The Temple: From Eden to Eternity with Dr. Randall Price

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OK, all right, I'm going to start over. I'm Terry Camerizal here on behalf of Creation Fellowship Santee.

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We love to learn about our creator God and believe that the Bible, when read properly, rules out the possibility of millions or especially billions of years.

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We used to meet for 10 years at the Creation and Earth History Museum in Santee, California.

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Then and online, our goal is to rally the remnant so we can defend our faith. You can see a list of our upcoming speakers by visiting tinyurl .com

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forward slash CF Santee. That's C for creation, F for fellowship, and Santee is spelled

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S -A -N -T -E -E. Tonight, we are happy to have with us

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Dr. Randall Price, founder of the ministry Word of the Bible. Dr.

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Price is a biblical archaeologist, leading scholar on biblical prophecy, and global keynote speaker.

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Our creation followers might recognize him as one of the experts in the recent Ark in the Darkness movie, but Dr.

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Price is also a prolific author on the temple. And that's just what we are excited to have him come speak to us about.

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If you're watching on Facebook or if you're in the Zoom and you have questions during his presentation, please put them into the chat and comments so that we can ask during the live

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Q &A at the end. And with that, I'm happy to turn it over to you, Dr. Price. Thank you,

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Terry. I'm glad to be with everyone this evening. I know this is a fellowship that focuses on creation, and I do speak on those topics as well.

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But when we talk about the subject of the temple, we're actually beginning with what we call protology, the first things, and tying that in with eschatology, the last things.

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Because God had the original creation, but he also has a new creation. And the subject of the temple spans all of that and is very essential to all of that because in God's plan and program, we'll find that the temple is kind of at the center of all that he is doing.

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So I'm going to switch to a PowerPoint and run through a little bit of everything related to the temple, kind of past, present, and future.

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And let me get this where we can all see it. All right.

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I hope that's full screen now. And is everything

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OK for y 'all? Looks good. Thank you. OK, I have something on mine that says, meeting is being recorded.

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Leave meeting. OK, I'm just going to click that. Everything's good? I do see your temple from Eden to eternity.

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We're good to go. OK, good. All right. So as I was saying, when we talk about creation, starting at the very beginning, we're talking about the

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Garden of Eden, God putting man on earth, putting him in a particular situation.

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And we know God's presence was there, but sometimes we just bypass that and don't think deeply enough about what was going on.

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And so for us, this is going to relate to the temple's past purpose.

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Let me go back to that. So what are we doing as we talk about the very beginning of things?

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As we look at the scriptures, we talk about a heavenly temple. The heavenly temple, you'll see it as we come to the psalmist.

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He talks about the Lord is his holy temple. The Lord's throne is in heaven. And this was written by King David, but there wasn't a temple standing in the time of King David.

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That only happened in the time of Solomon. Then we have passages from the Book of Revelation that mention a loud voice coming from the temple from the throne.

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But obviously, the setting of this is heaven. As you can see this also in Revelation 11, 19, the temple of God, which is in heaven, was opened, and the ark of his covenant appeared in his temple.

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Dr. Price, can I interrupt you for one minute? Certainly. I think you have it on presenter view rather than slideshow.

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But do you prefer it like this? Can you see all of it rather than just -

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I can see the whole, just somebody in the comments mentioned that it's in presenter view.

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I'm OK with that. I can certainly change that. Let me escape this and go to -

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Would be slideshow, yeah, from current slide. From current slide, right there.

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There you go. Yeah, thank you very much. I'll put those texts back up. All we're simply saying here is that there was a temple in heaven from the very beginning.

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This is God's throne. This is God's presence. And you'll notice it has features in it that are similar to features we see later in Earth on the earthly temple.

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When we get to that, we'll find out why. But as we go to the

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Garden of Eden, the layout, and this is the best an artist can do with what we have in the text.

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But it tells us God's presence was in the garden. It talks about a tree of life and a tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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It talks about cherubim stationed at the east of Eden to prevent man from coming back into the garden once he was exiled from the garden after the fall.

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So these are just features that are there. There's an assumption that there was a mountain of the Lord. But at any rate,

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God's presence was in the western part of the garden because when they are thrown out of God's presence, they go east.

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And the return to God would be west, but they're not permitted to do that. So this is the kind of picture we see.

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You see in Genesis 3 -24, it says he drove the man out. And at the east of the

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Garden of Eden, he stationed cherubim with a flaming sword which turned every which direction to guard the way of the tree of life so that man in a fallen state could not return and regain immortality in the garden.

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Now, thinking about all that and just to think about it in a real sense, how do we get back?

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How does man get back to God? How does he get to the plan that unfolds in scripture? We come to Abraham and it says the

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Lord appeared to him. So this was a manifestation to Abraham just as had happened to Adam.

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Adam and his wife, later Chava, Eve, had

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God's presence. It tells us they walked in the garden in the cool of the day and the presence of God was there and they heard his footsteps and he called for them.

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So this was what we call a theophany. If you understand that's the second person of the

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Trinity, it will be a Christophany, but God came down with two angels.

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We know the story from Genesis 18 and the picture there goes on with Sodom and Gomorrah about Abraham is left standing before the

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Lord. So we know that the Lord was there in the physical form. We see something similar when

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Abraham now is being told by God to offer his son,

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Isaac, on Mount Moriah. At Mount Moriah, the text goes on to talk about that they named that place

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Adonai Uriah, or the Lord sees, or as a kind of a play on words, it will be provided because the same root for see and provide is there.

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And so the picture is, is that where he was to offer Isaac, God substituted a ram.

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And so this is the first substitutionary atonement in the Bible. The ram takes the place of Isaac.

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It forecasts the work he's gonna do on Mount Moriah, which is the place, of course, where the temple would stand and also in the same vicinity where the crucifixion took place.

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All of this is part of talking about future experiences. So it's tying things together and moving things forward.

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All of this deals with a covenant. It's the covenant that helps us understand how God works throughout history.

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He made a covenant with Abraham in Genesis 12, and that's repeated in 15 and 17 and 22, and on it goes with all of Abraham's descendants.

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So that when he chose him, he chose his descendants in him. And he said, in you, all the nations of the earth will be blessed.

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So the picture of what God was going to do through the Jewish people, through Israel as a nation, would be to bless all the other nations of the world.

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And out of this Abrahamic covenant, which involved a land and a seed and a blessing, came three other covenants, a land covenant, which kind of made it necessary that Israel have a land and be in that land in order for these promises to be fulfilled.

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And then a Davidic covenant, which was a covenant based on the seed promise.

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And that was the one that would indicate Messiah would come from a particular family, a lineage.

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And then finally there was a blessing, but this is the spiritual covenant called the new covenant. And that's the one that will be affected with national

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Israel in the future. Those who believed in Jesus as their

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Messiah entered into that new covenant when that happened, whether the

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Jew or Gentile. So that's what we, the church is now under the new covenant. It participates in the new covenant, but remember the new covenant, as part of this whole covenant system made with Israel, was designed to be ultimately fulfilled by them.

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So the temple's going to be a strategic part of this, both past, present, and future.

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And we'll see how this unfolds. When we're talking about restoring God's presence to this people and carrying that whole promise forward, we come to Mount Sinai.

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In Mount Sinai, we heard this statement when Moses and the children of Israel camped at the foot of Mount Sinai.

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He said, let them make for me a sanctuary that I may dwell in their midst. And the word sanctuary,

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I'll show you here the Hebrew word, mishkan, it comes from the verb shekan, which means to dwell.

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So he literally says, make for me a dwelling place that I may dwell in your midst. Because God's desire was to dwell with his people.

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He couldn't do it as a holy God in the midst of unholy people, but with this structure that was a meeting place, he could bring his presence, in a sense, ritually shielded from man and his unholy contamination.

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And through the ritual and through the various things that recognized sin and how to approach

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God in a proper way, that his presence would dwell with man. And that's what happened throughout the

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Old Testament period. The same word is used in the New Testament. When we speak of John 1 .14,

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it says, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And this is the word shkina in Hebrew, or shekina or shekina, some people put it that way.

