The Temple of God

In 1984, I was sitting on a Sunday morning with Mr. Armstrong. We just watched the telecast.

And the doorbell rang at his home. And I went to answer it. And there were three men at the door. They had dark suits on, white shirts and curls in their head. And I very soon astutely figured out that they were Orthodox Jews. Didn't take very much to recognize that. And they asked if they could see Mr.

Armstrong. They were from Jerusalem. And I went in and told Mr. Armstrong they were there and asked him if he wanted to see them. And he said, well, sure. So we invited them in. And they wanted to talk to him because they knew that he had some projects in Jerusalem that he taught out of the Bible. And they thought he would help them because they wanted to build a temple.

And they talked to him and they told him that they already had the animals that were being bred. They had already had the shofars and the instruments of bronze and gold and all the things that were described in Exodus and the Pentateuch that were in the temple service. And that they were ready to go. They just needed a temple. Now, he didn't help them with a temple because that really wasn't what we did, although we did have a lot of projects in Jerusalem. We had the dig there and they knew all about that.

Mr. Armstrong had actually been asked by Professor Mazar of the university to help to dig in Jerusalem. Mr. Armstrong knew that Christ was going to return to David's throne and so he didn't think it was wrong to do it. So he said, okay, and a lot of us were recipients of that. I got to go in 1973. In fact, I went there with Randy Stiver.

We dug and found broken relics. And Randy actually found his wife there. Not that she was a broken relic, but she was there. So you could find all sorts of things with that dig. But when you think about the temple and what it means, and I've titled this the Temple of God, because the temple has always been something that fascinated people.

Certainly the Jews have longed for a temple, wanted to build one. And there have been a lot of grand and glorious buildings over the years. Of course, God, when he brought Israel out of Egypt, he actually had the tent that they carried around. They had the ark and the various things that God had inspired them to make.

But it was moved. Every time Israel moved, they moved, and it moved with them. And yet God wanted a more permanent thing. If you turn to 1 Chronicles 22, we read about David. And of course, King David was a man after God's own heart. He made some major mistakes, but he always turned back to God and repented. And he wanted to build a temple, a house for God, a permanent place for it. And of course, all they had was that temporary thing that had gone before. And then inside the temple was the Ark of the Covenant, and Aaron's rod that budded, and books of the law, etc.

All those things housed in the tent. But David, he wanted to build a house. And we read in 1 Chronicles 22, verse 5, David said, Solomon, my son, is young and tender, and the house to be built for the Lord is to be highly magnificent, for a name and for beauty to all the lands. It was built to glorify God, and it was to be beautiful, nothing ugly about it. And David said, I'll prepare for it. And he prepared abundantly before his death.

Verse 6, he called Solomon his son and commanded him to build a house for the eternal, the God of Israel. And David said to Solomon, my son, as for me, it was in my mind to build this house to the name of the Lord my God. But the word of the Lord came to me saying, You have shed much blood and have made great wars. You shall not build a house to my name because you have shed so much blood on the earth in my sight.

Of course, God was with him in those wars, but yet bloodshed and people and death isn't what God wanted. In verse 9, God told him, He said, Behold, a son shall be born to you, who shall be a man of rest. And I will give him rest from all his enemies, all around.

For his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quietness to Israel in his days. It's interesting to think of building. You know, America had a great run building because we had peace in this country pretty much. You know, it's hard to build in warfare. You know, look at Europe, look at Africa and different places where there have been wars over and over.

It's really hard to build. You need peace to build something. And God was going to give peace for Solomon. Verse 10, He shall build a house for my name, and he shall be my son, and I will be his father, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel forever. God has always wanted a relationship. He wants us to be his children. He wants to be our father. And David goes on and says, My son, may the Lord be with you and bless you and build the house of the Lord your God as he has said of you.

Only may the Lord give you wisdom and understanding and direct you concerning Israel so that you may keep the law of the Lord your God. Give me an admonition of what you need to do. Then you shall prosper. And if you take heed to fulfill the statutes and judgments which the Lord charged Moses concerning Israel, be strong and of good courage.

Do not fear nor be dismayed. The same thing we tell our children when they face problems of school, college, etc. We want the same thing for them. And behold, in my trouble I have prepared for the house of the Lord a hundred thousand talents of gold. This is from the Treasury. A hundred thousand talents of talents, three hundred shakles. A shackle is about six or seven pounds. So really what we have here is about, oh, in the neighborhood of three hundred and fifty tons of gold. That's a lot of gold.

A lot of gold. David laid out for that. And that's from the Treasury. Ten times that. It says a million talents of silver. So we're looking at about a bunch in that. What did we work today? The price? A lot. And bronze and iron without weight. Now, it's hard enough for me just to measure the gold and the silver, let alone the bronze and the iron. For it is in abundance.

He was collecting things from all over the earth. I believe the ships of Tarsus were mining. They have mines up in Minnesota that were mined not by the Indians, not by us. But somebody mined a lot of copper out of those mines. I think a lot of that came. They dug up smelting furnaces in Inge and the engineers looked up those, the channeling, the way they channeled the wind through that.

And they figured out that mathematically that they could reach the temperatures of our blast furnaces today. And I think that was part of the wisdom God gave Solomon, not only just in wisdom, but in construction and building and all the things that he did for him during that time. And David says, and you can add to this, which he did. In verse 15, he says, And there are many workmen with you, cutters of wood and of stone and timber and all kinds of skillful men, for every kind of work.

