Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfector of our faith. The sacrifices made in the Jewish temple foreshadowed the sacrifice of Christ. That temple was destroyed, but it will be rebuilt. That's because prophecy speaks of an antichrist stopping the sacrifices. For them to be stopped, they must have resumed in a new temple in Jerusalem.
From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Irwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Irwin Lutzer is in a series on seven signs of Christ's return. Today, we're learning about sign number five: the temple rebuilt in Jerusalem. Pastor, I've been to the Temple Institute in the old city.
I've seen the priestly robes, the implements for sacrifice, and also instruments to be used for music at the new temple's dedication. And you know, Dave. When that temple is rebuilt, of course, it will not only fulfill prophecy, but it will become a part of the total picture of what God is doing in the end time. Exactly how it will happen, we don't know, but as you pointed out, it is so important for us to recognize that the Bible has prophecies which have not yet been fulfilled, but which will be fulfilled, even though we don't know how.
Well, I'm holding in my hands a book entitled "When Jesus Returns," and the importance of this book is that this is the last week we're making it available for you. This is one of the last days for a gift of any amount. It can be yours. Here's what you do: go to rtwoffer.com or call us at one eight eight eight two one eight. Ninety-three thirty-seven.
The Bible says the time is coming when men's hearts shall fail them for fear.
Well, if you're a believer, you don't need to be afraid because you and I have hope. Let's listen carefully. And then in sixty-three BC. 63. Ptolemy comes, and he's a Roman now, because you know Greece is beginning to fade in its influence.
Rome is beginning to come, and and as he marches into Jerusalem, he sees all of these Jews who are lying physically in front of the temple, saying, "We would rather be killed. Do not go in here. Do not desecrate this place." Well, when he saw them protecting the temple that way, he said to himself, "This must be because there's lots of treasures in the temple." So obviously, he went in, and according to Josephus, the historian. When he went into the holy place, and then he went into the holy of holies, he noticed that there was just a barren rock. There was no ark, because you see, that ark that was lost during the time of Solomon's temple was never rebuilt.
There was only one ark, and he was shocked at the fact that there was no representation of deity and really no treasures, at least within the holy of holies. Then what happens is a man by the name of Herod the Great comes, and he's an Idumean, and he is put there by the Romans, who basically has the responsibility for ruling the land. Because now you remember, the land is under Roman authority and Roman power. And he says, "I want to do the Jews a favor." Of course, the Jews didn't trust him at all. He says, "I want to build you a temple," and they said, "Oh yeah, we know what you're going to do.
You're going to tear this temple down, and then you won't build us another one." And so, in order to curry favor with the Jews, he said, "Look, I'll make you a deal. I will not even tear your temple down. I will build another one on top of it. And really, the building of the new temple and the tearing down of the old one will go on simultaneously. And I will train one thousand priests to work as masons, so only priests will be working on those holy areas in the temple.
And I want to build it for you." And so he does. He begins in 19 BC, 19 years before Jesus Christ was born, approximately. And what happens? This temple is absolutely gorgeous, and it is still called the Second Temple. You say, well, actually, there are three.
There was Zerubbabel's Temple, and then there's Herod's Temple. But ah, no, no, no, no, no. They don't count it that way because Herod's Temple was a quote continuation of the second. It is therefore also called the second.
So you have the second temple period. And then, of course, when you go to Israel today and you're at the Wailing Wall and you see those huge stones that weigh tons, those are the stones that Herod's men put in place to build the sanctuary area. That's the part that you see. No remains of Solomon's temple, but plenty remains, or at least some remains, I should say, of Herod's temple.
So that's the temple that's there when Jesus is there. And you remember, they even said it wasn't finished yet in Christ's time. Forty and six years was this temple in building. The disciples said, "And thou'll raise it up in three days." They had built on it that many years. You've seen replicas of it; it is gorgeous.
So now turn to Matthew chapter twenty-four. Jesus is sitting on the Mount of Olives, and he's there in the temple area. He came out from the temple and was going away. That very probably means he was going through the Kidron Valley to the Mount of Olives. When his disciples came up to point out the temple buildings to him, and he answered and said to them, "Do you not see all these things?
Truly, I say to you, not one stone here shall be left upon another, which shall not be torn down." Wow! And then he goes into the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Titus comes and he destroys Herod's temple, and they surround the city. And Jerusalem, it is said that a million people died in and around the city, and the atrocities are unbelievable. I will not even say them publicly.
