The Third Temple
Lesson from Zachariah stands true for today, tooSome 2,400 years ago, as the Jews were slowly building the Second Temple in Jerusalem, they asked the prophet Zachariah (Zachariah 7), ''Shall we continue to fast for the Babylonian destruction of the First Temple? Or has our period of mourning ended?''
Commentators explain that this question was born of frustration with the slow pace of Jewish redemption from their exile to Babylon. Persian King Cyrus had permitted the Jews to return to Israel and build their temple anew, but the process had been hampered by Samaritan antagonism as well as Jewish poverty. Those who remembered the glory of the First Temple were unimpressed by the diminished beauty of the second. Only a small percentage of the nation had even returned from exile at this stage of the building process. And so the nation wanted to know: Is this what redemption looks like? Is our suffering truly over, or are we simply in another phase of our exile? Click on this Link