So he wanted to have the people ready. I mean, his heart was there. He wanted to build this. In his mind's eye, he'd already built it, I'm sure. But he couldn't do it because God wouldn't let him. And David did all that he could. It was possible for him to do. Keep your place there if you want to go to 1 Chronicles 29.

I'm going to go to 1 Chronicles 23 in a minute. But in 1 Chronicles 29, verses 3 and 4, it also says what David did personally for the temple. So, Because I have set my affection to the house of my God, I have of my own proper goods of gold and silver. I've given to the house of God over and above what I prepared for the holy house.

Three thousand talents of gold, of the gold of Ophir, seven thousand talents of refined silver, to overlay the walls of the house. So we're talking about roughly ten tons of gold and about twenty-five tons of silver that David personally gave for the temple. I mean, this is something special. Hard to even imagine that kind of wealth and what was done and why people came to see the temple when Solomon built it. Back to 1 Chronicles 23. You kept your finger there. You'll get back to it. David was old and full of days.

He made his son Solomon king over Israel. And he gathered the rulers of Israel and the priests and the Levites. And the Levites were numbered from the age of thirty. So they were mature, thirty years and upward. The number was thirty-eight thousand. Of these, twenty-four thousand were set to work for the house of the Lord, six thousand officers and judges, four thousand gatekeepers, four thousand praised the Lord with the instruments which David made for praising. The noise when they built was going to be that of praise of God. Not the noise you'd have when you build a house next door. And I've had a couple built next door and you hear all the hammering and things.

Interesting. There would be no noise in there. We go to 1 Kings 6. Of course, this temple, the story goes back and forth between Kings and Chronicles. I'd like to go to 1 Kings 6 and verse 1. Because it tells when they started building the temple, which helps you understand when the Exodus was as well.

Verse 1 of 1 Kings 6, it says, it happened in the four hundredth and eightieth year after the sons of Israel had come out of the land of Egypt. So four hundred eighty years after the Exodus. In the fourth year Solomon's reign over Israel, the month of Ziph, the second month, he began to build the house of the Lord. He starts describing this. Let's go down to verse 6. It says, the lowest story was five cubics broad and the middle was six cubics broad.

The third was seven cubics and the cubic, we try to guess exactly what that is, 18 to 24 inches, depending on the long cubic, the formal cubit or Egyptian cubit. There's so many cubits out there that we don't really know exactly what it was. But it was large. And it says, for around the house, but he made narrow ledges for the house around it so as not to lay hold of the walls of the house.

In other words, don't touch what's holy. That section of the building was going to be holy.

And if you remember back in Mount Sinai, don't let your animals, don't go up on the hills around it, the foot of the mountain, because it's holy. There's holy ground, and so Solomon, they had that so that they could walk around the temple and have some room without touching it. Verse 7, when it was being built, the house was built of stone made ready beforehand, and there was not heard in the house a hammer or an axe or any iron tool while it was being built. It was carved and done off-site. All the noise was even away from the location where God was going to place His name, put His temple to be assembled on site. And he goes on to describe some of the things. Verse 11, the word of the Lord came to Solomon, saying, verse 12, as to this house which you're building, if you walk in my statutes and do my judgments and keep all my commandments to walk in them, then I'll perform my work with you, which I spoke to David, your father. And I will live among the sons of Israel and will not forsake my people Israel. Again, God wants to be with His people.

That's what it was about. And Solomon built the house and finished it. Verse 15, he built the walls outside with boards of cedar. Boards that last because of the cedar oil in them. And the floor of the house and the walls and the ceiling, he covered them on the inside with wood and covered the floor of the house with planks of fur. These were a little inferior to some of the later things, but the foundation, the base, was there. And he lays out how big it's going to be. In verse 18, it says, the cedar of the house inside was carved with gourds and open flowers.

All was cedar. There was no stone seen. There's nothing that wasn't precious going to be seen even. He prepared the Holy of Holies on the inside, set the Ark of the Covenant there. And the Holy of Holies, verse 20, in the front part was 20 cubits in length and 20 cubits in breadth, 20 cubits in height. And he overlaid it with pure gold and covered the altar of cedar.

And Solomon overlaid the house inside with pure gold, chains of gold across the Holy of Holies, overlaid it with gold. He overlaid the whole house with gold until he had finished the house.

Also the altar that belonged to the Holy of Holies, he overlaid with gold.

Pure metal. No tarnishing. Always shiny. And inside the Holy of Holies, he made two carobs of olive wood, 10 cubits high. And one wing, five cubits, the other wing stretched, just like his throne above where the carob is set. God sits in the middle. And they're all carved out of olive wood. I brought an olive wood vase. I have a bunch of olive wood carvings at home. Mr. Mookles said that was the ebony carvings. I just have olive wood carvings. I think olive was harder than ebony, though. I think my olive wood could take on his ebony. But his pieces are bigger than mine, though. But it's interesting. If you've ever seen olive wood, a heart it is. And an olive wood is upper you can come and play with if you want. It's one of the hardest woods in the world. I can't imagine trying to carve this wood and do the things that he did in the house of God. And of course, God gave special help to the craftsman there. His spirit came down on him so they could do these things. But it is such a hard wood to do. But he carved two caravings of olive wood. And now these are big, big caravings with their wings stretching across, you know, 15 feet or so across the wingspan on that. And he said in verse 28, he overlaid the caravings with gold.

And he carved all the walls of the house around with carved figures of caravings and palm trees and flowers inside and out. The floor of the house was overlaid with gold inside and out.

It's just, again, an amazing building for God. The temple was supposed to be beautiful.

