Mk 13.1-2,
Mt 24.1-2,
Lk 21.5-6.
In
Christians spend a lot of time analyzing and discussing it. For good reason; we wanna know about the second coming! (And want it to happen sooner rather than later.) We wanna know the future. We wanna know our futures. Should we make grand plans for our lives, or is
I grew up in churches which had adopted
Thing is, when I grew up and studied history, I quickly came to the conclusion the historical events which look like they fulfilled it… in a ludicrously obvious way, do fulfill it. Everything Jesus said would happen, did. (Except his actual second coming. ’Cause come on.) That’s why the Holy Spirit
Of course people of our day don’t know ancient history, so of course this goes right over our heads.
We Christians who believe the Olivet Discourse was fulfilled in the first century, and that most of the stuff in Revelation was also fulfilled by the second century, are called
If you wanna know about the events Jesus predicts in his Olivet Discourse, I refer you to the very useful Bellum Judaicum/“The Judean War,” written by Flavius Josephus in the years 75 to 79. He’s an eyewitness to when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in the year 70, and tells of it in gory detail.
The impressive temple.
What triggered the whole Olivet Discourse was a casual statement Jesus made while someone—identified by Mark and Matthew as Jesus’s students, though Luke keeps it vague—was praising the temple.
Mark 13.1-2 KWL - 1 As Jesus comes out of temple,
- one of his students tells him,
- “Teacher, look at what sort of stones these are!
- And what sort of architecture!”
- 2 Jesus tells him, “You see these things?
- —the great architecture?
- There might not be one stone upon stone here
- which might not be pulled down.”
Matthew 24.1-2 KWL - 1 Jesus is leaving, and as he comes out of temple,
- his students come beside him
- to show him the temple architecture.
- 2 In reply Jesus tells them, “You see all these things?”
- Amen, I promise you:
- There might not be one stone upon stone here
- which won’t be pulled down.”
Luke 21.5-6 KWL - 5 As some of them are speaking about the temple—
- that the stones are good, and arranged in holy ways—
- Jesus says,
- 6 “These things which you see: Days will come
- in which there won’t be stone upon stone
- which won’t be pulled down.”
The temple Jesus and his students are speaking of is the fourth temple to exist on this spot. Yeah, I know; many Christians call it the second temple. It’s not really.
- The first temple was the
tabernacle , a portable temple constructed by craftsmen under Moses’s rule sometime in the 1300sBC . Between Moses and King David ben Jesse, the tabernacle was located near a few different cities in the land, but under David it relocated to Mt. Moriah in the 1000s. - The second was
Solomon’s temple , a gold-plated, ornately decorated cedar building, following the tabernacle’s layout. It’s named for King Solomon ben David, who built it the 900sBC . (Probably had it built, but the biblical text says he built it, and who knows?—maybe he did. It’s a lot of work for one guy, but still.) Burnt down by the neo-Babylonians in 587BC , Christians and Jews usually call this “the first temple,” ’cause it was a permanent structure. - The third was
Zerubbabel’s temple , built under the Persian governor Zerubbabel bar Šealtiel in 522BC after Babylonian Jews returned to Jerusalem to re-establish it. We don’t know a lot about its construction, but it was likely a stone building. Christians and Jews usually call this the “second temple.” - The fourth was
Herod’s temple , the temple of Jesus’s day. Herod 1 decided to renovate it entirely, and brought up to Roman standards. Next to nothing was left of Zerubbabel’s original structure. But people still call it “the second temple” because the worship continued despite the renovations—as no doubt happened when Solomon replaced the tabernacle. The Romans destroyed it in 70CE . - The fifth was the
Dome of the Rock , which is still there. It’s a Muslim shrine, constructed by Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan in 691–92 on the ruins of Herod’s temple. Yeah, Christians don’t identify it as a temple anymore, and Jews never did. But during the first crusade, after the Europeans took Jerusalem from the Umayyad Empire, the crusaders called it the Templum Domini/“Lord’s temple,” and worshiped Jesus in it; and the warrior monks who named themselves the Knights of the Temple (the “Templars”) based themselves in it. There; there’s some fun historical trivia for you. - And because Darbyists insist most prophecies have yet to be fulfilled, including ones which include a temple, they posit another temple, to be built either before or during the great tribulation. Some insist it’s gotta be in the Dome of the Rock’s current location; others recognize it could be anywhere, same as the tabernacle originally was.
