Chapter 8 Glimpses of the Temple Site
Copyright 2008
Maurice A. Williams

REVELATION 11:1
1 And there was given me a reed like unto a rod: and it was said unto me: Arise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that adore therein.

At this point in Revelation, John has been asked to measure the Temple and see who worships there. Judea has just suffered a terrible tribulation through the four winds and two of the three woes. I have shown that the four winds compare very well with historical events between the crucifixion of Christ and late A.D. 66 when Vespasian conquered all Judea except Jerusalem. The Judeans trapped in Jerusalem suffered even more acutely during the first woe. Disaster came during the second woe when Titus brutally conquered the starving people. There is still another woe coming, the third woe, which will extinguish Judea as an independent nation when Bar Kochba leads the Judeans to total defeat and exile. In the following chapters, I will provide more information about Bar Kochba and the war of A.D. 131–5 than any other book interpreting Revelation.

All of this is so harsh on Judea that I want to move some distance away and view Jerusalem through the eyes of history. Then you and I both can place these sad events into a wider perspective, a perspective that offers more hope to Judea than the four winds and three woes did. Imagine that you are hovering above Jerusalem, high enough that you can see the whole city. Imagine your head pointed north, your feet south, and you are looking straight down on the city. Today is the morning after the birth of Jesus. The sun's first rays slowly creep from your right but have not yet swept across Jerusalem. The rays will, in a few moments, illuminate the Temple's front wall. Covered with gold leaf, this wall will shine almost as bright as the sun. Right now, nothing is illuminated. The Temple, the homes, the streets are all clothed in darkness, too dark to see any details. But in your imagination you can clearly see anything you want to look at.

You can see that there are several sets of walls enclosing the city. There is an outermost wall enclosing the whole city. Within it are more walls that divide the city into sections. On your upper right, in the extreme northeast corner of the city, stands one walled section, the Temple site. In the center of this section stands the Temple. In front of the Temple, facing away from you toward your right is the sacrificial altar and a large basin filled with water. The Temple, the altar, and the basin are surrounded by buildings and open spaces that divide this section into several sets of concentric, rectangular courts. The innermost court contains the Temple, the altar, and the basin. It is called the Court of Priests. No one other than a priest can enter it. The Court of Priests connects on the eastern edge with the Court of Israel, so named because only the male descendants of Israel can enter it.

The Court of Israel opens into the Court of Women just east of it. The Court of Women got its name because all descendants of Israel, including women, can enter it. These inner courts are surrounded by a fence that opens into the largest court, the Court of Gentiles, so named because anybody, even Gentiles, can enter that court. The walls surrounding the Court of Gentiles are lined with booths and shelters, all open on the side facing the Temple. They serve as gathering places for prayer or discussion. Vendors also use them, selling lambs and doves or changing foreign coin into Temple coin.

The Temple complex is large. It spans a quarter mile from north to south and one-seventh of a mile from east to west. It covers thirty-four acres, an area the size of eighteen football fields. The Temple itself is ninety feet long, thirty feet wide, and forty-five feet high. Attached to the eastern end is a larger front. The front is 115 feet wide by 165 feet high. The Temple stands almost in the center of the Temple complex between north and south, but much closer to the western edge than to the eastern edge. The rest of the city is west and south of the Temple section. East of the city is the steep valley of Kidron; south is the Hinnom valley. If you look down toward your feet, you will see the Hinnom valley running east and west at the southern edge of the city. If you look to your right, you will see the Kidron valley running along the eastern edge. The valley looks like it continues northwards past the Temple site, but the Judeans gave this northern part a different name. It is not as steep as the Kidron. They call it the valley of Jehoshaphat. On the opposite side of this valley, directly on your right, is the Mount of Olives.

Imagine yourself just above The Temple now. It is almost sunrise the morning following Christ's birth. The Levite on morning watch just sighted the sun's first light illuminating the east behind the Mount of Olives. "It's becoming light!" he shouts down to the others, "The East is bright!"

Someone shouts, "Is the East bright as far as Hebron?"

He looks to his right. "Yes!" he shouts back, "The light has risen." Then the priests and Levites who were waiting for that moment begin the morning sacrifice.