He covered it all with gold. Verse 38, the 11th year and the month of bowl, which is the eighth month, the house was finished as to all its parts and as to all its plans. Seven years in building it. Seven years to put this together, all crafted off-site, fitted on-site, put together there.

It was so fabulous that the kings of the earth wanted to come see Jerusalem. You know, we hear about Solomon and his wisdom and things, but it was more than just the wisdom Solomon had. We always talk about dividing the baby and the things, but God gave him wisdom and so many different things in building and the things he did and so special. Even the queen of Sheba, you read the story there about her coming down because she was told how wonderful this is. And people described it, and I've seen people describe things as beautiful, and I've gone to them, and they weren't so great. But for her, when she went down there, it was just the opposite. She says, wow! So, you know, Second Chronicles 9 is a story. You can write it down. You can read it later. I'm not going to read the whole thing there. But she sat there and said, they said it was the greatest thing on earth, and he said it's much more than what I was told. It was incredibly more beautiful than what it was.

And what did she do? She brought 120 talents of gold. She brought about a half ton of gold to give to Solomon and incense and jewels and spices and things that she brought with them. This was a fabulous building. And the whole world came to Jerusalem to see not just the temple, but all the technology and all the things that God had given to Solomon and the wisdom. But they wanted a temple.

But the temple didn't last. Israel didn't obey God. They didn't keep the statutes and judgments very much. They offered sacrifices to Baal, all sorts of different things that they did.

And it was sacked a number of times. But yet it was still there. And, of course, all the prophecies relating to the temple was about the Messiah's return. In Isaiah 44, verse 28, we have the famous prophecy there about Cyrus, which is again, this prophecy was given about 7RBC before the temple was destroyed. The temple was destroyed 100 years later. And Isaiah was written to Israel and Judah. He was at the time Hezekiah. And it says in verse 28, it says that God says of Cyrus, He's my shepherd, shall perform all my pleasure, even saying to Jerusalem, you shall be built, and to the temple your foundation shall be laid. Now, when Isaiah said that and wrote that down 100 years before Judah was even destroyed, they had a temple.

They probably questioned, why did Isaiah say this? Because the temple is already built. It's there.

But yet we read in 2 Kings 20 about Hezekiah when he was, you know, gonna be sick and God said, you're gonna die, get your house in order. And then God gave him extra 15 years.

And he said, what'd you show him? The Babylonians came to visit. He said, I showed him everything.

He said, well, then everything's gonna go to the Babylonians. And it did. They conquered Israel because of the rebellion and they burnt down the temple. They burnt down Jerusalem.

And now they had a problem. The Jews were devastated because the Messiah has to return to the temple. And we don't have a temple. How can the Messiah come back? And they understood the prophecies. They knew the Messiah was gonna come and it wasn't that far away. You know, around that they knew they didn't know the exact dates, but they knew that the Messiah is gonna come in a few hundred years from the prophecies. And yet they didn't have a temple at this time.

And of course, indeed, we find out that house was prophesied by Isaiah. And I'm sure when they went into captivity, that temple burnt down. Isaiah's prophecy meant a little bit more to them. But yet they were in Babylon with Nebuchadnezzar. Who's Osiris? No, he's gonna come from Persia, a whole other nation. And sure enough, we read in Ezra 6. If you turn to Ezra 6, it talks about the temple being built there, Darius. Verse 1, Darius the king made a decree. The search was made in the house of the rolls, for the treasures were laid up in Babylon. And there was found at Acomintha in the place that is in the province of the Medes, a roll, and there was a record, thus written. In the first year of Cyrus the king, the same Cyrus the king, made a decree concerning the house of the God of Jerusalem. Let the house be built, the places where they offered sacrifices, let the foundations of God of Jerusalem be strongly laid, the height of the three-course cubics and the breath three-course cubics, the same size it was supposed to be, and the rows of stones, great stones, etc. Just as it was prophesied by Isaiah. Now, I could prophesy something that this building could be destroyed, and the host wife from Mexico is going to come up here and rebuild it in 200 years. I'd be dead by then. You wouldn't know if it was right or not. We'd all be dead. But, I mean, this is incredible that the prophecies on what happened, and they're going to get a temple. It's coming back. And they did. They rebuilt the temple. Of course, they had a lot of problems. They built things for themselves first, and God said, hey, take care of me.

You know, yeah, I'll take care of you. You take care of me. And they didn't have the faith, and finally Zachariah's drawable and different ones got them going. But, Haggai chapter 2, let's look at the prophecy about the second temple. When he talks about that, they're rebuilding it. And it didn't have the manpower. It didn't have all the gold and silver. It didn't have as much money.

Haggai 2 verse 3, it says, who is left among you that saw the house in her first glory?

And how do you see it now? Is it not in your eyes, this comparison, that's nothing?

Yeah, it was. It wasn't as nice. Be strong, Zerbil, says the Lord. Be strong, Joshua, son of Josidec, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land, says the Lord, and work.

For I am with you, says the Lord of Hosts. According to the word I covenant with you when you came out of Egypt, so my spirit remains among you. Fear not. Thus says the Lord, yet once a little while I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea, and the dry land, and shake the nations, and the desire of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of Hosts. The silver's mine, the gold is mine. Verse 9, the glory of this latter house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of Hosts. And in this place will I give peace, says the Lord of Hosts. They must have been thinking, are you kidding? This isn't near as nice as Solomon's Temple. How is this going to happen? How's it going to be? Look at this house!