Because one time I did, and someone rebuked me and said, "You should never talk about such graphic things publicly." So I won't, except to say that people were crucified on the Mount of Olives. People who had starved to death were thrown over the walls because they had no place to bury them, and women were eating their children. It was terrible, terrible, just like Jesus said later on that the tribulation was such that there hasn't been a tribulation like it.
Now I think that there's still a tribulation coming that's even going to be worse. But up until that time, nothing that horrible had happened. And would you believe? That if you go to Israel with Roy Schwartz, and he'd be a good man to go to Israel with, you'll actually see some of the stones that fell down during the destruction of the temple in seventy A.D., and you will notice on those stones, if you look carefully, some soot. That you can actually rub with your hands and know that that soot is nearly two thousand years old, and that's the fire that was set by Titus and his men when Jerusalem was so terribly destroyed, and the temple was destroyed in seventy A.D.
So that's the story. That's the story of the two temples. The question is, what about the future? Will there be a third temple? Will the Jews who have the heart of what shall we say Israel is in their heart and the temple is in their heart?
Will they ever get a chance to build a third temple?
Now nearly two thousand years have passed. Take your Bibles and turn to Second Thessalonians. Second Thessalonians and the passage is one that we read earlier in this series on prophecy. And you'll notice it says in chapter two, verse three, "Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship." So that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God.
Now, if this is the Antichrist, there has to be a temple in Jerusalem, so that he can go there and pretend that he is God. Take your Bibles also and look at Revelation chapter eleven. If the book of Revelation was written after the destruction of Jerusalem, the only sense that one could make of this is that there will be a temple, because it says, "And there was given to me a measuring rod like a staff, and someone said, 'Rise and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and those who worship in it.'" And leave out the court, which is outside the temple, and do not measure it, for it has been given to the nations, and they will tread underfoot the holy city for forty-two months, which is really three and a half years. What's going on in the text when you measure something? It means that you are evaluating it.
You are evaluating the people.
Now, the question, of course, is how could a temple possibly be built? All of us know that the obstacles to it are formidable. You have the two Muslim buildings that are on the Temple Mount. You have, of course, the whole Middle East as a powder keg ready to explode. Anyway, how could a temple be built in the Temple Area today?
First of all, I have to tell you that there is a group called the Temple Mount faithful who are absolutely convinced that it's going to happen, and they are preparing for it to happen in Jerusalem. You can go into their rooms and their workplaces, and they will take you there and they'll show you all of the utensils are being readied, just like in the Book of Leviticus in the Old Testament. They already have them, and these aren't replicas. These they say they are making to use. You have, for example, some of you have heard the discussions regarding finding the ashes of the red heifer.
That that may really sound strange to us. Finding the ashes of a red heifer. I mean, number one, who in the world would want to find the ashes, and number two, what's the significance of the red heifer anyway? You know, in the book of Numbers, God says that when you purify the priests, what you're supposed to do is to take some water and mix it with the ashes of a red heifer.
So what they're trying to do is to do either one of two things: either find the ashes, because there were only a few red heifers that were killed, and apparently the ashes were kept in a bowl because they were very sparingly used.
So you have these people looking for these ashes all over the place in the Qumran area outside Jerusalem. They're looking for ashes now. Personally, it's just a personal thing, but I do think that possibly there are other priorities that I personally could have other than looking for. These ashes, but some people are intent. The others are saying, "No, we can breed some red heifers that are so red that they do not even have one single white hair." And if we can do that, we can meet the requirements.
Either way, the bottom line is you have people that are fanatically committed to the establishment of the temple. How in the world could it possibly happen?
Well. One is, of course, that there might be some peace agreement, and people might be able to say, "Look, let's let the Jews build a temple. They don't have to tear down the Dome of the Rock." Some people think that the temple was a hundred, excuse me, three hundred feet north of the Dome of the Rock. Anyway, build the temple there, and they can build a small one there, and then you can have two houses of worship. There's the El-Aksa Mosque.
There's also the Dome of the Rock, and let's have the temple too. Let's be lovey-dovey. Let's get along nicely. What are the chances of that? Very, very slim.