As the lamb is sacrificed, the Temple’s front begins to glow with the reflected light of the rising sun. The Temple is the city's tallest structure. Part of its outer surface is plated with gold. It shines brilliantly, a symbol of those marked by the covenant, that they should reflect God's glory because their ways should reflect God's ways.

This day, the day you are watching, the savior God promised to restore all things has finally arrived. He is the Eternal Word become flesh and blood, a descendant of David. He is a member of the Israelite race, the son of a Judean woman. He was promised to our first parents. He will make remedy for the bondage our first parents took upon themselves and their offspring by their sin. He is the one predicted to the serpent, the one who will subdue the spirit behind the serpent. He will accomplish the mandate given our first parents to subdue and dominate everything that moves upon the earth (Gen. 1:28). He is a child of the lastborn children of God. His destiny is to triumph over the powerful firstborn sons of God. He will win for the rest of humanity, the little ones who have authority to rule but not the power, victory over the fallen angels who have power but no authority.

It will be a glorious accomplishment. It will be accomplished, not merely by God’s command, but by someone who is fully human. This fully human and fully divine Messiah will involve other humans in it as well, especially the Judeans. They were called through their ancestors to recognize the promised one and respond to him the way the betrothed would when the bridegroom arrives for the wedding.

The priest and Levites who are conducting the sacrifice this morning are, of course, unaware of his birth. If they were aware of it, they might have conducted the ceremony with more fervor and joy. If they realized the prophetic implications of the sacrifice they just made, they might wonder why God would allow such things to happen. And they would be apprehensive over the choices they must make as they and their fellow Judeans interact with the promised one now that he is here.

Now imagine yourself moving higher. All of Jerusalem comes into view, then the surrounding area, as you go still higher. To the southwest of Jerusalem, five miles from the Temple, is Bethlehem. The shepherds are talking to one another awed by what they saw. If you look to your upper right you can see, not far away, the Magi's caravans heading toward Jerusalem. They will soon call on Herod to ask him about the new king whose star they saw in the east. Continue moving upwards and see Jerusalem in relation to Judea and Judea in relation to the neighboring countries; they in relation to the whole world. Then come back again.

As you come down, you can see ground detail getting larger. Everything blurs as you pass through the depths of time as well as space. Then you can see clearly again. You recognize that you are coming in to the same spot but at a different age. It is now one thousand years before Christ's birth. David is king, and the Temple has not yet been built. All that exists of Jerusalem at this age is the first part of the Lower City atop Mt. Ophel. You can see it there under your knees. It looks quite different than it did when Christ was born. North of Mt. Ophel is Mt. Moriah where you remember the Temple standing, but Moriah is a farm at this time. A pagan Canaanite is using the rocky top as a threshing floor. He beats his freshly-harvested wheat to loosen it from the chaff. Then he throws it high in the air to let the mountain breeze blow away the chaff while the purified kernels fall upon the rock.

David is in his dwelling on Mt. Ophel to the south. He recently offended God by ordering a census to count his subjects the way pagan kings do. He had been told not to do it, but he did it anyway. He was given a choice of punishments for his arrogance. The people whose number he impiously learned will be reduced in size to a number unknown to him. This can be done through an enemy attack or through a famine or through a contagious disease. David had chosen a contagious disease. A disease is under God's direct control, and David knew that God is merciful. Today while we are looking down upon Jerusalem, David is looking up. He sees a vision. He sees an angel of the Lord approaching Jerusalem with sword unsheathed to continue the punishment already started in the other cities:

When the angel of the Lord had stretched his hand over Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord had pity on the affliction, and said to the angel that slew the people: It is enough. Now hold thy hand. And the angel was by the thrashingfloor of Areuna the Jebusite (2 Kings [2 Sam.] 24:16).

Imagine David's relief that God called the angel back. Imagine David's gratitude that God had manifested mercy for David’s ease of mind through this spectacular vision here at this spot already sacred to the Israelites. David resolves that this spot, the threshing floor of the Canaanite on top of Moriah, shall become the site for God's holy house that David long wanted to build.

