Will a new temple be built in Jerusalem?

Written by: Houston Beckworth

The war in Israel and Palestine has garnered the attention of many Christian Zionists and Dispensationalists here in the United States. They believe that the Biblical promises of Israel’s unification, given during the Babylonian exile, should be interpreted literally. 

They mainly apply this interpretation to the vision in Ezekiel 40-48, where Ezekiel follows an angel as he measures a temple and the surrounding land. However, no temple has been found that matched Ezekiel’s specifications, so they argue that it was a prophecy of an end-time temple.

Is this theory correct? Some have suggested that this temple was instead merely an idealized building plan for the post-exilic community. However, the prophecy states that God’s glory would return to the temple (Ezekiel 43:1-7). At the dedication of the second temple (Ezra 6:16-18), one significant feature was missing: the glory of the Lord. 

In every other dedication of the tabernacle or temple, the vision starts with God’s glory manifesting itself in a cloud-like form after the temple is fully furnished (Exodus 40:35; 1 Kings 8; 2 Chronicles 5:14; 7:1). In Zechariah, which was written after the second temple was rebuilt, prophecies continue to anticipate a future where God and his glory would return to the temple — as if the second temple was not filled by God’s presence (see. Zechariah 6:12-15). As such, the second temple does not seem to fulfill Ezekiel’s prophecy. 

If God is going to fulfill His promise to dwell with his people in His temple, does this mean Ezekiel’s temple needs to be rebuilt now, 2,500 years later? This doesn’t seem correct either. The description of the temple is given with disproportionate, almost figurative numbers. 

For example, the temple complex is 500 reeds long (Ezekiel 42:20), a little over a mile long. However, walled Jerusalem was only about a quarter-mile in length, and the temple complex was approximately one-third of that. And when Ezekiel measures the river of life, the trickle flowing from the temple turns into a mile-wide, uncrossable river (Ezekiel 47:1-12). With these and many more abnormal features, it is natural to suspect, then, that the vision should be interpreted in a non-structural manner. 

However, Ezekiel never instructs the Israelites to build the temple. Instead, Ezekiel 43:10-12 says that the act of recalling the temple would motivate God’s people to observe the law once again. God again stresses this idea in Ezekiel 44:5 when he commands the prophet to “set on your heart” the temple’s statutes and laws. 

Interestingly, this heartfelt focus on the law is referenced in other passages. Most notably, Ezekiel 11:19-20 and 36:27 promise that the people will come into accord with the law as God placed his Spirit within the people’s hearts. Should it be any surprise, then, that Ezekiel 37:26 promises that God himself will set the sanctuary in the people’s midst, just as the Spirit is set in each person?

Ezekiel 11:16 says, “I have been a little sanctuary for them among the lands where they have gone.” Right before this, God had departed from his sanctuary because of Israel’s rebellious nature (Ezekiel 8-10). But now it seems that God serves his remnant as a “little sanctuary” by merely dwelling with them. To portray this, Ezekiel 11 ends with God’s presence moving from the temple to hover over the city’s mountain (Ezekiel 11:23), and this context is picked up in Ezekiel 40-48, again on a mountain. 

Several scholars suggest that the final temple in the book of Ezekiel portrays God dwelling with his people without a physical sanctuary, which would fit perfectly with God’s spirit dwelling within his people. This is further suggested by Ezekiel 37:27, which promises the future temple while saying that “my dwelling place shall be over them,” just like his presence had formerly dwelt over the mountain.

The writers of the New Testament — the apostle Paul in particular — believed this very thing (1 Corinthians 3:16-17; 6:19-20; 2 Corinthians 6:16; Ephesians 2:21). In 1 Corinthians 3:16-17, Paul combines the themes of the church being the temple with God’s indwelling spirit and the holiness of the temple. The only other place in the Bible where these themes are found together is in Ezekiel.

Right before God promised a future temple in Ezekiel 37:26, he further points to fulfillment in the church era: “I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them.” This is the new covenant, also mentioned in Jeremiah 31:31, which is explicitly seen as fulfilled through Christ’s work (Hebrews 8:6-13).

I see many more parallels: (1) Ezekiel’s measurement is alluded to in Revelation 11:1-2, where John measures the temple using the same language, and this is placed before the 1,260 days, which is well-understood as part of the church era; (2) Ezekiel’s messianic shepherd-prince is the source of all animal offerings (Ezekiel 45:17), just as Jesus is identified as the replacement for sacrifice (Hebrews 10:10-14); (3) Ezekiel introduces a new, special form of the priesthood (Ezekiel 44:15-27), similar to how 2 Peter 2:9 introduces the revolutionary concept of all Christians being a royal priesthood.

While Ezekiel certainly includes many features that scholars are still investigating, we can find allusions from Ezekiel itself and the New Testament that Ezekiel’s temple was fulfilled through the temple of the new covenant formed in part by the spirit-filled believers. Regardless of whether dispensationalists build a temple in Jerusalem in the future, it appears that it will not be able to fulfill Ezekiel’s vision since Christ has already initiated its fulfillment.