There is a first temple and a second temple. The covenant text declares both. Paul declares both. There is no middle glory. The stone structure between them was never a dwelling of YHWH. It was an empty room.

 

The tradition inserted a building between the first and the second. It called that building the second temple and built the entire institutional religious system of second temple Judaism around it. Five hundred and eighty-six years of fence laws, scribal authority, Pharisaic management, sacrificial administration, all of it organized around a stone structure in Jerusalem that the presence of YHWH had never entered.

This document names what that stone structure actually was. Not the second temple. Not the middle glory. An empty room. The gap between the first and the second. The placeholder between the departure of the kavod (glory, the weighty, shining, overwhelming presence of YHWH) from the first temple and the arrival of the fullness of YHWH in the second temple, which is the body of Mashiach (Messiah). Destroyed and raised in three days. The covenant completion signature. The latter glory greater than the former. The shalom given in this place.

There is a first and a second. No middle. The covenant text declares two temples. Paul declares two glories. The institution inserted a third and called it the second. It was an empty room for 586 years.

 

The First Temple

The Presence Filled It

The first temple, the temple of Shlomo (Solomon), was unambiguously the dwelling of YHWH. The historical record and the covenant testimony agree on what happened when the ark of the covenant was brought into the holy of holies at the temple’s dedication.

1 Kings 8:10-11, and when the priests came out of the Holy Place a cloud filled the house of YHWH so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud for the kavod (glory, the weighty visible presence of YHWH) of YHWH filled the house of YHWH. The priests could not stand. The presence was that full. That heavy. That real. The first temple was the dwelling of YHWH because YHWH entered it and filled it with the fullness of his visible presence.

Fire from heaven consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices at the dedication, 2 Chronicles 7:1. The presence confirmed the structure. The structure did not contain the presence, the presence chose the structure as its visible dwelling place in the covenant history. First. Real. Confirmed by fire and by the kavod that drove the priests out of the holy place.

The first temple was filled. The priests could not stand. Fire from heaven. The kavod filling the house. YHWH entered the first temple and his entering was unmistakable, visible, physical, overwhelming. First. Real. Confirmed.

 

The Departure

YHWH Left Before the Destruction

The first temple was destroyed by Babylon in 586 BCE. But YHWH did not leave because the Babylonians destroyed the temple. YHWH left before the destruction came. And he recorded his own departure through the prophet Yechezkel (Ezekiel) so the covenant people would understand, the destruction was not YHWH being defeated. YHWH chose to leave.

Ezekiel 10:4, the kavod of YHWH rose from the cherub to the threshold of the house. The presence moved from its seat above the ark to the doorway. Then Ezekiel 10:18-19, the kavod of YHWH went out from the threshold of the house and stood over the cherubim. And the cherubim lifted up their wings and mounted up from the earth before my eyes as they went out with the wheels beside them. And they stood at the entrance of the east gate of the house of YHWH and the kavod of the God of Israel was over them. Then Ezekiel 11:23, and the kavod of YHWH went up from the midst of the city and stood on the mountain that is on the east side of the city.

The departure was staged. Deliberate. Recorded. YHWH moved from the holy of holies to the threshold. From the threshold to the east gate. From the east gate to the mountain east of the city, the Mount of Olives. And then the departure was complete. The presence left. The first temple stood empty of the kavod before the Babylonian army arrived to destroy the stone structure. YHWH was not in the building when it burned. He had already left.

 

The Second Temple

The Empty Room

The return from Babylon. The decree of Cyrus, not a covenant declaration from YHWH but an imperial authorization from a Persian king. Zerubbabel the governor and Yeshua (Joshua) the high priest leading the rebuilding project. The prophets Haggai and Zechariah encouraging the work. The stone structure completed in 516 BCE, Ezra 6:15 records the date precisely. Dedicated with a feast. A new beginning for the covenant community in the land.

And then, nothing. No cloud filling the house. No kavod so heavy the priests could not stand. No fire from heaven. No record anywhere in the covenant testimony or in any historical source of the presence of YHWH entering the second temple the way the presence had entered the first. The dedication of the second temple is recorded in Ezra 6:16-18, and the people of Israel the priests and the Levites and the rest of the returned exiles celebrated the dedication of this house of God with joy. The celebration was real. The joy was real. The presence was absent.

The Talmud, the rabbinic record of what the scribal tradition itself knew about the second temple, lists five things present in the first temple and absent from the second. The rabbis knew. They recorded it. And they kept the institution running around the absence for 586 years.

 

The Ark of the Covenant

The visible center of the divine presence in the first temple. The gold-covered chest containing the tablets of the covenant, above which YHWH declared he would meet with Moshe and speak to the covenant people. Disappeared with the Babylonian destruction. Never recovered. Never replaced. The holy of holies of the second temple contained no ark, an empty room at the center of the most elaborate religious institution in the ancient world.

