Will Jewish temple sacrifices resume during the Tribulation?

Question 10184.

Scripture indicates that temple sacrifices will resume during the Tribulation, because several prophecies require a functioning altar which the Antichrist can stop. That is not a comfortable conclusion for a Christian who knows the letter to the Hebrews, and it needs handling with care.

Two things have to be said together. A revived sacrificial system in the Tribulation has no standing before God whatever, and Scripture still tells us plainly that it will exist.

The texts that require temple sacrifices

Daniel 9:27 says the coming prince will make a strong covenant with the many for one week, and in the middle of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. You cannot stop what has not started. The verse assumes temple sacrifices running when the covenant is broken.

Daniel 12:11 counts days from the time that the regular burnt offering is taken away and the abomination that makes desolate is set up. Again the offering is in operation and then removed. Daniel 8:11 and 11:31 describe the same pattern in the language of the near fulfilment under Antiochus.

2 Thessalonians 2:3 and 4 has the man of lawlessness taking his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Whatever building that is, it is a temple in operation, and Revelation 11:1 and 2 has John measuring a temple with an altar and worshippers in it while the outer court is given over to the nations.

Why the plain reading holds

You can only avoid a literal temple by making all four passages figurative at once, and the figures then have to be explained without any textual signal. Daniel counts days. John measures courts. Paul names a seat. Those are the details of a building, not the vocabulary of a metaphor.

There is also the matter of the near fulfilment. Antiochus Epiphanes really did stop the offerings and defile the altar in 167 before Christ, and Jesus still spoke of the abomination of desolation as future in Matthew 24. The pattern therefore repeats, and it repeats with the same furniture. I set that out in the article on the abomination.

So I take it that temple sacrifices will resume, that they will run for around three and a half years under a covenant with the coming prince, and that they will be stopped at the midpoint when he sets himself up in the holy place.

There is also the pattern of Jesus in Matthew 24. He speaks of the holy place, of those in Judea fleeing, of Sabbath travel and of a specific sign to watch for. Every one of those details assumes Jewish religious life centred on a temple in Jerusalem at the time in question, which is another reason I take the resumption of temple sacrifices as literal.

What such offerings would mean before God

Nothing. That has to be stated without hedging. Hebrews 10:12 to 14 says Jesus offered a single sacrifice for sins for all time and then sat down, and Hebrews 10:18 says that where there is forgiveness there is no longer any offering for sin. Any attempt to atone by animal blood after Calvary is a denial of the finished work.

Indeed the writer to the Hebrews warns his readers in the strongest terms against going back to the old system, and he wrote while the second temple was still standing. Reviving temple sacrifices as a means of acceptance is a step backwards into shadow after the substance has come.

So the resumption in the Tribulation is a religious act of an unbelieving nation, not an ordinance appointed by God for that period. He permits it, He does not command it, and the covenant that authorises it is made with the Antichrist rather than with the Lord.

It is worth adding that Israel’s unbelief at that point is not in doubt. A nation that has entered a covenant with the coming prince has not yet recognised her Messiah, and temple sacrifices offered in that condition are the religion of the unconverted. Paul described his own people in Romans 10 as having a zeal for God but not according to knowledge, and this is that zeal reaching its final expression.

How this differs from the millennial offerings

This distinction matters, and it is regularly missed. The temple sacrifices of the Tribulation belong to an unbelieving nation under a false covenant. The offerings of Ezekiel’s temple belong to a converted nation under the new covenant, in a house where the glory of God has returned.

The first is an attempt at atonement and therefore an offence. The second is memorial, looking back to the cross as our own communion service does, which is the case I make in the article on millennial worship.

Same city, similar furniture, entirely different meaning. Ritual is never self interpreting; it means what the covenant behind it says it means, and here the covenants could hardly be further apart.

The practical question of a rebuilt temple

A resumption of temple sacrifices requires a site, a priesthood and a legal arrangement, and none of that is trivial given what stands on the Temple Mount. Various Jewish groups have prepared vessels, trained men of priestly descent and rehearsed procedures, which is a matter of public record rather than speculation.

I mention it only to show that the prophecy does not require a miracle to become possible, and not to suggest that any current initiative is the fulfilment. It is not my business to identify the covenant of Daniel 9:27 with any negotiation now in progress. I discuss the building question in the article on the rebuilt temple.

The sensible position is that the prophecy is specific and the mechanism is not our concern. God has arranged stranger things with less notice.

There is a further practical matter which Scripture does not settle: whether a full temple is required or whether an altar and a court would satisfy the prophecies. Revelation 11 has John measuring a temple, an altar and worshippers while the outer court is given to the nations, which some read as a partial arrangement. I hold the question open, because temple sacrifices need an altar rather than a completed building.

Why God permits it

Scripture does not tell us directly, so I will keep this brief and cautious. What the pattern shows is a nation seeking security through a covenant with a man rather than through her Messiah, and receiving exactly the protection such covenants provide.

Isaiah had already described that arrangement as a covenant with death which will not stand. The revived temple sacrifices are the religious expression of a political bargain, and the bargain is broken by the stronger party halfway through.

Out of that betrayal comes the deepest distress Israel has known, and out of that distress comes the national turning to the one they pierced. God is not the author of the false covenant, and He is well able to bring His purposes out of its collapse. I trace that sequence in the article on the time of Jacob’s trouble.

There is also a lesson about false security which applies far beyond that period. A nation with a functioning temple, a signed treaty and a full calendar of offerings will look religiously secure right up to the moment the covenant is torn up. Outward religion has never yet protected anybody from the consequences of not knowing God.

What this means for the way we speak about it

Two temptations need resisting. The first is triumphalism, treating a rebuilt altar as a scoreboard for our own prophetic scheme. There is nothing to celebrate in a system that cannot forgive a single sin.

The second is contempt. Jewish people who long for a restored temple are longing for something God Himself promised, even if the fulfilment will come in a form they do not yet expect. Paul’s tone in Romans 9 and 10 is anguish rather than mockery, and ours should be the same.

So we hold the doctrine plainly and we hold it with a heavy heart, which is roughly how the prophets held it too.

We should also be honest about our own record. Christians have repeatedly announced that a rebuilt temple was weeks away, and the announcements have aged badly. The doctrine does not depend on any current initiative, and stating it without a timetable is the only responsible way to teach it.

So, now what?

If temple sacrifices are going to resume and mean nothing, then the point for us is the sufficiency of what Jesus has already done. Every altar in history was pointing to a single moment, and that moment has happened, and He sat down.

So stop building small altars of your own. What are you still trying to offer God to make yourself acceptable to Him, when He has already accepted you on the strength of an offering you did not make?

And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Hebrews 10:10 (ESV)