Could we say maybe zero with a minus sign? At least that's the way it appears. Another possibility is there are those who say, "Oh, you know what's going to happen is there's going to be an earthquake, and if the earthquake destroys the Dome of the Rock, it'll be a whole brand new day. Then we can have discussions as to who owns it, and we won't have to tear it down. God will tear it down." Another possibility, and I suggest it only as a possibility, if it is true that there's going to be a world leader who's going to rise out of Europe, and who's going to make a covenant of protection with Israel, who is going to be able to say, "I will protect you against the foe," and he will appear to be a friend of Israel at first.
Might it be that he has so much clout and so much political power, and this is one of the reasons that the people on the earth will worship him? Is because he seems to be able to even solve the Middle East crisis by having enough muscle to allow a temple, perhaps even at least a small one, to be built in Jerusalem to give the Jews their own worship place, and then later, three and a half years later. He breaks his covenant, and he personally goes into Jerusalem and does, in effect, what Antiochus Epiphanes does, and he establishes himself as the ruler, the God, as we just read in Second Thessalonians, where he, in effect, says, "I'm taking over. I'm the one who is going to control the events of the world. I am God." And after that period of time, Jerusalem is trodden underfoot by the Gentiles for 42 months.
As it says in the book of Revelation, until the glorious appearing of Jesus Christ on the Mount of Olives, and the Mount of Olives splits in the middle, as we shall see in the final message of this series, and Jesus Christ comes to rule and to reign.
Now where will we be when that's happening?
Well, the rapture could happen any moment. We could be taken up, and then after that, there may be several years for all of the political pieces to come together. Antichrist arises, and the events that we've just talked about take place. But the bottom line is, there are many people committed to the idea that Jerusalem needs a temple.
Now it will not be there to worship the Lord Jesus Christ. You understand, because the Jewish people today, as a whole. There are many individual Jews who believe in Jesus, but as a nation and as a whole, they do not accept Christ as Messiah. They want to establish their own worship, but in establishing that, they will be fulfilling an end time prophecy.
Now let me give you a couple of words in conclusion. What lessons can we learn? First of all, a lesson regarding God and His judgment. When I think of this history, I'm reminded of the fact that here's God who chose the Jews. He loved them.
He says, "You, I have chosen above all the families of the earth." What could be more beautiful than that? But even though they were chosen of God, He said, "Because you've turned from Me, I will take away your worship place." And your land, I will be the one to see to it that your temple will be destroyed. Do you know that Jesus actually talked about Titus as being God's armies? He says, "The Lord sent forth His armies." He's predicting the destruction of Jerusalem. The Lord sent forth His armies, and He destroyed their city.
Wow! You mean just because God chose you, and just because you're special people, that doesn't mean that you are exempt from His judgment? I think of America today. We say, "Well, you know, we're America. We're founded with all of these Christian influences, and look at all the good things we've done." But we, as a nation, are also becoming idolatrous.
We are turning from God, and you never know when God might say you have crossed the line. I'm not making any predictions because I'll tell you, some nations have become very, very rotten before they've crossed the line. But I also want to remind you that God judges us not just at the end in some cataclysmic judgment, but sin is always being judged. Sin is judged by the breakup of our families. Sin is being judged by the diseases that we have.
There is always sin that is being judged immediately, even though there is also a future judgment to sin as well. And we never know. We can't take God's blessings for granted. They are given to us as a gift, and He may take them from us when He wills. That's the first lesson.
The second lesson, though, is on the faithfulness of God. The faithfulness. I mean, here is God who, throughout all these centuries, and if you studied the history of Jerusalem since the destruction of the temple, you know how many centuries there were. You know, there were centuries here when the Muslims were in charge. There were centuries here when the Turks were.
There were centuries here when this took over and that took over. And you just you're just dizzy, and you're saying, century after century after centuries, the Jews were out of their homeland, and yet God predicted. God predicted that I will give you the land as an everlasting possession. It was God who said these things, and you can see that even though God may take His time, God works nonetheless consistently with His word, and we see the faithfulness of God.
Some of you individually are going through difficulties and trials today, and you wonder how you can even face tomorrow. You say, "How do I get through Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday with all of this?" Pain.
Well, I want you to know today that God walks with us and is faithful even in the midst of our difficulties. He never leaves us. He never forsakes us. The Scripture is clear: when you walk through the fire, I will be with you. When you are in the floods, I'll be with you so that you will not drown.
The faithfulness of God. A final conclusion, and that is the jealousy of God. The jealousy. The Bible says God is a jealous God because He does not want rival worship. As a matter of fact, the reason, as we mentioned, that the temple was destroyed is because of that rival worship.
