The Antichrist 4: A Rebuilt Temple?

Today, the next installment in the series.

1. The title "Antichrist" itself

2. Revelation's Beast from the Sea

3. Things will get worse and worse...

4. A rebuilt temple?

Ezekiel 40-42 speaks of a glorious temple. The description follows God's promise in 39:25-29 that God will bring Israel back to their land and will pour out his Spirit on them. Is this a temple that will be built in the end times?

Probably not. For one thing, we should remember that the temple was rebuilt in 516BC. All the prophecies in the OT about the rebuilding of a temple relate to a time 1500 hundred years ago when the temple had been destroyed. But a second temple was built and lasted almost 600 years before it was destroyed again in AD70 by the Romans. Similarly, many prophecies of Israel returning to Palestine were fulfilled in 538BC when the Persian king Cyrus allowed them to return from captivity.

It is true that the rebuilt temple was not the glorious structure Ezekiel describes. Until Herod the Great launched a stone by stone refurbishment in 20BC, the temple was at times underwhelming, it would seem. Could Ezekiel by-pass the first rebuilding to speak of a rebuilding yet to come?

Probably not, at least not if Hebrews is right. In Ezekiel 43, the Glory of the LORD returns to the temple. In Ezekiel 10, Ezekiel had seen the Glory of the LORD leave the temple prior to Jerusalem's destruction. Here he sees the Glory return.

The problem is that for Hebrews, Christ's sacrificial death has made any earthly temple obsolete (10:14). Indeed, the book of Revelation has no temple in the new Jerusalem (21:22). From a Christian perspective, Ezekiel 43 could no longer be literally fulfilled from the time of Christ's death on. We must either take it symbolically or as prophecy God changed like He changed the verdict Jonah brought to Ninevah.

There is thus only one possible indication in the Bible that the temple will be rebuilt, and if it points to a rebuilding, it only does so indirectly. 2 Thessalonians 2 speaks of a "man of lawlessness" that the Darby-Lindsey-LaHaye school equates with the Beast of Revelation and the Antichrist of 1-2 John. In 2 Thessalonians 2:4 says that he "sets himself up in the temple as God."

If this verse refers to a literal temple, then one will have to be rebuilt. Mind you, there was a temple standing when this verse was written. The passage says nothing about it being destroyed and then rebuilt. But if this passage is yet to be fulfilled, if it does not refer to the church as the temple of God or was not somehow fulfilled before AD70, then a temple will have to be rebuilt for it to come to pass.

2 Thessalonians 2 is enigmatic all the way around. There will be a "falling away" before the Day of the Lord. In 2 Thessalonians, this would appear to be a time of oppression of believers and the Jews. I suspect that any mid-first century audience hearing these words would immediately remember Caligula's attempt in the late 30's to set up a statue of himself in the Jerusalem temple. Indeed, I imagine the original audience picturing a Roman emperor in the bubble above their heads when they hear this chapter.

Something was holding this man of lawlessness from coming, something or someone that needed taken out of the way before the man of lawlessness would be revealed. But then the crisis would come to a head and the Lord would destroy him.

It is difficult to know what all this means. If it is yet to be fulfilled and the temple here is literal, then we will expect a temple to be rebuilt. At the same time, it is always shaky to base an expectation of the future or a practice or a belief on one passage in Scripture alone. And that is what we have here--and an ambiguous passage at that!