Just a couple of weeks ago I was teaching on 1 Peter 2 and
thinking about the Temple Mount and the Wailing Wall. It struck me in light of
the passage that these people are putting their faith in dead stones. The image
is striking to me. Our Temple is made of living stone and it must be contrasted
with these dead ones. Judaism's devotion to a temple of dead stone is the basis
of their rejection of the Messiah. The doctrine of the Living Temple, the very
person of Jesus Christ becomes a stumblingblock and occasion for offense.
Dispensationalism or as it is called in this link 'Christian
Zionism' rejects the Apostolic Hermeneutic. Are they literalists as they claim?
Not at all. They need to be reminded of this. They reject what the Apostles
teach about the Old Testament and most importantly 'how' to read the Old
Testament. The veil Paul speaks of in 2 Corinthians 3 likewise lies over their
hearts when they read the Old Testament.
They greatly err in establishing all their doctrinal
foundations in Old Testament readings. When the New properly elucidates their
true meaning and import we find they were literally true but in poetic and
symbolic and often typological form. The centerpiece of Scripture was not the
plan concerning Hebrew Israel. The center of Scripture is Jesus Christ of which
Hebrew Israel and its temple was but a small symbol... and thus necessarily
incomplete and flawed. It was the shadow, not the substance. Christ is the
hermeneutic by which we understand the Old Covenant age. We cannot properly
understand the Old without the New.
Dispensationalism rejects this, makes Israel the substance
and thus while proclaiming Spiritual liberty they are in fact captured by a
form of bondage... like the Hasidic Jews praying before dead stones. They
profess to follow Christ but they still worship at the temple made of dead
stone.
They reject the Christocentricity revealed to us in the New
Testament. Christ and the New Covenant are for them a stumblingblock.
Of course the Living Stone doesn't just build the New
Covenant Temple, providing a way of life to the lost world. The Temple is also
a proclamation of coming judgment. The Stone that is life to some will be death
to others. The Stone in Daniel's image smashed the idolatrous statue that
depicts the empires of this world. The Stone did so in the first century with
the cry of 'It is finished'. The actual event has been delayed because of the
longsuffering of God.
When Christ returns the Danielic prophecy already fulfilled
in Christ will be brought to fruition 'in time'. The eschatological reality
will be imposed on the cosmos, on this age. And then in the Age to Come we will
experience the joy of the New Heavens and New Earth where there is no longer a
Temple. We will have Christ Himself, full Spiritual union, the joys of
righteousness in eternity.