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The Greek term skinao or skene is simply a transliteration of that Hebrew word.

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So when you see that, what is being said is that when the second person of the

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Godhead who would be the Messiah came to earth and took a human form, it was like God in his glory dwelling within the tabernacle.

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It was a way he could meet with us. It actually tells us that this is

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God in the flesh. This is what we're talking about. So you can see how all this ties in with temple terminology.

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So when Moses is receiving commandments from God, the one he received was about building the tabernacle.

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And God said, this is gonna be according to the pattern which

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I showed you, both with the structure of the tabernacle and all the furniture that goes in it.

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You shall construct it according to what was shown you on the mountain. The term pattern that's used there, some texts will say pattern, some will say type, some will say example, some will say many things or design, something like that.

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The word tab meet in Hebrew refers to something that could be a model or a blueprint. Moses was actually shown the heavenly temple.

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He saw something in that vision. And God said, make a copy on earth the things that are in heaven.

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Why is that? Because God was bringing his presence to earth, localizing it. And he simply reproduced a little bit of heaven on earth as the place of his throne.

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He had a heavenly throne in a sense, he had an earthly throne. When you come to the Ark of the Covenant, this structure, you'll see how this fits together.

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So when we look at this, going back to our picture of the Garden of Eden, you had these essential elements.

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And when we come to the tabernacle and its layout, you'll see those same elements reproduced.

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So you have the presence of God in the West. You have preventing people from entering into that presence or the cherubic.

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They're all the outer curtains on the Eastern side on the inner curtain, separating the holy place from the

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Holy of Holies. And they're all in the Ark of the Covenant itself. And then you have the lamp stand, which is like a stylized tree of life and the table of showbread, which is like, shall we say this case, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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These are things that represent the original creation, but now have been restored in a ritual way so that as people enter

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God's presence, they enter according to this prescription. So in a sense, what we're saying is,

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God created a place where he can dwell with us in our fallen state. And so the way away from God is to the

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East. The entrance to God is to the West, just as it was in the Garden of Eden. We come to the

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Ark of the Covenant. This is where God's glory came and dwelt. That's what he said,

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I will meet with you there. And so from the time of the original tabernacle, the glory of God appeared as a pillar of fire at night or a cloud by day, stayed with Israel.

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And when we come to the first temple, it entered into that structure and could be seen with Israel all through that period of the

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United Monarchy, and then later what we call the Divided Monarchy, those periods.

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So this was the kind of idea, I will speak to you from the mercy seat, the

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Kippurit. That's the term for it. So our term, Yom Kippur, when the high priests would go in once a year for a few minutes into the

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Holy of Holies, carrying the blood on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement.

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That's when this kind of thing happened, when Israel as a nation had their sins passed over one more year.

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Now, if we look at the temple through time, going back, we have the construction of a first temple. And I'll go ahead and circle this because this is where we're headed right now.

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The construction of a first temple under Solomon. And then we had the construction after a 70 year period of exile of a second temple.

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So let's look at some of that. That's very important. It says, God chose

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Zion, Zion. This is Jerusalem. He said, he's desired it for his habitation.

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This is my resting place forever. Here I will dwell for I have desired it. So God, just as he had a chosen people, he also had a chosen place.

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That's the land of Israel. But within that chosen place, he had a central sanctuary, a place where his presence would dwell, where all the tribes of Israel were to come and representative appear before him.

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And when he created the first temple, he's gonna say, wherever you are on the face of the earth, you turn toward this place and pray,

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I will hear from heaven because God's presence was there. Edwin Smith wrote an older book.

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He said, unlike other cities, a lot of my screen is obscured by things that I can't seem to make go away too well.

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I've got all our pictures on the side here. I'm not sure how to make those. Would you like help just reading the start of that or?

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Well, I just moved it out of the way. So I moved it down to the bottom. So it says, unlike other cities of antiquity, which have been the admiration of the world on account of their greatness, splendor, or wisdom,

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Jerusalem has ever been identified as a particular place in the whole world, which may be said to have formed the connecting isthmus betwixt this sin -polluted earth and the throne of the eternal majesty on high.

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In other words, it was considered a meeting place. It was a place where God was gonna bring his presence.

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But now moving, putting that there, I can't get to my corner.

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Let's see. Well, let's work in that way. All right, so here is something of what the first temple may have looked like.

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As you can see from the text in 1 Kings 8, it says, if you pray toward this place, because you're praying to God and God has localized his presence, not his entire presence, obviously, because when

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Solomon prayed, he said, heaven and highest heaven cannot continue, much less this temple which

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I have built. But nevertheless, his presence was with his people. So that temple, archeologically, we have evidences of what this temple would have looked like in nearby places.

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Remember, it was King Hiram of Tyre, Lebanon, up in that area, that came and helped build the temple.

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And if you go to that area today, this is in Syria. We have the Ein Dara temple, and you see cherubim at the entrance to the temple.

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We have models of temples that were found at a place called Kirbat Keyefa, just near the

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Valley of Elab, from the time of Saul, King David period.

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We have walls now discovered in Jerusalem from the time of King Solomon. And here is a reservoir from the first temple period, used by pilgrims coming to the temple.

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And I show you some of this because all of this stuff is at the present day Temple Mount. There are people who, and I've done a whole presentation on this, you can find at my website.

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But where was the temple located? It was located exactly where we know it has always been.

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That's the testimony of history and archeology. There are some disparate voices today trying to say that the temple was somewhere else, another part of the city.

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I simply not correct. So that's why I'm showing you a little of this evidence. Because of Israel's sin, basically following other gods, alongside or in place of the

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God of Israel, God said, I made a covenant with you. This was the Mosaic covenant.

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And it had terms, it had conditions. And because of that, when Israel did not obey,

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God had told them what he would do in a progressive way. He would bring ultimately finally some destruction.

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And he did that at the place that represented his fellowship or presence with his people. So the first temple was destroyed.

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And then we have an interim time when the Jews returned from exile after 70 years and came to Judah.

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Daniel will be talking about a sanctuary that will be built. This is during the period we call the

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Maccabean period, just before that, it's actually in the Syrian Greek period, a man named Antiochus IV Epiphanes, when the temple was built by the exiles who returned to Judah, he came in because Israel was never again independent as it had been before, it was under now

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Greek rule. And he had a priest offer pigs, which are unclean animals on the altar.

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He put a huge statue of Zeus Olympius, the Greek God outside the temple.

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This was what Daniel referred to at that time as abomination that makes desolate. When there was a revolt that happened, temple was cleansed again.

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The term for rededicating the temple is Hanukkah. So this is the whole story behind Hanukkah, which is not necessarily in our

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Bibles, it's in between the Testaments, but Jesus and John 10 celebrate the feast of dedication, it says, and that's the same term as Hanukkah, the same time of year.

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Herod the Great, following the Greek rule came Roman rule. Herod the Great wanted to placate the

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Jews and press the Romans. He built the temple twice the size that it was before, built a very expansive courtyard around it.

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You can see from this picture that the temple is there kind of to the left -hand side of your screen.

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But as you look, you see this large esplanade, you see all these walls and columns.

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This is all part of the Roman world, what they were used to, these type of stoas.

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And so all this was part of that work. If you look at the front of the screen, you see some stairs coming down.

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All that area has been excavated by Israel and also to the right of the screen as well.

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They can't excavate on the Temple Mount, but they can excavate at the foot of the Temple Mount only since 1967, that's been ongoing.

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So if we look right beneath this staircase, there's an arch called

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Robinson's Arch. You can see at this point, the top of that corner, see the corner up there, just above that arch.

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So Josephus, first century historian who wrote about these things, talks about the priest standing here at this corner, blowing a trumpet to sound the beginning of the

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Shabbat, that is the Sabbath day. And then when it ended, the same thing, it was the way that people knew to stop work and go home.

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The stone that was up there was pushed down and right at the foot of that, archeologists found it.

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Now I'm pointing here to it, but there's a piece missing. Piece that's missing is this piece that was cut out and taken to the museum.

