The Third Temple Movement and the Convergence of the Last Days

[Note: Our guest contributor, Mondo Gonzales, served as a pastor for 15 years before joining the staff of Prophecy Watchers in Oklahoma City. He is the co-host of Prophecy Watchers television program and a writer and researcher for their magazine of the same name.]

I was saved at age 18, but was completely ignorant of spiritual happenings in 1993. By God’s grace, I was immediately drawn to studying the nature of the last days or what Jesus called, “the end of the age.” I kept a three-ring binder to collect newspaper clippings connected to various biblical prophecies. I added page after page until it was full. With the signs of eschatological convergence proceeding at lightning speed all around us, what took many months back in the 1990s now only takes hours or days.

One of the most troublesome trends we are witnessing right now is actually a key indicator that we are in the last days. There is a convergence of apostasy in the Church, just as Paul warned in 1 Timothy 4:1 and 2 Timothy 4:3-4. However, spiritual signs are not the only category that is converging.

Prophetic events swirling around us are evident for anyone to observe right now. They demonstrate that we are witnessing the stage being set for the end of the age.

Coming Soon: The Third Temple

One development that gives evidence of the soon return of Jesus is the exhaustive preparations already being made for the building of the Third Temple. Numerous scriptures reveal that a third temple will be built, although some in the Church spiritualize these prophecies to presume their fulfillment figuratively or metaphorically. Let’s examine the evidence.

Let’s begin in the Old Testament with the prophet Daniel. We do not have space to cover the entire 70 weeks of Daniel, but the last verse of chapter 9 concerns us the most; it describes the events of the last week that are yet to be fulfilled. Daniel 9:27 reads:

“And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator” (ESV)

From this passage, we learn that at the “halfway” point of the week (three-and-a-half-years into the seven-year period), the Antichrist will put an end to sacrifices and offerings. Which sacrifices? Which offerings? The Temple was destroyed in AD 70, and there have not been sacrifices in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount for over 1900 years.

Daniel was told that sacrifices and offerings would take place in this future end-time scenario. This can seem very confusing because there is no physical temple today for those sacrifices and offerings. So, what should we conclude?

Some claim that Daniel was speaking figuratively. But a symbolic interpretation of Daniel 9:27 does not make sense because it would require us to assume that the 70-week prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27 has already been fulfilled. It clearly has not.

Even though we do not see a temple today, for this prophecy to be truly fulfilled, a temple must be built sometime in the future. The Third Temple will be built, and whether it is finished one day before the midpoint or years prior, it will be in operation for sacrifices by the midpoint of the Tribulation period.

The expectation that a temple will be rebuilt in the future is based on a logical deduction from the text itself and grounded in the conviction that when God gives a prophecy, it must come to pass or else God is a liar. Though we might not understand how, nor believe it to be possible, God cannot fail. Notice what God says about prophecy, “Truly I have spoken; truly I will bring it to pass” (Isaiah 46:9–11).

We must always interpret Scripture straightforwardly. This is especially true when it comes to prophetic passages. Many Bible teachers in the past doubted that Israel would ever become a nation again. Instead of accepting prophecy literally, they chose to spiritualize, symbolize, or outright ignore the prophetic passages. However, those who did take it literally were eventually vindicated.

The Testimony of Jesus

A second proof of a coming physical third temple is given by Jesus Himself in the Olivet Discourse. Matthew 24:15 reads, “So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand)…” (Matthew 24:15; also Mark 13:14, ESV).

The phrase “holy place” has two similar occurrences in the Greek New Testament (Acts 6:13; 21:28). Both of these references in the book of Acts refer to the Temple. Therefore, Jesus, as a prophet, gave us a snapshot of a future period when an abomination will occur in the Temple. Even though no Temple exists today, we know that the abomination of desolation will occur in a Temple that will be built in the future.

The “abomination of desolation” phraseology appears in Daniel 9:27; 11:31; 12:11 and in the apocryphal book of 1 Maccabees 1:41-59. Daniel 11:31 (“And they shall set up the abomination that makes desolate,” ESV) and Maccabees passages refer to an event that can only be interpreted as a real physical event that happened in the second century before Christ. The Seleucid king Antiochus IV entered the sanctuary in 167 B.C. and desecrated it by putting an idol on the altar mixed with pig’s blood (Josephus, Antiquities 12: Ch. 5, Par. 4; 1 Maccabees 1). According to the Jewish historian, Josephus:

“Now it came to pass, after two years, in the hundred forty and fifth year, on the twenty-fifth day of that month, which is by us called Chasleu, and by the Macedonians Apelleus, in the hundred and fifty-third olympiad, that the king came up to Jerusalem, and, pretending peace, he got possession of the city by treachery; …And when the king had built an idol altar upon God’s altar, he slew swine upon it, and so offered a sacrifice neither according to the law, nor the Jewish religious worship in that country.”