 

The Sacred Fire

The fire YHWH himself kindled on the altar of the first temple, recorded in 2 Chronicles 7:1 as descending from heaven at the dedication. The fire that was never to go out because YHWH himself had started it. Absent from the second temple. The altar fire of the second temple was kindled by human hands.

 

The Shekinah — The Divine Presence

The visible indwelling presence of YHWH, the kavod, the cloud, the glory that filled the first temple so completely the priests could not stand to minister. Never entered the second temple. The holy of holies of the second temple was entered by the high priest once a year on Yom Kippur to stand in a room that contained nothing — no ark, no mercy seat, no kavod. The room the covenant described as the dwelling place of YHWH was an empty room.

The Ruach HaKodesh — The Holy Spirit

The prophetic presence of YHWH moving through the covenant community. The rabbinic tradition itself acknowledges that the spirit of prophecy departed from Israel after the last of the writing prophets, Malachi, approximately 430 BCE. The second temple period is the period of the silent heaven, YHWH not speaking through prophets, the covenant people maintaining the institutional forms of the covenant without the prophetic voice that had always been the primary channel of covenant communication.

 

The Urim and Thummim

The priestly instruments through which YHWH communicated his will on specific covenant questions. Present in the first temple period. Absent from the second. The high priest of the second temple wore the breastplate that had contained the Urim and Thummim, but the objects themselves were gone. The form of the priestly communication system remained. The content had departed.

 

Five things. The five things that made the first temple the dwelling of YHWH, all five absent from the second temple from its dedication in 516 BCE to its destruction in 70 CE. The institution knew. The rabbis recorded it. And the institutional religious system continued for 586 years, managing access to an empty room, running the sacrificial system in a structure the kavod had never filled, maintaining the fence laws and the authorized interpretation and the migdal etz (wooden platform, the elevated structure Ezra stood on to read the Torah above the people, establishing the authorized interpreter as the necessary mediator between the people and the text) around a holy of holies that contained nothing.

The institution managed an empty room for 586 years and called it the dwelling of YHWH. The five things that made the first temple what it was were absent from the first day of the second temple’s existence. The rabbis knew. They kept the institution running anyway.

 

The One Moment the Presence Was in the Second Temple

There was one moment, one period of time, when the fullness of YHWH was present in the courts of the second temple. Not the kavod descending on the stone structure. Not the fire from heaven. Not the Shekinah filling the holy of holies. Something greater than all of those. The fullness of YHWH in physical form walking through the gates.

Yochanan (John) 1:14, kai ho Logos sarx egeneto kai eskenosen en hemin, and the Word became flesh and eskenosen (pitched his tent, tabernacled, took up residence, the same concept as the mishkan, the same dwelling language as the kavod filling the first temple) among us and we beheld his doxa (glory, the same kavod, the same divine weighty presence) full of grace and truth. The glory that had filled the first temple. The glory that had been absent from the second. Present in the Word who had become flesh and was walking in the courts of the second temple.

Paul in Colossians 2:9, in him the whole fullness of deity, pan to pleroma tes theotetos, the complete totality of the divine nature, dwells bodily. Not partially. Not representationally. The complete totality. Bodily. The fullness that had filled the first temple, present in the body that walked into the second temple.

Haggai 2:9, the latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former and in this place I will give shalom. The latter glory that exceeded the former glory of Shlomo’s temple, this was it. Not the Herodian expansion. Not the architectural magnificence of the stone courts. The Word, the fullness of YHWH in physical form, walking through the gates of the second temple and teaching in its courts. The latter glory greater than the former because the kavod that filled an empty room is less glorious than the fullness of YHWH in a physical body that can be seen and touched and heard and followed.

And in this place I will give shalom. At the cross. The body of Mashiach lifted up between heaven and earth. Destroy this temple, the stone structure, the empty room, and in three days I will raise it up. The living temple. The body. The second temple. Not the stone structure that had stood empty for 586 years. The tzelem (shadow or image) inhabited by the fullness of YHWH, destroyed and raised on the third day, the covenant completion signature, the third day of Avraham’s approach to the mountain, the covenant faithfulness confirmed.

 

First and Second

No Middle

Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:45-47, the first adam became a living nephesh (soul, breathing creature). The last Adam became a life-giving pneuma (spirit). But the pneumatikon (spiritual) is not first, the psychikon (natural) is first and afterward the spiritual. First and last. First and second. The sequence is the sequence. No middle stage that counts as the arrival of what was declared.

The first temple, YHWH dwelling in the kavod filling the stone structure. Real. Confirmed. The presence filling the house so the priests could not stand. First.

