The New Jerusalem and Its Shape

At the very end of the Bible, John sees the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, and he says something that at first seems to undo everything in this book:

Revelation 21:22 And I saw no naos ναός nah-os'(sanctuary-temple) in it, for the Lord God the Almighty is its naos(sanctuary-temple), and the Lamb.

“I saw no naos(sanctuary-temple) in it.” Some will take this as the final word: in the end, there is no temple.

But the sentence goes on. There is no temple building “for the Lord God the Almighty is its naos(sanctuary-temple), and the Lamb.” The temple has not disappeared. God Himself has become the temple. The model made by hands is no longer needed, because the One it pointed to is now present in person.

Revelation 21:3 And I heard a great voice from heaven saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with people, and He will tabernacle with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them."

The word for “tabernacle” here is skene σκηνή skay-nay'. This is the promise we read in Chapter 5, “I will set My tabernacle (mishkan מִשְׁכָּן mish-kawn') in your midst,” fulfilled at last.

The Shape of the City

Then the angel measures the city:

Revelation 21:16 And the city is laid out as a square, and its length is the same as its width, and he measured the city with the reed — twelve thousand stadia(about 1,400 miles); its length and width and height are equal.

Its length, width, and height are all equal. The city is a perfect cube.

Scripture has described a room with these proportions before:

1 Kings 6:20 And before the oracle—twenty cubits in length, and twenty cubits in breadth, and twenty cubits its height—and he overlaid it with pure gold; and he overlaid an altar of cedar.

It is the holy of holies in Solomon’s temple, twenty cubits long, twenty wide, and twenty high, overlaid with pure gold. This was the innermost room, behind the veil, where the ark stood and where the high priest entered once a year.

In the end, the whole city has become the holy of holies. What was once a small golden room behind a curtain has grown until it fills the capital of the new creation. The temple was not canceled. It expanded until it took in everything.

The Standard Stays

A city that is the holy of holies keeps the standard of the holy of holies:

Revelation 21:27 And nothing koinos κοινός koy-nos'(common, worldly) will by no means enter into it, nor anyone practicing abomination and falsehood, except those written in the biblion βιβλίον bib-lee'-on(scroll) of zoe ζωή dzo-ay'(life) of the Lamb.

The word there is koinos, the very word Peter used when he said, “I have never eaten anything koinos(common, worldly) or akathartos ἀκάθαρτος ak-ath'-ar-tos(impure, unclean)” (Acts 10:14). Service goes on as well: “His servants will serve Him” (Revelation 22:3). And Isaiah, speaking of the new heavens and the new earth, says this:

Isaiah 66:22-23 For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I am making, stand before me, declares the LORD, so shall your seed and your name stand. And it shall come to pass, from new moon to new moon, and from Shabbat to Shabbat, all flesh (basar בָּשָׂר baw-sawr') shall come to worship before me, says the LORD.

From new moon to new moon, and from Shabbat to Shabbat, the rhythm of worship that the Torah set does not fade away. It carries on into eternity.

The Whole Story at a Glance

Step back now and look at the whole road we have traveled. The place where God meets His people was never chosen by people. And when the story is read in order, it is not a story of cancellation but of completion.

First came the tabernacle in the wilderness, built to the pattern God showed and filled with His glory on the day it was raised:

Exodus 40:34-35 And the cloud covered the tent (ohel אֹהֶל o'-hel) of appointed time (moed מוֹעֵד mo-ade'), and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle (mishkan). And Moses was not able to enter into the tent (ohel) of appointed time (moed), because the cloud abode upon it, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle (mishkan).

Next was Shiloh, the place where He first made His name dwell. Shiloh fell, not because the Torah had ended, but because of the wickedness of a people who did not keep it:

Joshua 18:1 And the whole congregation of the children of Israel assembled at Shiloh, and set up there the tent (ohel) of appointed time (moed); and the land was subdued before them.

Jeremiah 7:12 For go now to My place which was in Shiloh, where I caused My name to dwell at the first, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of My people Israel.

In David’s day the ark rested in a tent he pitched for it, while the tabernacle of Moses stood at Gibeon, and David bought the threshing floor of Ornan at full price and built an altar there. That threshing floor became the site of the temple:

2 Samuel 6:17 And they brought in the ark of the LORD, and set it in its place, in the midst of the tent that David had pitched for it; and David offered up burnt offerings before the LORD, and peace offerings.

