Current Preparations


In 2004, Randall Price, president of World of the Bible Ministries, provided the following summary of modern preparations to rebuild the Temple. It is evident these plans were already well advanced at that time. Much more has been done since then.

According to experts, detailed blueprints for the Third Temple have existed for the past four years. The plans were drawn according to the primary sources of information: the Bible, Josephus, and the Mishnah tractate known as Middot ("Measurements"). Other structures, including the Sanhedrin complex, have also been planned or actually built. The restored Temple complex envisioned by Ezekiel, is to be thirty times larger than that of previous Temples. The legal stipulations that the Sanhedrin will use to govern Israel's relationship to the rebuilt Temple and its services have already been researched and are in the process of being published by the Research Center for Jewish Thought under the direction of Yoel Lerner.

Since 1987, the Temple Institute, a group of rabbinical researchers, designers, and craftsmen, has been creating in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem what they call a "Temple-in-waiting." Among the 103 Temple items that have, or are in the process of being recreated are: apparel for the High Priest, sacrificial incense spices, urns, incense pans, the golden laver, and the stone vessel (kelal) for grinding and holding the purifying ashes of the red heifer, the golden menorah (lampstand), silver trumpets, the Golden Altar of Incense, and the Table of Shewbread. Other building projects include a full scale altar for the training of the priests. The Ark of the Covenant is believed to exist in a chamber under the Temple Mount. Another group active in the rebuilding of the Third Temple, the Temple Mount Faithful, has brought three cornerstones to Jerusalem from Mitzpe Ramon in the Negev. It is one of the few places in the Land of Israel where the character and color of the stone is similar to that from which the First and Second Temples were made.

According to rabbinic tradition, the Tribe of Levi was forbidden to alter their names (which connoted their priestly heritage) when assimilated into foreign cultures. Thus, we continue to this day to have Levis and Cohens, and derivatives of these names. Recently, a more scientific test to verify those of priestly lineage has appeared. A computerized list of all known priestly candidates in Israel is maintained. Orthodox organizations in Israel are helping to educate this priesthood.

In order for a Temple to be rebuilt today, those who would enter the holy areas must first be ritually pure. All Jews have become ceremonially unclean in the Diaspora and must be purified by the ashes of the red heifer (described in Numbers 19). In 2002, a red heifer was born in Israel, the first in 2,000 years. Because the Jewish sage Maimonides taught that there had been nine red heifers between the beginning of the Tabernacle and the end of the Second Temple, and, that the tenth would be prepared by the Messianic King, a special urgency is attached to the recovery of the Temple Mount.1

True Placement of This Event in History


The hope that the Temple will be rebuilt soon, or at least before history enters the period of terrible judgment known as the Tribulation, does not fit what Scripture itself teaches. Indeed, we have three Scriptural reasons why it is unlikely that this rebuilding will be accomplished before the Tribulation begins.

  1. The Book of Daniel includes a fascinating prediction.

    And he shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain; yet he shall come to his end, and none shall help him.

    Daniel 11:45

    The person who is the subject of this prophecy is the king of the north (Dan. 11:40-44), identified by conservative expositors since ancient times as the Antichrist. The Antichrist will not appear on the world scene and accomplish the victories described in Daniel 11 until after the Tribulation has begun. In my commentary on Daniel, I show that his conquest of Israel will likely take place after the opening of the second seal (Rev. 6:3-4).2 He will then plant "the tabernacles of his palace" on the Holy Mount. "Tabernacle" is simply the word "tent,"3 although it can refer more generally to any dwelling.4 If a Temple will be standing on the mount at that time, why does Scripture make no mention of it? Why does it say only that he will set his palace there? One purpose of Daniel's vision is presumably to warn Jews of the grievous defeat that they will suffer at the hands of the Antichrist. Omitting any mention of a rebuilt Temple in the Scriptural account of his conquest would run counter to this purpose, for surely he would seize and desecrate it.
         Since he will first come to prominence as a Muslim ruler,5 the tents of his palace will probably be erected on the Dome of the Rock. Yet he will occupy that prize location only a short while before coming "to his end"—that is, before he is assassinated. Only some years later, after he returns from the dead, will he assume control of world government and demand everyone's worship (Rev. 13:1-8).
  2. Jesus makes a prediction that to a casual reader almost seems offhand, yet it conveys rich truth.

    And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things.

    Matthew 17:11

    See also Mark 9:12. By predicting that Elijah will come to the earth during the Last Days, Jesus underlined a prophecy already stated in the Book of Malachi.

    4 Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.

    5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD:

    6 And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

    Malachi 4:4–6

    What will be included among "all things" restored by Elijah? Any Jewish reader of Jesus' promise would doubtless infer that after the ruination of Jerusalem in AD 70, the main thing in need of restoration is the Temple. When exactly will Elijah appear on the scene of world events? The Book of Revelation speaks of two witnesses that God will send to the earth toward the end of the Tribulation.

