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The Third Temple
End-Time
Prophecy: Why is the Third Temple so Important?
Bibles For Israel ministry
The
Hebrew prophets all proclaimed that in the last days, the exiles of Israel
would return to the Promised Land and that the Temple would be rebuilt.
“Then the nations will know that I the Lord make Israel holy,
when my sanctuary is among them forever.” (Ezekiel
37:28)
These
phenomenal end-time events are unfolding before our very eyes!
The
Prophetic Return to Israel and the Third Temple
“I will bring back my exiled people Israel; they will rebuild
the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink
their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant
Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have
given them.” (Amos 9:14–15)
So many
skeptics around the globe like to proclaim that God has rejected the People
of Israel and that Israel has been rebirthed by man alone.
Yet, we
find in Scripture that God never intended to reject His People forever:
“You, Israel, My servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, Descendant
of Abraham My friend, you whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, and called
from its remotest parts and said to you, ‘You are My servant, I have chosen you
and not rejected you.” (Isaiah 41:9)
God
always planned to bring the Jewish People back to the Land on His terms not
man’s.
And
just as the prophets foretold, the Jewish People are returning to the Holy Land from
the four corners of the earth after 19 centuries of global exile:
“Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring
from the east, And gather you from the west. ‘I will say to the north, “Give
them up!” And to the south, “Do not hold them back.” Bring My sons from
afar And My daughters from the ends of the earth.’” (Isaiah
43:5–6)
Not
only are the exiles of Israel returning to the Promised Land, but preparations
to build the Third Temple are progressing through the efforts of the Temple
Institute and the Temple Mount Faithful Movement.
Why
Build the Third Temple?
“Here am I, and the children the Lord has given me. We are signs
and symbols in Israel from the Lord Almighty, who dwells on Mount Zion.” (Isaiah
8:18)
You might ask yourself, “If the sanctuary was ‘a copy
and a shadow of what is in Heaven (Hebrews 8:5),’ and
Yeshua (Jesus) ‘serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by
the Lord (Hebrews 8:2),’ why contemplate
building the Holy Temple?”
The
Holy Temple in Jerusalem was never simply a building or structure, but an
earthly dwelling place for the Divine Presence of God.
The Lord said, “Let them construct a
sanctuary for Me, that I may dwell [shakan] among them.” (Exodus
25:8; see also Exodus 40:34–35 and 1 Kings 8:11)
This dwelling
(shakan) forms the related word Shekhinah, which
is not found in the original Hebrew Bible, but it is used in rabbinic
literature and Bible translations to describe the Lord’s Divine Presence.
“The glory of the Lord entered the temple through the gate
facing east. … I heard someone speaking to me from inside the temple. He said:
‘Son of man, this is the place of my throne and the place for the soles of my
feet. This is where I will live among the Israelites forever.’” (Ezekiel
43:4–7)
Rambam
(Rabbi Moses Maimonides), a medieval Jewish philosopher and Torah scholar,
said that the Temple has eternal significance.
He
wrote in Hilchos Bais HaBechirah (The Laws of God’s Chosen House) that
the Temple had two primary purposes:
1. To
reveal to mankind the Divine Presence of God, which dwelt above the mercy seat
of the Ark of the Covenant.
“There, above the cover between the two cherubim that are over
the Ark of the Testimony, I will meet with you and give you all my commands for
the Israelites.” (Exodus 25:22)
2. To
facilitate the offering of the required sacrifices.
Since the destruction of the Second Temple in
AD 70, however, the Jewish People can no longer offer these sacrifices. In
fact, 202 out of the 613 mitzvot (commandments) in the Torah cannot be performed without a Temple. (Temple
Institute)
With no
Temple in Jerusalem, the Jewish people now worship the God of Israel in their
local community synagogues and in the study of Torah.
Instead
of offering animal sacrifices, they now offer Tefillah (prayer), Teshuvah (repentance),
and Tzedakah (charity).
Many
think that animal sacrifices have been done away with forever, but according to
Bible prophecy, this simply isn’t so.
The
Lord tells the Prophet Ezekiel that in a future Temple, the prescribed
sacrifices will be offered:
“The north and south rooms facing the temple courtyard are the
priests’ rooms, where the priests who approach the Lord will eat the most holy
offerings. There they will put the most holy offerings — the grain offerings,
the sin offerings and the guilt offerings — for the place is holy.” (Ezekiel
42:13)
But a
serious question arises not only for the Jewish community, but for all
Believers in Yeshua: will the next Temple — the Third Temple — be Ezekiel’s
Temple where the Divine Presence will once again reside — or will some other
presence reside in another Temple?
Daniel, Yeshua, the Anti-Messiah, and the Third Temple
In the
prophetic writings of the Book of Daniel and the Brit Chadashah (New
Testament), we find significant details about the role of a rebuilt Temple in
the end times.
Both
Daniel and Yeshua (Jesus) tell us that the Anti-Messiah will defile the Third
Temple before the return of the true Messiah.
They
both call this spiritual defilement in the Temple the abomination of
desolation:
“So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the
abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet
Daniel — let the reader understand — then let those who are in Judea flee to
the mountains.” (Matthew 24:15–16; compare with Daniel 9:27, 11:31,
and 12:11)
Daniel 9:21–24: in his Seventy
Weeks Prophecy, prophesies that Jerusalem and the destroyed Temple would be
rebuilt, that the Messiah would be killed (cut off), and that Jerusalem and the
Temple would once again be destroyed.
