The Temple was God’s House that God never even wanted! It was a house for kings and priests to show just how progressive and righteous they were!
King David desired to build a House
for God since he had a grand one for himself (1 Chron 17:1). Although Nathan
the prophet agreed with David, God sent word by Nathan unto David, “Thus saith
the Lord, ‘Thou shalt not build me an house to dwell in’” (1 Chron 17:4).
Why did God not want a House of
His own?
“For I have not dwelt in an house
since the day that I brought up Israel unto this day; but have gone from tent
to tent, and from one tabernacle to another” (1 Chron 17:5). God always was
with the people, and a House would make Him further from the people.
Before, He had appeared on the
Ark of the Covenant, behind a curtain, and only the clean and holy chief priest
could see His throne and hear His Voice, but in a sense all the people had
walked with God who appeared as a cloud by day and a fire at night (Exod
13:21).
God’s ‘House’ had been a mobile
Temple, and a building would only constrain Him. Symbolically, the Exodus was
Him going to the ‘Paradise’ to deliver His people from Egypt, symbolic of Hell
and Pharaoh Ahmose I, the devil. [1]
As such, tabernacle worship would
represent the godhead — the fire and cloud the Spirit of God, the Existence on
the Mercy Seat the Paternal aspect of God, and the tents of skin the flesh of
God.
Furthermore, Tabernacle worship
was very much like the arrangement of the Trees with their natural canopies circled
around the Tree of Life in their midst as the Tabernacle of God. So, from the
beginning, God was with His people and without a building.
God never wanted a House, but
David did. Because of the grievous sins of David, although a man after God’s
own heart, Solomon would be selected to build the House for God. It may be that
God never wanted His Temple associated with David, nor the ‘Son of David,’
Jesus; that would have made the Davidic Temple too prominent, so the immediate
son of David was selected to oversee the building of his House for God.
The Temples were for the builders.
It was Solomon’s Temple and Herod’s Temple which had been started in the days
after the diaspora and authorized by Persian King Cyrus. Thus, the Second
Temple was Cyrus’s House for God, technically, and it was not finished
in the days of Herod.
Again, technically, Josephus
relates that Herod’s Temple was built on the foundation of the Second
Temple and if that is true, the third Temple has already been built and destroyed!
Apparently, Herod ruined the Second Temple and built a new one from scratch
where the two preceding temples had stood.
Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel
mentioned another temple but did not call it a third one (Jer 31:31-34
& Ezek 36:26–27). The ‘Temples’ in both of those two sources are much the
same, the latter being, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit
within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a
heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you and bring it about that you
walk in My statute and are careful and follow My ordinances.”
Therefore, the so called “Third
Temple” was built by Herod, and the last Temple built by God Himself by His ‘Handyman’
Jesus.
The material for the Last Temple
are Christians themselves. The Last Temple is the invisible Church wherein God
lives in His people.
I submit that the Temple of which Jeremiah and Ezekiel wrote was not a House at all but an invisible structure:
Now therefore you are
no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of
the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and
prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief Cornerstone; in whom all the
building fitly framed together grows unto an holy temple in the Lord. (Ephes 2:19-21)
The so-called Third Temple has already been built and it was built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Jeremiah and Ezekiel saw the plans for the Temple of God, and it was not a building at all, but a spiritual construction wherein the ‘blocks’ are ‘lively stones,” to wit:
You also, as lively
stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up
spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. (1 Pet 2:5)
The Jews accused Jesus of heresy,
saying, “Forty and six years was this Temple in building, and will you rear it
up in three days?” (John 2:20), and that He did when He arose from the tomb
after three days, laying the foundation of the Church and the House of God. Many
times, beginning with the Jews, then the Romans, and then devious men like
Stalin and Hitler, they tried to tear down the Invisible House of God but to no
avail.
They did remove buildings,
doctrines, and people, but after 2000 years the Church remain standing and will
remain so for perpetuity!
Those buildings that you see,
many with Sunday partying in progress; those are not the Temples of God. Jesus
identified them beforehand when He recalled Scripture, “It is written, ‘My House
shall be called the “House of Prayer;’ but you have made it a den of thieves. (Mat
21:13).
Not to be mean, but look at the
Temples that have been built. The worst of the worst are Islamic because it was
not built on the Cornerstone, Jesus.
The Roman Catholic Church was
built on the bones of Peter (beneath St. Peter’s Basilica) and their ‘cornerstone’
is Peter, not the ‘Stone,’ but the ‘Pebbles,’ of Peter.
The same goes for Protestant
Churches. They meant well, but soon they began to burn the separatists. Each
Christian burned at the stake by either Catholics or Protestants were removing
one lively stone at a time until the churches became unstable.
Then came the restorationists who
literally removed all the stones at one time and built a church with one wall,
so to speak. Only they are the true Christians and all those who died for
Christ before deserved their fates. As such, their church has become their god
and water its foundation.
The original Church was described
in total by the seven churches of Asia, and just as Jesus predicted, even those
who met wherever had among them thieves.
As such, all churches have imperfect
components because the people have become the ‘cornerstone.’ It is not what God
Wills for His people, but what they desire for themselves.
The modern-day Churches of Christ
has rebuilt the Roman Catholic Church very well and on the cornerstone of
Alexander Campbell. Now, they are very ‘catholic’ all the while damning them
all!
By now, most of the Church are
dens of thieves, and money the object of their affection. I believe the last
thing in the world that churches need is more money. Money is most often to build
things even for God, but we often forget it is not a House that God wants but a
Divine Household.
I see many huge so called 'Houses of God' but within few people. I see others with great temples but not based on prayer. What have the people done with God's Church? The last thing that we need is not more money or new buildings, but more prayer. Just like the Jews who were always the root cause of destructions of their Temples, it seems to be Christians that destroy the Church.
[1] Ancient sacred literature
points more toward Ahmose and the ‘brother’ of Mose (Egyptian) or Moses
in the English. Ahmose-Ankh, next in line to be Pharoah by the law of primogeniture,
was a prince but never made it to Pharoah. He was superseded by his younger brother,
Amenhotep I, indicating that something happened to Ahmose-Ankh. I suggest that the
latter prince was the one who died in the first Passover, further validating
the Pharaoh of the exodus was Ahmose I. Therefore, Moses does not mean ‘water’
but according to Wikipedia, “The Egyptian root msy ('child of')
or mose has been considered as a possible etymology, arguably an
abbreviation of a theophoric name with the god's name omitted. As such Mose was
just the son of with no known father or mother and Ahmose was the son of
Ahotep I, his mother, a matronymic whereas Mose is theophoric for possible ‘son
of God.’
No comments:
Post a Comment