Did Yahshuah (Jesus) come to cleanse the temple, or announce its destruction?



"When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, "Get these out of here." (John 2:13 NIV)

Every commentator I have ever read calls this scene "Jesus Cleanses the Temple." It is my belief that he did not come to "cleanse" the temple but to end it.

The commentators say he loved the temple and was trying to reform it. I say that he was announcing

the end of the temple.

He ended animal sacrifices (he drove out the animals).

He ended tithes and money offerings (he drove out the money changers).



He announced the destruction of the temple



"Jesus left the Temple and was going away, when His disciples came to point out to Him the buildings of the Temple. But He answered them, "You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down." (Matthew 24:1-2 RSV) And He declared that his body was the true temple

Speaking of himself he said, "One who is greater than this temple is here."(Mt.12:6).

To his hearers that was blasphemy. How can anyone claim to be greater than the temple?



The fact is Yah had never dwelt in the Jerusalem Temple, but dwelt now in the body of Yahshuah.

" Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me." (John 14:11)

"the Father who dwells in Me does the works." (John 14:10)

"and the word which you hear is not mine but The Father's who sent me." (John 14:114)

Yahshuah challenged the rulers of the Temple to destroy the temple of his body and in three days he would rebuild it. He called the Jerusalem temple of stone "a den of thieves". And he prophesied that soon the Jerusalem Temple would be destroyed, and that not one stone would be left standing on a stone. In 70 AD the Roman General Titus killed one million people, razed the city and destroyed the temple. He erected a Roman idol on the ruins and to this day (2007) the Temple has not been rebuilt. A Brief History of the Temple and Yah's Shokeyn (Presence)

Originally Yah asked Moses to build a tent (Tabernacle) where He and Moses could meet. When the tent was ready Yah's presence (his Shokeyn) descended and remained on the tent. When they entered the Promised Land 40 years later, the tent was erected in Shiloh and for 400 years the Shokeyn was there. In the days of the wicked High Priest Eli (1106 BC), when his evil sons took the ark out of the Tabernacle and carried it to battle, the Shokeyn (presence) departed. "And she named the child Ichabod, saying, the glory (Shokeyn) is departed from Israel." (1Sa 4:21)

On Sept. 11, 988 BC when Solomon erected the first Temple the Shokeyn returned and descended upon the temple. But the people began putting idols in the temple.

When Hezekiah became king in 722 BC

He "brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it". (2 Kings 18:4)

It became worse and worse so that by the days of Ezekiel, 593 BC, the temple was filled with every kind of false god and idol, and the people were committing abominable acts there. Ezekiel saw the Shokeyn depart by the eastern gate and went and rested over the Mount of Olives.

And the shokeyn of Yah went up from the midst of the city and stood on the mountain, which is on the east side of the city. (Ezk. 11:22-25)



In 586 BC (seven years later) the First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians and most of the people were taken as slaves to Babylon.

Seventy years later, after the captives were released from Babylon, they returned to Jerusalem and built another temple (515 BC). This temple was later improved upon by King Herod and is sometimes called Herod's Temple. The Shokeyn never came to this Second Jerusalem Temple until Yahshuah visited it. . When Yahshuah came to this temple there was no presence of God in it. It was a hideout for robbers.

The Shokeyn stayed on the Mount of Olives until around 30 AD when Jochanan was baptizing Yahshuah in the Jordan River. Then the Shokeyn descended upon Yahshuah and remained in him.

"I saw the Spirit descending like a dove and it abode on him." (John 1:32)



Yahshuah's message was that now people would not go to Mount Zion to the Temple or up on any mountain for Yah wanted to make each person's body a temple where they could worship him in spirit.

"A time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem... a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." (John 4:20-24)



The human heart had become the House of Prayer, the House of Yah, the New Temple.

Now mercy and peace, love, fairness, and humility, had become the new sacrifices.

"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit". (Psalm 51:16)

"To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice." (Proverbs 21:3)

"For I desired Mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings".

(Hosea 6:6)





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