I fully agree the temple was destroyed in 70AD, that had absolutely no bearing regarding any part in fulfillment of Matthew 24
I believe a third temple will be built,, with animal sacrifice renewed,, a complete abomination to the Cross of Calvary
Isaiah 66:1-4 clearly shows a temple built as a house unto the Lord, and renewed animal sacrifice in abomination
The word "Delusion" is used two times in the KJV, once in 2 Thessalonians 2:11 and here in Isaiah 66:4 both associated to a "Temple/House" of God:
There is no 3rd temple mention in Scripture. That is a pretrib invention you have bought into.
One cannot help but see the drastic move away from the physical to the spiritual, from the shadow to the substance, from the imperfect to the true, from the temporal to the eternal, from the earthly to the heavenly under the new covenant. The physical temple is replaced with a spiritual temple, multiple animal sin offerings are replaced by one final sacrifice for sin. Christ and all the NT writers taught the superseding of the old abolished system with the new eternal system. Basically, we move from the type to the anti-type, from the anticipated to the realized, from the inadequate to the true.
After the tearing of the veil, the earthly temple loses its significance and relevance. It becomes a symbol of rebellion and the focus of God’s distain.
Daniel 9:26 says:
“the people of the prince that shall come (speaking of the Roman soldiers)
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.”
In Daniel 9:27 after predicting that the old covenant would be removed, the angel predicted that God would destroy the temple (the centre-point of the sacrifices) forever. We learn:
“for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.”
The consummation is the one final future Coming of Christ.
We see the fulfilment of this in Christ’s words in Matthew 23:37-39:
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord (the consummation, as Daniel predicted).”
Christ continues (to remove any ambiguity as to what He was referring to) in Matthew 24:1-2,
“And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”
This couldn’t be clearer.
What was going to replace the old physical Jewish building in Jerusalem was not something that was restricted to one race but a global spiritual temple that embraced all nations equally.
In John 4:19-24 we see Christ addressing this subject, in response to a statement made by the woman at the well. The woman said to Christ,
“Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.”
Christ responded,
“Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”
What Christ was teaching here was that a new economy was being introduced through His earthly ministry that would forever replace the old. No longer would the worship of the living God be restricted to a natural geographical land-mass or be centered upon a physical temporal brick building built with hands in earthly Jerusalem, rather, it would now be concentrated in a spiritual eternal temple (the redeemed Church) which is spiritual located within the heavenly New Jerusalem. That temple would not be restricted to one physical nation but would be situated throughout all the nations of the world.
Jerusalem would no longer be the center of divine worship on this earth. Geographical locality becomes irrelevant in worshipping God. One location would be as good as another to worship God. In saying this, Jesus was internationalizing divine worship and the community of Christ.
After Calvary, the temple becomes synonymous throughout the New Testament with (1) Christ, (2) the body of Christ, and (3) the temple in heaven.
Since Christ, the worship of God was no longer restricted to a physical earthly building but rather relocated to an invisible spiritual temple called the Church. The Old Testament tabernacle, as important and powerful as it was, became a deficient temporal type of the more perfect spiritual fulfilment in Christ and in His Church. This teaching about the spiritual manifestation of the temple was clearly an anathema to the unbelieving Jew and was regarded as complete heresy.
The house referred to here is a spiritual house and relates to the Lord Jesus Christ and the building of His spiritual body – the Church. Any Jew interpreting this Old Testament text literally would have mistakenly assumed that the hope for the nations in the last days would arise in the form of the physical temporal earthly temple in Jerusalem rather than a new spiritual temple.
Jesus said to the Jews in John 2:18-21,
“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
The Jews at the time of Christ, being ignorant and earthly minded, interpreted this statement to mean: He was claiming to destroy and rebuild the physical Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. The reading records,
“Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days?”
However, the next verse exposed their blindness, saying,
“But he spake of the temple of his body” (v 21).
Christ spiritualises the temple here. None could surely dispute this. There were 2 different mind-sets in this picture. Christ’s heavenly mind-set presenting the introduction of the new covenant in the form of Himself and the Jews carnal earthly mind-set hankering towards an old inadequate system.
Christ also declared during His ministry, whilst standing in the actual temple,
“I say unto you, That in this place is one greater than the temple” (Matthew 12:6). However, the Jews in the main had No comprehension of that glorious statement. To this spiritual Temple would the nations finally find mercy, thus, fulfilling perfectly what the old temple couldn’t. And thus, through Himself (the living Temple), fulfilling Isaiah 2:2 that
“all nations shall flow unto it.”
Granted, the temple was central to the Jewish faith. For anyone to intimate in any way that it would be destroyed was viewed as nothing short of blasphemy. However, Christ was redirecting their eyes from the old temporal building – which was an imperfect shadow and type of Himself – and pointing them towards the new all-sufficient eternal temple – in the form of His person. Through His impending death, the temporal temple and its ceremonies would be done away with.
This was a major offence to the naturalistic earthly mind-set of the religious Jews. This was teaching they tried to use as a weapon to try and discredit Christ in Mark 14:58, saying,
“We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands.”
The new economy brought a seismic change in the form, location and focus of divine worship. It didn’t just bring an abolition of the old temple and its redundant sacrifices and priests, it brought a renunciation of them. Time after time the concept of the continuation of a physical temple is renounced; the reason being, it was rendered useless by the introduction of the new covenant.