Now imagine yourself moving higher. All Jerusalem comes in view again, then the surrounding area, just as it did last time as you moved away. Continue upwards till Jerusalem fades in the mists of time and you can again see the whole hemisphere containing Judea and the neighboring countries. Then come in again. Everything blurs once more as time recedes ahead of you. Then you notice the smell of fresh mountain air as your vision clears. The first things that catch your eyes are the abundance of wildlife on and around the mountain. You realize that this is a very early stage in the history of the Temple site. There are no structures on Mt. Moriah, not even a threshing floor. The highest points of the mountain, the points that will later become the foundation for the altar and the Holy of Holies, are bare rock and are plainly visible.

As you come in closer, you can see a man and a boy approaching the top of the mountain. The boy has a bundle of wood on his shoulders. As they ascend, he asks the man: "Father, we have the fire and the wood, but where is the victim for the holocaust?" The father, very much concerned and sorrowful, says: "God will provide himself a victim for the holocaust, my son" (Gen. 22:8). The time is two thousand years before Christ's birth; the man is Abraham; the boy, his son Isaac. They are on their way to the spot where Abraham will make the sacrifice God asked. Abraham solemnly stops at the bare rock and sorrowfully spreads wood for the holocaust. His sorrow will soon turn to joy because God will not require that he make the sacrifice:

And behold an angel of the Lord from heaven called to him, saying: Abraham, Abraham. And he answered: Here I am. And he said: Lay not thy hand upon the boy, neither do thou anything to him: now I know that thou fearest God, and hast not spared thy only begotten son for my sake. Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw behind his back a ram amongst the briers sticking by his horns, which he took and offered for a holocaust instead of his son. And he called the name of that place, "The Lord seeth" Whereupon even to this day it is said: In the mountain the Lord will see (Gen. 22:11–14).

You are watching the first event Scripture records as taking place on Moriah. It is a sign of the sacrifice God made by granting humans genuine freedom. Isaac was the child that God promised Abraham, the child with whom God would establish the covenant. From his seed would spring "kings of peoples." He was in fact the child who was to become the direct ancestor of Jesus, the incarnation of God's own Son, the Son whose sacrifice God really will accept. God's own Son was promised to the first woman after she and her husband sinned. He will be her seed and will crush the pride of the one who tempted her. He will make remedy for her sin and her husband's sin and for the sins of all her offspring.

Abraham did not know all these things that would happen in the future, of course. He did know that God promised him a child in his old age. For some reason unknown to Abraham, God had asked that the child be offered as a holocaust, a victim to make remedy for sin. And Abraham was willing to accept God's command. Abraham was rewarded for his faith. God promised that Abraham's offspring would multiply and be as numerous as stars in the sky or sand on the beach, not only from his son Isaac but also from his first son Ismael:

And as for Ismael I have also heard thee. Behold, I will bless him, and increase, and multiply him exceedingly: he shall beget twelve chiefs, and I will make him a great nation. But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bring forth to thee at this time next year (Gen. 17:20–21). I will bless thee, and I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand that is by the sea shore: thy seed shall possess the gates of their enemies (Gen. 22:17).

God also told Abraham: “(I will) be a God to thee and to thy seed after thee" (Gen. 17:7). Now back away; and, as you back away, watch in your imagination the descendants of Abraham as they increase and multiply. First there were Ismael and his branches of Abraham's seed passing down through Ismael's twelve sons. Then there were Isaac and his two sons Esau and Jacob who passed down Abraham's seed through Jacob's twelve sons and Esau's fourteen grandsons. Then there were more branches through Abraham's six additional sons by his wife Cetura whom he married after Sarah's death. Watch as his progeny multiplies. They become whole tribes and whole nations, not only the twelve tribes of Israel, but tribes and nations of Arab and other Semitic peoples as well. Imagine them as numerous as sand on the beach or as stars in the sky, and wonder how can God be God to so many peoples with so many conflicting ideas.

Now imagine yourself coming back again. Just hold your arms close to your body and fall. When you feel close enough, spread your arms to slow your descent. As you get closer you can see that Mt. Moriah is much different than it was during Abraham's time. It is now A.D. 638. The whole Temple site is ruined. The foundation marking the outer courts that King Herod improved is still intact, but not one building is standing on top of it. As you draw closer you can see, and smell, that the platform is being used as a refuse dump. Where the Temple once stood now stands a deep layer of human excrement. The excrement was piled there by the Byzantine Christians in a misguided attempt to humiliate the Jews.

