By Dr. Charles Ruark, MD
Introduction
During the Millennium, the Millennial Temple will be the House of the Lord; that is, the personal residence of the Lord Jesus Christ, His home. The description of this Temple and its environs, as set forth in the Book of Ezekial, chapters 40 through 48, is compelling evidence that Holy Scripture (the Bible) is God’s inspired Word.
Ezekiel’s precisely correct word picture of the Temple is compelling evidence of the divine inspiration and reliability of the Holy Bible. Ezekiel was a priest with a profound appreciation for the temple built by Solomon, but Ezekiel was neither an accomplished mathematician nor highly skilled in architectural design. Yet, his detailed description of the Temple results in the perfectly geometrically interlocking of its parts to produce a structure exceedingly more complex and beautiful than Solomon’s temple. We cannot believe for a moment that Ezekiel, of his own knowledge, wrote his description of the Temple. Surely, he was inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Bible scholars who are friends of mine, Dr. Daniel L. Black, Dr. French L. Arrington, and others, concur in the assessment that Ezekiel’s description of the Millennial Temple affirms the divine inspiration and reliability of Holy Scripture. This has implications for the whole Bible being the divinely inspired Word of God, as said by the Apostle Paul (2 Timothy 3:16) and the Apostle Peter (2 Peter 1:20-21).
The divine inspiration of Holy Scripture means God created the heavens and the earth as told in the Book of Genesis. It means that Adam and Eve were the first man and woman created by the direct action of God, and they were the progenitors of the whole human race. It means that all humans became subject to sin and death because of the sin of Adam and Eve, their disobeying God by eating fruit from the forbidden tree. (Looking at this as a physician, I believe the fruit eaten by Adam and Eve was infected with a genetic toxin that destroyed 99 percent of their genomes, and thus, they became mortal and eventually died. I believe all humans have inherited from Adam and Eve their genomes that age and mutate, and therefore we die.)
Two Examples of the Amazing Accuracy of Ezekiel
The following are two examples of the amazing supernatural (divinely-given) accuracy of Ezekiel chapters 40-42. The first is from Ezekiel 40:42:
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“For the burnt offering there were four tables of hewn stone, a cubit and a half long, a cubit and a half wide and one cubit high, on which they lay the instruments with which they slaughter the burnt offering and the sacrifice” (NASU).
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The exact locations and dimensions of all the Millennial Temple structures are either given or can be derived from information in Ezekiel chapters 40-42. For example, the exact location of the Altar of Sacrifice (Ezekiel 40:47) within the inner court is not provided, but it can be determined with complete confidence by information provided by Ezekiel. In contrast to that, the exact location, number of, and dimensions of the tables of hewn stone cannot be, so all of this is given in the verse above (Ezekiel 40:42). If the height of these tables, or their number (“four”) had been any other than specified in this verse, it would be impossible to maintain the holiness of the dimensions of the Temple. This is because the height of the tables of sacrifice cannot be other than 1.5 cubits (31.5 inches), and the hewn stone tables must fit comfortably under them. Also, there is room for exactly four of them, and they must be located so that two tables of sacrifice jointly share one hewn stone table. (The fifth picture of Bundle 06 of the Schematics shows these supernatural relationships.)
Another example are the dimensions of the thresholds of the House’s side chambers (see Ezekiel 41:16 NASU). They are located in front of the south and north doors of Ezekiel 41:11. (These thresholds are seen in the sixth picture of Bundle 05 of the Schematics on the millennialtemple.tv website. They are the stippled grey squares located on the free space between the black steps and the green rectangular spaces in this picture.) These are the thresholds opposite the galleries of three stories mentioned in Ezekiel 41:16. The widths of these thresholds are provided in Ezekiel 41:11, as follows:
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“The doorways of the side chambers toward the free space consisted of one doorway toward the north and another doorway toward the south; and the width
of the free space was five cubits all around” (NASU).
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So, the widths of the free spaces, and thus also of the thresholds, must be 5 cubits (8.75 feet). But what about the lengths of the thresholds? It is a bedrock architectural principle of the House that all thresholds must be square in their dimensions. For them to be otherwise would render the House profane. Each side chamber on every floor, with only four exceptions, has a length of 5 cubits (8.75 feet), and the doorways occupy lengths of 5 cubits, which is the length of one side chamber. Thus, the thresholds of the north and south doors cannot be other than squares (5×5 cubits), providing proof of the supernatural dimensions of the House.
