Well, clearly PETA wouldn't exist at that time.

Can you imagine the horror they would experience?

Seriously, I have to wonder if that particular passage in Ezekiel wasn't reffering to a 'last chance' sort of offer to the israelites.
Kevin | 09.30.03 - 2:32 pm | #

Matthew Henry and some other Puritan commentators take Ezekiel's temple to be a symbolic narrative of the signfigance of the renewed covenant with Israel after the return from exile (and as such is also, therefore, typological of the new covenant as were all old covenant orders).

The earlier parts of Ezekiel, prophesying judgment prior to the exile, do so with other various symbolic temple imagery (e.g., Ezekiel digging through the walls).
garver | Homepage | 09.30.03 - 2:46 pm | #

This description of the Millenial Temple always confused me, since Christ abolished animal sacrifices. I'm not totally convinced of your reasoning but it is very interesting considering that the Temple Mount Faithful are currently making plans to restore animal sacrifices.
Robert DiStefano | Homepage | 09.30.03 - 10:32 pm | #

Robert,

It is not my reasoning. I am just a reporter in this case. I am not a premillennialist. The fact that preparations are underway to restore sacrifices could be viewed as a necessary step toward fulfilling the prophesy or (in terms of Christian involvment in the activity) a misguided attempt to usher in what is not going to happen.
David Heddle | Homepage | 10.01.03 - 5:19 am | #

For someone who presses a literal hermeneutic to its fullest extent to underpin Calvinism, I am surprised that you so easily back off for your post-millenialism.

I am Calvinistic. But I also tend to take passages like Ezekiel's temple at face value. If I were to cast it in post-millenial terms, then I would say that part of the global expansion of the gospel will include the Salvation of Israel. They will construct this temple and they will offer these memorial sacrifces in it. You can see a forerunner of this in the Messianic Jewish Passover celebrations of today. These simultaneously celebrate the Exodus from Egypt's slavery through the passover Lamb and celebrate the Exodus from sin by Messiah the Passover lamb.

The problem with a symbolic hermeneutic is that you need to connect each symbolic point with an non-symbolic Christian element. Who has the discernment to do this?

I really have more to say on this, but a comment box is insufficient.
Don Curtis | Homepage | 10.01.03 - 8:27 am | #

The temple in Ezekiel was the design given to the returning exiles based on their repentence and return to obedience. God's blessing would follow. Only about 50,000 returned and they were dispirited and disobedient as they continued to marry foreign women. In God's graciousness, He has actually expanded that promise to include a new heaven, new earth and new Jerusalem, based not on their obedience and effort but soley on His grace.
stan | 10.25.04 - 3:18 pm | #