Disciple Bible Study, 12-5-19, Haggai & Zechariah

At the same time with a similar purpose.

Oh, okay.

And and maybe helpful to remember that in the Jewish Bible is organized a little different from the Christian Bible.

Just a little bit.

Okay.

And uh the way that goes, right, is Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, the Pentateuch.

Those are the most authoritative, the most.

That's called the Torah.

The next section are called the Prophets, Naveem.

But that includes Joshua and Judges, not Ruth, 1st and 2nd Kings, 1 and 2nd Chronicles.

We call those history books.

Those are in the prophetic writings in the Jewish Bible.

The twelve prophets.

And then last come the writings that's called the Ketu Beam Psalms, Proverbs, Jobs, Ecclesiastes, Ruth and Esther go, they are Esther's dead last.

And so they're actually the Jewish Bible is arranged from the books that have the most authority to the least.

Which means if you're reading something in Leviticus and you don't like it, and you find something in the Psalms you prefer, too bad.

Leviticus is more important than the Psalms.

Now Christians don't do that.

And the prophets they put they kind of lumped together even though they're clearly divided.

We're not really sure about the original arrangement.

Because remember, there's three Isaiahs, and they're all compounded into one.

So the chronology is a little funny, right?

Because second Isaiah is clearly happening after Jeremiah.

Daniel is in there, but Daniel, in almost everybody's opinion, was like the last book in the Hebrew Bible that made it in.

In terms of chronology, it was written really late compared to all the other ones, but you don't find it arranged that way.

Does that make sense?

So sometimes we think we look for a parent order and there's not.

And I don't know if you know this, like the Quran is arranged from longest verse to shortest.

The chronology is all shuffled.

Oh my gosh.

Jeremiah, the book I mentioned to you, it's like somebody had a manuscript and dropped it down the stairs and just put it back in a stack.

It's all shuffled because he's he he you know, he's talking bit, the wall is being overrun, and he talks about stuff before that.

And then, you know, it's I mean, maybe he's like Kurt Vonnegut and loves to go like back and forth, but I don't think so.

I mean, so it's you it's not always like linear chronological for us.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah, maybe it's okay, since we're talking about temple, can I tell you a little bit about temples?

And if at any point this is not interesting, let me know.

But I wanted to give you the idea about the three, the three, essentially the three temples.

Really, there's two, but Herod takes that second one and makes a very different.

So the first temple is built by Solomon, and what's interesting is you hear this idea that the one Solomon builds is so much superior to the one that is built by the other folk, right?

That they weep.

Well, a couple of things about that.

First, David is the one who acquired the materials for the for the house.

Um, he didn't build it.

The scriptures say he wasn't allowed to because he was too violent.

Solomon's a pretty violent guy, it turns out.

He sort of uh just kills all of the political opponents David left around.

But he builds this temple, and as his architect, he employs the builder who just built a temple to Baal in the city of Tyre.

And the temple in Jerusalem is a cut and pasted from the temple to Baal.

So when you hear about Solomon's temple, there's this big old thing called the Bronze Sea.

It's this huge, huge holder of water on the back of twelve bulls.

Well, bulls are an iconography of Baal.

Baal was thought to be a cow.

And sure enough, that was in Tyrae as well.

The things inside the temple are perhaps a little different, but the dimensions, etc., are right.

And the things in the temple are things like gourds and pomegranates.

Um, the palace that David and Solomon build is more than twice the size of the temple.

This is really important to remember that.

The palace was twice the size of the temple.

Correct.

And it was connected to the temple.

So, you know, we love this idea since Roger Hutchison of the separation of church and state.

Well, well, no, it was really clear who controlled the temple, it was the king, and the king's domicile was bigger than God's.

Other important thing to remember is that the the temple holds the Ark of the Covenant, which is God's footstool, not seat.

God stands on the box and they carry God around.

And they thought God lived in the temple, so if you're wondering how big God is in their imagination, well, you just work backwards in the dimensions.

