THE HOPE OF ISRAEL - The Preterist Archive

The Hope of Israel: What Is It? 121
WAS THE PATTERN SHOWN EZEKIEL FOLLOWED?
So far as we are aware there is
no evidence now
available as to the plan of the temple built in the days
of Ezra. Herod the Great had so transformed it in
the days of Christ, though without interrupting the
regular "services and sacrifices, as to destroy all trace
of the original design. That question, however, which
we cannot now answer, does not affect the question
of the purpose for which the pattern was revealed to
Ezekiel.
It should be noted that everything in connection
with the return of the people of Israel out of Babylon
was purely voluntary. Only those returned to Jerusalem
"whose spirit God had raised to go up to build
the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem" (Ezra
1:5). They were not taken out of Babylon as out of
Egypt in a body and by strength of hand. But we
know that they brought with them the holy vessels,
and we know that they had, and could have followed,
the pattern shown in the mount to Ezekiel. For God
had commanded the prophet to show it to them, and
He gave him also this charge "Thou son of man, show
:
the house to the house of Israel, that they may be
'ashamed of their iniquities ; and let them measure the
pattern. And if they be ashamed of all they have done,
show them the form of the house, and the fashion
thereof, and the goings out thereof and the comings
in thereof and all the forms thereof, and all the ordinances
thereof and all the forms thereof, and all the
laws thereof; and write it in their sight, that they
may keep the whole form thereof, and all the ordi-(
nances thereof, and do them" (43:10, 11).