjoyed, but rather that we are taught the meaning of a deeper glory. It is not as though God thinks that extra embroidery on Aaron’s robe would be more glorious, but He doesn’t want us to have that. Rather, God is teaching us that in the realm of glory, as with other forms of aesthetic experience, less is more.

I kind of agree, but kind of not. It’s more like the fact that the simpler and more graceful something appears, the more work has gone into designing it. [1]

As we follow the patterns through the Bible, we find Word becoming Flesh. Every glorious element of the Tabernacle was a symbol to be fulfilled in, and constructed out of, people. [2] The Restoration era is interesting because it was kind of a halfway house between the Old and New Covenants.

When the second Temple was built, the young people shouted and the old people wept. The young people got it right. Solomon’s Temple was made of stone and wood. Ezekiel’s Temple was made out of people. All New Jerusalems are.

What’s on the table is not what’s glorious. It’s just a memorial, the foundation plaque on the living house.

The Old and New Covenants, like everything else God seems to do, are a head and body. Adam builds the house and Eve fills it. Man is structure, woman is glory.

Building the house took blood, sweat and tears. Since the marriage supper (AD70!), it’s now about raising the kids. This is the glory. [3] It’s still messy because it’s still a process of building. But it’s a different kind of messy, and a different kind of glory. It is the content from the Tablets of Stone being written on Tablets of Flesh.

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[1] This was the message in those Mac vs. PC ads. heh.
[2] This explains why dispensationalists fail to see the words of the prophets being fulfilled in history. They are still waiting for a temple of stone. On the evil of holding onto shadows, see The End of Shadows.
[3] For how this age was prefigured, see Vile Bodies or Bright Young Things. For background on Satan’s constant attempts to counterfeit the process, see There Can Only Be One.

For thus says the LORD God of Israel to me: “Take this wine cup of fury from My hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send you, to drink it. “And they will drink and stagger and go mad because of the sword that I will send among them.” Then I took the cup from the LORD’s hand, and made all the nations drink, to whom the LORD had sent me…” (Jeremiah 25:15-17)

The content of this post has been revised and included in Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key.

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[1] See Sacramental Doses of Death.
[2] This is the execution of a Covenant curse, so those who fought against Jerusalem were people under the Covenant.
[3]Contrary to popular opinion, I believe that the divided animals substitute for the Canaanites rather than for Abraham, but the birds do substitute for Abraham. The birds are the head of the Covenant, and He is never crushed. Only the serpent’s head is crushed. This also relates to the linen left in Christ’s tomb. The Jew-Gentile body was divided in Abraham and reunited in Christ. See Pass-over and Pass-Through.
[4] See Three Babylons.
[5] This also relates to the disappearance of the pure Covenant-head, the Ark of the Covenant. See The Lost Ark.

Here’s the last installment of my answers to Brian Simmon’s 50 objections to a first century “coming in judgment” of Christ. You can find a link under Featured Articles that will list them all for you.

46. Abraham still hasn’t inherited the land God promised him (Gen. 13: 15; Acts 7: 5).

Joshua 21:43 “So the LORD gave to Israel all the land of which He had sworn to give to their fathers, and they took possession of it and dwelt in it.”

I don’t see the relevance of Acts 7:5. The Land was promised to his descendants.

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Peter Leithart writes:

Solomon’s temple had windows, but they are mentioned only once, in 1 Kings 6:4. Ezekiel’s description of the visionary temple uses the word “window” twelve times.

One can see out of, and look into, Solomon’s temple. From Ezekiel’s temple, Israel can look out the twelve windows to the world, and the temple is opened to the world.

This seems new: How strange is it to have the temple wall perforated with windows? Pretty strange, I suspect. Temples are supposed to be closed-off holy spaces. But Ezekiel wants to open the windows of heaven. [1]

This is great. The first thought I had was that this observation can be extended both forwards and backwards in time.

Extending it backwards, we have the Tabernacle which had no windows. No natural light was allowed into the tent. The only light was the Lampstand (and the Shekinah, of course). Solomon’s temple opens the mystery of God a little; the nations get a fleeting glimpse of the mystery.

Ezekiel’s Temple was never built. Actually, yes it was. It was built out of believing Gentiles, with the Jews of the Restoration era as a priesthood within it. The revelation of the mystery is getting closer: in Ezra, all the Jews are concerned about their genealogy, not just the priests; a single Jew and Gentile body under a single emperor in “the age to come” is prefigured by the oikoumene. The Herod’s failed to discern the nature of this Temple, and the nature of the Restoration commission of the Jews. Did Herod’s Temple have any windows?