It didn't seem to make sense. Oftentimes, a lot of things that God says prophetically, we look at it humanly, and we don't see how it's going to happen.

It's interesting that the men tried to make return and rebuilding this temple, what Isaiah prophesied. When Isaiah, all the prophets, they talked about returning Jerusalem, the temple, the things, and they read, and they tried to apply that to the temple. Isaiah 56, 7, when he said, even then will I bring them to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer.

They're burnt offerings, they're sacrifices shall be accepted on my altar. My house shall be called the house of prayer for all people. Again, all these prophecies into the house of the Eternal, and they were thinking the temple. We have to have this temple because the Messiah returns to this temple. The second temple fell into disrepair and into ruin many, many times. Josephus quotes an older historian, talks about Antiochus Epiphanes, who desecrated the temple. He came in and offered swine on the altar, even. And all these things that happened, of course the Maccabees, their famous Jewish family, came at this time and they had some success in restoring the temple, driving out some of the paganism. Because to them it seemed there could be no hope without a temple.

Without a temple, the Messiah can't come back, and that's what the prophecies say.

In 63 BC, the general consul of Rome, Pompey, took the Jews, tore down a wall of the temple when he attacked them, and they thought they was going to destroy the temple. He inspected it and looked at it, but he didn't take anything. This had to be, wow, wow, he didn't destroy it. We still got our temple. The Messiah can still come. They know it's coming close. 63 BC is pretty close to when the Messiah is supposed to become. General Crassus was fighting at Parthia, and he needed money for his war. So he wanted to strip the temple, and the high priest then negotiated with him and said, please, here, just take this gold beam in the temple and we'll give you that, but just leave everything alone. And he agreed to it. They lied to him and stripped it all anyway. He took it for the war. So there was virtually no gold and silver left in the temple coming up to 40-50 BC.

Yet the Messiah has to come to this temple. It's supposed to be beautiful and special.

There was little or no treasury, and they knew the Messiah would be coming, and they had to be distraught when they saw their temple treated in this way. And now came the setting of the temple about the time that Christ, Jesus as a man, would come to it. The temple then was not a third building, but a reconstruction of the second temple known as Herod's Temple. Herod wanted to win the people over, so he decided to restore the temple for them. Josephus says he was actually going to tear the temple down and rebuild it, and the Jews were afraid of him. I mean, the guy lied about everything. He killed his own children. He did all sorts of crazy things, and so they were afraid he was going to tear it down altogether. They were really upset, but it was in Herod's best interest actually to build it, so he did. He wanted to be a great builder. And so beginning about 20 BC, he hired 10,000 skilled workmen, 1,000 priestess masons, and 1,000 wagons with oxen to haul the stones to rebuild the temple. The stones were very large. Josephus says some of the stones were 40 cubits long, 6 cubits high, and 3 meters, or about 60 feet by 12 feet by 9 feet.

Weighed a lot of tons. And not every stone was the same size. The largest stone that they found complete in the excavations was a lot smaller than that. It was only 12 meters by 3 meters by 4 meters, which is 36 feet by 9 feet by 12 feet, and it weighed 400 tons. That's the only one they found. They were bigger ones, obviously, than that. In building it, the blocks used no mortar. Yet Josephus says you couldn't slide a paper between the blocks. It was that tightly together. The outer wall, the blocks were thick. Each block bore Herod's trademark, and if anybody's got a juice in the dig, you see these giant stones they have an etching he put all the way around them, and when they cut them up, you'd see some stones that have an etching on part of it. They came off of one of those stones that was much bigger. You can still see those. You can see a lot of them in Gerascha today in Jordan, because a lot of those stones were hauled off there to build the city at that time.

The etchings did show that the individual blocks did not have plastered surfaces. The foundation was 20 meters, or 60 feet, below the ground. Josephus says the highest point of the wall was about 450 feet tall, or 150 meters. Iron clamps were put on the inside to hold it.

As they filled it, it was broadened by high. Basically, they were building a giant retaining wall to flatten off the Temple Mount area so they could build. The Temple had four courts, each ascending as you went up toward the Holy of Holies, where only the high priest and the royal priestly dress could go in at that set time. The Temple proper, it says, was completed in one and a half years, yet it was 46 years in the building. Josephus said this when talking about building the Temple proper. He said it did not rain during the day, but only at night so the work could be completed. He said the whole time it didn't rain. Now, the Jews, the priests, probably thought, wow, this is incredible because the Messiah is coming and it didn't rain. There had to be a reason for this. It would give hope to those workers to think, wow, something's about to happen.

The Romantacitus describes the Temple as possessing great riches. Of course, they only had one God, and the Romans and the other people had hundreds of gods. You had to spread your tithe out.

So the Temple there only had one people such as you gave it to, which was nice.

The special, it was a beautiful building, especially made. And the Jews probably thought, wow, we got our Temple back. Christ can come. The Messiah is going to rain and put down the Romans and put us up. How did Jesus look at the Temple? He looked at it with zeal and with respect.

It represented God, His Father's house. It was special to Him as well.

Jesus is a boy. When separated from His parents in Luke 2, we read that where was He? In the Temple.

And His parents said, why? He said, I was about my Father's business.

When tempted, Satan took Christ to the Temple. Matthew 4. We read about that. When it says, when He's being tested, verse 5, the devil took Him into the holy city and set Him on the pinnacle of the Temple. He saved that pinnacle looking down into the valley. It was really steep. From the Mount of Olives, they said, when the sun rose, the white and the calcium shined so bright, it practically blinds you. Satan took Christ up there. And he said, if you be the Son of God, cast yourself down, for it is written, he shall give angels charge concerning you, and in their hands shall they bear you up, lest at any time you dash your foot against a stone.

