"The Future History of the Church, Part 3" - The Temple Then and Now (page 9 of 16)

The Temple Then and Now

Now, we need to talk about the idea of the Temple. Jesus begins talking of the end of the world in Matthew 24 by discussing the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. Jesus said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (Jn. 2:19). He was herein talking about His body.

Man is made in God's image and likeness; we are like a temple. In Corinthians Paul says "Know ye not that ye are temples of the Spirit?" The Temple was like a box within a box within a box: the Outer Courts, the Holy Place, and the Qodesh HaQadashim the sanctum sanctorum, the Holy of Holies. The Outer Court corresponds to our physical bodies. The Holy Place represents our mind, emotions and intellect; our souls. Paul says to keep this holy. The Holy of Holies corresponds to where God's Spirit dwells within us. This is one way to understand and eliminate a lot of the confusion surrounding demons being cast out of Christians. Yes, even Christians may come under demonic influence and be oppressed or even invaded in their bodies or possibly their souls. But when you say “possessed” by a demon you are talking about a demon entering the innermost man, where in a Christian God's Spirit dwells. That cannot happen. A Christian who is following Jesus cannot be demon-possessed. The Greek word “ek ballo” is a very strong word meaning “cast out”; we get our word “ballistic” from it. This term is never used in connection with a Christian anywhere in the Bible.

Jesus spoke of His body as a temple. Remember: what happened to Jesus in His last days happened to the Early Church and to the Apostles in their last days. Those things together teach us about what happens to the church in its Last Days. Again, in John 2:19 Jesus said,

"Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up."

The physical temple was an emblem of His body. In Hebrew we call Hosea “Sohea”; that “sh” sound indicates a link with Jesus because of the structure of Hebrew. The Hebrew language is based on roots; when you have the same root in two different words, those two words are usually connected in some theological manner with each other. In Midrash, words with the same root, or shoresh, usually have an established Midrashic connection in their interpretation. That “sh” root in Hosea means “salvation”. Jesus' name is Yeshua; Isaiah's name is Ishiahu; Joshua's name is Yehoshua. Wherever you have that “sh” sound it has meaning pertaining to salvation, and all of those figures with an “sh” sound teach about Jesus in some way.

Look at Hosea 6:2:

"After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in His sight."

So we see it: what happens to Jesus happens also to us. In seven places the New Testament refers to the church as the “temple” or the “tabernacle”. The Holy Spirit is like the cement that holds the bricks together. Take a look at I Peter 2:5:

"You also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood"

We are the stones of the temple. The church is the holy house, the Temple, and we are the stones that comprise it. The Hebrew word for “fellowship” is “heet ha brut”. Peter's epistle was written to Jews and his ministry was mainly to Jews as we're told in Galatians. He writes therefore from a very Jewish perspective, and the Jewish view of “fellowship” was heet ha brut, meaning “bricks cemented together”'. It is one thing to come to church, but quite another to come to fellowship. Anyone may come into the building, but being a brick in the wall is something entirely different. If there is a brick missing from our wall, there is something wrong with the building; if a Christian is not cemented into it, there is something wrong with the church. He or she must get cemented in. We are the stones.

Midrashically, on Palm Sunday what happens? In Luke 19:37-40, we find this: Jesus comes onto the Temple Mount while the people are singing the Hillel Rabbah from Psalm 118 – "Hosanna to the Son of David". The Pharisees freak out, telling them to be quiet; but Jesus says, "If these remain silent, the stones will cry out", indicating the Herodian stones of the Temple. In other words, "If the Jews don't proclaim Me, the Christians will." The Pharisees and Jewish leaders believed themselves to be special because they were descended from Abraham. But they go out to hear John the Baptist in the wilderness and he tells them, "God could raise up Abraham's children out of the stones" (Luke 3:8). Somehow what happened to Jesus' body was replayed in the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. Acts 15 shows the Tabernacle being restored as the church, quoting from Amos. That will also happen to us. The temple will be destroyed again, but then raised up in glory.

The early church had been meeting in Solomon's Portico right outside the Temple. At the same time God was making ready to destroy the old Temple, He was building a new one right next to it. When the new Temple was ready, the old one was destroyed. The same is true with us; God is building a new temple, a new tabernacle.

The old Temple in Jerusalem was demolished and the abomination of desolations was set up with the entrance of imperial Rome in 70 A.D. symbolizing political dominion over the house of God. Be careful of Erastianism, or state churches. The concept is totally dangerous. When Jesus said, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and render to God the things that are God's", he was addressing three issues: The first issue was that even in Old Testament Judaism there was to be a kind of separation of “church and state”. The kings had to be descended from David while the high priests had to be descended from Aaron. That became convoluted during the reign of John Hurcanus during the period of the Hasmoneans which followed the time of the Maccabees. In context, Jesus was addressing this.

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This is Page 9 of 16 of PART 3