Will the temple be rebuilt?

Question 10069.

Will a third temple be rebuilt in Jerusalem? I believe the answer is yes, and not because of anything in the newspapers. Several prophecies about the last days assume a functioning sanctuary standing on that site, with sacrifices being offered in it and a man of appalling arrogance eventually desecrating it.

That said, I want to keep this sober. Speculation about a third temple has produced some of the silliest material ever published under the heading of Bible prophecy, and I have no wish to add to the pile. What follows is what the text requires, and no more than that.

Two temples have already stood

Solomon built the first, described in detail in 1 Kings 6 to 8, and the Babylonians destroyed it in 586 BC. The second was begun under Zerubbabel after the return from exile, and later expanded on a magnificent scale by Herod. That is the building the disciples were admiring when Jesus told them, “There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down” (Matthew 24:2).

Rome fulfilled that in AD 70 with brutal thoroughness. Since then the site has carried no Jewish sanctuary, and for most of the last thirteen centuries it has carried Islamic structures, the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque among them.

It is worth distinguishing two Greek words that both get translated temple. The hieron is the whole complex with its courts. The naos is the sanctuary proper, the holy place itself. The prophecies about the coming desecration use naos, which is rather more specific than a general reference to religious buildings.

So the question is not whether a religious structure of some sort will stand there. It is whether a Jewish sanctuary, with an altar and a functioning priesthood, will exist again before Jesus returns. I think Scripture says it will.

Daniel expects sacrifices to be stopped

Daniel 9:27 describes a coming ruler who “shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering.” You cannot put an end to something that is not happening. Sacrifices being halted at the midpoint of that seven-year period assumes sacrifices being offered at the start of it.

That in turn assumes an altar, and Jewish practice has always tied legitimate sacrifice to the temple site. Daniel also speaks of “abominations” and of a desolation poured out on the desolator, language that Jesus later picks up directly.

I take Daniel 9 literally, as I set out in my answer on Daniel’s 70 weeks prophecy. The first sixty-nine sevens ran to the day and were fulfilled exactly. It would be a strange method that read those literally and then treated the seventieth as a symbol.

If the seventieth week is still future, then a third temple is required for its central events to make any sense at all. That is the strongest single argument in the case.

Jesus points to a standing holy place

In the Olivet Discourse Jesus said, “So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains” (Matthew 24:15-16).

Antiochus Epiphanes had already done something like this in 167 BC, sacrificing a pig on the altar and setting up an image of Zeus. But Jesus speaks of it as future from His own standpoint, and He attaches it to a period He describes as “great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now.”

Some argue that this was fulfilled by the Roman standards carried into the ruins in AD 70. The difficulty is that Jesus places the event immediately before His own visible return in verses 29 to 31, and that has plainly not happened. The sequence will not compress.

So Jesus expects a holy place, standing, capable of being desecrated, at a point still ahead of us. A third temple is the natural reading of His words.

Paul and John assume the same thing

Paul writes of the man of lawlessness “who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God” (2 Thessalonians 2:4). The word is naos, the sanctuary.

Attempts to make that a metaphor for the Church run into trouble immediately, because the picture is of a man physically seated in a specific place, and Paul writes to people who knew exactly what a temple was. He is describing an act of blasphemous occupation, not a spiritual condition.

John is given a measuring rod and told, “Rise and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there, but do not measure the court outside the temple, for it is given over to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for forty-two months” (Revelation 11:1-2).

Temple, altar, worshippers, an outer court and a measurable footprint. Forty-two months is three and a half years, matching the second half of Daniel’s final seven exactly. The third temple is assumed throughout that passage.

What about Ezekiel’s temple?

Ezekiel 40 to 48 contains a detailed description of a temple, with measurements, gates, chambers, a river flowing from it and a portion of land set apart around it. This is not the third temple of the tribulation period. It belongs to the Millennium, after Jesus returns.

The detail is what persuades me it is literal. You do not give an architect’s specification, cubit by cubit, for a building that exists only as a symbol of spiritual truth. Ezekiel was told to describe it to the house of Israel so that they might be ashamed of their iniquities, and a vague allegory would hardly serve that purpose.

The sacrifices offered there are memorial rather than propitiatory, looking back to the cross as the Old Testament sacrifices looked forward to it. Hebrews settles that no animal blood ever took away sin, then or later.

So Scripture anticipates two more temples: the third temple of the tribulation, defiled and eventually judged, and the millennial temple filled with the glory of the Lord returning by the east gate.

How could a third temple actually happen?

This is where I decline to speculate in detail. The practical obstacles are obvious to anyone who has stood on the Mount of Olives and looked across at that platform. The political consequences of any attempt would be severe and immediate.

What I will say is that Scripture does not require a peaceful or a pious rebuilding. Daniel 9:27 ties the arrangement to a covenant made by a coming ruler, and it is entirely possible that a third temple is permitted as part of a negotiated settlement rather than achieved by devotion.

Nor does Scripture require the Church to help. I have no enthusiasm for Christian involvement in temple building projects, and I think believers who fund such things have misunderstood their own gospel. The cross ended the sacrificial system. Hastening its revival is not a Christian errand.

Preparations reported from time to time in Jerusalem are interesting but they prove nothing about timing. God does not need our assistance to fulfil His word, and He has never yet asked for it.

Keeping this in proportion

The temple question tends to attract people who love a countdown. I would rather it attracted people who love the Lord. Nothing about a third temple is a sign that must precede the Rapture, since the Rapture is signless and imminent, as I explain in my answer on imminence.

What a rebuilt sanctuary would indicate is the approach of the seventieth week, which the Church is not appointed to endure. The stage can be set long before the curtain rises, and we are not the ones who decide when the curtain rises.

It is also worth remembering what the New Testament says about where God dwells now. “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” That is not a denial of a future building; it is a statement about the present one.

I find that keeps me level. A third temple may well be built and defiled and judged. Meanwhile the sanctuary God is actually occupying at this moment is His people.

So, now what?

Watch the subject with interest and hold it loosely. Read Daniel 9, Matthew 24, 2 Thessalonians 2 and Revelation 11 together and let them interpret one another rather than letting a news bulletin interpret them for you.

And take the personal application seriously. If God’s Spirit dwells in believers, the state of that sanctuary matters more to you today than the state of any stone building in Jerusalem. What sort of temple is He living in at your address?

“Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.”

2 Thessalonians 2:3-4, ESV