This afternoon, if you have your Bibles, we’ll turn to Ezekiel. We wanna continue our study through the book of Ezekiel. We’re coming to Ezekiel chapter 40, and in chapters 40 through 43, we see what is, we talked about the various temples, the tabernacle and the various temples that were built last Sunday or last Wednesday night, and that there were literally, this will be the final temple that will be built, it’s going to be built by the Lord himself, and that’ll be built at the end of the tribulation period, and that’s what Ezekiel is seeing here and given.
I wanted to just share a little bit before we get into the nuts and bolts of how to build the temple, because there’s been a lot of confusion about what exactly the Bible’s saying about the last days, about the millennial kingdom, about the temple, who’s coming, is the Lord building it, who’s building it? Last Wednesday night, we looked at the fact that right now there’s the Temple Institute in Israel, and you’ve got a whole bunch of Jewish people and scholars and that are putting together all of the elements that will be part of the temple, and they plan on building the temple. However, I don’t think this is the temple that Ezekiel is talking about, and I think this is a temple that is going to be the temple, as we said on Wednesday night, that will be built either right before or right after the rapture of the church and the Antichrist comes to power and it’ll be a temple that he will use. First of all, he’ll allow the Jews and encourage the Jews to begin their sacrificial system again, and for the first three and a half years of what is referred to as the Great Tribulation, they will be encouraged to make sacrifices as they once did.
At the midpoint of the tribulation, though, the Bible talks about the fact that he will come and desecrate the temple, and he will declare himself as God, and he who had set a peace treaty in the Middle East, which looks like it’s an impossible task to do, yet this man, under really the inspiration of Satan, will be able to do this, and through this, the nation of Israel is looking for a Messiah. They are looking for the one that will come, and much as they looked to Jesus the first time that he came, they were looking for him to deliver them out from the power of Rome, and they were looking for him to be able to give them victory over Rome and to once again establish the kingdom that David and Solomon had once had. We saw that Jesus, on the other hand, had never intended to throw off the power of Rome or to overthrow the Roman government.
As a matter of fact, when confronted by Pilate during his last trial, Pilate asked him if he was king of the Jews and if his kingdom was of this world, and Jesus said his kingdom was not of this world, and that he really had no desire to overthrow the Roman kingdom, and the whole thing is he came rather to overthrow the kingdom of darkness that was enslaving the whole world to its system and enslaving men to sin, and without coming and paying the penalty for our sins, when he would come again the second time, which he also spoke of when he was giving the Sermon on the Mount, what the kingdom of God would be like, the thing is he established the fact that the second time could not have happened without him coming the first time because he needed to pay the penalty for the sins of the world from every person that would believe, from Adam to the end of the world as we know it when he shall return with his 10,000’s of saints to rule and reign, that he needed to pay the price for all those who would believe, and he’d pay the price for their sin and become the propitiation that their sins could be forgiven. Well, as Jesus was sharing all of that, today there’s come confusion and there’s churches that used to preach that that no longer preach that,. Today some of them are preaching a version of amillennialism called Kingdom Now, teaching that somehow the church is here and we have to establish the kingdom on earth and that things are getting better and better. I don’t know what newspapers are reading and I don’t know what newscasts they’re listening to that they’re saying that things are getting better and better in the world.
I see that more and more people that stand for truth and a biblical principle in our Christians are being persecuted greater all over the world, and all one has to do is look beyond the liberal headlines to see what’s actually happening in Niger, Nigeria, other nations in Africa, communist nations, Muslim nations, to see that Christians are being persecuted and martyred, and I just read an article this last week that said more Christians have been martyred in the last century and the first portion of this century than had been martyred before that. And yet you’ve got Christians in America that are saying, well, things are getting better and better. Yet if you look at our own culture, our own culture is becoming worse and worse, and you also see that the church today is being infiltrated with many, many false teachings that just 20 or 30 years ago, they were there, but people would have known that they were false teachings and would have rejected them today.
Now you’ve got a number of well-known pastors that are embracing some false teachings, and like I said, one of those is the Kingdom Now philosophy. Another is Calvinism, which has replaced the whole, as we’re going through Romans on Sunday mornings, we looked at Romans 1, verses 17 and 18, which I really, I believe is the whole theme of the Gospel of Romans, and it talks about that Paul is unashamed of the Gospel of Christ, and he lays out the whole Gospel. Part of the Book of Romans is to be there to show the need of the Gospel, what the Gospel is, and how the Gospel redeems and saves men, and that the Gospel is for everyone.