And I need to ask you today: Where is the temple of God? The Shekinah glory left after the first temple, as we mentioned a moment ago. It never came back during the time of Zerubbabel.
So far as we know, it certainly is not there today. Where is this cloud of glory? Would you be surprised if I were to tell you that it is within your own heart and within your own body? If you're a believer in Christ, the Apostle Paul says that our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and he didn't use the word that means the outer court. He meant our body is the inner shrine.
Our body is the holy of holies. He says.
Now you know how protected the holy of holies was. Priest could only go in one day a year. It's not the kind of thing in which you wanted to drag anything that was unholy, unless you were to desecrate it, like some of the evil people did. My dear friend, that's exactly who we are, though. When we're walking down the street, when we're riding the L, when we are traveling, whatever it is that we're doing, when we're working in the office with all of these pressures, it is God that lives in us.
As God has said, "I will dwell in them and walk in them, and they shall be my people," says the Lord.
So you take God with you wherever you go, and He dwells within you. I've given you that illustration, haven't I? Of an usher who stopped someone who was reading a trashy novel from coming into the church, and the the usher I'm sure was doing his job. But actually, the the building itself is not holy. Did you know that even this building is not holy?
It is the people who are holy. And if there's something that you should not bring into the church sanctuary, it is something that you should never bring into your soul, because it is within you that exists that holy of holies that God jealously wants us to guard. Finally, let's go back to the Dome of the Rock one more time. It was there that Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac. You remember.
And how you know the story of how he lifted the knife to heaven and was willing to do it, and God says, "No, Abraham, don't do it." Now I know that thou fearest me because thou hast not withheld thy only son from me. God says, and then Abraham looked, and there was a ram that was caught in the thicket, and God says, "Offer the ram in the place of Isaac." And that actually is the best message that comes out of the city of Jerusalem. The best message is that when Jesus died on the cross, just a few hundred yards, really, from where Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son, that when Jesus died there, he was the sacrifice for sinners, and it is because of him that we can be forgiven and cleansed, because God has provided for us a lamb who would take away the sins of the world, and if we believe in him. We shall be saved. If we reject Him, we shall be lost forever.
A word about the judgment of God, the faithfulness of God, but the jealousy of God of wanting us for Himself, and the wonder of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let's bow in prayer. Our Father, we pray today that You might give us a great sense of Your awesomeness and Your sovereignty. In the working of world events, and Lord, we look at Jerusalem today with all of its needs, and we know that you are focused there because your word says that you've chosen Jerusalem as the place where you would put your name. And we pray for the believers in Jerusalem.
We thank you that there are some. We pray, O God, that in that city we look forward to the time when the name of God shall be honored, and then during the millennial kingdom. When many people shall go and say, "Come, let us go unto the mountain of the Lord, unto the God of Jacob," for He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths. For the law shall go out from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. We long, Father, for that day when Christ is honored in that great city.
In Jesus' name, Amen. Amen. This is Pastor Lutzer. I want to speak to your heart for just a moment. Are you ready for the future?
Are you ready for all the chaos that is going to take place in the months and years ahead as God begins to wrap up history? Is your heart at peace because it has come to know Jesus Christ personally and you are trusting Him? If that's not true of you, I urge you to believe on Him, as the Savior of the world. This is one of the last days we're making available for you. A book entitled "When Jesus Returns." In this book, you'll discover that yes, there is such a thing as a one-world order.
There is, yes, indeed, the teaching of the Scripture about the rapture. Other kinds of issues, in it I have a chapter entitled "One Minute After You Die." For a gift of any amount, it can be yours, and because we are going to be offering it only for the next few days, I urge you to take advantage of this offer right now. It's our thank you for a gift of any amount. Here's what you do: go to rtwoffer dot com, or pick up the phone and call us at one eight eight eight. Two one eight ninety three thirty seven.
By the way, when you are at rtwoffer.com, you can also click on the Endurance Partner button.
Some of you might like to become a part of what we are doing on a regular basis. At any rate, let us make sure that our hearts are at peace, no matter the future. Here's what you can do: go to rtwoffer dot com or call us at one eight eight eight two one eight ninety three thirty seven. Remember the title of the book: When Jesus Returns. The subtitle: Living in Expectation of the End Times.
You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60614. Erwin Lutzer concluding his message: The Temple Rebuilt in Jerusalem, the fifth sign in his series Seven Signs of Christ's Return.
Next time we turn to sign number six: War in Israel. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Irwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
