No Temple in the City?

One of the most beautiful structures in antiquity was Solomon’s Temple, built around 957 BC. It is believed to have been established on the spot where Abraham brought Isaac to be sacrificed (Genesis 22). What’s amazing about this structure was, among other things, how it was built: “When it was being built, [it] was built with stone finished at the quarry, so that no hammer or chisel or any iron tool was heard in the temple while it was being built” (1 Kings 6:7).

Why? Such a sacred place should not be defiled by the sounds of chisels and iron hacking away at stone. Of course, that structure has long been gone. Indeed, it had never been meant to last forever. Instead, the temple and its services, just as the tabernacle before it, and the temples built after it, were all models, or shadows, of the plan of salvation—from the death of Jesus, symbolized by the animal sacrifices, to the final judgment, symbolized by the Day of Atonement ministry in the most holy place.

All of this helps explain better our verse for today. The thousands of years of human history under the curse of sin have passed away. The trauma and suffering are all over. Christ’s victory at the cross has now been fully consummated. Satan is gone, his evil angels are gone, and lost humans have received their just demise.

In short, the whole terrible experience—for us, the universe, and for God—is finished. “So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ ‘O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?’” (1 Corinthians 15:54).

There’s no more temple of sacrifice because there’s no longer a need for it. God the Father and His Lamb, Jesus, have done all that the temple pointed to; the redeemed are now in the presence of their Creator—and will be forevermore.

Lord, I thank you for the plan of salvation.

For Further Study: Hebrews 8:1–5; Exodus 25:8; 1 Corinthians 5:7

Key Bible Texts

And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. (Revelation 21:22 KJV)