And yet you’ve got Calvinism and other doctrines coming into the church which deny that. Well, along with these, with Kingdom Now and Calvinism and some of these other teachings, has come the teaching that Jesus isn’t really going to come and be the one that builds this temple and establishes this kingdom. And yet, if we’re gonna look at some verses this afternoon, besides what is in chapter 40, the first few verses there, and I want you to just see that the prophecies of what is referred to as the third temple, or as we saw, the sixth building that was dealing with worshiping God in Israel, that this is going to be established and built by Jesus.
It says in verse, chapter 40, beginning at verse one of Ezekiel,
Ezekiel 40:1
In the five and twentieth year of our captivity, in the beginning of the year, in the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth year after that the city was smitten, in the selfsame day the hand of the Lord was upon me, and brought me thither.
And I want you to understand that when he says the city was smitten, he’s speaking of Jerusalem, he’s speaking of the temple being destroyed. This would have been the Temple of Solomon.
Ezekiel 40:2-4
This would have been the final attack of Nebuchadnezzar upon Jerusalem. And at that final attack, they took what had been left of the temple instruments back to Babylon with them, and they were used in some of the, later on, during the Book of Daniel reveals, during a celebration of the later king of Babylon, where he desecrated those instruments, and then his kingdom was destroyed. But it says here, in verse two.
2 In the visions of God brought he me into the land of Israel, and set me upon a very high mountain, by which was as the frame of a city on the south.
3 And he brought me thither, and, behold, there was a man, whose appearance was like the appearance of brass, with a line of flax in his hand, and a measuring reed; and he stood in the gate. 4 And the man said unto me, Son of man, behold with thine eyes, and hear with thine ears, and set thine heart upon all that I shall shew thee; for to the intent that I might shew them unto thee art thou brought hither: declare all that thou seest to the house of Israel.
And what he’s going to be shown is the construction of the temple. And as I mentioned, they use measuring terms that we’re not familiar with. And next Wednesday, I’m gonna get all those listed for you so that you can see exactly how many feet and inches it’s speaking of when it’s talking about things like a reed and other different lengths, a cubit, a cubit and a hand breath and various things. Those can be transposed into our common measurements so we get some idea of the size of the building.
And we will do that. We’re not gonna spend a lot of time today on the construction of the building, but I wanna look at the contractor. I wanna look at the one who’s building it.
And it says, and I’m gonna be quoting from David Hocking’s book in Ezekiel where he lists a bunch of other scriptures. And I’m gonna be talking about some of these other scriptures which point to the fact that this indeed is Jesus. The prophecies about a future temple must be considered very carefully.
Is there any contextual evidence that these prophecies should be considered as allegorical or simply word pictures of the church? And that’s what’s being brought to the church today. People are saying, this is just an allegory. It’s not real.
Yet we’re supposed to take other things literal. And if you look at what we’ve seen that have been given as prophecies and visions to Ezekiel thus far in the book of Ezekiel, you’ll see that some of these have happened and they literally happened. And now all of a sudden we get to this and we’re supposed to take this as allegory or as a word picture.
Do these prophecies refer to the coming and presence of the Messiah after the period of time known as the day of the Lord? And the day of the Lord is referred to throughout the prophets. And the day of the Lord is always dealing with the final days, the last days when God shall come. And ultimately, the ultimate day of the Lord is when he shall come and judge.
It’s also interesting that some of the same Christian churches that want to abandon and speak of this as allegorical also don’t wanna talk about judgment. And they don’t wanna talk about the coming great white throne judgment. Because if you don’t have Jesus returning again, don’t have Jesus coming and establishing his rule and reign from Jerusalem again, don’t have this temple being built again, then you don’t have to believe that Jesus is gonna come and have this great white throne judgment at the end of time as we know it and where all men will have to stand before him.
And then you have, it’s very easy and what you’re seeing, and it’s very disturbing to me, you’re actually seeing some people that have claimed to be evangelical, Bible-believing in the past that have now become almost universal in their view to salvation because they say, well, God, the great white throne judgment is just allegory. It’s really not true and in the end, God is a loving God and he’s gonna save everyone. Well, that’s universalism.
That is not what the Bible teaches. And that’s not what Ezekiel was given as a vision about the last days. And it’s not about the other prophets where they continually talk about the last days, where they talk about Daniel, talking about the 70 weeks of Daniel and how there’s a week of seven years that hasn’t been dealt with with the nation of Israel.
And a lot of these same people will deny that Israel is Israel and that God is done with Israel. Well, let’s take a look at, and I apologize, I’m gonna read this out of David’s notes and he did not use the King James Version at this particular time. So I apologize for that.
He repented later and went back to the King James. But when he wrote this little booklet on Ezekiel, I believe it was either using the New King James or another version. But in Zechariah 14.