Just outside the city, you can see a caravan approaching. When it gets close, two men with one camel break off and approach the wall. One man is Omar, Caliph and successor to Mohammed. Only twenty-eight years before this occasion, Mohammed led the Arabs from paganism into faith in the Most High God, the God who spoke directly to their common father Abraham. Mohammed told his followers to accept circumcision, marking themselves as descendants of Abraham and, like Abraham, to be submissive to God's will.

Thus far, most Arabs had embraced pagan religions even though they were Abraham's descendants. Their neighbors to the east, the Persians, also worshiped pagan gods. The Persians had fought often with the Byzantines. Their success pushed Christian influence away from the Arabs, thus abandoning the Arabs to paganism. In A.D. 533, after many fruitless wars, proving that both empires, the Persian and the Byzantine, were too strong to defeat the other, they signed an "Eternal Peace Treaty" (Cooke, p. 51). The two empires agreed to accept the status quo. This gave Persia a free hand to dominate all Arabs.

Thirty-seven years later, Mohammed was born. Forty years later, in 610, Mohammed called the Arabs out of paganism. Not many years later, about one hundred years after the eternal peace had been signed; Mohammed's followers launched a holy war against the Persian Empire and conquered it. A few years later, the Moslems attacked the Byzantines and forced the surrender of Jerusalem. This day, the day we are looking down on Jerusalem, is 105 years after the eternal peace was signed. Omar ibn-Khattab, Caliph of all Islam, is approaching Jerusalem to accept the city's surrender from the Christian Bishop Sophronius. He is walking. The other man, a man who is subordinate to him, is riding the camel. Omar is doing this humble act in accord with Mohammed's teaching. He also wants to show his profound respect for the city where the Most High God spoke to Abraham. He wants to emulate the ancient prophets and patriarchs who were submissive to God's will.

When Omar reaches the bishop, he will accept the surrender. He will pledge not to mistreat the inhabitants. He will then ask to see the holy shrines made sacred by the God of Abraham. He especially wants to see the rock where Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac. In your imagination, watch the bishop's face as he realizes the rock his conqueror reveres so much lies buried under tons of human excrement. Imagine also Omar's shock and disbelief when he realizes what the Byzantines have been doing. He immediately gets on his knees. With his own hands, using his own cloak, he begins cleaning this holy place where Abraham expressed faith and where David and Solomon built the Temple (Klein, Temple Beyond Time, p. 135).

How inscrutable is God's Providence. How quickly and inexplicably prophecies come true. And how difficult it is for us to understand why God lets history unfold the way it does. And yet most of us, like the Byzantines of that age, so disgrace what God has already done that we are not entitled to understand why and how God brings prophecies to fruition. This day, the day we are watching, and every day afterward, all the tribes descendant from Abraham, be they Jew, Christian, or Moslem, will at least recognize the God Abraham worshiped.

Now back away. As you back away, catch a glimpse of the Moslems down through the succeeding years revering the rock upon which stood the altar: clearing it, washing it, anointing it every day with perfume. They will build a beautiful dome over it. They will care for it until such a time as the Most High in an unfathomable way shall decree what will happen next.

In the early days of Islam, the Moslems would lie prostrate facing Mt. Moriah during their prayers. Later, Mohammed had them face the Kaaba in Mecca instead. As you get farther and farther away try to imagine those first Moslems prostrate, all their heads pointed toward Mt. Moriah. Try to imagine what Abraham must think, if God will allow him to see hundreds of millions of Moslems all over the world today prostrate in prayer. In addition, Abraham would see hundreds of millions of Christians, also claiming descent from him and following the teachings of Jesus. And he would see millions of Jews, who also pray facing Mt. Moriah. All these people are his seed. They all worship the God he worshiped.

