That Third Temple (Part A)

Jesus is at the temple. He's teaching.

He's putting down the challengers that have come against him. He's leaving the temple. And his disciples say to him, Master, what do you think of this temple ground? I mean, look at the stones in the temple and all around the buildings. And what do you think? And he says, I'm telling you, not one stone will remain upon another. That has come to pass. So thorough was Rome's destruction of that temple.

That was the second Jewish temple. I'll get back to those things. If you have your Bibles, please turn to the Gospel according to Mark chapter 13, and we will attempt verses 14 through 23. There is a chance I won't get past verse 14.

There's just enough information there. Mark's Gospel chapter 13 verses 14 through 23. So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, let the reader understand. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.

Let him who is on the housetop not go down into the house, nor enter to take anything out of his house. Let him who is in the field not go back to get his clothes. But woe to those who are pregnant and those who are nursing babies in those days.

And pray that your flight may not be in winter. For in those days there will be tribulation such as has not been since the beginning of the creation which God created until this time, nor ever shall be. And unless the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh would be saved.

But for the elect's sake, whom he chose, he shortened the days. And then if anyone says to you, look here is the Christ, or look here he is there, do not believe it. For Christ, or false Christ, and false prophets will rise and show signs and wonders to deceive if possible even the elect.

But take heed, see I have told you all things beforehand. That third temple, that is the title of this message. It has very much to do with us right now as does all prophecy. Jesus said not a jot or tittle would pass away from God's word. The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of God stands forever.

And this is the word of God. And it is about the future. The last days of human government will be characterized by increasingly strange, unprecedented and global dark things. These will be spectacular things. It will phase into larger and larger troubles.

It will expand. Technology will dominate everything and has a very large role in the end times. Without modern technology, last days prophecies would not be literal. It would be allegory. But now technology looking at the revelation of Jesus Christ and all the events that are taking place there. So much of it makes so much more sense than ever before.

Granted modern technology offers us benefits that we enjoy but will ultimately serve to destroy mankind as we know it. Before the rapture of the church, the removal of the church just before this period of time in history, this seven year period of time in history where Satan will be given more authority than he's ever had. And he will raise up for himself the Antichrist and his false prophet and a world that will line up behind them. The church will be taken out of the way.

There will be no need for the church, number one, because the church will be outlawed. And the tribulation converts will suffer persecution, most of them. But before the church is raptured, well after, there's a checklist of things that have to take place before the coming of the Lord. And I'll go back as far as the resurrection. Before these end time events could take place, Christ had to fulfill God's plan of salvation. We Christians, we get that.

We love that. Peter the apostle had to be martyred before the rapture of the church and the end time scenario began to unfold. In fact, Peter was murdered before the revelation of Jesus Christ given to John the apostle. Paul had to preach to Caesar.

Paul also was dead at the hands of Rome before the revelation of Jesus Christ given to John on the Isle of Patmos. Israel has to be in her promised land. Well, that one's significant because when the prophecies were given, they were in the promised land, but then they were booted out of the promised land, which if you were a Bible student in those days of prophecy, you would have been scratching your head wondering when and how God's going to get his people back into that land, but you would have known that they were going to go back into that land.

We happen to live at a time where we see them there. In fact, some of you were alive when Israel became a nation again. Well, some other things that have to be checked off the list aside from those is the modern technology as I mentioned, but lining up with this 14th verse that we just read from Mark chapter 13, the third Jewish temple has to be built. It does not exist right now, and that's it. That temple is central to the timeline that God has established.

Then comes the unprecedented global tribulation leading up to the last seven years of human rule. Now in verse 13 of Mark 13, Jesus said, And you will be hated by all for My name's sake. Now He said that in answer to their question, so let's go back a little bit. Jesus is at the temple. He's teaching.

He's putting down the challengers that have come against Him. He's leaving the temple, and His disciples say to Him, Master, what do you think of this temple ground? I mean, look at the stones in the temple and all around the buildings.

Master, what do you think? And He says, I'm telling you, not one stone will remain upon another, and that has come to pass. So thorough was Rome's destruction of that temple. That was the second Jewish temple. I'll get back to those things.

So thorough that to this day I'm believing more and more that archaeologists and historians don't have a clue where that temple was and the place that they think it was is not. At this point you can gasp. Okay. He says the Christians will be hated, and that is true. And the entire Jewish race is going to be hated yet again by a world power, by one madman and all those behind him. Now some don't share these views about the church being raptured and spared the Great Tribulation period. Well, that's their view, and I'm not here to share their view. I'm here to share my view, as I believe I have. And I will say they're wrong, but they're still loved and saved. They're just not as right as we are.

But, well, they can change sides. So Christ answering their questions. Now the Bible gives us some warnings about prophecy. 1 John, he tells us, test the spirits to see if these things are from God or not. Paul writes to the Thessalonians, a young church whom he invested quite a bit of end time information with, he shared.