I mean, obviously God's here at the Temple. He's not going to let you fall. Go ahead and do this.

Of course, Jesus answered, it's written, you shall not tempt the Lord your God. And you're not supposed to tempt God in that way.

John 2, like all four Gospels, record the money changers in the Temple and how they did it.

Jesus goes in there and meets the animals. He sees them just doing merchandise, treating it like a strip mall. What do they say in John 2, 17? It's interesting, when He did this, He says, the disciples remember that it was written, the zeal of thine house has eaten me up.

I love when they go through and they're writing these, that they remembered a lot of things that they didn't understand at the time. You know, generally you go in and try to make a big scene on things. Yet here Christ made a scene because it was zeal of His Father's house.

Luke 19, the same thing. Luke writes down that the house is a house of prayer. You've made it a den of thieves. He didn't teach that. He taught daily in the Temple when He was there in Jerusalem.

In verse 48 of Luke 19, He says, they cannot find what they could do to Him, for all the people were attentive to hear Him, a place of teaching and learning what the Temple was for Christ.

Christ continually taught in His Father's house.

The powerful didn't like Christ, but the people did. They saw Him.

Luke 21, of course we have the story there of the widow thawing in her mites and Christ saying she casted more than the rest of them because He was dealing with the attitude and spirit rather than the amount of money and the gold. In Luke 21 verse 5, right after that story, it's interesting. Think of yourself. You're there as the disciple of Christ. You've seen the end part of the building because the Temple was started being built before most of the disciples were born. That's certainly before Christ was born. But yet you knew how long it took to build it and things. Luke 21 verse 5, as some spoke of the Temple, how it was adorn with goodly stones and gifts, Christ said, As for these things which you behold, the days will come, in which there shall not be left one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down.

Now these are massive stones. Like I said, I mean, you're talking, you know, 400 tons.

And yet the disciples, did they believe these stones would be moved? Did they really understand that? I mean, and besides, why would you tear every stone down? You know, if you're going to, in the conquest of a city, you breach the wall in one spot and then you go in and plunder it. You don't tear it on every wall. Why would you do that? They had to wonder, what is he talking about?

Be it that's what happened. It was torn down. Jesus wept for the physical temple and what it represented. It was God's house. Sometimes we weep at the things we've had in the past that we lose.

But he respected it for what it was. What were the disciples' view of the physical temple after Jesus' death? Luke 24 verse 51. Christ talking them right before he departed. It was special. Christ had been with them. He had been resurrected. They didn't understand a lot of these things at the time, but they learned them. He came to pass verse 51. He blessed them. He was parted from them, carried up into heaven, and they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple praising and blessing God. They went to the temple.

Acts 2.46. This church started. Acts 2.46. They continued daily with one accord in the temple, breaking bread from house to house, eating their meals with gladness, praising God.

Acts 5 verse 12. It says, By the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders among the people, and they worked with one accord and Solomon's porch, a part of the temple.

After Acts 5, it doesn't talk very much about teaching in the temple, going to the temple.

Why? Did they come to a better understanding of what it was about, what God was doing?

They were persecuted, obviously, and it was hard to go in there and not be persecuted, but they had more. So what of the temple? Did Isaiah's prophecies and Haggai's prophecies refer to these temples? John 2, if you'd go there, verse 19. It's interesting because the temples that they built were all physical. And Haggai had said this latter house will be greater than the formal house. It'll be His glory. David charged Solomon to build the temple, and Christ said, I'll build my church.

Verse 19, Jesus answered and said to them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.

Then the Jews said, 46 years was this temple and building, and you'll build it in three days?

That didn't make any sense. But He spoke of the temple of His body, when therefore He was risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this to them, and they believed the Scriptures and the Word which Jesus had said. They remembered He said it, and now they believed it.

Did they think He was nuts when He said it? Probably. Say everybody else, I mean, 46 years to build it, 400-ton stones, do it in three days? What's He talking about? John Peter, did you get that? What did He say? You can imagine the whispering went on between the disciples. They didn't understand till late. They remembered Christ's body was the temple. Where God's Spirit was, is in Him, the Son of God. Turn to John 4, verse 23.

Because we're a temple as well, if God's Spirit's in us.

A physical temple is not where you have to go to worship.

There were signs during Christ's life of what the temple would truly be when He was alive, and how they would worship Him in the temple. John 4, this is after the living waters that at the well with the woman there. Christ said the woman, verse 21, Woman, believe the hour comes when you shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father. For the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshipper shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeks such to worship Him. Verse 24, God is the Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.

Was God really concerned about how much gold and silver David and Solomon and all of them put in the temple? Or how ornate the carvings were and how hard they were, the wood that burned up when the Babylonians destroyed it? Or was He concerned with the character in David and the character in the people, the patience, the repentance, and giving your heart and your mind and soul, worshiping in spirit and in truth? Instead of just going to this building and doing your little duty thing, we often do, sometimes without necessarily having the character that we're building in each of us. Turn to 1 Corinthians 3, 16. The temple is about God, about Jesus Christ and His family. It's about what He's building in you and me. It's not about the physical buildings. They're all decay. They all get destroyed. We fall into the mindset.