The Turks do not want the holy shrines damaged during a bomber attack. Cognizant that their resistance cannot stop the bombing, they will retreat without firing a shot and allow the city to fall unharmed into British control (Rimmer, pp. 27–8). As you hover over Jerusalem, the Turks watching the warplanes are coming to that realization. Isaiah predicted something like this sixteen centuries earlier: "As birds flying, so will the Lord of hosts protect Jerusalem, protecting and delivering, passing over and saving"(Isaiah 31:5). This is the first step ending Gentile control of the city—and of Palestine.

For almost thirteen hundred years, the Moslems controlled the temple site, save for a few brief periods during the Crusades. When John wrote about measuring the Temple, he prophesied that the outer court was not to be measured. It had been given to the Gentiles (Rev. 11:2). Moses spoke of a proviso in God's law concerning land. The land that God gave the twelve tribes was not to be taken away from them or their descendants. Even if their descendants sold it, or otherwise lost possession of it, it was to revert to the original heirs within fifty years:

And thou shall sanctify the fiftieth year, and shalt proclaim remission to all the inhabitants of the land: for it is the year of jubilee. Every man shall return to his possession, and every one shall go back to his former family. . . . In the year of jubilee all shall return to their possessions. When thou shall sell anything to thy neighbor, or buy of him: grieve not thy brother: but thou shalt buy of him according to the number of years from the jubilee. . . . The more years remain after the jubilee, the more shall the price increase: and the less time is counted, so much the less shall the purchase cost. . . . The land also shall not be sold forever: because it is mine, and you are strangers and sojourners with me. For which cause all the country of your possession shall be under the conditions of redemption . . . the buyer shall have what he bought, until the year of the jubilee. For in that year all that is sold shall return to the owner, and to the ancient possessor (Lv. 25:10–28).

Now as you move away, let your imagination span through the next fifty years from 1917 to 1967. They are years of bitter conflict as the Arab nations insist the Jews shall not possess the land. Arab nations once allied with Britain, now chaff against British control of the Holy Land. They helped the British defeat the Turks. They felt Britain should have placed the land in their hands. Repatriation of Jews becomes more serious, and for European Jews more desperate, as Nazi Germany murders six million Jews during the Holocaust. Repatriation turns Palestine into a powder keg as Arabs and Jews struggle for control when the British prepare to leave in 1948. When the British do leave, the surrounding Arab nations attack the new Jewish Commonwealth. But by incredible, almost impossible, victory for the Jews, they defeat the Arab armies and maintain their independence.

There are more confrontations, even another war, but the new Jewish Commonwealth cannot be extinguished. Finally in 1967, a serious war erupts as the surrounding Arab nations, again in a concerted effort, try to extinguish Jewish independence. This war will last six days. The Arab armies will be defeated. The Temple site will be conquered from Jordan. Fifty years after Britain publicly advocated that the Jews could possess their ancestral homeland, Jerusalem and much of Palestine will fly the Israeli flag. Jeremiah, 2580 years ago, prophesied that something like this would happen (Jer. 23:7–8).

Think what this might mean as you move farther and farther away. Could this be the end times of the Gentile era? If so, then the Gentile nations who resist God will face similar disasters as the Judean nation faced at the beginning of this era. During the Gentile era, God's word was brought to the entire world. Some individual people accepted it wholeheartedly, but not one Gentile nation, as a nation, at least today, is doing so. This must break God's heart to watch so many people of all nations disobey. They disobey because they love to do what God commanded them not to do. If God had a heart it would break with hurt and sorrow. God does have a heart—or at least the Incarnation of God into Jesus Christ provided God with a heart.

Let us move back in time to the beginning of this era. We will see how Jesus responded in his heart when he reached his ultimate confrontation with his enemies. We will see how he chose to deal with those who did not want to obey and whom he did not want, not yet anyway, to force into obedience. The years flee away as you come closer. Then you see the city clearly on that Friday when Jesus came face to face with his opponents. He had God's power at his disposal. He could easily have forced all of them into absolute and total obedience, against their will, merely by willing that they obey. But he did not want to do that. To do that would destroy their freedom. If he forces them against their will, he would get obedience, but what a sorrowful experience it would be for him. Their bodies would do what he wants because he has the power to make it so. On their faces would be the expressions he wants; through their lips would flow his words; in their minds would be his thoughts.