So I'm going to pause here a moment. If you don't have a lot of knowledge about the end times, don't be intimidated by that. There's a lot of information in Scripture. And if you want to get more familiar with it, you're going to have to go into the Old Testament books, Isaiah, particularly Daniel and Ezekiel, Joel and Zechariah. Those are the main ones. Others have information too, but those are the key books of the Old Testament. And in the New, of course, you have the Olivet Discourses of Christ in the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. And then you have Thessalonians and Corinthians, 1 Corinthians and the Revelation. Those are the key books. I hope I'm not leaving out one.

If I am, don't bother letting me know. I'll suffer the mistake myself. But anyway, to Thessalonians, Paul said, do not despise prophecies. And then he said in the next verse, test all things. And so we are into this. We want to know what's going to happen and what's going on. And God wants us to and that's why we have the prophetic word and why it is fitting together so remarkably. In fact, in preparation, the problem is there's so much information that fits.

How do you distill it? How do you take it in and share it with people so you don't lose their attention? How do you go back and say, oh, but I'm talking about this?

Well, we'll find out how we do it and hopefully we do it in a good way. Looking now at verse 14. So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, let the reader understand.

Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. This abomination of desolation is an event that is going to take place in the Jewish temple. It hasn't happened yet. It has happened, but that was a distant fulfillment.

I'll get to that in a moment. But it will be a blatant defilement and it will be an act of war in the mind of the Jew and in the mind of the one who perpetrates it, which is the Antichrist. That single character, that individual that is likely alive and well and an adult at this time somewhere in the world, but his identity is not yet revealed. It could be he is not yet here, but I believe he is because I don't think mankind can sustain the technology that is available for multiple reasons.

Again, we'll have to weave those into the consideration. But this will, this act begins the wrath of the end time period. So the end time period is a seven year period, according to Daniel, that 70th week of Daniel. And the first three and a half years are going to be relatively peaceful for the Jew. But there will be troubles for other peoples. In fact, I'm trying not to get ahead of myself because then I get lost when I come down. I can't say that again. Then my mind is going there.

So I'm going to wait on that. But this is the day of the Lord, as the prophet Joel spoke about. And it is a day of trouble and it is a day of darkness for mankind. By the time this particular prophecy comes into fulfillment that Jesus is speaking about here in verse 14, again the church, true believers, will be gone. But the apostate church will be here and it will be thriving. That is the church that doesn't believe in the Bible. That doesn't think Jesus is all that he says he is. But still they insist on calling themselves Christians in the church. It will become a traditional thing for them, but they have no identification with the God of creation and the Christ of the resurrection whatsoever.

And so they are left behind and in an irretrievable state, I fear. There has already been that one episode of this abomination in the temple already. So let's go to the temple a moment. First there's Solomon's temple. And that was destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king. Then the second temple was built under the leadership of a Jewish leader named Zerubbabel. But the Romans destroyed that temple much later through their general Titus and it has not been rebuilt.

There is now no Jewish temple. But there has to be for this verse to be fulfilled and we'll come to that. During that second temple, there was an abomination of desolation committed and it was a partial fulfillment of what Daniel said, which is typical in the Old Testament.

The prophecies are half fulfilled, but the greater and final fulfillment remains to take place. And this is the case with the temple. This man, Antiochus Epiphanes, he was a king in Syria about 168 years or so before Christ was born. And he invaded Jerusalem. He made an altar and shrine to Zeus. And there in the Jewish temple, he did this and he sacrificed a pig and other unclean animals that are unclean religiously to, ceremonially to the Jews. The Maccabees has some of this in it in 1 Maccabees, which is not, we do not consider it scripture, but it is good historical reading. And if you have time to read 1 and 2 Maccabees, I think you would benefit from it if you have gotten your scriptural work done first.

It's like kids, you can have your dessert, but you've got to eat your dinner. Well, the Caesars, of course, when they came along, they were in habit of putting their gods in the place of other people's gods. And eventually they put their own images alongside of their gods.

They wanted to be recognized as divine. But Antichrist, when he defiles the third temple, he is going to put his image there and nobody else's. And there's a lot more that's going to happen with this when he puts his image there. He will endow that image through his false prophet with life. How's that going to happen? Is it going to be genuine life?

What is going on? His sidekick again, that false prophet of his, will give that image of Antichrist power to kill and to demand everyone to receive his mark, which we know the code 6, 6, and 6. Now don't be afraid of that number. It's nothing for us to be afraid of.

It's something to identify and understand. Don't get into superstition. For us, the number 666 comes right before the number 667.

And pretty much that's it unless it's in the context of end time studies. We won't be here again to see this all acted out. But it will be considered a badge of allegiance to Antichrist. You will have to get this mark or you will be considered a traitor and a blasphemer to him. Those who refuse will be exterminated. Revelation 13, 15.

He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. This is transhumanism and it's already at work. There are scientists who are now becoming quickly, not all of them, but many of them, shaman and frankensteins.

