TEMPLES OF GOD | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 3, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 36.

TEMPLES OF GOD.

Man in the beginning was a temple of God. Divinity dwelt in humanity. God was incarnate. He dwelt in the flesh.

When man yielded to the tempter, sin became incarnate, and the temple of God was profaned. From that time to this God has been seeking entrance to the human heart, a dwelling place in human flesh. In order that men might know that it could be done and the wonderfully glorious results that would follow, the Son of God was manifest in Jesus of Nazareth. He was so manifest that we might in simple faith invite Him into our heart as an abiding presence, casting out and destroying all sin, and bringing every member, every faculty, into the blessed service of unselfish love.

Many of the object lessons of His ordained worship of the past were given for the great purpose of impressing upon man that the only holy, worthy thing was that in which God dwelt, and so man be led to yield himself a dwelling-place, a temple, a sanctuary of God.

The sanctuary in the wilderness taught this truth. The temple built by Solomon taught this truth. The glorious temple of which God showed a pattern to Ezekiel, the center of a restored Jerusalem, taught the great truth that “Jehovah is there.” Ezekiel 40 to 48. His presence would heal all barren land, all salt marshes, all impure waters, and would give life to all. But Jerusalem was never thus restored. That temple was never built, and never will be built. Israel would not yield all to God, and God could not come in and dwell among them; neither could He have built a temple for His name for a half-hearted people to dishonor. Hence the temple builded at the restoration from Babylon fell far short of Ezekiel’s pattern, and never saw the glory of Solomon’s temple save in the person of Jesus Christ, whom the temple-keepers rejected. Ezra 3:12; Hag. 2:3, 7, 9.

When Jesus Christ came, He was a perfect human temple of the Holy. His flesh was wholly yielded to God, and the Father dwelt in Him. He was, therefore, Immanuel, “God-with-us.” He did not reveal Himself. The life that he lived, the deeds that He did, the love that He manifested, were the life, the deeds, the love of the Father.

Jesus Christ is the great Builder of the only true and glorious temple of God which will ever be built. All other temples were either shadows and types, or real temples in part, in limitation. For example, the sanctuary and temple of Solomon were types of the true. Each individual and the church itself are temples of the Lord (1 Cor. 6:19; 3:16), but not in the fullest sense. Christ’s spiritual temple is identical with His household. It is “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone.”

The building of that temple is thus declared by the prophet: “Behold, the Man whose name is the Branch; and He shall grow up out of His place; and He shall build the temple of Jehovah; even He shall build the temple of Jehovah; and He shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon His [the Father’s, Ps. 110:1] throne; and He shall be a priest upon His [the Father’s] throne; and the counsel of peace shall be between them both.” Zech. 6:12, 13.

Jesus is now sitting as high priest on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens. Heb. 8:1. He is, by His Gospel, by the finishing tools of truth, gathering out from the world’s quarry all who are willing to be cut, hewed, and polished for living stones in His great spiritual temple. He is transplanting them, growing them in, by life—living stones—into the great, splendidly glorious, eternal temple of God, His own living temple: “in whom each several building, fitly framed together, groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are builded together, for a habitation of God in the Spirit.” Eph. 2:21, 22. This is the true temple of God.

David said that it was in his mind to build God a house, meaning the material temple. God assured His servant that this could not be, tho He appreciated the devotion of David so much that He promised David that He would build him a house, meaning all that makes a house of worth, the continuance of his family or house forever in the seed of David, Christ Jesus. Man can build only a mere material house of boards and brick and mortar, etc.; but God builds a living temple, every stone of which is itself a living temple. This is the only temple of God which is building or ever will be built. “The Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands.” “For we are a temple of the living God; even as God said, I will dwell in them and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Wherefore come ye out from among them, and be ye separate; saith the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be to you a Father, and ye shall be to Me sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.”