Only in their wills could they resist. They would will what they want, and he would instantly flood them with the force he possesses to compel obedience. Their defiance would never get put into thought, much less into words and deeds. Their determination to disobey would immediately be stifled by an overpowering compulsion to do what they do not want to do. Their complaints would be drowned with words they do not want to speak. Their resentment would be smothered with thought control of unimaginable magnitude, the degree of magnitude that only God can generate. It would be infinite, untiring, everlasting. What agony for God to deal this way with individuals who are totally dependent upon God. What unimaginable hell for those individuals who experience it.

If God so wanted, God could forever postpone using force, but why should that be done? Sin, disobedience, cannot go on forever. From the beginning of God's revelation through Moses even to the revelation through Jesus, God always made it clear that human disobedience will not be tolerated forever. If God were human, God would risk life itself, if humans were minded to take it, rather than use force. God's Word did become human. In the human confrontation Jesus had with the people of his own generation, he did refrain from using force. He did so right up to his death. After his death, he need not suffer anymore. So after his death would be the time to use force. Jesus hinted at this when he answered Caiaphas:

And the high priest rising up, said to him: Answerest thou nothing to the things which these witness against thee? But Jesus held his peace. And the high priest said to him: I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us if thou be the Christ the son of God. Jesus saith to him: Thou hast said it. Nevertheless I say to you, hereafter you shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of the power of God, and coming in the clouds of heaven (Matt. 26:62–64).

Some newer translations get his last statement over more forcibly. It is tantamount to telling Caiaphas that the next time you deal with me I will be clothed with divine power. I will sit at God's right hand. I will rule in his name. Do you wonder why God does not encourage us to do everything we please, and why God insists that we obey? It is because God created everything that exists and holds every bit of it in continued existence. Everything we do, even what we think, affects what God has created. Our disobedience ruins it. Somebody or something is always hurt by our disobedience. The very person who holds us humans in existence is the person who became Jesus Christ. He, in his divine nature throughout our lives, had been crucified against our will. He has used his sustaining power to hold us in existence and grant us ability to do as we choose, even though we might choose to disobey.

As you come closer, you can see him hanging on a cross on a small hill just outside the city walls. People surround him. They taunt him saying: "If you really are God’s son, come down off the cross." How can he control his human emotions so effectively? Almost anyone else, if he could, would come off the cross. But if Jesus comes off that cross, then he will come off the cross of our wills, the crosses you and I have given God. That would be the end of our ability to disobey, ours and everyone else in the whole world.

The Father wanted the events in Christ's life to reflect the important aspects of our relationship to God. One of them is that God is granting sufficient time for every created person to act in freedom to decide whether to serve God or to continue disobeying. Scripture prophesied the important events in the Christ's life long before his birth. He was to be the Pascal lamb. Many things the Israelites were told about the Pascal lamb have some bearing on Christ. They were told not to break the Pascal lamb's bones (Exodus 12:46). The Pascal lamb was offered as a sacrifice to make recompense for sin, to stay God's hand poised in retribution. It was the Pascal lamb's blood that spared the Israelites when God disciplined the Egyptians.

As you look down into the city you can see that it is getting late. The Temple officials observing the crucifixion are impatient because Jesus is not yet dead. They send men to ask Pilate to order Christ's legs broken to hasten his death. If you look closely, you can see the men going northeast toward the Praetorium outside the north wall. Jesus could endure his sufferings forever. He has the power to lay down his life and the power to pick it up again (John 10:18). But his mission was to fulfill Scripture. The lamb's bones are not to be broken if the sacrifice is to be acceptable. It is time now for him to die before the men return. He stirs one more time on the cross. The people become silent. You can hear his words: "It is consummated. Father into thy hands I commend my spirit." His heart, already filled with sorrow, literally breaks as the muscles rupture with the intensity of his sorrow, and he dies.

Back away now, and for the last time move away from Jerusalem. As you move away, try to get a wider perspective on this day's events. What do they mean for the people of that city? What do they mean for all people? As you leave, you can see that things are happening down below. It is getting dark, as a storm moves in. The Temple mount shudders from an earthquake. Everyone in the city had all day been nervous because of the trial and crucifixion. Now their anxiety turns to terror because of the storm and the earthquake.