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It has on it the words, to the place of trumpeting. So we know it was put there to tell the priest, particular priest in training, where to stand and where to blow those trumpets.

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When we look at this staircase, it's just around the corner. This is all of Israel entered through this.

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When we talk about Jesus entering the temple, this is the place he would have entered through these double gates.

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He was not a priest. He's not from the tribe of Levi. So he couldn't enter through the other gates, which are only given to the priest or a part of the royal family, which that Robinson's arch was part of.

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So this is the public interest. When we talk about the beautiful gate and the healing of a man in the book of Acts, Acts chapter one, when

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Peter and John go to pray, they're going through this gate and the man is sitting right at that gate.

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Inside those gates, very beautiful construction. That's why it's called the beautiful gate. In fact, if you look at the staircase just to the right of it, you see sort of a building.

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The staircase continues on the other side of that building, but that is the mikveh. This is the place of ritual immersion.

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We would call it baptism. They had to immerse themselves to be ritually pure to go into the temple.

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When the day of Pentecost happened, all the baptisms that took place, 3 ,000, 5 ,000 adding to the church, they went into that building there for that ritual cleansing.

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So here's what that looks like today. It's excavated. The staircase is here and there's the remains of the building with a lot of those mikveh, or these ritual immersion pools in between.

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So again, we have evidence of where these things are mentioned in scripture. When Jesus was on earth and overlooked this at one point, he says in the

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Gospel of Matthew, behold, your house is being left to you desolate. I say to you from now on, you shall not see me until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the

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Lord. The idea here is that, again, because of the national rejection of Jesus as Messiah, they then came under the terms of the covenant and rejected

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God. And as a result, they were going to find their house desolate or be destroyed.

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This is also mentioned in Luke when it says, these days are gonna come upon you and they will love you to the ground and your children within you because you did not leave one stone upon another because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.

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And so on the, I didn't point this out, but when the first temple was destroyed, it was on the ninth of the

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Hebrew month of Av, which is around our August, September. And when the second temple was destroyed, it was exactly on the same day.

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And so it was indication to the nation of Israel that this was a divine discipline.

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God was doing it exactly at the same time. And of course they record their recognition of that. We look today at some of the evidence of that.

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These stones were pushed down from above the wall nearly to the right of your screen is the

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Western Wall or the Kotel or what we call the Wailing Wall. There's shops on the left -hand side, but you can see when the stones were pushed down, it buckled the street.

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This is the main street that Jesus, the disciples and others would have walked upon. The excavator of this was a man named

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Ronnie Reich. He only finished it around 1998 for the 3000th anniversary of the city of Jerusalem.

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And they left these stones right where they were rather than trying to reconstruct something because they wanted to give testimony to the fact this destruction happened just as history said.

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But it also indicated the fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy because he said it would happen and it did happen.

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So now we go to the temple through time and we're moving from the past to the present day.

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There's no longer a temple on the Temple Mount. There is a spiritual temple and those who belong to the body of Christ are part of that spiritual temple because the presence of God is with them.

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Individually, our bodies are called the temple of God because the Holy Spirit dwells us. So this same language is used, but the temple in a sense was taken away or no longer exist in that sense.

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Instead, we have since 691 AD a

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Muslim structure known as the Dome of the Rock. And we'll talk a bit about that. So let's look at some of this present situation and it's a very problematic one.

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That's why we have the issues we face today. Before 1967, as Islam took over, they built a part of their city and things almost up against this wall.

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It was only a narrow corridor where Jews could come and wail as they would call it at this wall.

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In 1967, on June the 7th, all that changed with the Six -Day War as Israel was attacked simultaneously by eight different nations.

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It responded from Jordan who in 1948 had occupied all of what we call today the

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West Bank, that's all Judea and Samaria, including half of Jerusalem, just as Egypt had occupied the area we today call

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Gaza and Syria had occupied the Golan Heights. All of these were occupied by other nations.

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It's always strange we never hear anybody else called occupiers. They just call the Israelis occupiers, but they were simply re -occupiers because it was their land in the first place going back to antiquity.

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But in 1967, that changed. They regained this territory.

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The Jordanian authorities surrendered. The chief of the

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Israel Defense Forces, Shlomo Goran, sounded the shofar and there were people who, in 19 years, they were separated from this part of the

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Temple Mount and the Western Wall and all of this. The soldiers that were serving at this time had been, when they were born, there was no access to this.

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So for the first time in their young lives, they were able to come and actually come to this place where Jews prayed from a distance now since the very beginning.

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So Shlomo Goran sounded the shofar. He said, we're announcing the beginning of the

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Messianic Age because he felt if Israel was returned and for the first time in history, in the last 2000 years, regained this territory, that something monumental must be happening.

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I met with him actually shortly before his death and went through some of these things with him. And he explained how they came to the

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Temple Mount and they had army corps of engineers measuring things that were gonna do many things.

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He even wanted to remove the Dome of the Rock. Politically, it was not possible. There was great protest.

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He couldn't get his way. He did some other interesting things before his death, but this was the intention of Israeli authorities, at least of religious authorities, but the world was not ready.

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So the Temple Mount from that point became the most volatile 36 acres on earth.

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And we have seen now a contest of holy sites. What was where the place of the

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Temple was, now there's a Muslim Dome of the Rock. Even though the wailing wall or Western wall of the

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Temple Mount was called Al -Buraq wall because the Muslims claimed that Muhammad had rode his celestial steed

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Al -Buraq and tethered into this wall in his night journey to this place, which all of course is a reinterpretation because he died five years before any

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Muslims came to Jerusalem. In his night vision, he went to the

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Far Mosque, which in that day was in a place called Medina. He was in Mecca. So, but it's been reinterpreted, of course, for political reasons to be

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Jerusalem. And so they built a mosque later in the year 711 called the

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Al -Aqsa Mosque. The whole place is called Al -Aqsa, meaning the Far Mosque.

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And so this is where we are in terms of interpretation of history. If you look at this aerial view, you can see because of this, even though this came under the sovereignty of the state of Israel, Jews relegated themselves to the

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Western wall below and the Muslims continued to worship up on the top where the original

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Jewish Temple was. And there are other reasons for all of this, but basically this is the status quo for today.

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But if you notice when the Muslims come up here for prayer, which is only once a year during Ramadan, they pray toward Mecca, which is the opposite direction.

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The Dome of the Rock is, of course, in the West. They pray toward the East, which is toward Mecca and turn their backsides to what is considered the holiest place in Judaism.

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And maybe the third holiest place in Islam, but they don't give it the same reverence at all.

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Because of political situations and because the Muslims had control of this area called

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Al -Aqsa or the Temple Mount, they decided to change the status quo by building a new mosque on the site.

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This was something that was not supposed to be allowed. You can see them moving all these archeological layers without any inspection or, and they threw the debris out.

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We estimate about 20 ,000 tons of archeological rich debris was just moved out.

33:54

So they could build this within what was called Solomon's Stables, a new mosque called the

34:00

Almawani Mosque. And that's what exists today. The pushback in all this started as early as 1987 with groups who wanted to see the

34:10

Temple rebuilt. We have Temple Mount faithful who marched to the site wearing sackcloth like they were mourning over the temple, carrying a model of the temple.

34:19

They put, they built cornerstones for the new temple. The sign behind me says,

34:36

Mikdash Hashlishi, it's the third temple. Stones of the ebony for the third temple, the bait of Mikdash Hashlishi, the third temple.

34:48

There was another organization called the Temple Institute. If you've gone to Israel, you may have visited this. They've been working since 1987 to build all of the type of implements and utensils required by Jewish law to have a functioning temple and to also begin training a priesthood to do the work when that day arrives.

35:13

Sanhedrin was reconvened in October of 2004. This was the body, of course, that existed in the time of Jesus, just because they were priests related to the temple and the temple was destroyed, their job ended.

35:28

But now it's been reconvened in view of future rebuilding. So their goals are to locate at the original temple and to find a descendant of King David, which by the way is very interesting because on a genetic basis, we know people who were related to the house of Hillel, related to the house of David, those descendants were known even though temple records were left.