We did decades ago about... we had beautiful campuses. We had three of the most beautiful campuses on earth. And wow, look at that. It's wonderful. We had the finest auditorium in the world acoustically. It wasn't the biggest, but it was certainly beautiful. But that's not what it's about. Verse 16 of 1 Corinthians 3, Know you not that you are the temple of God, that the Spirit of God dwells in you. If any man defile the temple of God, him God shall destroy. For the temple of God is holy. Which temple you are. No noise in the temple. While collectively we make up the temple, we have a responsibility individually. 1 Corinthians 6, a few pages over, verse 19.

Paul continues, What? Know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which you have of God and is not your own. You're God's special property when he puts his Spirit in you. You're bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your Spirit, which are God's. Every part of the temple is covered with gold or innate work, castmanship, special to God.

More than just David's gold. But look at the care that they took in building the temple.

How much more care is God going to take in building something in you, spiritually? Turn to 2 Corinthians 6. 2 Corinthians 6, 16.

Are you seeking purity in your actions and your character? So you can be part of the temple?

2 Corinthians 6, 16. What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said, I will dwell with them and I will walk with them and I will be their God and they shall be my people. Come out from among them. Be you separate, says the Lord. Touch not the unclean thing and I will receive you. We can't leave the earth, but we can keep our minds pure. We can keep away from the destruction of the mind that we see all around us in society today. Verse 18, and I will be a father to you and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty. What did he say to Solomon? You will be my people. God wanted to be with His people. Do we respect each other as sons and daughters of God? How do we treat our temple, the spiritual body, individually and collectively? Remember, there was no noise in Solomon's house in building Solomon's temple. Is there hammering and chiseling in God's temple? There have been.

Is there noise or is there peace? Are we a place of learning and teaching?

I've found a lot of times people who make destructive noises in the temple often have an agenda, power or money or position or whatever, and it's sad because God wants people to worship in spirit and truth to see Him as the glory. Turn to Ephesians 2. Again, are you going to be a noisy stone that gets rejected or are you going to be part of the household of God? Jesus Christ, God the Father, don't want noise. And they can silence that noise. They can make us part of God's household.

Every time there's noise in the temple, it costs physically, spiritually, emotionally.

Ephesians 2, verse 18, it says, For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.

Therefore you are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God, and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom all the building, fitly framed together, grows to a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you are built together for a habitation of God through His Spirit. Each of you fits somewhere in the temple of God.

The parts of Solomon's temple were built off-site. Do you realize the family of God has been built off-site? Not only off-site in location, but off-site in time. People a thousand years ago, two thousand years ago, Abraham, Isaac, go back to Enoch, Noah. Not only in different locations, but in different times. To be fitly framed together, and we need to fit, or we won't be there.

1 Peter 2.

We read there what we have to be, that spiritual house.

1 Peter 2, verse 5.

Peter writing, he says, And you, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. We're not acceptable to God without the sacrifice that Christ made, part of His plan. You're called by God the Father. He picks it. Through that sacrifice, we can be made pure. We can be shaped and carved and molded into something beautiful that fits.

Verse 6, Therefore also it contains in the Scripture, I lay on Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious, he that believes on him shall not be confounded.

The noise won't take you away if you're close to God. If you're serving the same way that Jesus Christ did, serving His Father. Unto you therefore which believe He is precious, that's you and me. God and Christ are precious to us. But unto them which are disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made head of the corner. A stone of stumbling, a rock of offense to those which stumble at the word being disobedient. Yeah, other nations don't want their God to have come, sent His Son down to be crucified and died. In this world, you put everything up and you protect no matter what it takes. But God gave us His Son. Without the cornerstone, you can't be laid straight.

Verse 9, you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation of peculiar people, that you should show forth the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. He called us, God the Father. Why He picked me? Why He picked you? I mean, I look out and there are so many good people around, people more talented than I am, and that any of us are. Do you think, you know, why us? But that shows His glory. If you pick the smartest people on earth, they are the smart guys. No. It shows His glory. And often the smart people tend to say, paint their own glory. They did it. Turn to Revelation 3, verse 12, talking to the churches.

What does He say there? 3-12, him that overcomes will make a pillar in the temple of my God.

You shall go no more out. I will write upon Him the name of my God, the name of the city of my God, which is New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from my God, and I will write upon Him my new name. We talk of pillars in the church, people who reflect what God's values are, people who reflect righteous character. We have to help one another to be part of that temple.

You can't just do it alone. That's what fellowship is about. I feel sorry for people that can no longer attend church, and some who have chosen to isolate themselves, sadly, because you need that fellowship. James 5, you want to help others? You want to do something for yourself? James 5 makes it clear how you want to help yourself. James 5, 19, James writing, says, brethren, if any of you err from the truth, and one converts him, let him know that he which converts a sinner from the air of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins. Want to hide some of your sins? Help somebody else.

Does not Christ convert all of us sinners from the air of our ways? He covered all our sins by his death. It was part of God's plan. He says he took on our affirmities. He became ridicule for us, so we could be part of something better, a part of the temple of God. Are we not like him?

God's focus is on a temple that can't be destroyed. It's not about the gold and the silver. All the physical temples were destroyed. They were types of things, and they were built beautifully and respectfully, and as good as men could make it, just like the land that was sacrificed, the blood and the wine, the symbols for Christ's sacrifice that would come, nothing unclaimed should come into the temple. What is unclean today? My obviously sin. All too often, we only think of obvious sins, murder, stealing, lying, but there's a lot of smaller sins.

Division that has happened for 2,000 years in the church for various reasons. People wanting money, power, position, wanting to be seen by men, people that could act really good, people that could teach really good at times. Even it's funny to me, my history goes back to I was a pagan for one year. I have a picture of me by Christmas tree, and that was about it.

