Ezekiel 43:1-12--The Glory of the LORD Fills the Temple

Ezekiel 43:1-12
English Standard Version

The Glory of the LORD Fills the Temple
43 Then he led me to the gate, the gate facing east. 2 And behold, the glory of the God of Israel was coming from the east. And the sound of his coming was like the sound of many waters, and the earth shone with his glory. 3 And the vision I saw was just like the vision that I had seen when he came to destroy the city, and just like the vision that I had seen by the Chebar canal. And I fell on my face. 4 As the glory of the LORD  entered the temple by the gate facing east, 5 the Spirit lifted me up and brought me into the inner court; and behold, the glory of the LORD filled the temple.

6 While the man was standing beside me, I heard one speaking to me out of the temple, 7 and he said to me, “Son of man, this is the place of my throne and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the people of Israel forever. And the house of Israel shall no more defile my holy name, neither they, nor their kings, by their whoring and by the dead bodies of their kings at their high places, 8 by setting their threshold by my threshold and their doorposts beside my doorposts, with only a wall between me and them. They have defiled my holy name by their abominations that they have committed, so I have consumed them in my anger. 9 Now let them put away their whoring and the dead bodies of their kings far from me, and I will dwell in their midst forever.

10 “As for you, son of man, describe to the house of Israel the temple, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities; and they shall measure the plan. 11 And if they are ashamed of all that they have done, make known to them the design of the temple, its arrangement, its exits and its entrances, that is, its whole design; and make known to them as well all its statutes and its whole design and all its laws, and write it down in their sight, so that they may observe all its laws and all its statutes and carry them out. 12 This is the law of the temple: the whole territory on the top of the mountain all around shall be most holy. Behold, this is the law of the temple.

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I will break from the pattern of posting the images and video for this passage because I believe there is a bit here to discuss.  Remember in Ezekiel 10 that Ezekiel saw the Glory of the LORD depart the first Temple when the people went into Exile and the LORD went with them.  Now, the glory of the LORD returns to His Holy Temple from the east (not just the direction of the sunrise, but also the direction of the Babylonian Exile).  He once again says this is the same glory of the LORD that he saw in his vision of the LORD when the LORD commissioned him to be His prophet to the people in Exile.

If you go back and look, this follows a pattern from when other dwellings for the LORD were built.  The Tabernacle was completed and the glory of the LORD filled the Tabernacle so that no one could enter it.  The same is true for when Solomon built the Temple.  We do not see the glory of the LORD fill the second temple (Zerubbabel's temple, later called Herod's Temple) in the same way.  However, we do see Jesus come and call it His Father's House, exert ownership over the Temple and it was still closely connected the gospel-centered ministry of Jesus and His apostles.  Jesus referred to His body as the LORD's Temple, and certainly the fullness of the LORD's Glory resided within Him, and we are now the Temple of the Holy Spirit, and the fullness of the LORD's Glory should reside within us and we should hopefully experience a similar "filling" when we are genuinely saved.  The Holy Spirit will so completely fill us that it pushes everything else out for a time and we are made holy for the LORD and His purposes and our bodies become instruments of worship for the LORD and we become part of the royal priesthood of believers that are ministers of the gospel.

But what about this new Temple?  Why does it exist and why does the Glory of the LORD reside there?  That question is answered in verse 6.  This Temple is quite literally going to be heaven on earth.  This is the very throne room of God and it will come down from heaven (The New Jerusalem will include or will be this New Temple) and He will dwell among the people.  What we will not see in this New Temple is a veil of separation between the Courtyard and the Holy Place or between the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place.  All those who are part of the LORD's eternal kingdom will have free access to Him all the time.  The LORD will do this to show that He is LORD over heaven and earth and there is no god that has any right to be worshiped anywhere by any people because He is LORD of all Creation.  His Holy Name will be high and lifted up among all peoples of all nations and no longer will His Land or His People be defiled by idols.

Ezekiel is to describe this Temple--this place where atonement was secured for the people--so they would be ashamed of their iniquities that drove them away from the first Temple and led to its destruction.  They would long for the return of the Temple and of the Glory of the LORD and desire for Him to once again fill the Temple and dwell among them, but that did not occur as they expected.  That is why John opens with "The Word became flesh and [tabernacled] among us."  John is pointing to the fact that Jesus is partially fulfilling this prophecy, but this is a real place with real dimensions that will really exist in the future and it will be Jesus who sits on the throne of the eternal Kingdom forever and ever--the same God who is called the LORD here is called Jesus, the Christ in the book of Revelation.

As to the purpose of the Temple, it will be what it has always been--a place for all the people of the world to come and be taught the Law of the LORD and to know about the atonement that He has provided for them.  There will be an altar for sacrifices that we will read about next, but they will be sacrifices of thanksgiving and freewill offerings.  They will not be blood sacrifices for the remission of sin, for the payment of debt, or the restoration of the people.  All that was accomplished by Jesus' death, burial and resurrection.  The purpose of teaching people the Law is that they might obey it.  So it is true what Jesus said in the gospels, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my Word (referring to the Law) will never pass away."  The Temple and the massive mountain that it will be on (see the book of Daniel where there is a vision of a mountain that fills the entire earth) will be declared holy.  I believe this to be quite literal that there will be some geological changes.  We went from the earth first being covered by water in the book of Genesis to the land and the sea being separated (this has symbolically been a symbol of division between the people of God and the other nations of the world with the people of God living on "land" and the people of the world being the unstable seas), and we will get to a point in the future where there is no more sea.  There will only be the people of God and all the Land will be the LORD's Land--the Holy Land.  We think of Mount Zion when we think of the mountain of the LORD where the LORD's Temple resides, but what if one day the LORD causes that mountain to grow and fill the entire earth and all of the places we currently think of as high places are brought low and there is no more sea?  What if this language isn't figurative, but literal?  We can't imagine such a place as the people of Noah's time could not imagine all the geological and atmospheric changes that were going to happen because of the Flood because it had not happened yet, but what if the earth of that day looks nothing like the earth of today? It instead will be the perfect place for God and His people to dwell together (like the Garden of Eden was supposed to be, but on a worldwide scale).  The Curse will be reversed and the need for animal sacrifice for atonement will be no more, but the need for the Temple will still be very real as all the people will desire to come together and have the LORD Himself teach them everything they are to know about Him and His Law and what pleases Him so they can be even more obedient to Him.  Because they love Him, they will love His Law and will desire to know it and obey it.   That is probably a very different view of "heaven" than you were ever taught, but it is a biblical view of heaven.