35:50

So there's a whole huge database of the descendants of King David and they actually meet on a regular basis once a year for a kind of a conference.

36:01

And then of course, to ultimately erect a temple, an altar on the temple mount to renew sacrificial system.

36:09

You can see headlines like this, the temple vessels are ready for the rebuilding of Jerusalem's third temple.

36:15

These are the kind of images you often see inceptualizing what that day would be like.

36:22

But of course, we're talking about a World War III happened in the Middle East over this kind of thing.

36:28

In July of 2022, right at the end of COVID, Jews did something they hadn't done.

36:35

Just as the Muslims changed the status quo, Israel decided it was changed.

36:41

We've not been able to go up on the temple mount and pray. It's our capital city. This is our holiest place.

36:48

It's under Israeli sovereignty, but we have not gone there. They decided to do that.

36:54

And so that has been renewed. And as that's been done, it has caused worse conflict with the

37:02

Palestinians who now usurped charge of this place after the

37:08

Jordanians lost it. And so when we come to something like October 7th and the massacre that happened there and the war that's going on right now, the day after that, you heard

37:21

Ismail Hanea, who's the head of Gaza, say we have achieved a victory in the battle for Jerusalem, the defense of Jerusalem.

37:30

Jerusalem's the axis of the conflict. And he went on elsewhere to say because of Jewish prayer here, because of Jews' desire to rebuild the temple, this is why the war is taking place.

37:41

It's a religious war. If you look at the Palestinian, this is

37:46

Hamas, one of the organizations among the Palestinians, but the one who's in charge of their government, they have right at the center of their logo, the

37:56

Dome of the Rock, and then cross swords indicating that symbol of Jihad, the way this will be the battle for this.

38:04

Another thing they've mentioned, and listen to this headline, it says, Hamas reveals the hidden reason for the

38:10

October 7th attacks on Israel. It's the red heifer. The red heifer is something that has to be raised and then burned and its ashes used for the purification of those who will rebuild the temple and officiate within it.

38:28

So they got these red heifers from Texas. They have five of them right now, sitting in Shiloh or Shiloh, and the hope is to have this red heifer ceremony on the

38:39

Mount of Olives. And then from that, have the means to begin the process of rebuilding the temple.

38:45

That, of course, is frightening to the Palestinians because they feel they would lose control.

38:52

And that's part of the things behind this conflict. Monadis, one of the codifiers of the

39:00

Mishnah, which is kind of put together the oral law in the, it's supposedly behind the written law, which is in the

39:11

Bible. He said nine red heifers were prepared from the time that this command was given up until the destruction of the second temple.

39:19

First was prepared by Moses, the second by Ezra, and seven more prepared from Ezra until the destruction of the temple.

39:25

And the 10th, the king Messiah will prepare, may he be speedily revealed. So in other words, there's been nine.

39:33

The one now that they want to see done, they believe will enter us into the

39:39

Messianic era. So this combines present politics with prophecy.

39:47

Just this week and before this as well, back in May, Ben -Gavir, who was the minister, national security minister, has been going to the

40:00

Temple Mount, praying for the hostages, things like this. It's the first time an official of Israel has actually gone to the

40:06

Temple Mount for prayer. And it moves things into a different realm. He says, and he said this

40:13

Al -Aqsa belongs only to Israel. You can see Muslims saying Al -Aqsa is only for them.

40:18

So this conflict is now present, has been on for a while, will continue. Some of those fighting in the

40:25

IDF today are among advocates for rebuilding the temple. And they wear these patches on their military uniforms saying we are fighting so we can rebuild the holy temple.

40:37

So that moves us into the temple's future plan and on the way to eternity.

40:43

If we look at, at least as I see it, a literal unfolding of the 70th week of Daniel, which is a period of seven years, which

40:56

I won't go into all the details on, but if you look at this kind of timeline, indicates the next thing that is coming upon this world is a time of tribulation, the appearance of the

41:08

Antichrist. At the midpoint of the seven years, that is three and a half years into it, the

41:14

Antichrist will desecrate the temple. Jesus said that in the Gospel of Matthew 24, verse 15, also in Mark 13, in verse 15.

41:27

So, and Paul will go on and talk about it too. I think I have this coming up, so I'll mention it.

41:34

But the temple obviously would have already been rebuilt by this midpoint. So we could see some preparations for it being made today.

41:43

At some point that will be successful. It tells us in 2

41:48

Thessalonians chapter two, that he, that is this man of sin or the Antichrist, takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being

41:57

God. Just as Satan always wanted to be like the

42:02

Most High, as he comes and, shall we say, empowers or gives his authority to this individual on earth, in a real sense, this is

42:14

Satan working through a man as he never has before, to try to achieve his ideal on earth.

42:21

He's been in control of the earth. He's the God of this age. He's the prince in power of the air.

42:28

The whole world lies in the lap of the evil one, which is why his humanistic and global agenda seems to be moving forward so well.

42:39

But all of this is still under the control of God who is in heaven. And Satan knows enough of scripture to know that there is an end to him.

42:50

It's all been predicted. But he's trying to slow things down. He's trying to, he can't attack

42:56

God directly, but he attacks God's people on earth, trying to thwart this plan. This is part of how that will happen with the temple at the center of it.

43:06

Zechariah tells us at the end of this period, God will gather all the nations to Jerusalem.

43:13

They're going to come against Jerusalem, do battle. It tells us that he will in that day, and this is the very next verse, it says the

43:20

Lord will go forth and fight against those nations as he fights on a day of battle. And in that day, his feet will stay on the

43:26

Mount of Olives, which is in the front of Jerusalem on the east. And so if you've never been to Israel and been on the

43:32

Mount of Olives, you know you're facing the Temple Mount. This is where the conflict with Antichrist will be.

43:39

This will be the final battle. We call it the Battle of Armageddon. And this moves us to the

43:46

Lord coming into Jerusalem to see the national repentance of the

43:52

Jewish people, where Isaiah 66, as a nation is born in a day, where Romans chapter 11, verses 25 to 27 says, so all

44:03

Israel will be saved. That is all the Jewish people lived at that time. It says, he says, he will pour out on the house of David and the habitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplication.

44:15

They will look on me whom they have pierced and they will mourn for him. So this is a time of national repentance.

44:22

And again, it's there right in view of the Temple Mount. Now, what happens after this is the

44:30

Isaiah chapter two, verses two through four, talks about the mountain of the house of the

44:36

Lord, that is the Temple Mount, will be established as the chief of the mountains. So there'll be a final temple built and it says all the nations will stream to it.

44:48

That's because now there's been a judgment of the nations and the believing nations, along with the believing

44:53

Israel will join them in this time when the Lord will set up his throne or his kingdom on earth.

45:01

You know, you may or may not have heard of this or even accept this, but I, again, looking at the text literally, and it tells us that he will reign upon this earth and it tells us he'll reign upon the earth.

45:13

It tells us that God's will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So I take the idea of a thousand year reign of Christ on earth quite literally.

45:25

And with that in mind, we have a temple for the world that will be built.

45:31

And that Ezekiel 39 tells us that he's going to set his glory among the nations.

45:36

He'll bring them back. They'll know that he is the Lord when he's sanctified in their midst.

45:44

This is part of what happens in a battle called the battle of Gog and Magog, which happens earlier.

45:52

I think my opinion before the tribulation, but it also tells us in Ezekiel 37 that he's going to put his temple again on earth.

46:02

And we have these nine chapters of Ezekiel 40 -48 dealing with the description and the directions for this earthly temple.

46:12

Now, some will say, well, why does it have to be literal? Well, if you look here, I just laid it out for you.

46:19

Ezekiel is laid out where the first part of it, chapters one through 32 deal with the destruction of the first temple.

46:30

And the nation is disciplined and rejected. The temple is ruined and the nations are judged. We come to chapter 33 through 48 and we see that the prophetic section of this, okay, is moving from retribution to restoration.