Again, Jesus was speaking of the fourth temple. This temple was under construction all his life, and wouldn’t be complete till the mid-60s. Seriously. Herod 1 began the renovations in 20
Before Herod’s renovations, the temple was built atop Mt. Moriah, on as big a plot of level ground as Solomon could find. Herod determined it simply wasn’t big enough. He had a wall built round the hill, had it filled with earth, and made it a level platform on which his new temple would be constructed. It’s still there. The Western Wall, which used to be called “the wailing wall” (and still is, by Christians who think Jews go there to mourn, not pray) is the west retaining wall of that platform. The Eastern Wall is what you usually see in tourism photos of Jerusalem.
Jerusalem nowadays. This is actually the view from Olivet, so it’s the angle Jesus and his students had when Jesus gave his discourse.
Parts of the temple were required to be Levites-only, so according to Josephus, Herod had
So when the students pointed out the architecture, no doubt they were noticing something new which hadn’t been there the last time they’d visited temple. Hey, check that out! Look what a fine job the stonemasons had done. And since Jesus used to be a handyman, wouldn’t he appreciate it too?
And maybe so… but y’know, the day would come when it all came down.
It’s awfully hard to move bus-size stones into place. Just as hard to knock ’em over, or destroy them. But Jesus told his students all the stones they found so impressive… were coming down. And that’s what happened less than 40 years later: The Romans marched in, flattened the temple, and left nothing behind but the platform.
Does there even need to be a temple?
You may be aware
But for the longest time humans have insisted—and still insist—there needs to be a temple. There needs to be a physical location where we can interact with the Almighty. And yeah, the L
Acts 7.47-50 NET - 47 “But Solomon built a house for him. 48 Yet the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands, as the prophet says,
- 49 ‘Heaven is my throne,
- and earth is the footstool for my feet.
- What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord,
- or what is my resting place?
- 50 Did my hand not make all these things?’ ”
Is 66.1-2
I’m with Stephen. The Holy Spirit has a house he’s made of Christendom, and Jesus himself said we don’t need another.
John 4.21-24 NET - 21 Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You people worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, because salvation is from the Jews. 23 But a time is coming—and now is here—when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such people to be his worshipers. 24 God is spirit, and the people who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
(Yeah, this too is a subtle prediction there wouldn’t be a temple in Jerusalem much longer.)
Jesus isn’t the first (nor the last) to predict the temple’d come down. The Old Testament is full of prophets who warned the Hebrews to not assume the temple—magnificent though it was back then—was a permanent landmark. ’Cause the Hebrews regularly made that mistake: They figured God would never let foreign invaders touch his temple. He’d do as he did in
The Indiana Jones movies may be really entertaining, but they never did get God right. He didn’t spare his people, his temple, nor even his own Son: If sin needs to be destroyed, God has no trouble destroying whatever it takes to get sin destroyed. Don’t fool yourself.
God already has a temple in heaven;
Christians still make this mistake. We assume God would never let something he loves—something which serves him so well!—be destroyed. It’s naïve of us, considering God lets lots of people suffer martyrdom for Jesus. God lets churches be dissolved, ministries be shut down, Christian schools close, cities and homelands be invaded, and people die, all the time.
Do any of our favorite preachers, any of the best servants of God we’ve ever seen, get to live forever? Not yet. And since God cares for people far more than institutions, why should we assume institutions automatically get to last till Jesus returns? God considers everything and everyone to be expendable. ’Cause we are.
Everything will pass away. Everything. We Christians are coming back, but everything else will go. So let it go. Enjoy it while you have it; keep it functional in case the generations to come still wanna use it; but don’t cling to anything that’ll pass away. Let it go.
