The Temple

There Will Not Be Left One Stone upon Another

In order to understand the meaning of these words, we should know how the story originally began. The place where the temple was to be built was chosen by God when he told Abraham:

Genesis (22 – 2):
 God said," Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you."
 3 So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; and he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and rose and went to the place of which God had told him.
4 On the third day Abraham lifted his eyes up and saw the place afar off.
5 Then Abraham said to his young men," Stay here with the ass; I and the lad will go over there and worship, and come back to you.
6 And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it on Isaac his son; and he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together.
7….... 9 When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an alter there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the alter, upon the wood.
10 Then Abraham put forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.
11 But the angel of the Lord called to him ….. .
12 He said, "Do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me".
13 And Abraham lifted his eyes up and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a bush by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.
14…. 15 And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven,
16 and said, "By myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son,
17 I will indeed bless you, and I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore. And your descendents shall possess the gate of their enemies.

The ram that Abraham offered here was the first offering to be offered on the big huge rock of mount Moriah. God the Almighty choose this huge rock to be a marker to pin point the place where the temple was to be later on built, and also to pin point its place when no stone of the temple was left upon another. After this incident with Abraham time and events went by till king David came along and decided to hold a censor and count the Israelites, his action displeased God and he sent to tell him:

1 Chronicles (21 – 9):
 And the Lord spoke to Gad, David’s seer, saying,
10 "Go and say to David, "Thus says the Lord", "Three things I offer you; choose one of them, that I may do it to you."
11….12 either three years of famine; or three months of devastation by your foes, while the sword of your enemies overtakes you; or else three days of the sword of the Lord, pestilence upon the land, and the angel of the Lord destroying throughout all the territory of Israel." Now decide what answer I shall return to him who sent me.
13 Then David said to Gad, "I am in great distress; let me fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is very great; but let me not fall into the hand of man."
14 So the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel; and there fell seventy thousand men of Israel.
15 And God sent the angel to Jerusalem to destroy it; but when he was about to destroy it, the Lord saw, and he repented of the evil; and he said to the destroying angel, "It is enough; now stay your hand." And the angel of the Lord was standing by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
 16 And David lifted his eyes and saw the angel of the Lord standing between earth and heaven, and in his hand a drawn sword stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, clothed in sack-cloth, fell upon their faces.
17 … 18 Then the angel of the Lord commanded Gad to say to David that David should go up and rear an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
 19 So David went up at Gad’s word, which he had spoken in the name of the Lord.
 20 … 22 And David said to Ornan, "Give me the site of the threshing floor that I may built on it an altar to the Lord, give it to me at its full price, that the plague may be averted from the people."
23 …25 So David paid Ornan six hundred shekels of gold by weight for the site.
26 And David built there an altar to the Lord and presented burnt offerings and peace offerings, and called upon the Lord, and he answered him with fire from heaven upon the altar of the burnt offering.

This means that the Lord pin pointed the place and choose the spot on which the temple should be built. But God did not allow David to build the temple as David had shed too much blood, but David made a lot of the necessary preparations needed to build it. As seen in:

1 Chronicles (22 – 2):
 David commanded to gather together the aliens who were in the land of Israel, and he set stonecutters to prepare dressed stones for building the house of God.
3 David also provided great stores of iron for the nails for the doors of the gates and for clamps, as well as bronze in quantities beyond weighing,
4 and cedar timbers without number; ….

And in:1 Chronicles (28 – 10):
 …. , for the Lord has chosen you to build a house for the sanctuary; be strong, and do it."
11 Then David gave Solomon his son the plan of the vestibule of the temple, and of its houses, its treasuries, its upper rooms, and its inner chambers, and of the room for the mercy seat;
12 .. . 19 All this he made clear by the writing from the hand of the Lord concerning it, all the work to be done according to the plan.

And in: 2 Chronicles (3 – 1):
 Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to David his father, at the place that David had appointed, on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
 2 He began to build in the second month of the fourth year of his reign.