46:47

The nation is restored. This is where we have the valley of dry bones and all the things that happen there.

46:53

The nations are judged and there's divine deliverance. And then we see the idea of restoration and this temple that will stand.

47:02

Well, some will say, well, couldn't this simply be symbolic? When we look at the language in Ezekiel, it says, well,

47:08

I was by the river Kebar because Ezekiel was taken with the exiles to Babylon.

47:14

So his whole vision is not in Jerusalem, it's in Babylon. And so it says, the heavens are open,

47:21

I saw visions of God. So if he's not even in Jerusalem and it's all visionary, why is this literal and not symbolic?

47:29

Well, let me just compare Ezekiel's visions in scripture concerning the temple with previous ones.

47:35

When Moses saw it, we mentioned in Exodus 25, he saw a literal structure and built a literal structure, which was the tabernacle, fulfilled in history.

47:46

David in 1 Chronicles, it tells us he also had a vision and he wrote it down and as a result, he gave it to Solomon and they built the first temple.

47:57

That was literally fulfilled in history. So Ezekiel, same term, same idea, has a vision.

48:03

He's told to write it down. And then Israel is told that if they repent, and this is chapter 43 of Ezekiel, it says, then let them make it or do it, build it.

48:16

So they're supposed to build it and that's literally fulfilled. So it fits very much with the text of the scripture.

48:25

If you look at the details, you have immense details, every single entrance and dimensions, everything is given in explicit detail.

48:37

And those who have looked at this said, these chapters describe the general layout of a visionary temple, yes, but the chapters are difficult to read without some attempt to draw what

48:48

Ezekiel describes. The detailed measures invite the reader to sketch out this temple plan, which in fact is what

48:54

Christian Jewish exegetes have done throughout the ages. If it can literally be drawn, it can literally be built, then it must be literal.

49:02

And that's exactly what happens. Here's a model of someone has built exactly based on the scriptures, nothing added, just what the text tells us.

49:11

So we believe this will be a literal structure in the future. And this is the place to which in this future age, all will give attention because now the glory of God will return to this place.

49:24

And this is where the rule of Messiah will be from Jerusalem. And there's topographical changes that are given.

49:32

There's many other types of things. All these things seem quite literal with dimensions and actual places that are given.

49:42

And then it says the glory of God returns. It tells us that Ezekiel 43 led me to the gate, the gate facing toward the

49:49

East and behold the glory of God of Israel is coming from the way of the East. Remember that's the direction.

49:54

And if you were looking at Ezekiel, you'd see that earlier in chapters nine through 11, the glory departed as God was about to destroy the temple.

50:04

It tells us that his glory departed from within the temple at the Ark of the Covenant, went to the outer part of the holy place, then to the gate facing toward East, and then it disappeared.

50:18

It went over the Mount of Olives. As you look at these directions, of the return of the glory of God, it goes exactly opposite.

50:28

It comes from that direction in the East and moves West until it again fills the temple.

50:36

So it's, again, this is a restoration. God is returning. This all is part of fulfilled his little promise.

50:42

If it left literally in the past, it's coming back to be fulfilled literally in the future. And then of course, we have the final climax of all this is the

50:53

New Jerusalem. I want to explain about that because Revelation says, I saw the holy city,

50:59

New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. And when we look at what John says in Revelation about it, he says,

51:05

I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God and the Lamb are its temple.

51:11

So it does have a temple, but it's temple or it doesn't require a structure as such, because we're looking at those who are within that structure,

51:23

God himself. But when we think of what this is, it's going to be on earth, comes down out of heaven from God to earth.

51:34

And I think what we look at, we see the dimensions of this cube structure.

51:41

It's actually the heavenly temple. The holy of holy is detached from that and coming down to earth so that we, with the promise given in John chapter 14,

51:58

Jesus said, if I go away, I'll come again and I'll receive you to myself that where I am there, you may be also.

52:04

He goes on to talk about in my father's house are many dwelling places. Were not so, I would have told you,

52:10

I go to prepare a place for you. And so the new Jerusalem is that place, but it's wherever he is, we will be.

52:18

And it tells us that he is going to be in his heavenly environment.

52:24

So in my opinion, that's the final structure that we have this temple, whatever it may be in the ultimate sense, dwelling with God forever in that form.

52:41

So that kind of is gonna end things. I'll wrap it up this way. Back in the second century

52:47

AD, after the destruction of the second temple, there was a rabbi named

52:55

Akiva and some of his disciples were walking with him on the temple mount and they saw a jackal jump out of some of the ruins.

53:04

And they remembered a statement in the book of Jeremiah that said, I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals.

53:10

And so in typical expression, believing this, they tore their garments to show their extreme mourning over this fact that it happened, that destruction happened.

53:26

But rabbi Akiva, he started laughing and they were, you know, what's going on?

53:33

He said, rabbi, why are you laughing? And he made this statement, he said, if we have seen the prophecies of the temple's destruction come to pass, how much more should we see the promises of his restoration fulfilled?

53:45

And what he was trying to say was that if literally God did this in the past and he's promised to renew it and restore it in the future, then if this happened, the other has to happen as well.

53:59

It's the same thing for us. If Christ came and he said, I'm coming again, we know because he came literally and fulfilled the prophecies, then he'll come again, just as he promised a second time.

54:11

We can take that to the bank. We have great confidence in it. So that's what's being said here.

54:17

Now, let me just make this statement before we begin to take some questions. I have a ministry called

54:22

World of the Bible Ministry. We bring the world of the Bible to the word of the church because our

54:29

Bible is content, but the world of the Bible is the context. And we want to be able to put those things together.

54:37

And that involves all kinds of things. But we take tours to the

54:42

Holy Land. We've done 115 of these, and I'll be back there in September. And then we're the tour group again in April.

54:52

I have books on the temple. I've written the Rose Guide to the Temple. If you see that, that's mine.

54:58

We've done a virtual tour of the temple. I have a book called

55:03

The Temple and Bible Prophecy. I have another book called

55:09

Jerusalem and Prophecy, which lays out everything there. And then a book you should try to get because it really answers a lot of the questions but going on right now.

55:19

I'm actually the general editor. I got 22 scholars together to answer questions about what should we think about Israel?

55:26

And one of the chapters in there on the temple, I also wrote. So those are kind of things that are available that I think would help.

55:35

So with that, let me just say, there's also the Evangelical Study Bible. I was on the committee that produced this.

55:42

It is young earth creation. So Dr. Marcus Ross was part of that in the

55:49

Genesis. It also has a messianic focus. I did over a hundred of the archeological study notes in that.

55:57

So this is available through Zonderville. It was produced by Harper Collins. It's New King James version.

56:04

So if you have a chance to look at this new study Bible, I think you'll enjoy that. Well, that's all

56:09

I have in terms of the PowerPoint. Well, that was amazing. All right. I'm gonna quick ask you about your tours.

56:16

Now, are you going there? Are you taking a tour group there this September? No, I'm actually on the board of an organization called the

56:26

Friends of Israel. And so with the Friends of Israel, our board is going over to see how some of our missionaries are doing.

56:34

They're also going to try to look at some of the relief works and things that we were doing there.

56:41

And so it's more of a fact -finding mission.

56:50

In April, we're hoping by April, of course, things will be back to normal and we'll be able to have a nice tour like we normally do.

56:59

So that's our hope. That's exciting. Me and Diane were going to go to Israel in March, but it got canceled.

57:09

So now we're going to South Africa in September. So I was just wondering if you were going in September.

57:15

So I would like to get over there. You know, before the rapture, anyway.

57:22

It's certainly possible to go to Israel. El Al Airlines has the best schedule but maybe a couple of airlines flying.

57:31

There's some areas that are compromised in the North. Otherwise, there's small tour groups going on right now all over the place.

57:40

So, you know, and people should go, I think, and give some encouragement to the Jewish people.

57:46

They've suffered probably one of the greatest attacks, not only physically with 1 ,200 people killed in one day, but also psychologically, because within the very land they sought to have as a refuge after the

58:00

Holocaust, they had been attacked and things as bad as the Holocaust has happened to them again.

