In the Old Testament, the Lord commanded that a sanctuary be built for Him:
“Speak to the children of Israel, and they shall make Me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them” (Exodus 25:2, 8).
About Solomon, the Lord said:
“He shall build a house for My name” (2 Samuel 7:13).
“And Solomon built the temple and finished it” (1 Kings 6:14).
“The temple was pleasing to the Lord, and the Lord sanctified it” (1 Kings 9:3).
After the destruction of Solomon’s temple, the Lord commanded the building of a new temple (Haggai 1:3, 8).
The Saviour zealously upheld the temple:
“My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations” (Mark 11:17; Matthew 21:13; Luke 19:46).
The Saviour saw in the temple a special divine presence:
“He who swears by the temple swears by it and by Him who dwells in it” (Matthew 23:21).
The Saviour acknowledged sanctification through the temple:
“Which is greater: the gift, or the altar that sanctifies the gift?” (Matthew 23:19).
The apostles prayed in the temple:
They, after the Ascension of the Lord, “were always in the temple, praising and blessing God” (Luke 24:53).
Preaching Christianity throughout the world, the apostles came to the Jerusalem temple for worship:
Apostle Paul says: “I came to Jerusalem to worship” (Acts 24:11).
“And I prayed in the temple” (Acts 22:17).
The Lord predicted that Christians would have their own temples, rebuilt and renewed:
Apostle James brought at the Council of Jerusalem a prophetic prediction about this (Acts 15:16–17):
“After this I will return and rebuild David’s fallen tent. Its ruins I will rebuild, and I will restore it, that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles who bear My name, says the Lord, who does these things.”
Christians indeed had temples, which they called churches:
“They met in the church for a whole year and taught a great many people, and the disciples in Antioch were first called Christians” (Acts 11:26).
The church, or temple, was always distinguished by Christians from a dwelling house:
“Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but to be in submission, as the law also says. And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is shameful for women to speak in church” (1 Corinthians 14:34–35).
Temples of God must be preserved until the coming of Christ, when the Antichrist will mock them:
“The man of sin will be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God” (2 Thessalonians 2:3–4).
Addressing the Objections of Sectarians
Sectarians say: Acts 17:24 — “God, who made the world and everything in it… does not dwell in temples made with hands.” Therefore, temples are not needed.
Orthodox response: We do not think that God can be “locked up” in a temple, as the pagans thought. According to our understanding, God is omnipresent, but there is a special divine presence in the temple, and temples are necessary. This is evident from 2 Thessalonians 2:4.
Sectarians say: 1 Corinthians 3:16 — “You are the temple of God.”
1 Corinthians 6:19 — “Your bodies are the temple… of the Holy Spirit.”
Orthodox response: It is true that every Christian is a temple if the Holy Spirit enters him, but a material temple, of course, must exist. The Antichrist will come and mock the temple of God (2 Thessalonians 2:4). And sectarians are the henchmen of the Antichrist; even before the coming of their father the Antichrist, they already mock the temples of God.
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