    And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.

    Revelation 11:3

    Who are these two witnesses? Again in my commentary, I present an elaborate case that they are Moses and Elijah.6 To relieve any doubt that one of the witnesses is Elijah, the Book of Revelation discloses that they will send fire upon their enemies and stop the rain (Rev. 11:5–6). So far as we know, Elijah is the only man in the past who performed these particular miracles (1 Kings 17:1; 18:1–46; 2 Kings 1:1–16). When exactly will the witnesses appear? The concluding portion of the Tribulation will be the seventieth week of Daniel (Dan. 9:25–27). The first sixty-nine weeks—each week representing seven years of 360 days—were fulfilled at the first coming of Christ. The opening event was heaven's decree that Jerusalem should be rebuilt after its destruction in 586 BC. The subtle wording of the prophecy pointed to several climactic events, the last being the resurrection of Christ in AD 33.7 But history did not proceed directly into the seventieth week. Besides anticipating that the city and sanctuary of Jerusalem would be destroyed after the Resurrection, the prophecy set the seventieth week at an indefinite time in the distant future. From the Book of Revelation, we learn that the seventieth week will fall immediately before Christ's return in glory. The first half will be the 1260 days (three and a half years of 360 days) devoted to the ministry of the two witnesses (Rev. 11:3, quoted above). The last half will be the forty-two months allotted to the world dictatorship of the Antichrist.

    And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.

    Revelation 13:5

    One of his blasphemous deeds will be to occupy and desecrate the Temple in Jerusalem (Dan. 8:9-13; 9:27; Matt. 24:15; Rev. 11:1–2). We conclude that the Temple will indeed be rebuilt someday. Its first appearance in Scripture's survey of things to come is at the start of the forty-two months preceding Christ's return—a placement consistent with our thesis that it will be rebuilt a few years earlier under Elijah's direction.
  3. The wording in Daniel's prophecy of seventy weeks strongly implies that the long interruption between the close of the sixty-ninth week and the opening of the seventieth corresponds to removal of the Temple as a site of Jewish worship.

    25 Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.

    26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.

    27 And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.

    Daniel 9:26-27

    Continuing absence of the Temple from Jewish experience is the reason why the seventieth week will not begin until more than thirty years after the Tribulation begins (see the lesson discussing the length of the Tribulation).

Where the Temple Will Be Rebuilt


We now see growing confusion about where the Temple in ancient times stood. In recent years, voices coming from the media and other channels of influence have been spreading doubt that the ancient Temple was actually situated on what is now known as Temple Mount.8 The main original source of this doubt was a book first published around 1990 by Ernest L. Martin, a Bible teacher who was a meteorologist by profession and a member of a religious body on the fringes of orthodoxy.9 He was also well known for his work on the birth date of Christ and the Star of Bethlehem—work which I sharply critique elsewhere on this site. A convincing rebuttal of his views on the location of the Temple has recently been provided by men well informed on the history and archaeology of Jerusalem.10 Therefore, I will not detour into a long discussion of what Martin has written about the ancient Temple, except to point out the basic fallacies in his claim that what is now called Temple Mount was instead the site of the Roman fortress known as Antonia, which sat directly north of Herod's temple complex. The evidence supporting this claim? Martin's case rests heavily on the following words of Josephus.11

The tower of Antonia lay at the angle where two porticoes, the western and the northern, of the first court of the temple met; it was built upon a rock fifty cubits high and on all sides precipitous. It was the work of King Herod and a crowning exhibition of the innate grandeur of his genius. For, to begin with, the rock was covered from its base upwards with smooth flagstones, both for ornament and in order that anyone attempting to ascend or descend it might slip off. Next, in front of the actual edifice, there was a wall three cubits high; and behind this the tower of Antonia rose majestic to an altitude of forty cubits. The interior resembled a palace in its spaciousness and appointments, being divided into apartments of every description and for every purpose, including cloisters, baths and broad courtyards for the accommodation of troops; so that from its possession of all conveniences it seemed a town, from its magnificence a palace. The general appearance of the whole was that of a tower with other towers at each of the four corners; three of these turrets were fifty cubits high, while that at the south-east angle rose to seventy cubits, and so commanded a view of the whole area of the temple. At the point where it impinged upon the porticoes of the temple, there were stairs leading down to both of them, by which the guards descended; for a Roman cohort was permanently quartered there, and at the festivals took up positions in arms around the porticoes to watch the people and repress any insurrectionary movement. For if the temple lay as a fortress over the city, Antonia dominated the temple, and the occupants of that post were the guards of all three; the upper town had its own fortress—Herod's palace. The hill Bezetha was, as I said, cut off from Antonia; the highest of all the hills, it was encroached on by part of the new town and formed on the north the only obstruction to the view of the temple. As I propose hereafter to give a fuller and more circumstantial description of the temple and the walls, these remarks shall for the present suffice.