58:07

So it's demoralized them. They are struggling with this. There's more people being killed as the war goes on.

58:16

They're getting nothing but terrible criticism, anti -Semitic statements of these made really across the whole world.

58:25

And they suffer from that too, because people do not really understand the issues and the facts behind them.

58:32

It's more - The replacement theology people.

58:37

We have stopped extending invitations to people to speak for us that adhere to the replacement theology.

58:47

So I'm going to turn this over to Terry. Hi, so we do have some questions from our audience.

58:56

So I'm going to go ahead and ask you some of those. Robin has a few, so we're going to start with one of hers.

59:02

The temple picture that you showed that has the cherubim, was that in Syria and was that a

59:08

Jewish temple? No, that was a Syrian temple. It was, there's actually several up there.

59:17

The Ein Dara one, there's the Tell Tayanat temple. All of these have features that are very similar to what

59:26

Solomon's temple would have looked like. The Ein Dara temple I showed you is probably the closest in time.

59:32

So they're about, when you're trying, because we have architectural features given in the Bible, but we have no, we had no examples till these temples were discovered back in the 1930s and following.

59:43

So you're seeing similar things because they were built by similar people. Okay. Solomon used the expertise and the architectural -

59:58

Oh yeah, that makes sense. I was just trying to figure out how pagans could build a temple like the

01:00:05

Solomon did, but - Okay, when we go back, that's why I was going back to the Garden of Eden, because we have this layout of the presence of God and then the entrance to God.

01:00:17

And so it follows a kind of a tripartite arrangement where you have an entrance that is less holy, then a holy place only, where only the priests can go, and then a holy place where only the high priests can go.

01:00:34

And this kind of layout, because it was laid out at the very beginning of the creation, seems to have followed through as God revealed it on Mount Sinai.

01:00:46

And then we see it in other structures too. I mean, it's very interesting things you do these comparisons.

01:00:53

They're almost the same all the way through. It has to do also with the idea that at Babel, when there was a dispersion, there was a certain knowledge base that had been brought across with those who were on the ark and that kind of got dispersed.

01:01:13

That's why you see things like pyramids or other structures built in very diverse places, but they follow the same kind of pattern.

01:01:22

Oh, that makes sense, yeah. The general knowledge that was shared and then as the dispersal happened, took place elsewhere.

01:01:31

And temples are part of that. Thank you. And you also showed a temple reservoir.

01:01:40

And so she was asking, where's the first temple reservoir? Oh, that one is actually, you can't get into it.

01:01:50

But if you, when I showed you that big picture of the

01:01:56

Western Wall with the Robinson's Arch, it's kind of centered over between that and part of where the upper city was.

01:02:08

It was discovered in excavations. They were doing just in the last, I'd say maybe five or six years.

01:02:16

Okay. And because it's deep, but there's no way to secure it for people to enter it safely.

01:02:23

It's just, there's no access. But it's not under the Temple Mount where you would think that the reservoir would be.

01:02:30

Well, on the, okay. So let me explain. On the Temple Mount, we know of 37 reservoirs like that.

01:02:40

They existed, we know about them from the 19th century when certain archeologists were able to go there.

01:02:49

And it was under the Ottoman Empire and there were certain agreements made and they could do certain things. They explored and they identified these.

01:02:57

Since then, there's been nobody able to do any kind of archeological penetration on the

01:03:03

Temple Mount. So all these things were done in the 1860s and 70s and then nothing in the 20th century.

01:03:11

So we know these existed and we know where they are. If you go to the Temple Mount today, the

01:03:17

Muslims have wells. If you go there, you'll see these little kind of raised, like, look like cisterns and they have green kind of metal doors on them.

01:03:28

And those go down and what, where are these reservoirs in the past and full of water they use.

01:03:35

So they, you often can even see people sometimes spraying water all on the 36 acre platform that water comes from down below from those.

01:03:47

Oh, that's interesting. And there are probably more. There's some that, in all these existed on the

01:03:53

Temple Mount. We know from Conrad Schick and others who did these excavations again in the 19th century that beneath the

01:04:03

Dome of the Rock themselves, they're actually reservoirs, right in front of them and below them. So the

01:04:09

Temple had to have a massive amounts of water to deal with the sacrificial system, to deal with other things that were there.

01:04:17

That reservoir I showed you was for pilgrims who came to the Temple Mount. I mean, by the tens of thousands and they needed a water source.

01:04:28

So all that was there. In that arrow picture I showed you, probably didn't notice it was kind of a triangular, no triangular, square building at the bottom.

01:04:39

That's a huge reservoir as well. Oh. And just like that area

01:04:46

I showed you where on the day of Pentecost, they went in and were baptized. That kind of stuff is all in that area on the

01:04:53

Southern side of the Temple Mount. So we know there's massive amounts of these things that exist. Thank you.

01:05:03

Okay, next is, do you think that the Ark was in the Second Temple?

01:05:08

Robin says that she's heard other people talk about that the Ark was never in that Temple.

01:05:14

That's correct. I've written two books on the

01:05:20

Ark of the Covenant and you can find them, go to Amazon, just look up my name and you'll see one was called

01:05:26

The Search of Temple Treasures and another one's called Searching for the Ark of the Covenant. And I weigh out the historical arguments about this, but we know as a fact that the

01:05:38

Ark was in the First Temple probably about 38 years before it was destroyed.

01:05:48

Tells the Second Chronicles chapter 35 in verse three, King Josiah, when he was renovating the

01:05:57

Temple, making improvements that they cleared out idols and things, his grandfather

01:06:06

Manasseh had put a statue of a false

01:06:12

God in the Holy of Holies so that the Ark of the Covenant had been taken out before all that.

01:06:18

And he, and so Josiah has put it back in the Temple which Solomon built, so we have that.

01:06:24

We also know that Hezekiah unwisely showed the treasures of the

01:06:30

Temple to Babylon emissaries and Isaiah told him one day they're gonna come and take these things away from here.

01:06:38

So we believe that what happened was before the destruction of the First Temple when they saw, they were surrounded by enemies, 605

01:06:47

BC that's when Daniel and others were taken captive, 589 BC was another siege, then 586

01:06:55

BC the final destruction, but they had all this time to prepare. So the priest would have taken the

01:07:01

Ark of the Covenant and moved it somewhere to safeguard it because I mean, this is the

01:07:07

Holy Ark. All we have from that now is

01:07:12

Jewish tradition attracted in the Mishnah called Shekelim talks about the

01:07:19

Ark being hidden beneath the Temple Mount. And it tells us that one of the priests was separating the wood that was used for sacrifice.

01:07:29

There was moldy wood and it was good wood and it was their job to separate it and that he, when he was suffering, it solved that the flagstones and the floor beneath him were different.

01:07:41

And he went to tell his fellow companions what he had found and said he was struck dead at mid sentence lest he betray the hiding place of the

01:07:50

Ark. And so based on Jewish tradition, the Ark is hidden beneath the Temple Mount. Those who wanna build the

01:07:56

Temple today say, we think we know where this is and when we can get to it, we will and we'll bring the

01:08:02

Ark out and it'll be in the next temple. But Josephus, the first century historian tells us that the

01:08:09

Ark was not there. It says that the priest, the high priest would go in on the Yom Kippur, the

01:08:15

Day of Atonement, and it says he would pour the blood right on the barren stone within the

01:08:21

Holy of Holies where the Ark had previously sat. That's an odd thing to do.

01:08:27

Why did he do that? Well, because by law, he had to do that. He's supposed to put on the mercy seat of the

01:08:32

Ark, but what do you do if there's no Ark? And so Shlomo Gorin, he told me the very day I took that picture with him and had an interview, he said they did that because the

01:08:42

Ark was hiding beneath. And in continuity with the Ark that was underground, they poured the blood there because that was the closest thing to the mercy seat itself.

01:08:53

He said, how else could they do Yom Kippur if they didn't have the Ark? So you have to think about it.

