Tavita said:
If anyone can interpret Ezekiels Temple through the NT, I would be very interested to read it too.
Tavita
I shall quote from "A Case for Amillennialism; Understanding the End Times" by Kim Riddlebarger, Baker Book House ISBN 0-8010-6435-X. (pages 77-80)
Jesus declarded of himself, "One greater than the temple is here" (Matt. 12:6) and told the Samaritan woman that he could give her "living water" (John 4:10-14). Such declarations give us a major clue that
the authors of the New Testament reinterpreted the premessianic understanding of God's temple in light of the coming of Israel's Messiah. The temple occupied a principal role in the witness of Israel's prophets regarding God's future eschatological blessing for the nation. When we see that this imagery pointed forward to Jesus, we can better understand the nature and character of the millennial age.
Let us consider the Old Testament expectations regarding the temple of the Lord. Both Isaiah 2:2-4 and Micah 4:1-5 speak of God's future blessing on Israel in the last days when his people will go up to the temple on the mountain of the Lord and learn his ways. In Isaiah 56 we read of those who hold fast to God's covenant (v. 4) and love the name of the Lord and keep his Sabbaths (vv. 6-8). God will bring them to the holy mountain and the temple, which will be a house of prayer for all nations (v. 7). A similar vision was given in Isaiah 66:20-21, which says that the Israelites will bring their grain offerings to God's temple, and he will renew his priesthood. In Zechariah's prophetic vision we learn that one day Israel will once again offer sacrifices acceptable to God (14:16-19).
With all this prophetic expectation in the minds of Jews living in Palestine in the first century, it is no wonder that Jesus' declaration of God's judgment on the temple- "Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down" (Matt. 24:2)- came as a shocking offense. How dare this man say that their expectation of a glorious temple was fulfilled in him! He said, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days" (John 2:19). It was not until after Christ's resurrection that the meaning of these words became plain to his disciples. When he spoke of the destruction of the temple, he was speaking of his own body (John 2:22). This is what he meant when he said that one greater than the temple had come.
Ezekiel prophesied that the temple will be rebuilt, the priesthood will be reestablished, sacrifices will be offered, and the river of life will flow from this temple. How we interpret this prophecy will have a significant bearing on the question of a future millennial age upon the earth.
It should come as no surprise that dispensationalists believe that this prophecy will be literally fulfilled in the millennial age. According to J. Dwight Pentecost,
The glorious vision of Ezekiel reveals that it is impossible to locate its fulfillment in any past temple or system which Israel has known, but it mus await a future fulfillment after the second advent of Christ when the millennium is instituted. The sacrifical system is not a reinstituted Judaism, but the establishment of a new order that has as its purpose the remembrance of the work of Christ on which all salvation rests. The literal fulfillment of Ezekiel's prophecy will be the means of God's glorification and man's blessing in the millennium.
Traditional amillennialists criticize such images of perpetual animal sacrifices and temple worship after the second advent of Christ, saying this would undercut his saving work, especially since these aspects of Mosaic economy were fulfilled at Calvary. So Pentecost is careful to argue that Ezekiel's prophecy is not connected to a renewed Mosaic economy but to an entirely new order, one which
commemorates the saving work of Christ in the past (my question here: where is this written in scripture??).
But is this what the authors of the New Testament taught us about these prophecies? We have already seen that the New Testament taught that Christ is the true Israel and David's greater son. The Old Testament prophecies regarding Jerusalem and the mountain of the Lord are fulfilled in Christ's church. The promise of a land, as we have seen, will be fulfilled in a
new heaven and earth in the consummation. Likewise, the New Testament taught that
Christ is the new temple and that a new order of commemoration involving the ceremonies typical of the earthly temple can only commemorate the types and shadows, not the reality. This presents a serious problem for dispensationalists, who argue, in effect, that redemptive history takes a U-turn in the millennial age, as the reality in Christ now supposedly returns to the types and shadows of the Old Testament.
How, then, is the temple imagery from the Old Testament fulfilled by Jesus Christ in the New? In Exodus 40:34 we are told that the glory of the Lord filled his temple. When viewed against the backdrop of redemptive history, we see how this pointed to Pentecost, when, through the indwelling Holy Spirit, the glory of the Lord filled his true temple, the mystical body of Jesus Christ ( 1 Cor. 12:12ff.). If Christ's body is the true temple and as Paul put it, "We are the temple of the living God" (2 Cor. 6:16), what use remains for a future literal temple?
That to which the temple had pointed is now a reality through the work of the Holy Spirit. Why return to the type and shadow?
It is also clear from Hebrews 8-10 that Jesus fulfilled the priesthood typology of the Old Testament in his death, and
he put an end to the sacrificial system in his own blood once and for all. The author of Hebrews said, "We do have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, and who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by man" (Heb. 8:1-2).
If the reality to which the Old Testament sacrifices and priesthood pointed is found in this true sanctuary and tabernacle in heaven, why look for a return to the shadows in the form of an earthly temple, which pointed us to this heavenly scene?
Contrary to the view of dispensationalists, the prescribed New Testament commemoration of the ratification of the new covenant will not be found in a new order of temple worship, which includes a new temple, a new priesthood, and further animal sacrifices, supposedly in an earthly millennial kingdom. At he Last Supper Jesus told his disciples, "This is my body given for you; do this in remebranceof me..... This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you" (Luke 22:19-20). He instituted the divinely approved method of commemorating his sacrificial work, the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. In this way, the people of God feed on the Savior through faith and commemorate his dying on their behalf.
Jesus told the Samaritan woman that he could give her living water and that "whoever drinks from the water I give him will never thirst again" (John 4:14).
Jesus declared that he fulfilled the image of Ezekiel foretold in chapter 37 of his prophecy, when he spoke of water flowing from the sanctuary. If Jesus is the true temple of God, he alone gives us the "living water" which takes away the thirst of human sin and longing.
Therefore, the dispensationalists' insistence on a return in the millennial age to the types of the Old Testament sacrificial system amounts to a serious misunderstanding of the nature of redemptive history. By arguing for a new commemorative order based on Old Testament typology in the millennial age, dispensationalists see the future not as a consummation but as a return to the past. And this, of course, sadly obscures the person an work of Christ by seein the ultimate reality not in him but in the types and shadows destined to perish when the reality entered the theater of redemption.
I strongly recommend you read the whole book.....
for awhile longer.