Solomon's temple was 30 cubits high.

What's a cubit?

Like a foot and a half.

It's like your elbow to your fingers.

Some people's cubit is longer than others.

That's interesting, isn't it?

Um, but see, let's just pretend it's 18 inches or 16 inches, okay?

So it was a 45-foot-tall building.

So God was about 40 feet tall in their imagination.

Because God had to stand on the box and clear the roof.

The the building seems to have been a rectangle, not a trussed roof, but a flat one, if that makes sense.

And there's you can look at the picture behind you at Herod's temple, and it'll show you in the inner building there, it's like a rectangle.

So, okay, something like that.

What would the roof have been made of?

Um, that's a great question.

Um, what's the question?

What would the roof would have been made of?

So that since it wasn't a vault, that's that's you know, technologically relatively advanced stone vaulting, what you want to imagine is that these are seared beams that are stretched across a flat thatched roof sealed with bitumen tar pitch, something like that.

And and so when you hear that it's about 60 cubits long, that's 90 feet, um, well, why is it that dimensions?

Because you can find cedars longer than that, you see.

Right?

So that's what they did.

Now it it wasn't, when you hear those dimensions, by the way, it's not like it was 90 by 30 in a in a rectangle around those dimensions the whole way.

Instead, you need to imagine it was more like a 30 by 30 with a 60 by 30 courtyard.

Um let me draw a different diagram for that.

Okay, so imagine this is not a good marker.

Imagine it is sixteen.

Thirty.

But then you need to really imagine it's more like thirty by thirty here.

And then out here, in this remaining thirty by thirty, is sort of a court where you can go in and pray.

Would that have a roof too?

Um probably not.

Okay.

Because it's called court.

Okay.

So think not.

This building would be reserved for priests, right?

So this is God's house, and it's just for the priest.

And then, of course, within it is this room that's very famous now, the Holy of Holies.

And that's only for the high priest one day a year on Yom Kippur.

And uh story says high priests went in with the rope on his was always a man's ankle with bells on it, and if the bells stopped ringing, it's because God killed the guy and you dragged him out.

If you go in to retrieve it, you'll die too.

So this is sort of the function of the temple.

Does that make sense as a picture a little bit?

Um where did the idea of the temple come from?

Because the thing is, when you read the Torah, um, God tells Moses to not ever build anything permanent.

This is really important.

And and to be honest, uh, as a young Christian person, I just didn't read the Bible very carefully because we decided God wanted Solomon to build that temple.

Well, it's completely against the Torah.

You can't even have an altar of mortared stones, right?

They have to be just stacked up rocks so that they can fall down.

And then all of a sudden now there's this big old bronze thing on twelve bulls.

So you have to ask yourself, I think, did God change God's mind?

Or did we change God's mind?

This is a really great question, I think, and a little bit insidious.

But maybe it's helpful for you to know that when David was born in Bethlehem, Bethlehem was a settlement of a people called the Jebuzites.

Now, Melchizedek, the king of the city Salim, maybe you've heard of him before, was such a Jebuzite, a priest.

So these are Semitic people, very similar linguistically to Hebrew, but with different practice.

So they they worship the pantheon of gods and goddesses, the Jebuzites, and they worshiped their deities in houses, in temples.

And there's this interesting thing, because Jerusalem can mean in Hebrew Ear Shalom, the city of peace, but in the Jebuzite language it means Ear Shalim, city of the god Shalim.

Yes.

So David came from a group of Zebulites who worshipped a pantheon of gods.

How did he get so close to the one god?

Well, it's a great question, isn't it?

Now, now David is of Judaic descent, Hebrew descent, but living in proximity to Jebusites.

Yeah, he was a shepherd.

But I'm saying Bethlehem is in Jebuzite territory.

So I'm not saying he was a Jebuzite by race, but he certainly was proximal to the Jebuzites.

Um his his uh city, Bethlehem in Hebrew means house of bread, and Jebuzite means house of Laham, who's another god in the Jebusite pantheon.