01:08:59

Maybe he's right, but it was lost to history, not brought out after that.

01:09:06

So the second temple just didn't have it, but there was always the understanding that it existed and one day could be recovered.

01:09:17

So that's all we know. We know, and there's different theories as to where the Ark might be, but with the

01:09:25

Bible giving such attention to the Ark of the Covenant in the past, if it was destroyed or stolen or something like this, you'd have some comment on it.

01:09:36

We know that over 4 ,500 of the temple vessels were taken to Babylon.

01:09:45

And it mentions, you can see it Ezra chapter one. You know, in Daniel chapter five, they're offering,

01:09:52

Beltshazzar has this kind of party and he brings some of the temple vessels out. They were put in the temple of Shinar and he brings them out to kind of mock the

01:10:01

God of Israel. And that's when the handwriting on the wall says your kingdom is fallen. As the

01:10:08

Jews are under Cyrus allowed to go back to the land, Ezra one says they took the vessels with them.

01:10:14

And it actually gives us an inventory kind of in general sense, but he mentions there's 4 ,500 of them that went back.

01:10:23

But the Ark of the Covenant is not mentioned. So obviously it wasn't taken or it would have been brought back.

01:10:30

So these are the clues we have. We do our best to try to put the pieces together.

01:10:36

Thank you. Yeah, that does. That does make sense. So there's a couple of questions that kind of dovetail on things that you mentioned in that answer.

01:10:45

So one of them is about the destruction of the temple in 586.

01:10:52

And what Ezekiel was witnessing about the Shekinah glory leaving the temple a few years before that.

01:11:01

Jim would like to know your understanding about that situation. Well, as I was saying,

01:11:07

I mean, Ezekiel nine through 11 shows a progression of the departure of the

01:11:14

Shekinah from the first temple and sort of in preparation for it being no longer a holy structure,

01:11:21

God's presence has departed. And so now it can be destroyed as any building can as part of divine discipline.

01:11:29

But as you look at Ezekiel chapter 43, what's interesting is the directions of the return of God's glory into this rebuilt temple follow exactly the same path, but in reverse order.

01:11:42

So it's simply saying, whereas on the one hand there was divine discipline. Now there is divine restoration and what was removed is now returned.

01:11:53

And so it's simply showing that picture. I was saying this is literal because obviously if it happened literally the first time, by the way, if Ezekiel saw a vision of the destruction of Jerusalem and he wasn't even in Jerusalem, he was in Babylon when that happened.

01:12:09

And we know it happened historically and literally then his vision in Babylon of the future restoration of it should also be historic and literal.

01:12:19

It's just hard to argue otherwise. And so when I look at this, all the things that attend to that are also literal.

01:12:27

God is going to restore his people in the land, he's restore the nation, he's going to restore the worship features of that and his presence is part of that.

01:12:39

So that's the way I understand it if we look at those texts. Okay. And then also you refer to the

01:12:48

Ark having a part of Yom Kippur. So in the new earth, do you think that we will be going to Jerusalem for Yom Kippur or any of the feasts?

01:12:59

In the millennial kingdom, which is the time in which Ezekiel's temple will stand. Yes, because, and not, here's the thing, not,

01:13:10

I wouldn't say all the feasts. There were certain feasts that had a fulfillment with the first coming of the

01:13:16

Messiah and there are feasts that will have a fulfillment with the second coming of the Messiah. And so the one that is mentioned in Zechariah chapter 14 is the

01:13:28

Feast of Tabernacles or what we call Sukkot. So it says at that time that the nation, certain nations that had gone, they had representatives, these are believing nations, but they are part of nations that attacked

01:13:44

Jerusalem in the past. And so now these believers, because they're a part of that, need to show their allegiance and their agreement with Messiah as the

01:13:55

King of all the earth and the Lord in Jerusalem by going up at the

01:14:02

Feast of Tabernacles, which is the time the nations were to go as well. So this is kind of a solidarity thing, just like if nations who were involved in the

01:14:14

Holocaust, if we're going to accept them, how do we know?

01:14:19

I mean, there's such a stigma connected with it. They need to show that they're in agreement with others.

01:14:26

So that's the only one mentioned, but it does mention in Ezekiel that an altar is constructed.

01:14:32

It exists there and a table of showbread. So if these things are there, they're part of a ritual system that it implies.

01:14:40

The Sabbath will be there, but the Sabbath is not a feast. It's simply one of the instructions of God for the nation of Israel.

01:14:50

And what relation, the nations is unclear. It's clear that they will be the head and not the tail.

01:14:58

It tells us in Isaiah two, the nations will come to Jerusalem and the word of the

01:15:04

Lord will go forth from Jerusalem. So there's a sense in which the nations who did not know the spiritual things that God revealed to Israel will have that education through Israel.

01:15:18

Yeah. So there's some chatter going on. Several people are wondering about sacrifices during the millennium.

01:15:31

Why would they be reinstituted since Christ as the lamb of God has already made the ultimate sacrifice for us?

01:15:40

If you'll allow me to share my screen again, I actually have - Yeah, go ahead. Okay, let me do that. Now, where's my presentation?

01:15:48

It's back here. Maybe I shut it down. Let me go back to it real quick.

01:15:55

All right. I anticipated, I might be asked that. So I actually have a little bit of the

01:16:01

PowerPoints on that. Jan Markell has talked about that.

01:16:09

Yes. And is that in the Bible and I've just missed it? No, it's there. So let me see.

01:16:16

I got to share my screen and I don't see how do I share a screen again?

01:16:23

It should be a green button. And I don't see it. Let's see. Up, down, move your mouse up and down.

01:16:30

Yeah, I am. I'm not getting it. You're not seeing anything on the screen right now? Not right now, no.

01:16:37

All right. There should be a green button that says share. It might be at the, it's probably at the bottom of your screen.

01:16:43

Over here. Do you see a little Zoom square, a little blue Zoom square?

01:16:48

Now I see it. Okay, so share screen. Okay, I put share screen, but I don't see my, there it is right there.

01:16:58

Now are you seeing it? Yes. Okay, so let me now go to, You can do a presenter view.

01:17:06

That'll help you. Away from current slide. So it's right here. So when we talk about the sacrifices in this future temple, it's not just the book of Ezekiel that talks about it.

01:17:20

Oh, that talks about it in detail, but we see it in, we have these prophecies of the restoration of a temple, but these are prophecies of renewed sacrificial system.

01:17:30

You see it in Isaiah. You see it in Jeremiah. You see it in Zechariah. You see it in Malachi as well. So if you're looking at these particular passages, you'll see what it says about them.

01:17:42

And it just assumes it. Now to go back, what is the sacrificial system all about?

01:17:48

Back to the Garden of Eden. Okay, when men, until mankind sinned, they brought about the fall and the animal creation suffered in that.

01:18:05

Oh, the animal creation didn't participate in the sin, but they participate in the effects or the consequences of the sin.

01:18:14

And because of that, God can substitute a sinless animal for a sinful human. That's exactly what he did.

01:18:21

And it says in Genesis 3, 2, and 1, God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.

01:18:28

And we see this, and this is the first time they recognize that what the cost of sin is, that they have to be clothed.

01:18:38

And the skin has to come. Animal just didn't give its skin. It has to be taken. It has to be killed.

01:18:44

So they see the wages of sin is death, but it's not their death. It's an innocent animal.

01:18:50

And so this is how God taught from the beginning what was necessary to come to him.

01:18:59

In Genesis 3, 15, we have the picture of what we call the proto -evangelium, the first proclamation of the gospel, in which he says the seed of the woman will be in conflict with the seed of the serpent.

01:19:11

And it talks about how the serpent is going to bruise his heel and he will crush his head.

01:19:20

And so now it goes right to a masculine pronoun. We believe this is spelled out later in scripture as well.

01:19:30

This is a picture or prediction of the coming of the Messiah, laying out that the substitute would be this one.

01:19:38

And I think when you come to Genesis 4, verse 1, it talks about Eve.

01:19:44

She gives birth to Cain. And she calls his name Cain, which means acquire.