In the sky, brilliant flashes of lightning illuminate the clouds. On the ground, tombs are opened by the earthquake. The dead mingle with the living amid frightening peals of thunder and cries and moans of people convinced that the world is ending. If God were like you and me, this would have been the end. Two or three megaflash thunderbolts and a massive earthquake, and all would be finished. After all, the Son of God has been killed. It is time to judge all humanity.

But this is not the end. It is a new beginning: the beginning of the end times, assuredly, but a new beginning anyway. With this new beginning, there will be a new temple. It will not be like the old, built by human hands. God will build this temple. It will be built of people marked by baptism. It will span through time and through space, in heaven and on earth. Jesus will regulate this temple as a head regulates the body. He will nourish it and bind it together, giving it identity and unity as the vine gives the grapes. It will be wonderful to behold.

As you move away, try to see the New Jerusalem as John saw it descending from heaven. It is too large to fit in one place. It is a four-dimensional thing but viewed from three dimensions. John describes it as cubic in shape, billions of cubic miles in volume, if such a thing can be measured, but it cannot be measured. It cannot even be imagined visually because it spans through time. It is splendid beyond description, too splendid for words, although John tried to describe it with words. It is like a jewel descending upon the earth, composed, as it is, of human beings, in which each person is literally the arc of the covenant, containing within themselves the presence of Jesus. Jesus charges them to continue his work to apply the sacrifice he made for the world's salvation. Within his New Jerusalem, all persons can find truth and peace, forgiveness and reconciliation.

As you catch your last glimpse of this holy place, let your mind's eye look through the ages and see how this new temple spans time and place. Imagine people through the ages that have followed Jesus. Start with the apostles at the last supper. Imagine Mary's fifteen lonely years after her son died. Imagine the approach of his disciples. At first they were a small gathering, about one hundred individuals. Thousands joined them on Pentecost, the day the Church got its official start. Their gathering grew rapidly as it spread among the Judeans. It was a Judean Church then, almost exclusively Judean. They were the elect allowed now for the first time to enter the "Holy of Holies" and eat at God's table.

They were joined later by Greeks, Romans, and Gentiles from other nations. These are the others that join the elect, the others who are too many to count. These others come from all nations and all strata of society, following Christ despite disapproval and opposition from those who do not believe. They grow and spread until ten times twentyfour years later the elders of the Roman Empire and the emperor himself became Christian. Under them, and after them, the Roman Empire will be remade into a Christian society.

And in the years since then, look and see the banquet table, the altar, and the temple. They reach across distance and time, seemingly through many different altars and churches and sacrifices. But there is only one sacrifice now, offering heavenly food to anyone who has the faith to accept it. The banquet table within this temple reaches through time and space onto thousands of tiny portions of the same table. This is the table where the sacrifice of the Son, the sacrifice that was accepted, is continuously renewed in atonement for all who seek reconciliation.

The sacrifice is offered to all persons without prejudice to race or color or sex or nationality or, for that matter, for past sins. It is offered on a table where prejudice against the product of God's own handiwork would be unthinkable and illogical. We are what God intended each of us to be: not equal in the sense that we are indistinguishable, but equal in God's eyes, having equal protection under the Commandments. Yet we are different. Each of us is unique, the one and only one like our self, the indispensable one that is our self. God created each of us as we are. God gave us the form and shape, color and size, talents and weaknesses that we need to work out the destiny God has set before us. We are all invited to follow the promised one, to accept baptism, and to participate in the divine life made available at God's table.

Imagine that you see those who have left this life before you and now reign with Jesus. They passed from death into the first resurrection. They reign with him right now in a spiritual way. They already have been given dominion over everything that moves upon the face of this earth. They strengthen us in our struggle, for the struggle is in this life. They are now worshiping the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the Son through the Incarnation of the Lamb that was slain but now lives. They, and all the angels with them, even before you began imagining it, have been singing beautiful songs of praise and joyful happiness and eternal gratitude in the heavenly counterpart of the new temple.

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