When the age to come came, what do we find? The New Jerusalem, a city that is nothing but a window into the very heart of heaven, the slain Lamb. [2] With a priesthood of all believers, everyone can see inside the Tent. This structure, too, is built out of people.

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[1] Peter J. Leithart, Windows of Heaven.
[2] See also: Crystal Walls – 1: God’s Bouncers and Crystal Walls – 2: Godly Intolerance.

Is this verse simply teaching that if we “divide up” the Scriptures correctly, we’ll get an AWANA[1] merit badge from God? Hardly. It is flanked by condemnations of those who fight over the Scriptures to no profit, and those whose vain babblings are gangrenous.

Paul speaks of a soldier and a farmer, and then a productive workman. Paul is concerned about building saints and churches, and they are built by a straight and true cutting of the word. Like most of Paul’s statements, there is a very long, fully-loaded freight train of Old Testament history and typology right behind it, and it’s coming right at you, right now.

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“The restoration period is the last era of Israel’s history as the people of God and the climactic period of old covenant. The kingdom of God has grown beyond Israel and spread to the nations, who are the God-appointed protectors of His priestly people. Israel’s loss of independence and submission to Gentile powers was not a backward movement in the kingdom program of God. Abraham had been chosen by God so that through him all the nations of the world could be blessed (Gen. 12:3). In the restoration era, this was fulfilled more than at any other time in Israel’s history. Through the dispersion Jews had spread all over the world and they brought with them the knowledge of the true God.

Though Daniel spent most of his life serving the king of Babylon during the time of captivity, he is still a good picture of what the restoration era is about, for he served “Darius the Mede” also. Daniel’s job was that of an advisor, the supreme advisor, to the king of Babylon and then head over the satraps and presidents in the kingdom of Persia (Dan. 6:1-3). Essentially the king intended to designate Daniel as the actual ruler in Persia, as Joseph had been in Egypt: “the king planned to appoint him over the whole kingdom” (Dan. 6:3). This was not a “secular” calling. To advise the king and aid him and the daily affairs of rule was one of the functions of a prophet, as, for example, the prophet Nathan did for David (cf. 2 Sam. 7).

In other words, during the restoration era, Israel as a nation would no longer have civil power, but she was appointed by God to serve as a prophetic witness to the world. It was Israel’s prophetic task to give godly counsel to the leaders of the Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and Roman empires who protected her and, through her position in the empire, spread the knowledge of the true God. The final era of Israel’s history, thus, was a prophetic era in which the word of God went forth more broadly than at any time in Israel’ history.

Her new temple in Jerusalem lacked the glory of the temple of Solomon (cf. Hag. 2:3), but, as was appropriate for a prophetic people in an international age, her real new temple was the “heavenly” temple that was revealed to Ezekiel (40-48). Jews in this era were given a glorious vision of Israel’s worship and its global significance that made explicit the purpose of the tabernacle and temple. Through the worship of the true God, the priestly nation was to bring blessing to all men.”

 

from Introduction to the Bible by Ralph Smith.

“The Lord had used the exile to expand His territory. He had scattered His people as the four winds. Jerusalem was now the Temple (the holy city), a rebuilt Altar of Incense. The Empire was now the Land, the four-cornered bronze Altar beneath it.”

This all of course is a type of the New Jerusalem ruling an even greater world in this current age. I’ve also added a diagram.

“God claimed the Babylonian Empire as His territory, and began converting Nebuchadnezzar’s new World (Sea) into Land. The kings had failed to continue bringing the riches of the Gentiles under the Covenant, so the Lord expanded the Covenant promise. The expansion would cost Israel her life.”

“The wicked Hashmoneans took over the Temple for themselves, and did not give glory to God and restore the true High Priest. The Hashmoneans “buy” the Temple for thirty pieces of silver, but Yahweh rejects their offer, which treats Him and His people as slaves. These evils result in the Jews being broken apart and set at each other’s throats.”1

Either way, the pattern is the same, as the Jews’ apostasy under Greek rule was repeated under Rome, with the “Temple” they sold in the second instance being Christ Himself. Both “Greek” and “Roman” interpretations link the events of chapter 10 to chapter 12, and echo the judgments upon false shepherds by the pre-exile prophets. And in both cases, it is the “Temple” seen by Ezekiel that is being judged. The flock is divided and the Temple made desolate under Antiochus Epiphanes (Greece), and under Christ and Titus (Rome).

The most important factor is that in both events, the Jews’ compromise left them without a true High Priest, and thus no true Atonement.

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See James B. Jordan, The Handwriting on the Wall, p. 585-587.