01:19:50

She says, I have acquired a man. And then it says in the Hebrew text, even the Lord. It doesn't say with the help of the

01:19:58

Lord as some of her translations say, it just says et adonai, you know? So I think she believed that God had made this promise of a salvation and a return to the restoration of the world.

01:20:18

And she thought, you know, as we all would, let's have it sooner rather than later. And, but Cain was a disappointment.

01:20:25

Nothing changed with Cain. So she had a second son named Abel. Now it doesn't mean anything in English, but in Hebrew it's

01:20:33

Hevel. And that's the word for vanity. That's the word used in Ecclesiastes for the condition of the fallen world.

01:20:40

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. And I think she's seen that the curse will go on.

01:20:47

And that's why she named it that. But the promise is still there, that it's projected to the future.

01:20:55

And I think what Abraham says in Genesis 15, six, believed in the Lord and reckoned him for righteousness.

01:21:01

What did he believe? He believed what prior revelation was given to him.

01:21:07

This is progressive revelation, it's true, but he had a basis. He believed in what

01:21:13

God had said that he was going to send a substitute. He was going to bring salvation through this promised one who would one day reverse the curse and bring about a new creation.

01:21:26

And so that's when he believes. Otherwise we simply say that salvation in the

01:21:31

Old Testament is very different than salvation in the New Testament. We have to believe in Jesus for salvation.

01:21:38

Well, we look back on what he did. Abraham looked forward to what he was going to do.

01:21:44

It's still salvation by grace through faith. And the object of faith is always the same.

01:21:51

So this is tied in with this early passages in Genesis. And we look why millennial sacrifices.

01:21:56

Well, in the past, through the sacrificialism, they looked toward Christ's death, his substitution.

01:22:04

And in the future, they will look back on Christ's sacrifice. Very interesting, we talk about the

01:22:10

Lord's supper. It tells us as often as you drink this cup or eat this bread, you proclaim the

01:22:17

Lord's death till he comes. Well, what happens when he comes? Well, there's going to be a whole generation who now sees the risen

01:22:29

Christ in their midst but has no real connection with this. They have to go back and realize this themselves.

01:22:35

So this is what some consider a moral view. And the other view is, and I hold this one, that Ezekiel says that these sacrifices are for the atonement of Israel.

01:22:49

And probably in some sense for the atonement of the nations too, for anyone who's going to come. So it's like this.

01:22:59

The whole picture of salvation is a picture of Christ substituting himself for us.

01:23:07

And in the Old Testament, they offered an animal. They put their hands on it. Their sins were commuted to the animal.

01:23:14

It took its place. They recognized this animal is dying for me. In the

01:23:20

New Testament, the same thing happened. I mean, even the Lord Jesus probably brought sacrifices when he went up to the temple three times a year through his early age.

01:23:31

When he ate the Passover with his disciples, that was part of that too.

01:23:37

That animal had been offered in the temple and it was part of that sacrifice. So all of that was part of something

01:23:45

God commanded and had to be done. When we come to the future temple, okay,

01:23:52

Israel and all the people living in this millennial age are immortal bodies.

01:23:59

They still are sinners. They're not in resurrection bodies. They're in physical bodies. They walked from the administration of the time of Antichrist into the administration of Christ.

01:24:12

And so they're still the same people. And it tells us during this period, there's going to be a revolt or a ban among their descendants.

01:24:24

So this is all something possible. So we have to have some kind, and on top of all of that,

01:24:32

God's presence is now located again on earth, just as it was in the time of the first temple.

01:24:39

So the approach to God has to be mediated again to people in mortal bodies, if they're going to be part of his kingdom of priests.

01:24:49

Now, people still say, well, but I don't understand how that works. If Jesus Christ saved us past, present, future, then why would we need something like that?

01:24:59

But it tells us in 1 John 1, 9, we have to confess our sins, okay?

01:25:05

Now we're forgiven by the Lord past, present, future, and that is sealed in heaven.

01:25:14

I think that's sure. But on earth, our fellowship with one another and with God in a, and shall we say a horizontal thing, can be cut off because of sin.

01:25:25

We have to restore that. So it tells us that when we do this, the blood of Jesus' son cleanses us of all sin.

01:25:33

That's 1 John 1, 7. Well, cleanses present tense. So there's still some sense in which the blood of Christ, though it was offered forever for us, still has a very present and practical application.

01:25:48

And I think that's what's happened in the future. You have people living on earth and mortal bodies, sinful bodies with God not in heaven, but on earth.

01:26:00

And the approach to God is a very physical one. And he has the same, his temple exists on earth, but we have this kind of sacrificial system imposed again.

01:26:13

I simply see that in the text. I don't see a problem with that. Paul was saved.

01:26:21

He is offering a sacrifice for men under a vow. There's no condemnation to Paul doing that.

01:26:29

He did that in keeping with what he understood was the right thing to do. He didn't see any digression, nothing going back.

01:26:39

He saw that as part of his responsibility, as part of what God had commanded the nation of Israel.

01:26:45

He didn't command that to the Gentile nations, command to the nation of Israel. So I just see

01:26:50

God's institution of the temple, past, present, future, pretty much remaining the same.

01:26:58

There's no present sacrificial system because there's no temple. And we have a spiritual relationship to God in heaven, tells us that we go with our prayers straight to the throne in heaven, but God is in heaven, not on earth.

01:27:13

But one day he's coming back to earth and things will, I think, require this. So that's the way

01:27:19

I understand it. And I don't see a conflict with anything else in scripture. So is that a little clear?

01:27:28

As one person said - Yeah, that made a lot, I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah, they simply said, we can hardly spiritualize the sacrifices and then literalize the temple.

01:27:38

You're gonna be consistent and a temple is built and it says they're gonna be doing sacrifices in that rebuilt temple.

01:27:45

Then to be consistent, we have to have it all the same. That makes a lot of sense.

01:27:55

We should end the live stream and the recording. Yeah, so we do have one more question, but I don't wanna keep you longer than we need to.

01:28:05

So I wanna be mindful of that. Would you mind answering one more question on the live and then we'll go ahead and wrap things up.

01:28:12

So Bill had asked about, I believe it was Bill, who would like to know, oh, it was

01:28:18

Brad, I'm sorry. He says that he read an interesting and very detailed description of Herod's temple with the location of Solomon's temple within, written by the

01:28:28

Rittmeyers. Do you have an opinion about the Rittmeyer book? Yeah, Lean's actually a friend of mine and he and Kathleen have done some great work on this.

01:28:42

The chief book on this is called, well, I can't think of it all of a sudden. Anyway, there's a big thick book he's done on this.

01:28:53

He was an architect on the archeological project for 15 years or so under Benjamin Mazar after 1967 when they did the whole work of beginning excavations.

01:29:08

And so his expertise as an architect is doing architectural renderings from the archeological evidence to show what something looked like.

01:29:20

So from this, he's done the work to try to put together all the details of where things were located in the temple, what it looked like, where things stood, sizes, all of that.

01:29:31

And his work is first rate. Most people will certainly agree. Okay, perfect.

01:29:39

So as we're signing off our live stream and recording, if you could go ahead and just remind people about your ministry and how they can find your resources.

01:29:50

Ministry is called World of the Bible Ministries. The website is worldofthebible .com,

01:29:58

worldofthebible .com. And you'll find information on our tours there. You'll find a lot of free resources.

01:30:05

We also have a YouTube channel with a lot of various videos and materials there. So just encourage you to go to those sites.

01:30:15

Okay, perfect. And once again, we are Creation Fellowship Santee and you can email us at creationfellowshipsantee at gmail .com

01:30:23

to get on our mailing list so that we can send you invitations to our upcoming speakers.

01:30:28

Next Thursday, we're glad to welcome back our fan favorite, Dr. Jason Lyle of the

01:30:35

Biblical Science Institute. He's recently made a new discovery that really challenges the

01:30:41

Big Bang Theory. So we're excited to hear about that next week. So join us. All right, with that, we're gonna go ahead and turn off the recording.