Zechariah 14:1-4
Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. 2 For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city. 3 Then shall the Lord go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle.
70 AD dealt with the Roman Empire. 70 AD dealt with the prophecies that were talking about the fact that God was going to scatter the Jewish people amongst the nations because of their lack of their unbelief and the fact that they had been given so much and yet had denied him so often and that this would begin, would be part of his chastising hand and he prophesied they’d be scattered amongst the nations. He also said he would hiss or whistle and the people would come back to the land.
When he called them back, guess what we’re seeing happen today? We’re seeing Jews from all over the world come back to Israel. It began at the latter part of the 19th century in the late 1800s. It began to intensify during World War I and a lot more began to come back after World War II to a land and that’s when the nation that had not been a nation for 2,000 years, yet they came back and were a nation in a day just as it had been prophesied in the scriptures and they didn’t come back as we even read in Ezekiel.
They did not come back as two nations but they came back as one. They went out as Israel and Judah but they came back and they came back as Israel and today they’re being called from all over the world. I just saw some more Jewish people that came from, I forget which country it was but I said the other day that they say that they’re from the tribe of Manasseh.
People say, well, they don’t know what tribe they’re from. God knows what tribes they’re from and God will bring them back and just as his word says. Right now you’re seeing anti-Semitism growing by leaps and bounds in Europe and the major rabbis in Europe are telling the Jewish people go somewhere where it’s safe, go to Israel.
They’re saying in France, go to Israel. They’re saying in England, go to Israel. Guess what you’re seeing? You’re seeing people leaving that are Jews leaving France and England and the Netherlands and other nations in Europe and they’re going to Israel.
Right now in New York City, the mayor of New York is very anti-Semitic. He wants to establish Sharia law. He wants to overthrow Western really philosophies and teachings and he wants to persecute the Jews.
And what you’re seeing is there are people, Jews in New York, that are preparing to go back to Israel and people have said, well, why would they ever leave really high-paying jobs and beautiful homes in the United States and go back to Israel where they can’t probably get the same type of work or not because the Bible says that God would hiss or whistle and he would call them back and he would bring them back to the land that he had promised them and it would be the land that had been given to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the descendants throughout all eternity of them. And so we’re seeing this happen. Well, in Ezekiel, he talks about that there’s this event that’s going to occur.
Now, why couldn’t it be 70 AD? Because in 70 AD, there was only one nation that was really coming against Israel. That was Rome. You didn’t have all the nations of the world attacking Israel.
Instead, you had Rome driving Israel out of Israel. They destroyed the temple. They destroyed much of Jerusalem.
They drove the people into the lands. About half the people were driven out into foreign countries. Another half were sold into slavery in Rome and you can go and look on historical accounts of that that are extra biblical and see it actually happen.
It wasn’t all the nations of the world. Guess what you’re seeing happen today? Something that has never happened before in the history of our world. You’re seeing the rise of antisemitism growing greatly for really, well, my wife just brought to my attention.
She read an article. There was Ireland just contracted with one of the major airline builders to build this plane, but they told them, we want no Israeli technology in our plane. Well, so they did that.
They built them a plane with no Israeli technology. The only problem is the plane can’t land in fog because the only means they had to land a plane in fog was a technology that Israel had developed and is being put in planes all over the world today, but they said no Israeli technology, so they gave them a plane with no Israeli technology. The plane can’t land in fog, so if all of a sudden fog comes in, that plane’s gonna be in trouble, but it just shows you the depth of how the stupidity of the nations and the total lack of any understanding of why they hate Israel so much, and you look at the, it’s not just Ireland.
As I mentioned, many of the European nations have allowed many Muslims into the countries, and right now, there’s major political positions in England and in France that are held by Muslims, and their goal is anti-Israel. Their goal is anti-Western, and their goal is to destroy all that is Christian or Jewish. That’s their goal, and it has no logical sense, but it holds a whole lot of sense when you look at the fact that the whole world is gonna come against Israel, and right now, you’re seeing that much of the world is.
There’s alliances that we’ve talked about before as we’ve been going through the book of Ezekiel and also through the book of Daniel that were not there, that are there now. Iran, Russia, Turkey, Ethiopia, and other nations being united. Zechariah 14.9 says:
And the Lord shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one Lord, and his name one.
and the Lord shall be king over all the earth. In that day shall there be one Lord, and his name shall be one. That is speaking of the last days when the Lord shall come, and he shall come against these nations of the world that are going to attack Israel, and then after that shall come what is referred to as the thousand-year reign of Christ or the millennium kingdom, and he shall be known as the Lord over the whole earth.