Solomon completed the building in 957 BC And in accordance to the plan that the Lord had asked, and in the very place which the angel of the Lord pin pointed to king David and to Abraham before him.

We see that the builders and the stonecutters and all the worker were of the gentiles who were in the land of Israel, that is, it was the Gentiles who worked in the preparation of the stones and in gathering the building materials during king David times and also to complete and build the building in the time of king Solomon, but all was done under the supervision of the Jews. The Jews worshipped God in the temple when its building was complete.

After the divisions that took place after king Solomon, and in the time of the prophet Jeremiah who warned Israel of the coming disasters that were about to take place, the word of God came to him to:

2 Maccabees (2 – 4 ):
 In the writing it was mentioned that the prophet, having received an oracle, ordered that the tent and the ark should follow with him, and that he went out to the mountain where Moses had gone up and had seen the inheritance of God.
5 And Jeremiah came and found a cave, and he brought there the tent and the ark and the altar of incense, and he sealed up the entrance.
6 Some of those who followed him came up to mark the way, but could not find it.
7 when Jeremiah learned of it, he rebuked them and declared: " The place shall be unknown until God gathers his people together again and shows his mercy."
 8 Then the Lord will disclose these things, and the glory of the Lord and the cloud will appear, as they were shown in the case of Moses, and as Solomon asked that the place should be specially consecrated."

We see that God asked Jeremiah to take the tent and the ark and the golden incense altar and hide them all in a cave in the mountain where Moses had gone up and seen the inheritance of God, so that these items would not be within the spoils which were taken away from the temple by Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon in 604 BC. who took Jehoiachin the king of Judah as a slave to Babylon as in:

2 Kings (24 – 12):
 and Jehoiachin the king of Judah gave himself up to the king of Babylon, himself, and his mother, and his servants, and his princes, and his palace officials. The eighth year of his reign,
13 and carried off all the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king’s house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold in the temple of the Lord, which Solomon king of Israel had made……

The house of the Lord was burned down in 596 BC. as in:

2 Kings (25 –8):
 In the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month, which was the nineteenth year of king Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan, the captain of the bodyguard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem.
9 And he burned the house of the Lord, and the king’s house and all the houses of Jerusalem; …. (in the days of king Zedekiah).

And in: 2 Chronicles (36 – 18):
 And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king and his princes, all these he brought to Babylon.
19 And they burned the house of God, and broke down the wall of Jerusalem, and burned all its palaces with fire, and destroyed all its precious vessels.
20 He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia.

The king of Persia Cyrus the second, who occupied Babylon in 538 BC. issued a decree allowing the Jews to go back to Jerusalem in order to rebuild the temple of Jerusalem, which was rebuilt by Zerubbabel and Jeshua the son of Jozadak in 515 BC. and all the valuables of the temple were taken back from Babylon and returned to the temple. This second temple was named the temple of Zerubbabel.

The events continued till Antiochus Epiphanes defiled the sanctuary and offered pagan sacrifices to Zeus in 168 BC. and caused a great tribulation for the Jews as in:

1 Meccabees (1 – 20):
 After subduing Egypt, Antiochus returned in the one hundred and forty-third year. He went up against Israel and came to Jerusalem with a strong force.
21 He arrogantly entered the sanctuary and took the golden altar, the lamp-stand for the light, and all its utensils.
22 He took also the table for the bread of Presence, the cups for drink offerings, the bowls, the golden censers, the curtain, the crowns, and the gold decoration on the front of the temple; he stripped it all off.
23 He took the silver and the gold, and the costly vessels; he took also the hidden treasures which he found.
24 Taking them all, he departed to his own land. He committed deeds of murder, and spoke with great arrogance.
25 Israel mourned deeply in every community,
26 … 29 Two years later the king sent to the cities of Judah a chief collector of tribute, and he came to Jerusalem with a large force.
30 Deceitfully he spoke peaceable words to them, and they believed him; but he suddenly fell upon the city, dealt it a severe blow, and destroyed many people of Israel.
31 He plundered the city, burned it with fire, and tore down its houses and its surrounding walls.
32 And they took captive the women and the children, and seized the cattle.
33 … 37 On every side of the sanctuary they shed innocent blood; they even defiled the sanctuary.
38 …44 And the king sent letters by messengers to Jerusalem and the cities of Judah; he directed them to follow customs strange to the land,
45 to forbid burnt offerings and sacrifices and drink offerings in the sanctuary, to profane Sabbaths and feasts,
46 .. . 54 Now on the fifteenth day of Chislev, in the one hundred and forty-fifth year, they erected a desolating sacrilege upon the altar of the burnt offering. …..
55 … 56 The books of the Law which they found they tore to pieces and burned with fire.
57 Where the book of the covenant was found in the possession of any one, or if any one adhered to the law, the decree of the king condemned him to death.

The Maccabeus revolted and finally they won the victory, and they purified the sanctuary, and made another altar and offered sacrifices on it again.
In 63 BC. the Romans captured Jerusalem, and in 54 BC. Crasus blundered the treasury of the temple.

Herod the Great rebuilt the temple again, and enlarged it by adding new parts to it, he began in 20 BC. and finished in 26 AD. that is, for 46 years, and to this temple Jesus came and was asked by his disciples about the signs of the end of the world, as in:

Matthew (24 – 1):
 Jesus left the temple and was going away, when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple.
2 But he answered them, "You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down."
3 .. 6 And you will hear of wars and rumours of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet.
7 For nation will rise against nations, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places:
8 all this is but the beginning of the birth-pangs.
9 .. 11 And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.
12 And because wickedness is multiplied, most men’s love will grow cold.
 13 But he who endures to the end will be saved.
14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come.
15 "So when you see the desolating sacrilege spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand),
16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains;
17 let him who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house;
18 and let him who is in the field not turn back to take his mantle.
19 And alas for those who are with child and for those who give suck in those days!
20 Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath.
21 For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be.
22 And if those days had not been shortened, no human being would be saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.
23 Then if any one says to you, "Lo, here is the Christ!’ or says to you, "There he is!’ do not believe it.
24 For false Christ and false prophets will arise and show great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.
 25 Lo, I have told you beforehand.
26 So, if they say to you, "Lo, he is in the wilderness," do not go out; if they say, "Lo, he is in the inner rooms," do not believe it.
27 For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of man.
 28.. 29 "Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken;
30 then will appear the sign of the Son of man in the heaven , and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with great power and great glory;
 31 and he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heaven to the other. …..

Now and to understand what is going on, we ask, "What did the prophet Daniel say about the desolating sacrilege?"

Daniel (9 – 24):
 "Seventy weeks are decreed upon your people and upon your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint a Most Holy."
 25 Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the command to restore and to build Jerusalem, to the coming of the Messiah the prince, shall be seven weeks, then sixty-two weeks: it shall be built again, and the wall, but in troubled time.
26 And after the sixty-two weeks, the Messiah shall be cut off, but not for himself; and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war; desolations are decreed.
 27 And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week; and for half of a week he shall cause sacrifice and offering to cease; and upon the wing of temple shall come a desolation, until the decreed end, the wrath of God shall be poured out upon the desolation."

The Jews denied, crucified Christ and did not become part of his people, then in 70 AD the people of the prince who is to come, that is, the Romans lead by their commander Titus came and destroyed the city and the sanctuary, the temple was demolished but a small wall here or a corner there were left. The Romans blundered and looted the temple, they took away the golden Lamp-stand and golden table of bread, which were shown by Titus in the victory parade that took place in Rome to celebrate his victory, their picture is still to be seen carved on the stones of the victory gate of ancient Rome.