1 Maccabees 1:54 describes it this way: “On the fifteenth day of the month Chislev, in the year one hundred and forty-five, the king erected upon the altar of holocausts the abomination that causes desolation, and pagan altars were built in the surrounding towns of Judah.”

However, both Daniel 9:27 (“on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate”) and 12:11 (“the abomination that makes desolate,” ESV) describe prophecies to be fulfilled at the end of the age. Jesus insinuates that what happened during the Maccabean period was a prototype of what will happen again at the end of the age during the seven-year Tribulation period. So, for the words of Jesus to be fulfilled, a third temple must be rebuilt. This is a logical deduction from the text of Scripture.

The Affirmation of Paul

The third passage pointing to the future building of a third temple is 2 Thessalonians 2 (see also Isaiah 13:6–13; Joel 2:1–2; and Amos 5:18-20). Paul taught the Thessalonians extensively about the coming seven-year Tribulation period known as the “Day of the Lord” and the events leading up to its arrival. They were confused and most likely had read a false letter, allegedly from Paul, trying to convince them that the Day of the Lord had arrived.

In his second letter to the Thessalonians, Paul reminded them of the order of events he had previously taught while he was with them:

“Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God” (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4, ESV)

Paul affirmed that the Day of the Lord (the seven-year Tribulation period) will start with rebellion (apostasy) and the revealing of the man of lawlessness (Antichrist). Neither the apostasy of falling away nor the Antichrist happened in the first century, so the Day of the Lord had not yet arrived.

Paul continued describing what the Antichrist will do after the Day of the Lord starts. He will take his seat in the Temple of God proclaiming himself to be God—a desecrating event called “the abomination of desolation.” Paul gave this prophetic snapshot at a time when the Temple was still standing. Yet it was destroyed in AD 70. Many people probably wondered what to make of Paul’s prophecy since it was not fulfilled in the first century and could not be fulfilled without a standing temple.

We are still waiting nearly two thousand years later, but we must let the text mean what it says in a straightforward and literal way. Today, Jerusalem is under the sovereign control of Israel. Various nations are moving their embassies to Jerusalem. Religious and political attitudes have shifted dramatically in the last 15 years, and we can see a convergence of multiple factors anticipating the building of the Third Temple.

The Vision of John

The final passage prophesying a physical third temple being rebuilt in the last days is found in Revelation, where John was catapulted in the Spirit to see the future. The Lord Jesus revealed many aspects of the seven-year Tribulation which He instructed John to record and send to the Seven Churches (Revelation 1:11).

In Revelation 11:1-2, John saw the physically rebuilt Temple:

“Then I was given a measuring rod like a staff, and I was told, “Rise and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there, but do not measure the court outside the temple; leave that out, for it is given over to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for forty-two months.”

The angel who told him to measure bore witness to an existing Temple of God and altar in the city of Jerusalem during the future Day of the Lord. This same Greek word, “metreo,” is used in other portions of the book of Revelation to measure something real and physical (Revelation 21:15, 16, 17). Since the Temple of God exists in the future Day of the Lord, we can deduce that it must be built prior to that time. It is quite reasonable to expect to see preparations to rebuild the coming Temple as we see the end of the age quickly approaching.

Faithful Eye-Witnesses

If we take God at His word, we should also believe His prophetic Word.

The Bible teaches that truth should be established by two or three witnesses (Deuteronomy 19:15; Matthew 18:16). God has given us four prophets (Daniel, Jesus, Paul, and John) to teach us that a future physical temple will be in existence at the time of the Day of the Lord. But it will not be built in one day.

We should not be surprised that it will be a process that involves many layers, people, money, and more to see it accomplished. Anticipation of the Third Temple is evident even in newspaper headlines. For instance, in September 2022, the media seized on reports that five red heifers were being flown to Israel to prepare for the Temple’s cleansing and rededication.

These prophetic developments show us that the Messiah’s arrival is fast approaching. The convergence is here!