In the days of the patriarchs God visited the earth and talked with men but He never had a dwelling place among men until the tabernacle was built in the wilderness. He said to Moses, "Let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them," and when it was completed, "The glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle." This was Jehovah's dwelling place among His people, Israel, for some 500 years until Solomon.
When Solomon finished the temple, the ark, and all the holy vessels were taken from the tabernacle and placed in it. This being done, the glory of Jehovah's presence filled the temple as before it had the tabernacle. (Compare Exod. 40:34 and i Kings 8:10, 11). Solomon's is the first temple. As the reign of Solomon is a figure of the reign of Christ, so this first temple is a fitting type of the last earthly temple which is Ezekiel's, and will be built soon after the appearing of Christ.
Solomon's temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar at the beginning of the Babylonian captivity (2 Chron. 36:19). At the end of seventy years, Cyrus, king of Persia, rebuilt the house of God. This is commonly known as Ezra's temple and was so much inferior to Solomon's that the aged men who had seen the first, wept as they contrasted the two (Ezra 3:12). The destruction of this second temple is not recorded in Scripture but took place after Malachi.
Herod's temple was the third, of which the Jews said, "Forty and six years was this temple in building" (John 2:20). We have no Scripture record other than this of the erection of this temple, but it was caused to be built in view of the first coming of Christ (Mal. 3:i). It was in this building that Jesus was found sitting in the midst of the doctors when He was twelve years of age, and here, too, when they were about to make Him King, that He drove out those who sold and bought, saying, "It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves" (Matt. 21:13). This temple was destroyed in the destruction of Jerusalem as prophesied by the Lord (Matt. 24:2). As this house was erected before the first coming of Christ, so the next one will be before His second coming to the earth. From 2 Thess. 2:, we learn that the day of Christ's manifestation will not come until the "man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God."It is plain that the temple must be rebuilt or this bold blasphemer, the man of sin, could not sit in it. So also as to the ceasing of the daily sacrifice which is replaced by the "abomination of desolation standing in the holy place " (Matt. 24:15). A temple must be then standing or there could not be a " Holy place."
After the appearing of Christ and all evil is put down, the unrest of the nations stilled in the establishing of God's anointed King in Zion, there will be the fifth or millennial temple, the description of which is found in Ezek. 40:-42:It is larger than Solomon's and will be built by Christ. " Behold the Man whose name is the Branch and He shall grow up out of His place and He shall build the temple of the Lord. Even He shall build the temple of the Lord; and He shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon His throne" (Zech. 6:12, 13).
The Gentiles also, then subject to Christ, aid in the building of this temple. " They that are far off shall come and build in the temple of the Lord" (ver. 15). "The sons of strangers shall build up Thy wall, and their kings shall minister unto Thee " (Isa. 60:10).
The presence of Jehovah takes up its abode in this temple as it did in Solomon's. In the first part of Ezekiel (chaps. 10:18, 19; 11:22, 23) the glory is seen reluctantly to depart from the temple and city by the east gate; in the latter part of the book (chap, 43:) it is seen returning by the same way. '' Afterward he brought me to the gate, even the gate that looketh toward the east:and, behold, the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east:and His voice was like a noise of many waters:and the earth shined with His glory" (vers. i, 2).
It is as though the long gap of many centuries had not intervened. The people, forsaken for their sins and delivered into the hands of the Gentiles, have again become the people of God, with His presence in their midst never more to depart (ver. 7).
In the above, we have spoken only of the temple in relation to Israel. Let us not lose sight of the fact that God is building a temple now. '' Know ye not that ye are the temple of God?" (i Cor. 3:16.) The present temple is a spiritual house built of living stones. " In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit" (Eph. 2:22). R. B. E.