Son of man,
look with your eyes and hear with your ears and pay attention to everything I
am going to show you. (Ezekiel 40:4)Fourteen years after Jerusalem’s destruction, Ezekiel receives a vision of a rebuilt temple. It is argued this cannot be the temple to be built by the returning exiles because, for one thing, the dimensions don’t match. Because of this many have either spiritualized the vision or assigned these plans to an actual physical temple that will be constructed in some millennial age to come.
Yes, yes; very nice. The question that must be addressed,
though, is this: What would an exiled people, sitting in a foreign land most need
to hear? Would they be more impacted by hearing about some spiritualized temple
symbolizing the Christian era, or maybe a temple from the millennial future? Not that the millennium
was big on their minds. Wouldn’t a more meaningful revelation focus on a
sooner release and repatriation, and a new temple in the foreseeable future?
This is not
to say prophecy cannot address issues
far in the future, but most of the
time a prophetic message connects with the prophet’s audience. That’s just
common sense. To be sure, in this vision Christians have seen the symbolism of
Christ purifying his people (the church), but to Ezekiel it encourages his
audience that there will again be a temple in Jerusalem, and that they as a
people will, in time, be going home.
And what are you waiting for?
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