Zechariah 14.16
16 And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles.
Now, what is the feast of tabernacles? If you don’t understand the Old Testament, you won’t know what the feast of tabernacles is. The feast of tabernacles was established when the nation of Israel came out of wandering in the desert, and the Lord established the feast of tabernacles. It was when the nation once a year was to build tents or tabernacles, if you would, and they were to acknowledge that the Lord would come and dwell amongst them.
Now, the Lord had dwelled amongst them when they were wandering through the desert. He dwelt amongst them during the time that Moses built the, just lost my thought, what? Tabernacle, yes, thank you. I’m going, my mind.
Built the tabernacle, his kind of glory resided in the tabernacle. When Solomon built the temple, the kind of glory resided in the temple, and we saw that the Lord was amongst his people, and once a year they were to build the feast, celebrate the feast of tabernacles to remember when God had begun to dwell amongst his people. Prior to their coming out of Egypt, they were not a nation.
When they came out of Egypt, they were a nation. Then God began to dwell amongst his people, his nation that he had created. They weren’t created by any men, and they were to remember that, and this was to be part of the remembrance.
They are to go up to Jerusalem and establish the feast of tabernacles, and it’s going to be a very interesting feast because literally the Lord is once again going to be amongst his people, and all the nations of the world are to acknowledge this and come to Jerusalem, and so there will be people left after what is referred to as the last battle, the Battle of Armageddon, but they will go into the millennial, and they will come as nations to worship the Lord. Do these prophecies concerning a future temple involve all nations of the world? Well, Psalm 86 9 says,
All nations whom thou hast made shall come and worship before thee, O Lord;
and shall glorify thy name.
Haggai 2:6-9 says:
6 For thus saith the Lord of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; 7 and I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts. 8 The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the Lord of hosts. 9 The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the Lord of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts.
The answer is mine, and the gold is mine, and with the Lord of hosts, and the glory of this latter house will be great, great than of the former, saith the Lord of hosts, and in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts. And Revelations 15:4 says,
4 Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy: for all nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy judgments are made manifest.
It won’t happen under the World Economic Forum. It won’t happen under George Soros. It won’t happen under even our own government, which has even been noted as being one of the most friendly to Israel of any governments in the past, yet we even are turning our back on Israel in certain ways.
And we see that all nations will come against Israel, but then all nations will ultimately, because of this abandonment of Israel and the promises of God, receive the judgment of God, and then all nations will really see that he is God, and they shall come and worship him as he sits upon the throne in Jerusalem. The person who will build the temple. Let’s just take a look at the person who will build the temple.
Zechariah 6:12-13
12 and speak unto him, saying, Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, 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:
And it says, he whose name is the branch, and he shall grow up out of his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord. So we see the branch shall build the temple of the Lord, according to Zechariah 6. The branch is Jesus Christ. He’s going to build this last temple.
Zechariah 6:13
13 even he shall build the temple of the Lord; and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne; and he shall be a priest upon his throne: and the counsel of peace shall be between them both.
Now, Jesus is unique in that he is to be the King of kings and Lord of lords. But he’s also to be the great high priest.
If you go to the nation of Israel, the priest could never be the king, and the king could never be the priest. They had separate duties. They couldn’t do the other’s duties.
Uzziah, when he was king, he became very proud. And he went into the temple one day, and he said, I will offer the sacrifice. And the priests became very distressed, and they tried to stop him, and they tried to prevent him from doing it.
And he pushed them aside and went forward anyway, and God smit him with leprosy and cast him out, even though he had been, for all intents and purposes, up to that time, a good king. He’d been a king who had done the Lord’s will until that time. How did he step out of place? He who was a king was tempting to do the priestly duties.
There is only one individual who will be both priest and king, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who is enabled to offer the sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, and so he does his priestly duty. He also will be the king that rules over all of his creation.
So Jesus is both priest and king. Now, he goes on, and Zachariah says that the branch 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, and he shall be a priest upon his throne, and shall rule, and the council of peace shall be between them both.
The particulars about the construction of the future temple must be explained, and those are found in Ezekiel 40 through 48. We’re not going to go into, I mentioned the details, specific details today. We’re gonna hold that for another lesson, but I just have a couple more points, and then we’re gonna wrap it up for today.
The words he measured appear 25 times in Ezekiel. The details of the first three chapters of Ezekiel 40 through 42 point to a literal temple. These facts, along with Zachariah 6.13, he shall build the temple of the Lord, make it clear that the temple shall be built, and it will be able to be measured.
It’s not going to be something that’s going to be just an allegory. It’s a real place….