So, and what do you know?

There was a house in Lacham, a house for Lacham in Bethlehem.

So it's kind of ambiguous.

By the way, this information, I'm suspicious you haven't heard in church before.

Am I right?

This is bizarre.

I had to listen to um some terribly boring lectures to get this information that I'm convinced is 100% correct because it makes sense.

Um but boy, it was tough.

Um David's son Solomon in Hebrew shlomo could be a derivative of the word peace, shalom, but can also be uh something like shalim made manifest in a person.

So Solomon could have been somewhat self-proclaimed deity.

Now, this is all tricky.

I'm not saying David and Solomon were bad guys, but I am telling you without beyond a shadow of a doubt, they violate the Torah when they build this house.

And when you read 1 Kings and Chronicles carefully, Solomon says, I want to build you a house.

And God says, Am I ever gonna dwell in a house?

And Solomon takes that as a okay, I think I will.

And it's connected to the palace, and people have to pay for it, and it was really expensive.

What did they make it out of?

Limestone, beams of cedar from Lebanon, because those were the tall things, right?

And that's really clear.

They came from Lebanon.

The flag of Lebanon today still is the cedar tree.

Um, the Lebanese airline is still represented by the cedar.

Apparently they had some very giant ones, and that's where they bought them.

In Israel, they didn't have great trees.

They had things like acacia wood, which are not so big and bulky and majestic as to hold up a big ceiling.

So uh everything ends up, not everything, many things end up getting sort of gold leafed.

So don't think Solomon was the wealthiest person and all this stuff was made out of gold.

The Ark of Covenant itself is a wood box that's sort of gold leafed.

Don't think dipped, that's a little strong.

Uh it's gold-leafed.

So that's Solomon's contribution, and everybody has to pay to build the temple.

Solomon did it a couple of ways.

One was he charged taxes, the other way he charged a tax for people, you know, the way you get more out of people after the money's gone is you make them do something called corbey labor, which is well, there's 12 tribes, so um once a month, once a year for a month, you work for no wages.

And you can get a lot built that way, including resentment, which is why, which is why the thing breaks apart.

Now, when it breaks apart, Israel and Judah, the people who are in Israel can no longer go to God's house because don't you see it's not in their territory?

These are different kingdoms.

To go there, well, they have to pay tribute or duty, which is expensive.

They'd be, I mean, and then they'd be worshiping at this house.

It's connected to the palace of the king that they don't serve, you see, so it's difficult.

So Jeroboam, who's called a bad guy in uh the kings, builds shrines in the north where his people can go.

And what do you know?

They look a lot like the ones in Jerusalem.

They have altars on the backs of bulls, just like in Jerusalem.

But the author of Kings says those bulls are bad, our bulls are good.

Isn't that just like us?

So I think it's super important to read the Bible critically.

So we have to decide: did God want that stuff, or do we want that stuff?

Always.

Please.

So did Solomon have direct communication with God?

He says he did.

He said he did.

Once through a prophet, it was just easy.

No, he talks to God, and God says, What do you want?

Long life or riches?

And he says, No, I want wisdom.

Great, you can have all three.

They have this conversation.

So people really assume that their leaders are in direct communication with their their God.

Oh, yeah, thank you.

It's a great question.

In fact, even at the time of Jesus, do you remember when Jesus says it's harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle?

Um, people would have been flabbergasted at that because they believed if you were rich, it's because God blessed you.

Oh, George.

Yes.

Oh, prosperity aspect.

Creflodollar.

Um, Prophet Haggai.

If you build it, God will increase your wealth.

Isn't that interesting?

Um this is a real basic question.

But who lived in these temples?

The kings or the priests, or both of them?

Okay, so some priests possibly you shouldn't say live in the temple, the gods live in the temples.

These are the houses for the gods.

Okay.

And it's hard to know if how real they thought that was.

Like, did they have to move the gods in and out of the house and dress them and all of that, or is this all iconographic?

