The Original Ekklesia · Book 1
The Holy Temple
The Place They Never Left
45 chapters · about 61,000 words · free
About this book
After the resurrection, where did the apostles go every day? Luke answers in one line: “day by day, devoting themselves with one mind in the temple” (Acts 2:46). Most believers were taught that the temple, the Torah, and the feasts ended at the cross. This book follows the apostles through Scripture, passage by passage, and shows what they actually did. Read it on a journey or listen in the car.
Years after the resurrection, Paul walked into the temple in Jerusalem and paid for the offerings (Acts 21:24–26). Why would he do that if the cross had ended it all?
Many believers were taught that the temple was finished, that the Torah passed away, and that the feasts belong to the Jews. This book does not argue from tradition. It opens the Bible and reads it in order, from Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the temple to the New Jerusalem, and watches what the first believers actually did.
• What Solomon meant when he prayed that even the heavens cannot contain God (1 Kings 8:27)
• Why the apostles kept going up to the temple, day by day, after Yeshua rose
• The four rules of Acts 15, and where each one comes from in Leviticus
• A single night in Troas, and what Acts 20:7 says in the Greek
• Colossians 2:16: who was judging whom, and what a shadow points to
• Leviticus 23 and Numbers 28–29: every appointed time and every offering
Every Scripture passage is quoted in full from the Yeshua Literal Version (YLV), with the key Hebrew and Greek words explained in plain English. Its New Testament uses the Byzantine Majority Text (Robinson–Pierpont 2018) as its reference text.
The Original Ekklesia follows what the first assembly of Yeshua believed and lived, from the text of the Bible itself.
Chapters
Every chapter is on this site in full. Where a chapter has slides, an infographic or a video, it is marked.
01Solomon at the Dedication5 min · Slides · Infographic02Stephen Before the Council7 min03Paul Among the Altars of Athens4 min04The Tabernacle and Its Pattern5 min05A Temple Must Be Kept Holy5 min06Paul’s Road to the Temple3 min07What AD 70 Did Not End4 min08Keeping What Can Be Kept7 min09The Man of Sin in the Temple10 min10Ezekiel’s Measured Temple8 min11Go Up Year by Year7 min12The Passover He Will Eat Again5 min13The New Jerusalem and Its Shape12 min14Gentile Believers in the Synagogue5 min15Meeting in Homes, Reading Moses6 min16Jerusalem’s Believers at the Temple4 min17The Parting, Step by Step5 min18What We Bring to the Text5 min19Speak to Us Smooth Things3 min20The Deceiver and the Deceived4 min21The New Testament in Its Own World6 min22Why Food Touches Holiness6 min23How Near the Outsider Could Come4 min24The Priest’s Charge to Distinguish5 min25Zeal Rightly Directed8 min26The Faith Paul Never Left8 min27The Jerusalem Council’s Letter15 min28The Sojourner and the Olive Tree8 min29Romans 7, Read Whole7 min30Legalism, a Word Scripture Never Uses6 min31The Judges at Colossae6 min32The Substance Belongs to Messiah6 min33The Lord’s Day and Acts 2013 min34The Fourth Commandment in the New Testament7 min35Yeshua Kept the Sabbath9 min36Repentance as the Prophets Defined It6 min37Feasts Open to the Nations8 min38Leviticus 23, Day by Day10 min39The Offerings of Numbers 28 and 2911 min40Helel and the Appointed Times7 min41Forgotten in Zion8 min42Purity of Table and Purity of Life8 min43Sickness at the Lord’s Supper8 min44Circumcision and the Nations8 min45The Full Picture Restored5 min