My mom came into the church right after that, and so I had my whole life in the church.

And knowing all the players for so many years, being at the headquarters areas and knowing all the people, it was sad to see the people that left. What was really sad to me was to see people that were right on issues and presented them wrong. Pentecost could have been done two or three years sooner, but the people that the one in particular that presented it to him was so arrogant the way he did it like that. Mr. Armstrong, I learned working for him that, you know, same with you, if I were to go up there and call you names and everything else, and then say, now listen to me, you're not going to listen. You're going to be mad at me. And so, we ended up addressing sometimes the attitude more than the issue. And yet, some people who were right on the issues end up leaving the church later on. The one man who first presented to Mr. Armstrong, actually, the time he ended his life, didn't really believe we needed to even keep the Sabbath, at least not really that strictly. It was still the seventh day and whatever, but there's things that happen to you when you, if you're not careful. Being right on an issue and doesn't necessarily make you right. It depends on the attitude and the motive and why you're doing it. True Christ-like men and women show respect and humility. It's about service, about fitting where God places us. Not about rank over others or position. It's about character.

That doesn't mean you go along with things that are wrong, because you don't. We all answer to God. We work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. But the matter in which you do it, I've seen in my life so many times things that I wanted to correct right away, things I saw were wrong. And then I realized in some cases it was my place to say things and other times it wasn't. My first seven years in the airplane, I was kind of like a butler in a house. You hear and see everything, but you're not allowed to say anything or do anything. Then I became his aid and I had to tell him some things. And there were times I always respected him because if you could prove it from the Bible, then it stopped. One of the things he talked about, and the young people wouldn't know anything, some of the older ones would, was someone came to him and told him that Zachariah, that he was Zerubbul who built a temple, and his son Ted was Joshua the high priest and had filthy rags and because of his sins that he was going to repent and come back. And it was something Mr. Armstrong wanted to hear. He was, at that time, he was legally blind. And, you know, from the tax standpoint, he could still see enough to kind of walk, but and he wouldn't know it the way he walked. He, because he walked off the stage one time without even knowing it dropped off.

But it was interesting because he was so excited about this, so he couldn't do his research at that time. He couldn't really even read. In fact, one thing he said he really missed was just being able to read the Scriptures the last few years. And that's why he had me read the Bible to him.

But in reading, he finally, he was saying this even in some of the churches, and I was kind of sitting there going, oh man, because I didn't think it fit very well. And I think the person who did it was hoping that some of Mr. Armstrong wanted to believe. And so he said it finally one day, probably at least nine months later, nine to ten months, somewhere in there, he sat down, isn't it good that Ted's going to repent? My son, and he prayed for his son every night, you know, just like a father would. But it was interesting that he said, what do you think?

And I said, well, Mr. Armstrong, I don't see it. I said, I want your son to repent. I want everybody to repent. But I said, I don't think it fits. And he got mad at me, which he usually did when I said something that he didn't want to hear. But he sat on the chair, and I had an escape clause because he couldn't see or hear or do anything without me. So when he sat on the chair, it was kind of stuck for a while. But after about a half an hour, he calls me over and says, Aaron, why don't you see this?

And I said, Mr. Armstrong, can we just read that chapter? And I read it to him. And he saw that, yeah, it didn't fit. He never spoke about that again. Scripture is all important, no question.

But if you say it in the wrong time in the wrong place, or if you use it as a club, or if you use it to, hey, I'm a better new, I can see this and you can't. I mean, you've got to do it in a way that's proper and right. And all through my life, I found it with him. Even in the early years of the college, Mr. Armstrong, when he had a new thought or something, what he would ask, he'd ask the students, I want you all to go take your Bible. I want you to go look up scriptures, see if there's anything that disagrees with this, because if it disagrees with this, it's out. And he did that when he was talking about becoming part of the family of God. Before that, he knew we weren't angels, but he didn't know we thought it was blasphemy to say we're going to be sons of God. Even though the scripture said that, and Christ is our older brother, and we'll be like him, and he asked the students, go look, is there anything that disagrees with it?

And that's where we have to be. But again, if you find something that disagrees, and you can point it out, then the church, eventually the church, if it's really right, we'll figure it out. But sometimes God lets the church be in error for a while. I'll go to his read Revelation 2 and 3, and the doctor with the Nicolae Iotans and Jezebel, and think that's the true church. So there are problems at times. But the key is, how do you handle it?

And that's one of the things in the temple, you need to do all those things off-site, because they don't come into the temple. You've got to clean it up, make sure it works.

And there'll always be some noise. We make mistakes. There's no question like that.

But how do we treat people? It's relationships. God wants his children. He doesn't want to look down and say, oh, my children are fighting again, which we all did. My brother and I fought all the time. But we've got to learn to get along in that. We sin, there's noise in the temple.

And there's confusion when you're fighting. We know God's not the author of confusion. First Corinthians 14, 33. But he's the God of peace, and the church is the saint. So again, the spiritual body, there has to be peace. We have a lot of splinter groups, and we have people in the spiritual body. And there's no corporation about the church. The church is a spiritual body.

God knows who the people are that have his spirit. I don't. I've baptized people that have left. I always tell people at counseling, I wish the tongue of flame would sit on your head and the wind would blow, and I'd say, oh, you're ready. Let's go. It hasn't happened yet. I pray for them. I do all I can. I hope it changes, but it doesn't work that way.

The scriptures of Isaiah and the prophets were not really about the physical temples.

