Page 21 - Satan in the Sanctuary

The Stage Is Set 23

Soon the government leaders were there, and the rabbis.
The news spread fast throughout Israel. God had brought
His chosen people back to the wall.
And now, perhaps, the new Temple—the third Jerusa-
lem Temple—the Tribulation Temple—could reasonably
be spoken of as a possibility.
"As long as the Old City [Jerusalem area containing the
Temple site] was in Jordanian hands, the ancient dream of
a rebuilt Temple could conveniently be left in the category
of dreams," pointed out a recent editorial in Christianity
Today magazine. "But with the union of all Jerusalem un-
der Jewish control, the dream assumed realistic outlines,
and the challenge to rebuild the Temple, with its host of
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difficult political and religious questions, loomed large."
We must realize the profound difference between the
present times and the passage of the centuries since A.D. 70,
the destruction of the second Temple. For nearly nineteen
centuries there had been no reasonable hint of the Tribula-
tion Temple prophecies being fulfilled. The Jews had been
scattered like grains of sand in a hurricane. The world was
filled with the Jews, in the respect that they resided every-
where from Siberia to Kansas in those nineteen centuries.
They could hardly look objectively to reconstructing their
Temple. They pled with God four times a week to "renew
our days as they once were." Their patience and faith is
only equalled by that of the Christians awaiting the return
of the Lord.
But now, since 1948, there has been a dramatic turn of
events. The Jews now have their promised land, and with
it all the possibilities of things becoming "as they once
were."
And since 1967, they hold the actual site of their ancient
Temple.