Destroy This Temple and I Will Raise It Again in Three Days

Thanks Morguefile.com 

Early in his ministry, Jesus went to Jerusalem for Passover. When he visited the Temple, he found dishonest businessmen selling products needed for worship at the Temple and other goods doing their business right on the Temple grounds.

This angered Jesus not only because they were selling goods on the sacred grounds, but because their dishonesty and price gouging  on the items needed for worship hindered the ability of the people to freely worship God.

Jesus cleaned up this mess, turning over tables and chasing these businessmen off the Temple grounds.

The Jewish leaders demanded to know what authority Jesus had to do this. They wanted a miraculous sign to prove His authority. This is Jesus' response:

"Jesus answered them, 'Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days,' " John 2:19.

What the Priests and Jewish leaders did not know or grasp—although they could have if they had sought wisdom and understanding from God and His Word in the written scripture—is that Jesus was the Temple personified! (Tweet that!)

When Jesus said, "Destroy this temple," he was predicting that was exactly what they would do: destroy his person, his body.

When Jesus said he would "raise it again in three days," he meant his body, which was the personification of the Temple.*

The Jewish leaders, however, because they would not seek the truth from God, believed Jesus meant the earthly Temple would be destroyed—a horrifying thought because without the Temple, they thought they had no way of worshiping God.

This, this is the charge that convicted Jesus and won the Jewish leaders his death sentence in his trials. But the testimony that wrongly convicted him as an innocent man wasn't quite accurate.

"Then some stood up and gave this false testimony against him: 'We heard him say, "I will destroy this man-made temple and in three days will build another, not made by man." ' Yet even then their testimony did not agree" (Mark 14:57-59).

The Jewish leaders called it blasphemy.

Yet the Jewish leaders successfully destroyed the Temple: Jesus.

But there was prophecy in Jesus' words. He predicted that after he was destroyed, he would raise on the third day. And that is exactly what he did (Tweet that!):

"Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, 'Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?'

"But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. 

" 'Don't be alarmed,' he said. 'You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him' " (Mark 16:2-6).

Jesus, the personification of the Temple, was destroyed and then raised on the third day, just as he had predicted. (Tweet that!)

Amazing!

*You can learn more about how Jesus is the personification of the Temple in my soon-coming book, Prophecies Fulfilled in the Life of Jesus, due to be released soon from Pix-N-Pens. Check here for updates to availability: Dianne's Amazon Author Page.