According to the antichristian Jewish tradition and rabbinic interpretations of biblical prophecies, the so-called Third Temple - Hamikdash is supposed to be built on the Temple Mount (Mount Moriah) in the old town of Jerusalem, on the location which they consider the place of the First Temple (of Solomon, 10th century BC) and the Second Temple (of Zerubbabel, 6th century BC).
According to the majority of Orthodox Holy Fathers, the
likes of Saint Ephraim the Syrian, Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Cyril of
Jerusalem, the Third Temple will never be rebuilt, and if by any chance the
antichristian Jews do build it, it will certainly not be a lawful temple erected for God, but a
synagogue of Satan dedicated to Antichrist - the Man of iniquity.
The New Testament teaching regarding the Jewish Third
temple is the following:
- Christ's prophecy on the destruction of the temple:
When the disciples were showing the Lord the splendor of the Second Temple, He
replied: "There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall
not be thrown down" (Mt. 24:2). That happened verbatim in the year 70 AD.
- Christ's conversation with the Samaritan woman: To
her question about whether one should worship on Mount Gerizim or in Jerusalem,
the Lord replies that the hour is coming when the Father will not be worshipped
neither on the Mount nor in Jerusalem, but "in spirit and in truth"
(Jn. 4:21-23). By those words, Christ clearly abolished the Old Testament
Temple and sacrifice.
- Christ as the New Testament Temple: By the words
"Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (Jn.
2:19), the Lord spoke about the temple of His Body. Through Christ's
Resurrection the New Testament Temple was built - the Church of Christ.
Hence, in Orthodoxy it is considered that any sort of
support or flattery to antichristian Judaism is soul-destroying and goes
against God. This is because Judaism rejected and crucified Christ as a
transgressor of the law and still awaits the second christ - the Jewish
messiah.
In addition, Judaism is working hard to restore the Jewish
Old Testament temple and in it the animal sacrifices in Jerusalem, which is
nothing more than apostasy of persisting in the Old Testament law that was
overcome and fulfilled by Christ. His atoning sacrifice on the Cross ended the
need for animal sacrifices in the Temple. He became the "Lamb of
God", making all the Old Testament rites lose their purpose because the
Truth they had only hinted at had come.
After the deicide, the Jews unsuccessfully tried rebuilding
the temple three times. After the destruction of the Second Temple by Vespasian
and Titus (70 AD), at the time of Emperor Hadrian Aelius (ruled between 117 AD
and 138 AD), the Jews rebelled with the intention to bring back the Old
Testament order and the temple which were annulled by Christ's coming.
"Not seeing that they are warring against the judgement of God", as
Chrysostom says, "Who commanded that Jerusalem (as the Jewish spiritual
centre, comp. note) remain forever in ruins, but it is impossible for a man to
wage war on God and win". Rebelling against Emperor Hadrian, the Jews made
him finally leave the city in ruins by destroying everything that was left of
Jerusalem. The Jews were forbidden by law to enter Jerusalem, and in place of
the Temple he built a pagan temple dedicated to Jupiter, and renamed Jerusalem
itself to Aelia Capitolina.
The second attempt took place in the time of Saint Emperor
Constantine. Finding out about that undertaking of theirs, the emperor cut off
their ears and, thus imprinting a symbol of disobedience on their bodies, led
them everywhere as criminals, doing this as a lesson to all other Jews,
admonishing them, wherever they lived, not to attempt the same thing as these.
The third attempt happened at the time of Emperor Julian
the Apostate (ruled from 316 AD to 363 AD). Here is how that event is described
in the life of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem:
"After some time, when Emperor Constantius died, the
throne was taken by the law-transgressing Julian the Apostate. At first he
showed himself to be pious and good. But when Julian became firmly established
in power, he publicly renounced Christ and granted the Jews great freedom. He
allowed them to rebuild the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, helping them with
funds taken from the public tax paid to the emperor. And when this God-hated
work began, Saint Cyril of Jerusalem prophetically told his people that Christ’s
words would undoubtedly be fulfilled: “Not one stone shall be left upon
another” (Luke 21:6). Saint Cyril also prayed to the Lord Christ that He would
not allow His enemies to complete the work they had begun, but that He would
soon stop their undertaking and thwart their intention.
And the Lord heard the prayer of His servant and fulfilled
his prophetic words. For one night there was a terrible earthquake, which not
only destroyed everything that had been newly built, but also tore up and
scattered the old stones that still remained beneath the ground. All this was
dispersed from that place by the invisible power of God like dust. And when
morning came, many people gathered there, marveling at the miracle. And when
the Jews thought to undertake the same work again, suddenly fire fell from the
sky and burned all their tools. Great fear seized all the Jews. On the
following night, signs of the holy Cross appeared drawn upon the Jews’
garments, which could in no way be erased or washed away. Soon afterward the
lawless Julian perished during a campaign against the Persians in the year
363".
In regards to the third attempt of building the temple,
Saint Chrysostom states: "As the Jews started to work on that unlawful
task, removing a great mound of earth (the remains of the Second Temple) and
beginning to lay bare the foundations, suddenly a fire leaped forth from the
foundations and completely consumed not only a great number of the workmen but
even the stones piled up there to support the structure, and this put a stop to
the unlawful project, for many of the Jews, too, who had seen what had happened,
were astonished and struck with shame."
