Before Jerusalem Fell

The Con.temporay lntegri~ of the Temple 175
rod in hand and his gathering the worshipers together to measure
them. Even fellow premillennialist Mounce notes: “The measuring
of the temple is a symbolic way of declaring its preservation.”4 7
It
seems quite apparent that the symbolic mixture involves a contrast
between that which is outer and external to the worship of God (i.e.,
“the court which is outside the Temple” and Jerusalem, v. 2) and
that which is internal and essential to the worship of God (i.e., the
vcY6g [the Temple proper], the altar and the worshipers: the Church).
The mixture of figurative and literal is neither unprecedented nor
uncommon in Scripture (e.g., 2 Kgs. 21:12, 13; Amos 7:8, 9; Isa.
34:1 1; Lam. 2:8; Rev. 18:9-10).
Furthermore, although it is recognized on all sides that there is
an obvious involvement of the symbolic in the passage (e.g., the
measuring of the va6q or the innermost portion of the Temple: the
Temple proper, Rev. 11: 1), there surely must be some reality that
forms the basis of the symbol. After all, the symbolic names “Egypt”
and “Sodom” refer to the historical city Jerusalem (Rev. 11:8). If
John wrote about literal Jerusalem (“where also their Lord was
crucified” ) twenty-five years after the destruction of the literal Temple
(as per the evangelically formulated late date argument), it would
seem most improbable that he would speak of the Temple as if it
were still standing. The symbol would be confusing in its blatant
anachronism. The Temple is required to be standing for the symbolical
action of the vision to have any meaning. John uses the future
tense when he speaks of the nations’ treading down the city. As just
stated, this is not a reminiscence of a past event, but rather a future
expectation.
All of this becomes all the more apparent when the theme of the
book is recalled: Christ is judging Israel for the sin of rejecting Him.
Christ-rejecting, Church-persecuting Israel is to be humbled and
destroyed. Revelation 11:1, 2 clearly corresponds to the prophecy of
Christ as recorded in Luke 21:24. That prophecy (like its parallels
in Matt. 24 and Mark 13) is widely held to refer to the destruction
of the Temple in A.D. 70. It is the Lucan record of the Olivet
Discourse that specifically speaks of the dismantling of the Temple
by terms reflective of those in Revelation 11.
In Luke 21:24 we read: “and they will fall by the edge of the
47. Mounce, Revelation, p. 219.