According
to the Prophet Daniel, the Messiah would be cut off before the Temple is
destroyed:
“After the sixty-two weeks the Messiah
[Mashiach] will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of
the prince [ruler, nagid] who
is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with
a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined.” (Daniel
9:26)
This
prophecy was fulfilled in AD 70 with the destruction of the Temple, just forty
years after Yeshua HaMashiach (Jesus the Messiah) was cut off by his execution on a tree.
Through
the study of numerous end-time Scriptures, we believe that this prince or ruler
(nagid) — the anti-Messiah — will appear just as Daniel describes.
Daniel
says he will confirm a covenant of peace “for one week” (often
interpreted as seven years) but break that covenant in the middle of the term.
“And he [the prince] will make [some translations say ‘confirm’]
a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he
will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of
abominations will come one who makes desolate [some interpretations say, set up
an idol on the wing or precipice of the Temple], even until a complete
destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.” (Daniel
9:27; see also Matthew 24:15; 2 Thessalonians 2:4)
The
anti-Messiah will also proclaim himself to be God!
“He [the man of lawlessness] will oppose and will exalt himself
over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up
in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.” (2
Thessalonians 2:4)
The Temple Institute as well as the
Temple Mount and Eretz Yisrael Faithful Movement are the two main Jewish
organizations responsible for making preparations for the Third Temple and the
reinstatement of sacrificial worship.
Other
organizations have plans, too. One wants to pitch a tabernacle-style tent on
the Mount; another wants to build a synagogue in one of the corners of the
platform.
Why? Because as Chaim Richman, the director of the Temple
Institute states in his Myth Buster video series, “Buildings don’t fall down
from heaven.”
He adds that “it’s a mitzvah to build the Temple,” citing
Exodus 23:8 and that Jews should be performing all 613 mitzvot, which requires
a Temple.
He also says that the Third Temple will “bring the Light back
into the world” that left the Temple Mount when the Lord’s Divine Presence
departed.
Moreover, he believes the Temple will “reconnect all of
creation with one another. It is the Holy Temple that enables all of humanity
to engage in direct dynamic relationship with God and provides the opportunity
for every individual to rise to our greatest potential.” (Temple
Institute YouTube: Myth Busters Part 1)
Daniel
9 and 11 as well as Brit Chadashah writings, however, help us see that an
alternate reality exists for the Temple.
Nevertheless,
the ritual garments and vessels have been created.
Even
the Golden Menorah — the
seven branched candelabra — has been crafted, along with Levitical musical
instruments, such as silver trumpets, lyres, and harps to worship the Lord,
just as King David did 3,000 years ago (1 Chronicles 23:5).
The Temple Institute’s School is
training certified, DNA-tested Cohen (descendants of the High Priest Aaron) to
perform the Temple duties.
And the
final element, the Red Heifer, is being bred in Israel to be sacrificed in the
ritual purification of the priests and the vessels, so they may formally enter
the holiest of holy area on the entire earth.
Everything
is ready for the rebuilding of the Third Temple. Everything, that is,
except the land on which to build it.
Since
the liberation of the Mount in 1967, the Muslim world has made great efforts to
claim the entire 37-acre (150,000 square meter) platform as its own sacred
land, calling the site in Arabic al-Ḥaram
al-Šarīf — the Noble Sanctuary.
To
protect the Noble Sanctuary, the Muslim world has become expert organizers
of riots on the Temple Mount and terror on
the streets of Israel.
Incitement to
such violence increases whenever rumors spread that a Jewish presence will be
established on the Temple Mount or its own Muslim structures harmed.
Only an
incredibly respected, trusted, and honored man by both Muslims and Jews will be
able to establish a peace plan that allows the
Jewish People to worship the Lord in a Temple on the Mount that King David purchased (2 Samuel
24:18–25).
Whoever
this man is and whatever trouble awaits us (known as Jacob’s Trouble) when he
breaks the peace plan as Daniel 9:27 predicts, we can be confident that God is
on the throne and in control.
As King David writes in Psalm
121:4: “He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.”
We know
that end-time Bible prophecy concerning the Third Temple is soon to be
fulfilled because Israel was prophetically reborn
as a nation in 1948 (Isaiah 66:8), and
most of these Temple preparations only started in the last 30 years.
As we persevere
through these end-times, join us in introducing the Sar
Shalom (Prince of Peace) Yeshua HaMashiach
to the Jewish People so that He may dwell in them and bring them a peace and
Joy they have not yet known.
First
and foremost, our mission is ministering to Jewish people with love and
comfort.
“Comfort,
comfort my people (Israel), says your God.” Isaiah 40
Located
in the Holy Land, the Bibles For Israel ministry is producing the first-ever
Messianic Prophecy Bible.
We
educate Jewish people on the prophecies about the Messiah in the Tanakh (Hebrew
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For centuries, the Jewish People have streamed
to the Western Wall, which came to be known as the Wailing Wall, to lament the
destruction of the Temple, to pray for the rebuilding of the Temple, to receive
priestly blessings, and to repent.
A model of the Second Temple
The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem by the
Romans Under the Command of Titus, AD 70,
Daniel 9:21–24: in his Seventy
Weeks Prophecy, prophesies that Jerusalem and the destroyed Temple would be
rebuilt, that the Messiah would be killed (cut off), and that Jerusalem and the
Temple would once again be destroyed.
Copper vessels for the Third Temple: On the
left is the Abuv, a three tiered stand used for roasting the Omer on Passover.
The middle tier contains coal for roasting the barley. On the far right toward
the back is the copper vessel used in preparing the meal offering.
This 24-karat Golden Menorah was recreated by
The Temple Institute and is ready for use in the Third Temple.
Jewish man overlooks the silver-domed al-Aqsa
Mosque, which was built around AD 705 and is considered the third holiest
structure in Islam. It sits on the southern edge of the Temple Mount.
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