Orthodox Jews who visited Mr. Armstrong that day didn't understand. They wanted a temple so the Messiah could come for the first time. Mr. Armstrong knew we didn't need a physical temple for Christ to return. Not that there may not be one, but there may be one built of some sort, or after we know the sacrifices, some of the prophecies and things, we don't know exactly how that plays into it, but it's not necessary because it's not even a place. Go to Revelation 21, if you would. Verse 22, talking about the New Jerusalem, the temple.

Revelation 21, 22, I saw no temple therein for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. Of course, we'll be pillars in the temple of our God. The city had no need of the sun or the moon to shine, for God is the glory of it. Verse 27, though, it says, thou shalt know why is in or into it anything that defiles whatsoever works abomination or makes a lie, but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life. No noise can be in God's temple, God and Christ, and his family, making up the family of God. It's not wrong to build something physical for God.

I have pictures on my refrigerator, paintings for my children when they were little kids.

They weren't Rembrandts. Some of them look like Picasso, but we loved them because we loved our children. And God knows what we're trying to do, and he loves us, and we do the things that we do, even if it's going to be destroyed. He sure respected David for what he gave to the temple, his attitude toward that. But it's what's inside of us, the love that makes a house a home, it makes a people a family. Physical temples were built and destroyed. Nothing physical lasts forever. Close this thing out of the pyramids, and they get blown away with sand. Every year, they lose a little bit more of them. It's not about a physical temple. It's about the spiritual family of God. Pure, undefiled, godly love. When we look at the physical temple in Jerusalem, when we see the preparation that was made for it, the care and the planning, the building of it, you have to ask, how much more care is God taking in giving us thoughts and ideas and helping us in ways we don't even know. I think God's a lot more involved in our lives than we tend to believe sometimes.

And yet, He gives us free moral agency and choice. But He wants us to be part of His temple.

Stromsturm built an auditorium dedicated to God. Where is it now? It went down. Someone else bought it. Most of the buildings have been torn down around it. When God leaves, it's no longer a part of God's. It's no longer the temple. If God's spirit is not there, He's not there.

God and Christ through the Holy Spirit are building His temple in you and in me.

Some of us are pretty rough stones. We're being carved off-site. Because of the time we're finished and put in the temple, we can't be rough. Some people are going to be the doors. Some will be the hinges. Some of you are really good at encouraging people. You'll probably be the ornate part that's polished the gold that we get to look at. Some of us ruffians mark it out and probably be hinges. Try to hold it up, keep the good people in, bad people out.

What part we have to play, God knows where we fit. We're all being built off-site, off-time, to be put together when He returns. Some of us need a jackhammer, probably, to carve us out.

Some of us second-generation or third-generation Christians have had a lot more training. I didn't have to worry about hacking off Christmas and Easter and all that, because I never kept any of those things. And you're better off. The more you know, the younger you know it. You're better off the more you apply it before you're baptized. If you keep God's law, you're going to come into life and into marriage and into things better off than if you suffer some of the things the world offers.

I wish to fit in God's temple without annoying the other stones around me.

I don't want to scratch other people so that they get upset. I don't want to have millstones around my neck for causing other people to leave. I don't want to hurt any of those people that God is working with, as rough as they may be, because He's going to overlay them with gold. He's making them. And I don't want to damage those little ones that He calls. Can we find a better craftsman than God the Father who called you, or Jesus Christ, who died for you? I don't think so.

I see unfinished products everywhere I go. I learned years ago in the world that my wife and I traveled. When we met world leaders, we met the rich of the world, we met the poor of the world.

And I was taught not to see people as personalities, but see people as future kings and priests.

My first order on the plane. Treat everybody that gets on this plane like a king or a queen, because that's what they're going to be someday. And they may be royalty, they may be beggars, but none of that is the permanent station of these people. And we have to see people as that raw material that God is working with. The gold, the silver, copper, the wood. Standing in the wings, not yet taken to the quarry, perhaps, if they've not been called.

People who don't even know their potential is to be part of God's family.

The temple was meticulously built, off-site. Beautiful things. Are you the gold leaf?

Are you the henge? Are you the cedars? Are you the olive wood?

Christ knows where you fit. I said the personalities. There's some people that are just natural encouragers. There are other people that are just solid with doctrine. There are other people that are just able to stand up to various things. God, we're all a little bit differently, but the temple had all sorts of parts. But there can't be noise in the temple. You won't be there.

We have to know where we fit.

It says that Christ is the author of our salvation.

Hebrews 12.2.

God the Father calls you. He puts you in His church. We understand His plan through the Holy Days. We understand where He placed His Son in all those things. They were washed with His blood.

Hebrews 12.2, it says, looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

Because we read about His life on earth so we can understand that. Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

We have to endure the same way. If God puts us through persecution, we have to endure it.

I don't pray to die. I'm willing to die for God's word and what it is. I don't ask to be tortured and punished. I'd rather die a nice, peaceful death, hopefully before the tribulation starts.

When that is, it's in His hands. God is our master builder. We fit because God, through Jesus Christ and His plan, is building the inward character and the purity, instead of our outward physical appearances, which for most of us getting older isn't that great anymore. It may have been pretty once, but we all lose it.

The mystery is, you can't build the character and the pieces yourself.

With every part of your heart and your soul and your mind, you should seek it, like David did.

But you can't do it alone. But there's hope.

We have to keep our temple beautiful, adorned with the fruits of God's Spirit, quiet and peaceful. And most of all, we have to be willing to be assembled where God puts us.

In the most beautiful temple of all, the temple of God.