Before Jerusalem Fell

174 BEFORE JERUSALEM FELL
how could the readers make sense of its prophecies?
The Measuring of the Temple
In the second place, the measuring of the Temple is for the
preservation of its innermost aspects, i.e., the vadq altar, and worshipers
within (Rev. 11: 1). This seems to refer to the inner-spiritual idea
of the Temple in the New Covenant era that supersedes the material
Temple of the Old Covenant era. Thus, while judgment is about to
be brought upon Israel, Jerusalem, and the literal Temple complex,
this prophecy speaks also of the preservation of God’s new Temple,
the Church (Eph. 2: 19ff.; 1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19; 2 Cor. 6:16; 1 Pet. 2:5ff.)
that had its birth in and was originally headquartered at Jerusalem
(Luke 24:47; Acts 1:8; 8:1; 15:2). Notice that after the holocaust, the
altar is seen in heaven (Rev. 11:18), whence Christ’s kingdom originates
(’John 18:36; Heb. 1:3) and where Christians have their citizenship
(Eph. 2:6; Col. 3:1, 2).
The external court of the Temple complex, however, is not
“measured”; it is “cast out” (3Kf?cdE). All the Israelites who refhse
the new priesthood of baptism are cast out and their Temple destroyed.
The Temple is not destined for presemation, “for it has been
given to the nations; and they will tread under foot the holy city for
forty-two months” (v. 2). The prior prophecy of Christ (Matt. 24:2)
absolutely prohibits any expectation of even a partial preservation of
the literal Temple. Thus, John reveals both the prophetic certainty
of the material Temple’s destruction and the fact of the preservation
of His true Temple, His Church, His New Covenant people, His new
priesthood. 45 The proper understanding of the passage requires a
mixture of the figurative-symbolic and the literal-historical. This is
true in every interpretive approach to the passage, even the attempted
literalistic hermeneutic ofdispensationalism. Walvoord writes
that “the guiding lines which govern the exposition to follow regard
this chapter as a legitimate prophetic utterance in which the terms
are taken normally. Hence, the great city of 11:8 is identified as the
literal city of Jerusalem.”w But Walvoord is conspicuously silent on
the matter of John’s literally climbing the walls of the Temple with
45. As such, Rev. 11:1, 2 functions in the same way as the “sealing of the 144,000”
passage in Rev. 7.
46. John F. Wahmord, The Revelation ofJesw Chrirt (Chicago: Moody, 1966), p. 175.