So I don't I don't know the answer to that.

Philosophically, I think it's iconographic.

What did the average person think?

Probably God lived in that house.

Right?

I'm just not sure.

Same if you talk to Hindu people today, right?

Um kings live in palaces, but again, this the the king of Judah's palace was physically attached to the temple.

Oh, okay.

And bigger.

Did this architecture predate arches?

Um so it's a great question.

I mean, the most like the the real the real arch builder is would be the Romans, right?

And they built the arch incorrectly because they built it a semicircular arch.

Are you interested in this geometry lesson?

Yeah, I think I'm interested in some of it.

You know, um, the Roman arch is is a semicircle.

And so here's your Roman bridge.

And and you know, all that arches do is transfer weight out to the columns, right?

So if you've got really weak columns, they they they won't support the load.

But it turns out if you've got strong columns you can do a whole lot with an arch.

I mean, that's how Roman bridges look.

But mathematically speaking, you don't need a semicircle.

It's actually a big waste of materials.

So I don't know if you remember learning this in pre- this would have been algebra two or pre-calculus, you learned conics.

Conics are things like circles, ellipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas.

Right?

So this may not even be let me let me erase a little bit to show you this.

Okay, so here's the Roman arch.

Well, it turns out you know it's a waste of materials because you can actually build a parabolic arch that is just as strong and uses less material.

In fact, it's a little stronger because it doesn't have all this stuff hanging down there.

But the strongest arch is not a parabola anyway, it's a hyperbola.

And so that arch is the strongest of the three.

In fact, the the hyperbolic arch is the strongest one that there is.

Um again, you can tell it's a Roman arch because it's wasteful.

Now, if you know the Gothic arch, it's real similar to the hyperbola because it's like that.

If you're Moorish, just for fun here, there is your arch.

And that's decorative.

They knew that that wasn't the best engineering, it's just meant to be beautiful, and then maybe you've seen before the Arab Norman arch, like so.

But but there's your hyperbola in there with decoration.

Okay, I'm all over the place, I'm sorry.

Now, um, what happens at the temple?

Uh to be honest with you, for many, many people, whether you were Hebrew or Greek, your religious life all happened at the temple.

So when Solomon was king, there weren't synagogues.

There weren't.

Who circumcised babies?

Well, there weren't rabbis.

You took them to the temple or you did it yourself, that's it.

Or maybe there is somebody in your village who did that.

But if you want to offer a sacrifice, there's a couple of ways.

All life is a sacrifice, all life belongs to God.

So remember, you can't chop your own meat.

You bring that to the Levite in your own town, but on appointed festival days, you're supposed to come to Jerusalem because that's God's house.

And what happens in Jerusalem is there's these priestly people who, just like in the Middle Ages, they're attached with the king, don't you see?

They occupy some really great land, they do really important functions, and they almost become an elite class of people.

They can't own land, but by the time of Jesus, they start owning land.

This is really, really awful.

Mike.

Yeah.

Who were they from?

They're a tribe.

They were from, I seem to remember early on that uh God declared, these people are going to be my priests.

Descendants of Aaron.

Descendants of Moses or the Levites.

So Aaron, interestingly enough, is the word for ark in Hebrew.

Ahron means ark.

So it's the Akron of the covenant, and Aaron's people tend the Ahron.

And so these priests are descendants, supposedly, of Aaron.

Yeah, probably so.

And by the way, if you want to know, if you see the name Kohen, a Jewish person named Kohen, that's the word for priest.

Oh, beautiful.

So the Kohen's of the priests.

The word Kohan in Hebrew means priest.

With a seal.

C-O-H-E-N.

So what happens at the temple is a lot of sacrificing, incense, burning.

They would take bread and stick it in the Holy of Holies on a board to consecrate it because it sat in God's presence.

So they said you got consecrated bread.

We have consecrated bread.

It sits in something called the tabernacle, which is that box.