The second temple, the body of Mashiach. The Word who became flesh and tabernacled among us. The fullness of YHWH in physical form. Destroyed and raised in three days. The living temple. The latter glory greater than the former. The shalom given in this place. Second.

The stone structure Zerubbabel built and Herod expanded, not the second. Not a glory at all. An empty room. A 586-year gap between the departure of the kavod from the first and the arrival of the fullness of YHWH in the second. An institutional placeholder. A building that the presence never entered. Managed by an institution that called the empty room the dwelling of YHWH and built forty-six thousand subsequent denominational expressions on the same institutional management of an absence.

The institution inserted a middle glory between the first and the second and called it the second temple. Paul did not. Haggai did not, his prophecy of the latter glory was never fulfilled by the stone structure. Zechariah did not, the Branch who builds the final temple was not Zerubbabel. Yeshua did not, he destroyed the institutional claim of the stone structure by declaring destroy this and in three days I will raise up what you cannot.

There is a first and a second. The covenant text declares both. Paul declares both. Haggai declares both. Zechariah declares both. Yeshua declares both by his own body. First, the kavod in the stone. Second, the fullness of YHWH in the tzelem raised in three days for all who slept for all flesh from Adam forever.

No middle. The institution inserted a middle and managed it for 586 years. The cross abolished what the institution had been managing. Not the covenant people. Not the bloodline. Not the behold in Avraham’s name. The institutional management of an empty room. The fence laws built around an absence. The migdal etz elevated above the people to interpret a text whose name had been removed and whose presence had departed. The cheirographon tois dogmasin, the written record of the ordinances, nailed to the cross. Abolished. Because the second temple had arrived. In the body. Raised in three days. Open for all flesh. The empty room was never the dwelling of YHWH. It was the gap between the first and the second. And the second is here. Forever.

 

The first temple, YHWH filled it. The second temple, the body of Mashiach, raised in three days. Between them, an empty room for 586 years that the institution called the dwelling of YHWH. It was not. There is a first and a second. No middle.

 

 

First temple: the kavod filled it. The priests could not stand. Fire from heaven. Real.

The departure: YHWH left before the destruction. Recorded in Ezekiel. His own departure. His own choice.

The stone structure: an empty room. No ark. No kavod. No sacred fire. No Shekinah. No Ruach. No Urim. 586 years. Empty.

The second temple: the body of Mashiach. The Word who became flesh. The fullness of YHWH bodily. Destroyed and raised in three days.

 

First. Second. No middle.

 

The institution managed the empty room and called it the dwelling of YHWH. The dwelling of YHWH walked into the empty room and they did not recognize him.

 

Destroy this temple.

In three days I will raise it up.

The second temple. The body. Open for all flesh. Forever.

 

 

The Empty Tomb

Proof of the filled second temple.

The stone temple had an empty room at its center for 586 years. No ark. No kavod. No presence. The holy of holies, empty. The institution managed the empty room and called it the dwelling of YHWH.

The living temple had an empty tomb at its center for three days. And the emptiness of the tomb is not the absence of the presence. It is the confirmation that the presence has filled what it came to fill. The tomb is empty because the second temple is no longer in the tomb. The second temple is risen. The body of Mashiach, the living temple, the house YHWH built for his own habitation, the tzelem (shadow or image) filled with the fullness of the divine nature, is not in the tomb. It is risen. Filled. Permanent. Open for all flesh.

Two empty spaces. Two completely opposite declarations. The empty room of the stone temple declared, the presence has departed. The presence is not here. The empty tomb declares the opposite, the presence has filled what the first letter of the first word declared before the creation began. The house is not empty. The house is inhabited. The builder has moved in.

The stone temple’s empty room, evidence of absence. The living temple’s empty tomb, evidence of fullness. The institution pointed to the empty room and said YHWH is here. The resurrection pointed to the empty tomb and said YHWH has filled what he came to fill, and the filling is permanent and it is for all flesh and nothing in all creation can separate any flesh from the love that filled the living temple from the inside.

Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:1, for we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed we have a building from God a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens. Not made with hands, the same language as the rock cut without hands in Daniel 2. Not built by human agency. Built by YHWH. The living temple. Eternal. The second temple raised in three days and never subject to destruction again. Because what YHWH fills permanently is not subject to any destruction. The empty tomb is the proof that what was destroyed was raised and what was raised is filled and what is filled is permanent and what is permanent is for all flesh forever.

 

The empty room, 586 years of institutional management of an absence.

The empty tomb, the end of the absence.

 

The filled second temple.

The body of Mashiach.

The entire world.

The builder home.

Forever.

 

The Gospel Revolution  •  Mike Williams Ministries

William Ethan Massengill  •  Michael Lilborn Williams  •  Daniel Thomas Rouse

Published by Audrey Williams