Six Quandaries, Cont.

·        The Quandary of Incompatible Dispensational Conditions

Besides the faulty presumption of Mosaic and Ezekian inalterability, the Messianic case for restored temple sacrifice also presumes that the entire worship system Ezekiel records is entirely applicable to the millennial future. It interprets the whole vision only by its millennial dimension (chapters 47-48) without ability—if not without attempt—to distinguish limited historical earthly applications from futuristic glorified ones.

The Messianic reasoning is this: Since no temple was ever built and its ordinances were not carried out as Ezekiel saw them—then God must still intend for this temple to be built and its ordinances carried out (on the terms Ezekiel understood them) in the Millennial Age seen in the last chapters. Confirmation for this is sought by linking Ezekiel’s vision to other prophecies speaking of a restoration age temple, ordinances and sacrifices (also assumed to be fulfilled on their original terms of understanding).

But serious internal problems exist within Ezekiel’s vision that doom this conclusion. They arise from the fact that the worship system Ezekiel saw was as much rooted in his own time as it was predictive of things millennial. (In ch. 43, for instance, God tells Ezekiel what he is to personally do in making and cleansing the altar).

As such, the ordinances supposedly governing this “millennial” worship system are inextricably tied to specific factors native to Ezekiel’s age and past history which have no compatibility with Millennial Age conditions. Following is a list of key conditions attached to the visionary worship system along with the millennial problem each creates:

1.    God says that only the Zadokite priesthood will be able to minister directly to Him in this renewed worship system because of their unalloyed faithfulness to Yahweh during the recent period of the kings (40:44-46; 43:19-20; 44:10-16; 48:11).

Millennial problem: what relevance can pre-Yeshua Zadokite faithfulness possibly have in the Millennium?  Besides the difficulty of even identifying a physical Zadokite lineage now, more vital is that, after Ezekiel, the Zadokites were as guilty as anybody in subsequently putting Yeshua to death. Are we to believe that in the millennial worship system under Yeshua that God will somehow “give a pass” to physical Zadokites for their outstanding part in the crucifixion and so give them charge of millennial worship based in a prior faithfulness during a failing pre-Yeshua period which, by the time of the Millennium, will be at least 2500-3000 years past??    

2.    In the “future” system, God specifically prohibits the Levites outside the line of Zadok from ministering to the Lord because of their past unfaithfulness to the Lord (44:10-14). They can only minister before the people.

Millennial problem: the Millennium is a time when all of Israel’s past has supposedly been reconciled with God by their turning to Yeshua to receive His forgiveness and the “blotting out” of their past transgressions. If Yeshua has forgiven the Levites at His return, how can He disqualify them from ministering to Him based on their ancestors’ sins long before the crucifixion?? This problem is reinforced by Jeremiah who declares that the Levites will—without any distinction—never fail for all time to have a man to “minister before Me” (33:17-22. If Ezekiel’s system was for the Millennium, Jeremiah should have spoken strictly of Zadokites, not the Levites, who are “barred” in the Millennium.)      

3.    The Zadokites are told they may not marry a divorcée (44:22).

Millennial problem: if this injunction belongs to a millennial worship system, it presumes that divorce will be allowable under Yeshua’s reign—meaning that Yeshua will allow an ordinance which God says He hates (Mal. 2:16) and which Yeshua said before was only allowed by Moses because of hardness of heart (Mt. 19:8), which hardness is supposed to be removed from Israel in the Millennium.

4.    The Zadokite priests are told they may not eat the meat of animals that have been “torn” by other animals (44:31).

Millennial problem: Isaiah has said that in the millennial kingdom, there will be no enmity within the animal kingdom. There will be no animals tearing at one another. (Isa. 11:6-9.) If not, how then can this injunction in Ezekiel’s system possibly refer to the millennial kingdom?

As a matter of fact, Isaiah hinders the very concept of return to animal sacrifice by the equal reality that enmity between man and animal is removed in the millennial kingdom. His words, “they shall neither hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain” must certainly apply to the taking of animal life for sacrifice. This is reinforced where Isaiah declares that in the glorified realm, the offering of animals is an affront to God (66:3)!

5.    Regarding the produce from the land to be offered to the Lord, the prince of the land is to make offering “according to his ability.” That is, he is to fulfill the amounts of produce required to be offered, allowing for the possibility the land may not have a good year of produce.

Millennial problem: The Millennial Age is repeatedly prophesied to be a time of unprecedented prosperity for Israel. If so, and if this worship system is supposed to be executed in that Age, why would the system make any room at all for the possibility of poor harvests??   

These conditions are intrinsic to the Ezekian worship system and are therefore fatal to the Messianic belief that the system is to be applied to the Millennium as he saw it. To handle these conditions, Messianism is forced to either a) import them with the system into the Millennium—contradicting everything about the Millennium portrayed by the other prophets, b) ignore them or c) arbitrarily disassociate the conditions from the worship system, which is a regenerative approach to interpretation contrary to their own reconstructionist platform.

If these attached conditions are not millennially applicable, then it’s impossible to insist that the system itself must be applicable to the Millennium on the terms of Ezekiel’s dispensation. Nor can reconstructionist interpretation—which allows for no deviations and exceptions from original practices—arbitrarily extract the system from its conditions to project it into the future without them. If the conditions will not be there, then the system under its natural appearance and arrangement cannot be there either.

To sum, if the historic conditions behind this worship system don’t fit the Millennium, then either a) the system itself does not apply to the Millennium, or b) it can only apply regeneratively to the Millennium through a higher meaning and application, not in natural reconstructive fulfillment.