Ezekiel’s temple not millennial

Ezekiel’s Temple: not Millennial temple

“For many years there have been well-intentioned efforts by Christadelphians to interpret the last nine chapters of Ezekiel’s prophecy as a picture of a new temple to be built in the Land of Promise, a center of worship for all nations during the Millennial Reign of Christ. Such efforts have been confined to a comparatively small handful of students, the rest being somewhat daunted by the difficulties involved.

Because of this there has been a tendency to accept somewhat uncritically the results achieved by others — a startling exception to the normal Christadelphian way of things, that a Biblical exposition shall only be accepted when the detailed evidence has been examined bit by bit and thereafter approved or rejected.

Thus it has come about that the monumental work of Henry Sulley of Nottingham, published in 1892, has been allowed to set the pattern of Christadelphian thinking with regard to this temple. His scheme has been accepted in a remarkably uncritical spirit, largely — one imagines — because he was a well-qualified and successful architect who was deemed to be equipped well beyond the rank-and-file reader for the task of producing a definitive interpretation of the temple chapters.

The present writer is persuaded, however, that the work of that well-intentioned author was completely vitiated from the start by certain seriously mistaken presuppositions which dominated and distorted his synthesis in nearly all its main essentials.

Nor is it possible, because of technical difficulties over the production of a big set of diagrams, to go into the question as to what Ezekiel’s temple really was intended to look like. For the present it must suffice to say that the remarkable number of correspondences with Solomon’s temple in measurements and in the phrasing of the descriptions leads one to believe that essentially this temple was to be a second edition of the first temple, with certain modifications appropriate to the changed circumstances of its use.

But certainly the idea of a massive square of buildings with an inner ring (the “Holy Place”)         equally magnifical, surrounding the base of an unscalable conical mountain which itself is crowned with a gigantic altar for countless animal sacrifices — this idea, it is emphasized, must be abandoned as being far away from a correct interpretation of Ezekiel’s specification. Ezekiel’s temple certainly has an enclosure about a mile square, but there is nothing to suggest that the buildings are that size. Actually the sanctuary itself is of much more modest proportions” (FLET).

When the investigation is pushed further, there soon piles up a veritable mountain of evidence all of which insists that a temple like Ezekiel’s, with ritual such as is described there, was never intended for the abiding Kingdom of God with its divine King-Priest and immortal hierarchy.

The most casual reading reveals an intention to reinstitute sacrifice, ceremonial cleansing, the observance of Sabbaths and much else that was already made familiar through the Law of Moses.

But the New Testament is almost over-emphatic in its insistence that all these things, fulfilled (filled full)         in Christ, have been taken away once and for all, and that the purpose of God has no further room for anything of the kind:

a. No more sacrifices: Heb 9:9,12,28; 10:4,11,12,14,18; Col 2:14; Rom 10:4.
b. Are the millennial sacrifices only commemorative?
1) Not necessary, because Christ is there, bearing marks of crucifixion.
2) Bread and wine are a sufficient memorial: Luk 22:16,18.
3) Ezekiel says these sacrifices are in fact “for sin” (Eze 43:19-26; 45:17,22), ie, not just “looking back” to Christ.
4) If “commemorative” (ie, “look-back”)         sacrifices will be permissible in the Kingdom, then why were they not permissible in 30-70 AD?
5) Gal 3:19: “Law was added (only)         until Seed comes.”
c. Heb 7:12: Law will be changed. Cp Heb 7:18,19.
d. Heb 10:9: First law is “set aside”.
e. Heb 8:8,9: A new covenant with Israel, not according to the previous covenant.
f. Gal 4:9,10: Do you wish to be enslaved again to those “weak and miserable principles”?
g. Act 7:48: Most High dwells not in temples made with man’s hands” (summarized from FLET).
  1. Who is “Prince” of Eze 45; 46? A mortal prince/ruler of Israel: (a)         offers sacrifice for his own sins (Eze 45:22; 46:10-12); (b)         subject to death (Eze 46:17,18); (c)         has wife and sons (Eze 46:16), who will succeed him (Eze 45:8).
  2. The priests of this Temple are mortal: (a)         they sweat (Eze 44:18); (b)         should drink no wine (Eze 44:21; ct Mat 26:29; (c)         they die (Eze 44:22); (d)         they have no inheritance (Eze 44:28). By ct, see Mat 22:28-30.
  3. This Temple has Levites who went/can go astray (Eze 44:10-14).
  4. Interspersed with exhortations to a rebellious (?!)         house of Israel: Eze 40:4; 44:6; 45:9.
  5. No uncircumcised person (Eze 44:9). What about Gentiles saints?
  6. “Strangers” in the Land (Eze 47:22,23)? Easy to relate to return from Babylon, but not so easy to Kingdom Age.
  7. Eze 47:18: An eastern border of Jordan River. And Eze 47:19: the “river” on the south is wadi El Arish, not Nile. These borders are incompatible with extent of Kingdom (Gen 15:18).
  8. Is Jerusalem an enormous Temple area only? Or is it a city without walls, inhabited by children, as in Zec 2:4; 8:4,5?
  9. East gate shut 6 days out of 7 (Eze 46:1), or always open (Isa 60:11; Rev 21:25)?
  10. What is not described here? No lavish use of gold and silver. No High Priest garments of glory and beauty. “Splendid and holy as their new Temple was to be, its limitations only emphasized in their minds the abiding need for a new and better order, with a Messiah who would be both Prince and Priest ministering a sacrifice which would be all-sufficient, and not merely temporary and typical” (FLET)
  11. Ezekiel envisions a large Temple area, but no real city. Likewise, this is what Nehemiah sought to build (Neh 4:22; 7:4; 12:29). Did he understand Ezekiel’s vision to be for his day?

(Summarized from FLET)

“it is desirable to emphasize how much Israel were in need of a new religious code. With the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, they lost not only their temple but also everything associated with it. The ark of the covenant was gone. There was therefore no mercy seat, and therefore no Day of Atonement was possible. The holy fire, which had been unquenched since God signified His good pleasure by accepting Solomon’s sacrifices (2Ch 7:1), was now gone out. So the offering of true burnt offerings was likewise out of question. Neither had they a high-priest with Urim and Thummim who could give a divine judgment in time of perplexity. Indeed all the indications were that God had altogether abolished the system of worship which had been given hundreds of years earlier for the guidance and help of His people: ‘He hath violently taken away his tabernacle… he hath destroyed his place of assembly: the Lord hath caused the sabbaths and solemn feasts to be forgotten in Zion, and hath despised in the indignation of his anger the king and the priest. The Lord hath cast off his altar, he hath abhorred his sanctuary… the king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more’ (Lam 2:6,7,9).

“So unless God gave His nation a new start, Israel returned from captivity would be a people spiritually adrift.

“Evidently, then, Ezekiel 40-48 was designed to show the Jews how they were to worship and serve God when their seventy years of exile were expired — what kind of temple they were to fashion; the character of their priesthood; their offerings and their feasts; the due status of priest and prince; the re-allocation of the Land to the tribes; and especially, they were to be inspired with the possibilities of Jerusalem as a center for worship, not only for Israel but also for the strangers in the Land, and — more than that — as a source of spiritual blessings radiating to all the nations of the world” (FLET).

“But the people of Israel were unable to carry the project through to its culmination. Their own efforts were halfhearted. They were hindered and discouraged by enemies without and the beginnings of a renewed apostasy within. Thus, bit by bit, they lost their early idealism, and though the temple was built — probably, so far as one can tell, on the pattern of that planned by Ezekiel — it never achieved that which was intended for it. The Glory of the God of Israel did not return unto it, and Ezekiel’s great ideal still goes unrealized until the day when the new Jerusalem descends from God out of heaven; and then it will find expression, not in reeds of wall and cubits of altar but in the spiritual realities which those solid facts were intended to teach” (FLET).