The first post of this series on the temple motif in the Bible looked at the lengthy description of Ezekiel's temple vision in chapters 40 through 48. That post pointed out that many modern Christians look forward to the literal rebuilding of that temple as part of some future millennial kingdom. However, the study we have engaged in suggests a different way of understanding Ezekiel's vision, and internal cues from the Ezekiel text provide further reasons for not looking for a future building of what Ezekiel describes.
This study has repeatedly pointed out the relationship of Old Testament temple building to God's covenant making activity with his people and ultimately with the coming of the true temple, Jesus Christ. Thus, while the focus has been on Old Testament passages and events, we have looked forward to New Testament passages and themes that point to Christ (and the church) as the fulfillment of Old Testament temple building activity. Thus, the tabernacle and Jerusalem temples provide the types; Christ is the anti-type fulfilling what the type pointed to. Since the fulfillment has come, it is difficult to understand why an end times temple envisioned by Ezekiel would be constructed when the fulfillment toward which these temples point has already come. To look for a newly built temple of biblical prophesy has the effect of ignoring the person and work of Christ.
Of course, some people dislike this form of "spiritualizing" the biblical text and call instead for a more literal one, but I plead not guilty. The problem is not that other interpreters are more literal; the problem is that they misunderstand what the true temple is. This author is not spiritualizing when he points to Christ as the true temple fulfilling the biblical types -- that is the literal rendering of the New Testament. Christ is the real temple -- the Old Testament buildings are the allegorical types. Reading it in the opposite way fails to see the pattern of promise and fulfillment between the Old Testament and New and, again, thematically diminishes the fundamental importance of the work of Christ.
This way of looking at Ezekiel's temple is confirmed by the most likely reading of Ezekiel's text itself. It should be noted that Ezekiel has a vision of a massive fully formed temple. It is a vision, and unlike the building projects for the tabernacle or Solomon's temple, there are no instructions for how it would be brought about. The measurements of the temple are so grand as to be geographically impossible. While it is true, as some argue, that God could alter the geography, that seems to miss the implications of the text. It is not that geography can be changed; geography is irrelevant to the vision. Thus, looking beyond the temple itself to the surrounding area, the division of the land described by Ezekiel is accomplished through drawing straight lines on a map. This differs markedly from the division of the land at the time of the conquest of Canaan, which required careful descriptions of squiggly lines based on the locations of mountains, rivers, and villages. All of this geographic detail is irrelevant to Ezekiel's vision, because Ezekiel's vision is typological prophecy, not literal construction.
That being the case, it is not hard to understand the symbolism involved in Ezekiel's temple. I won't take the time to go through all of these elements, but a few examples should suffice. The massive size of the temple points to an expanded role and people, a theme associated with temples going all of the way back to the Garden of Eden and that will also mark the final garden temple of Revelation 21. The purpose of massive walls in the ancient world was to keep out intruders, and in a temple context the point would be safety from defilement.
Ezekiel 47 has one of the most significant passages -- and most loved by this blogger -- of symbolic import. A small trickle of water emerges from underneath the temple, pointing to its divine origin and nature. It flows eastward, growing into a mighty river that ultimately plunges into the Dead Sea, bringing life giving power to that Sea, which becomes a body full of life -- without destroying the natural bounty associated with its minerals. If the association with the coming and life giving accomplishment of Christ are not clear from this passage alone, they become clear when they are alluded to (without directly quoting) by Jesus himself in the water passages of John 4 and John 7. To think that Ezekiel 47 awaits some literal future fulfillment removes the majestic fulfillment that has already been found in the Lord Jesus Christ.
My next post will provide some summary comments regarding this approach to reading the Old Testament, then we will move toward a consideration of some New Testament temple passages.
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