(If you visit the millennialtemple.tv website and purchase Bundle 08 of the Schematics for the Temple, and examine the first picture, you will observe that had the length of the side chambers been other than 5 cubits or had the width of the free space been other than 5 cubits, it would have destroyed the holiness of the dimensions of the House.)
These are only two examples, but there are numerous examples like these in the Temple. What this means in practical terms is that there exists within the Bible a depiction of this enormous physical structure that is architecturally perfect and holy in its dimensions. The existence of this structure is supernatural. No natural architectural structure designed by the human mind alone could possess such perfect dimensions and holiness. Thus, the House, by implication, testifies to the accuracy and reliability of the whole Bible.
Practical Application of This Principle
There is an evil, satanic, antichrist religion that has become the popular religion of modern Western society. Its high priests are the theoretical physicists who sit in the chairs of secular universities in America. Their religion is called modern cosmology or the theory of evolution. Evolution is generally associated with the origin of life on the planet Earth. However, modern cosmology, which may be defined as the study and explanation of the origin and evolution of the universe, embraces and includes Darwinian evolution. The definition of life, as provided by NASA, is “a self-sustaining chemical reaction that is capable of Darwinian evolution.” Modern cosmology begins with the Big Bang, which supposedly occurred about 13.8 billion years ago. Then, life and Darwinian evolution began about 4 billion years ago, or about 500 million years after the formation of the planet Earth. And all of this happened, so they say, by the pure chance occurrences of molecules, resulting finally in the DNA molecule and code, and thus life.
The existence of the Millennial Temple in the Book of Ezekiel, by its evidence of the divine inspiration of Holy Scripture, falsifies, annuls, and destroys the popular religion of modern cosmology and the religion of Darwinian evolution. That this Temple will be built on the planet Earth in the future is written in a strong declaration regarding the Altar of Sacrifice found in Ezekiel 43:18:
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“And He said to me, ‘Son of man, thus says the LORD GOD,’ ‘These are the statutes for the altar on the day it is built, to offer burnt offerings on it and to sprinkle blood on it’” (NASU).
The Millennial Temple and the New Testament
Thus far, this article has addressed only the significance of the architectural design of the Temple for the Bible as a whole. Now attention will be given specifically to the significance of the design of the Temple for the divine inspiration of the New Testament.
Many years ago, early in my attempt to obtain a digital image of the Millennial Temple based on the dimensions given by Ezekiel, I employed a highly competent computer artist named Jacob Nagele. Jacob and I had rendered every Temple structure in the shape of squares or rectangles, according to the dimensions provided by Ezekiel.
One day, while in Dr. Black’s office, as an interesting tidbit of information, I mentioned this to him, while showing him the digital schematics of the Temple gates, where Jacob still had the side pillars depicted as circular. I remarked to him, “Dan, everything in this Temple is either a square or a rectangle!” We looked at each other for about 15 seconds. Then, he said to me something quite profound that very few have knowledge of, “The Hebrew altars in the Old Testament always had four corners, they were either square or rectangular in shape. Round altars, such as those built by the Canaanites and other pagans, were forbidden to the Israelites.” I was stunned.
It was at that moment in time that I became fully aware of the fact that the architecture of the Millennial Temple is based on the geometry of the cross. A cross is made up of two crossed long rectangles which form a square where they cross. The square and rectangular altars of the Israelites looked forward to the cross of Christ. And the square or rectangular dimensions of every Millennial Temple structure are commemorative of the cross of Christ. This supernatural architectural design of the Temple we call “the Geometric Principle.”
The Geometric Principle, evident throughout the Millennial Temple, bears witness to the divine inspiration and reliability of the Gospel, the New Testament, and the whole Bible. Christ who died for our sins on the cross, rose from the dead, and ascended to God the Father, will come again to establish His kingdom in its fullness on earth. The antichrist religion of the modern cosmologists will be abolished, and modern technology and modern medicine will be superseded by the blessings of the kingdom of Christ.