They're going into areas that they need to stay out of but they're not going to. Transhumanism essentially is the merger of robot and human, using DNA and other parts of the human composition. It is utopia through technology, this blend. And they're starting to do it.

They're working on it. It is, you know, this artificial intelligence to what, where does it stop? There's a factor in the spiritual features of this.

When John says he was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, he is not joking. It is going to be literal. It's an intricate merging of the human to robot that is saying, we don't need God and we will make this a better place for ourselves. And anybody that gets in the way, this is so serious to us, we're willing to have collateral damage. We're willing to kill people who will get in the way because the end will justify the means.

This is how humanism rolls anyway. The Lord says, spoken by Daniel the prophet. Jesus took the prophecies of Daniel literally. He got those pseudo-scholars. Well, they're scholars. They're just not good scholars that, oh, Daniel could not have written the things he wrote.

He had to write after the events because there's too many details. He could not, well, that's what prophecy is. Prophecy is the impossible made possible because of God. It is God telling the future.

Predictive prophecy is that. And when God says, you will be judged if you have not the blood of the Lamb, that's predictive prophecy too, with a guarantee. Spoken of by Daniel, Daniel 9.27. This is what Jesus is quoting. So here's Christ. They ask him a question and just like he took down his challengers, he's lifting up his believers using scripture. Look, scripture is so important. It's so easy for a pastor to decide, let's make the church an entertainment center for people or let's make it the place of God's word and try to filter out anything that takes away from God's word. And this is what Christ did.

Here comes the word. Daniel 9, verse 27. Daniel speaking, God through him. Then he shall confirm a covenant that he there is the antichrist and he confirms a covenant because he needs it. He has a need and he's using the Jewish people to get it. He wants their money. He wants their support. And when he comes to power, he'll break the deal.

That's bottom line. He shall confirm a covenant with many for one week. But in the middle of the week, now that week is a seven-year period. Don't have time to go into how we know all this.

You can study. Nehemiah is another book that is, anyway. But in the middle of the week, he shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering and on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate even until the consummation, which is determined, is poured out on the desolate. And so there's your time stamp.

This is going to be to the consummation. This abomination that is created in God's house by this monster. He's called a beast by God, which is to say he's a monster.

He's just destructive and harmful in every sense of the word. So the near fulfillment of that, Daniel 9, 27. The Syrian king, Antiochus Epiphanes. But the final will be through this coming beast, Daniel 11, verse 31. And this is centered on Antiochus 2. And forces shall be mustered by him and they shall defile the sanctuary fortress.

Then they shall take away the daily sacrifices and place there the abomination of desolation. Again, the near fulfillment, Antiochus Epiphanes, the far, is anti-Christ. But something interesting in that, Daniel 11, 31, is he refers to the sanctuary as a fortress. When Titus came to take the temple down, that first Jewish revolt, and it was a big revolt, it went on almost five months, those Jews were fierce. They turned the entire, they took over the Antonio fortress of the Roman 10th legion, which was right next to the temple, and they fought to the death and it was brutal. They turned the temple into a fortress, just interesting enough. But half of Daniel's seven years, his week, three and a half years, will, as I mentioned, be relatively peaceful because of that covenant that anti-Christ makes.

Then he breaks that covenant and then he goes full genocide towards that end after that. So, anti-Christ will claim to be God in this third Jewish temple during the great tribulation period. Jesus could not have been referring to the second temple where they had just asked him about the stones. That's the second temple. Lord, do you see this magnificent structure, this temple?

What do you think? That's Zerubbabel's temple, Solomon's having been destroyed and then rebuilt by Zerubbabel. This is the temple that Jesus is making this statement about. And when Rome destroys it, that's only a partial. Second Thessalonians chapter 2, the temple's still standing when Paul writes this.

Let no one deceive you by any means, for that day will not come unless the falling away comes first. That is a great apostasy and that's the church that that falling away is coming to. And the man of sin is revealed, that's anti-Christ, the son of hell or the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped because he's going to want to worship because he is Satan's, he is what Jesus Christ is to the father, anti-Christ is to Satan, his special creation.

And I'm saying that of course in a negative and sarcastic way about what's coming. He continues, Paul does, so that he sits as God in the temple of God showing himself that he is God. He'll tolerate no other.

He's going to believe this nonsense too. You see, Satan wanted to be counted equal with God. That's where it all went south. And that is going to be like father, like son.

You are like your father, the devil in full bloom. With the return of the Jews to occupy and rule the promised land today, these things are in motion. When Christ said it, he presupposed the destruction of this. He told us, he said, this temple is going away. Paul comes along and says with the knowledge it's going away, but there's going to still be a temple for him to come and defile just like the Lord said.

And from 70 AD to 1948, Israel had no promised land and still no temple. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the book of Mark. Cross Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. To learn more information about this ministry, visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. Once you're there, you'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. You can search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. That's all we have time for today, but we hope you'll join us next time as Pastor Rick continues to teach through the book of Mark, right here on Cross Reference Radio.