Saint Gregory of Nazianzus also describes these signs of
God in detail: In his sermons against Julian, written immediately after this
event, he describes the earthquake, the fire from the sky and the appearance of
crosses on the clothing of Jews in detail.
Witnesses of this are also the Church historians Socrates
Scholasticus and Sozomen: In their works "Church History", they note
how the Jews started the works on building the Third Temple with great zeal,
but that they were forced to flee by a "divine fire" and a
"terrible earthquake".
It is important to note that these two supernatural events
are confirmed by the pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus, who had no reason to
make up "Christian miracles", which further strengthens the
credibility of the reports themselves about the miraculous interruption of the
construction of the Third Jewish temple.
Saint John Chrysostom in regards to that further says:
"Аs it is impossible for men to destroy what God has raised up and wants
to last, so it is not possible for them to raise up again what God has
destroyed and which He wishes to remain destroyed. Therefore, so that the Jews
may not still be shameless, nor to ascribe to men the ruining of Jerusalem and
the temple, God did not allow that only the temple be torn down, but He made
all His miraculous signs and all things which had their principle from the heavens
disappear: the fire which consumes the sacrifices, the voice above the Ark of
the Covenant, the shine of the stones on the breastplate of the high priest,
and all other such things".
Quoting Old Testament prophets in detail, Saint Chrysostom
in several places states: "that the wrath of God towards the Jews is
final, that God had turned away from them once and for all, that He had finally
and irrevocably left them, that He had given them over to unceasing misery,
that they are deprived of all forgiveness, that God's punishment for the Jews
is final and going forward for them, there will be no lawful sacrifice, nor
clergy nor emperor" (except the lawless ones in the end times, when the false
Jewish messiah will rule, the son of perdition - Antichrist, comp. note).
"Since you killed Christ", Chrysostom concludes,
"since you put your hands on the Lord, since you shed precious blood, for
this reason there is no correction for you, nor ultimately forgiveness and
justification."
The building of the Third Temple is one of the most
sensitive eschatological questions for Orthodox Christians. It is a clear sign
of the end times and the coming of Antichrist. Tensions around the state of
Israel, which has still not taken control over the entirety of Palestine and
Jerusalem, are rising. Even more so, for Islamic sanctuaries are to be found on
the mount of the Temple - the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock (Golden
dome) which have to be removed for raising the Third Temple.
Since its very inception in 1948, Israel has sought to
declare Jerusalem its capital and to frame the territory of the
"biblical" and "God-promised" borders of "Greater
Israel" that stretch from the Nile to the Euphrates, practically covering
most of the territory of the Middle East. Due to the realization of this true
project of Antichrist, continuous bloody wars and operations to overthrow the
Arab regimes are being waged in the Middle East, of which the most important and
crucial is certainly the ongoing war between Israel and the USA directed
against Iran.
An uncritical and unreserved support for Israel is being
imposed on Christians around the world with the help of the Protestant heresy
of dispensationalism preached by Christian Zionists. They claim that the return
of Jews to the Holy Land, the restoration of the state of Israel and the
building of the Third Temple are the fulfillment of biblical prophecies and
that Christians are obligated to support them as God's chosen people.
This apostate attitude of Christians towards Jews and
Israel is also contributed to by the heresy of judaizing ecumenists who,
contrary to the teaching of the Church, see in the unrepentant God-killing Jews
"the people of God", and they deem the God-rejected Judaism an
equally powerful and equally salvific faith to Christianity by faith in some
sort of collective Judeo-Christian god, to whom they pray together, even though
the Lord himself said that the God of the Jews is the devil himself (Jn. 8:44).
To protect our flock and Orthodox Christians from these
antichristian heresies and delusions, this year we added to the anathemizations
of the Sunday of Orthodoxy the following anathema:
"To those who teach against the Church, that God
outside Her - as the only true Nation of God and New Israel - has also the
Jewish nation, which has been rejected and damned because of deicide, and to
who supposedly the blessings and promises of God still belong; and those who
support the state of Israel as the alleged fulfillment of biblical prophecies,
attributing the blessing of God to that which is the fruit of apostasy and
human iniquity; and to those who blaspheme that without baptism can be saved
those who crucified Christ, and who unrepentantly abide in the sin of deicide;
to the Bishops and clergy who go to the synagogues of Satan for joint prayers
with those who ceaselessly bring forth disgusting blasphemy towards Christ the
Savior in their books and traditions, denying His Divinity, Incarnation and
Resurrection; to those who deceive the Orthodox that Jews are today still the
nation of God, and that they are some sort of "older brothers" to us,
by which they reject the prophets, Holy Apostles and Holy Fathers; and to all
who with their ecumenistic flattery towards Jews help the mystery of iniquity
and are preparing the throne of Antichrist in the temple which they want to
build again in Jerusalem, for the purpose of subduing all nations under the feet
of their father Satan - ANATHEMA!"
Uteshiteljevo Monastery, during Great Lent, in the month of
February 2026.
Bishop Akakije of Uteshiteljevo, Serbian True Orthodox Church
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