1 Chronicles 21:28-29 At that time, when David saw that the LORD had answered him in the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite, then he sacrificed there. And the tabernacle (mishkan) of the LORD, which Moses had made in the wilderness, and the altar of burnt offering, were at that time in the high place at Gibeon.

2 Samuel 24:24-25 And the king said to Araunah: No, but I will surely buy it from you for a price; and I will not offer up to the LORD my God burnt offerings for nothing. So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. And David built there an altar to the LORD, and offered up burnt offerings and peace offerings; and the LORD was entreated for the land, and the plague was stayed from Israel.

When David wanted to build God a house, God first said this:

2 Samuel 7:5-6 "Go and say to my servant, to David: Thus says the LORD: Will you build for me a house for me to dwell in? For I have not dwelt in a house from the day that I brought up the children of Israel from Egypt, even to this day, but I have been walking about in a tent and in a tabernacle (mishkan).

Solomon’s temple rose on that same threshing floor, on Mount Moriah. On the day of its dedication the glory filled it, as it had filled the tabernacle:

2 Chronicles 3:1 And Solomon began to build the house of the LORD in Jerusalem, on Mount Moriah, where he appeared to David his father, where he prepared in the place of David, in the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.

1 Kings 8:10-11 And it came to pass, when the priests came out from the holy place, that the cloud filled the house of the LORD. And the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled the house of the LORD.

Babylon burned it:

2 Kings 25:9 And he burned the house of the LORD, and the house of the king, and all the houses of Jerusalem, and every great house he burned with fire.

After the exile, the returning captives built the second temple:

Ezra 6:15-16 And this house was finished on the third day of the month Adar, which was in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king. And the children of Israel, the priests and the Levites, and the rest of the children of the captivity, kept the dedication of this house of God with joy.

To those who remembered the first house, it looked small, but God said this:

Haggai 2:9 Greater shall be the glory of this latter house than the former, says the LORD of hosts (tzevaot צָבָא tsaw-baw'); and in this place I will give peace, declares the LORD of hosts (tzevaot).

Later came the defiling and the rededication that Hanukkah remembers, the first shadow, and after that Herod’s great expansion, the temple into which Yeshua walked. The Bible does not name Herod as its builder, but it records what people said about the temple and what Yeshua said:

John 2:19-21 Yeshua answered and said to them, "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up." The Jews then said, "It took forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?" But He was speaking of the temple of His body.

Into that house the Messiah came, and there the glory Haggai promised for “this latter house” could be seen.

Then came AD 70, the second shadow. After it comes the temple of the last days, where the man of sin will sit, and then Ezekiel’s temple in the thousand years, with Passover and Booths and priests who keep the Torah. Last of all, God and the Lamb are the temple, and His servants see His face:

Revelation 22:4-5 and they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no night there, and they have no need of the light of a lamp and the light of the sun, because the Lord God will shine on them, and they will reign forever and ever.

The high priest once entered His presence one day a year, behind a curtain; now His servants see His face always, in a city with no night.

The same story can be seen in one more view:

From beginning to end, the Bible never moves toward the idea that the temple is finished. It moves from a model made by hands toward God Himself.

What Paul Was Saying

When Paul said that God “does not dwell in temples made with hands,” he was not ending the temple. He was telling us who God is. God cannot be contained, and therefore He chooses where He will meet His people, and therefore His people must be holy.

Paul said those words and then purified himself in the temple. The apostles gathered at the temple and kept the feasts in the decades before AD 70. The temple will stand again in the kingdom, and Yeshua has said that He will eat the Passover again when it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And at the very end, God Himself and the Lamb become the temple. At no point along the way does the standard of holiness go down.

From the tent in the wilderness to God and the Lamb, the place has changed, but the Torah has not ended. In this season without a temple, we take up our cross, keep what can be kept now, and walk toward the day when all of it is kept and all of it is complete.

The Edges Put Back

This book began with a cropped photograph, a man with his fist raised who seemed to be shouting in anger until the frame was widened. Two lines of Scripture, cut away from their edges, seemed to say the same kind of thing about the temple: that it is over.

Now the edges have been put back, and the whole picture can be seen. It was never a story of a temple thrown away. It is the story of a temple growing, from a tent, to a house of stone, to a people, to a kingdom, and at last to a city that is one great holy of holies.

Here, then, is a question to carry with you. If the end of everything is not the removal of the temple but the holy of holies filling a whole city, how should you treat your own body today, your home, and the people you gather with?

You are no exception to God’s standard of holiness. If your body is His temple, you are a small, living preview of the city that is coming.