Jewish War 5.5.8 (238-247)

Martin and those who side with him argue that the structure here being described is much larger than the fortress appearing in today's well-known pictures and models of the Temple and its environs. They say that a structure so immense, containing "apartments of every description and for every purpose, including cloisters, baths and broad courtyards for the accommodation of troops; so that from its possession of all conveniences it seemed a town, from its magnificence a palace," had sufficient space only if it sat on what is now known as Temple Mount. Two replies will suffice.

  1. On the north side of this mount, the remains so far discovered are far from definitive as archaeologists seek to reconstruct what truly stood there in the first century AD.
  2. Martin and his followers greatly inflate their case by claiming that the fortress generally held about 5000 soldiers. No data specifically concerning the Roman presence in Jerusalem supports this claim. It is probable that Martin's faction have been greatly influenced by William Whiston's translation of Josephus's works. Although originating in the eighteenth century, his translation is still the most readily available. Whereas, in the above quotation taken from a modern translation, Josephus says, "a Roman cohort was permanently quartered there," Whiston's translation says, "for there always lay in this tower a Roman legion."12 A legion was indeed at least 5000 soldiers, often more.13 Which translation is correct? The Greek word in dispute is not the one denoting a legion, alternately spelled legeon and legion.14 Rather, it is tagma, which simply means a detachment of soldiers.15 It by no means refers specifically to a legion. H. St. J. Thackeray, the modern scholar responsible for the above-quoted translation of Josephus, renders tagma as "cohort," probably based on his own judgment as to the size of the detachment. Perhaps he took into account the specific information provided by Luke. In the Book of Acts, Luke states that the Roman army unit stationed at Antonia was a "band" (Acts 21:31), the Greek word speira,16 which indisputably means "cohort."17 A cohort fully staffed comprised one thousand soldiers, with 760 infantry and 240 cavalry,18 although commonly it was about half as large.19 Recognition that Antonia housed a force no larger than a cohort removes the most serious challenge to believing that it lay north of today's Temple Mount.

Yet the idea that today's Temple Mount is misnamed and that the Temple should be rebuilt further south seems to be gaining more adherents, at least among Jewish sympathizers, though perhaps not among Jews themselves. The person who will decisively resolve all disagreement is Elijah, for when he summons the nation to rebuild the Temple, he will know exactly where it should stand.

Footnotes

  1. Randall Price, "Will There be a Third Temple?" Jewish Voice Today, January/February 2004, www.dunamai.com/articles/Israel/third-temple-built.htm.
  2. Ed Rickard, Daniel Explained, 4th ed. (N.p.: The Moorings Press, 2020), 368–371.
  3. Jay P. Green, Sr., The Interlinear Bible: Hebrew/English, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1983), 3:2072.
  4. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, The New Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic (n.p., 1906; repr., Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1979), 13-14.
  5. Rickard, 210, 344–345.
  6. Ibid., 183, 286–287, 381–383, 397–400.
  7. Ibid., 229–279
  8. Yahweh's Restoration Ministry, "The Lost Temple Mount," YouTube (youtube.com/watch?v=yTSCQgZirts&list=PLThe_lGrLDhNs73-qgv4opsDwD-XqFJUI&index=2), 12/16/20 (4/28/17); Whitestone Media Ltd., "The Coming Temple," YouTube (youtube.com/watch?v=90XSXEfeIjI&list=PLThe_lGrLDhNEGmKWoEeeuFQ-MN7vFEL-&index=6), 12/16/20 (10/29/16).
  9. Ernest L. Martin, The Temples that Jerusalem Forgot (n.p.; Academy for Scriptural Knowledge, 2000).
  10. Hillel Richman, "The True Location of the Temple Mount," The Temple Institute, YouTube (youtube.com/watch?v=EEYOuYjqWwQ), 12/17/20 (12/3/18).
  11. Quotation from Josephus, with an English Translation by H. St. J. Thackeray (London: William Heinemann Ltd; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961), 275, 277.
  12. "The Life and Works of Flavius Josephus," trans. William Whiston (c. 1737; repr., Philadelphia: The John C. Winston Company, n.d.), 786.
  13. "Roman legion," Wikipedia, Web (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_legion#Size), 12/22/20.
  14. William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, eds., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 469.
  15. Ibid., 810.
  16. George Ricker Berry, Interlinear Greek-English New Testament (N.p., 1897; repr., Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1981), 514.
  17. Arndt and Gingrich, 768.
  18. F. F. Bruce, The Acts of the Apostles: The Greek Text with Introduction and Commentary, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1990), 451.; Darrell L. Bock, Acts (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2007), 652.
  19. "Cohort (military unit)," Wikipedia, Web (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohort_(military_unit)), 12/22/20.

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