I tell our kids it's like the mini fridge in the church.

It's where we put holy leftovers because holy things don't get tossed out.

And just like leftovers at home, when mom and dad made them with love, all the love's in them.

So when I bring things out of the tabernacle, all the love's still there.

Same idea.

We get it from these folks.

Did they bring the bread back out?

They did.

And then it was holy bread.

And you know, you're not supposed to, like it's not for regular people to be eating.

David, though, ends up being real hungry one time and he comes in and eats all the consecrated bread.

It'd be really interesting if people were like, Father Mike, I'm so hungry.

Let me give you some reserved communion first, and then I'll give you a bag of food.

Churches don't do that.

But it'd be really interesting, right?

How about we consecrate the food bags we're gonna give you?

Alright.

Um temple gets that one gets burned down totally 586.

And historically speaking, all of the literate people are in Babylon under the king Nebuchadnezzar.

Before he dies, he kind of has a loses his mind and starts worshiping the god of the moon and abdicates the throne.

His son is not really good.

He dies, the sun's gone, Cyrus takes over.

540.

He's an amazing guy.

What is he?

Oh no, totally different racially, ethnically, religiously.

Oh really?

So Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, you're really thinking like Babylon, that's present-day Iraq, whereas Cyrus coming from present-day Iran.

It's still heavy.

So this is the first Iran-Iraq war.

Um and Iran prevails, like really prevails.

Which countries did he take over?

All of them.

All of them?

How did he do that?

Um, well, that's a great question.

Um is that a difficult question?

I mean, no, um, it's not.

I'm trying to remember the military technology.

I can tell you how Alexander did it.

It was with the phalanx.

So what did the what the Persians have that Alexander didn't?

Um did they have horses that they could ride?

They definitely were riding horses.

So were the Babylonians.

Um there's some kind of thing they had militarily that was helpful, but Cyrus was a brilliant tactician.

I think I showed you how he took the city of Babylon.

Did I show you that?

This is great for you to know.

This is on the Cyrus Cylinder in the British Museum.

It's recorded.

Here was the city of Babylon, and its gates were so thick you could pull a U-turn on a chariot.

So how wide is that?

40 feet.

What they do is they build two walls and fill them in with trash and then pay for the top.

Trash, not like styrofoam, plastics, rubble, you know, and then threw in junk.

And through the middle of the city walls flowed the river uh Tigris.

And it was big enough that it could withstand a siege because you can't really poison a flowing river.

So they've always got water, and there's some arable land inside that city because it was really darn big.

So during a siege, really hard to take that city.

They didn't have bombs or cannons or anything like that.

So, what does Cyrus do?

He goes out of site back here, and he has his people dig this little trench, and then in the middle of the night, he diverts the flow of the river Tigris and walks into the city and takes it without a single casualty with his forces.

How brilliant is that.

Which is incredible, right?

I mean, it's it's amazing.

Now he had to have quite a force to dig that channel, but he did.

Uh, and again, you can find that in the Cyrus Syllaby.

I'm sorry, but it just reminds me of something, and it has absolutely nothing to do with this conversation other than that.

I I don't know whether you know this or not, but during the Civil War, Union ships couldn't come down the Mississippi and get past Vicksburg.

So Grant had a canal built around Vicksburg so that they could move their boats around Vicksburg and not be attacked by the guns that were in the highest.

This is why you're supposed to study ancient military tactics, right?

Because I don't want to say there's nothing new under the sun, but boy, I mean, that's actually I mean, I know that lesson, and I'm not a military historian.

And but that's really interesting, interesting tactic, isn't it?

So he was a brilliant military tactician.

He, unlike the Babylonians and Assyrians, did not do a brain drain.

He didn't create like a cultural stew.

He actually tried to strengthen local economies because he believed the stronger they were, the more money they would make and the more they'd pay in tribute.

And how he got the tribute was with a vast complex bureaucracy.

So Cyrus really was the inventor of the bureaucracy, whereas the Assyrians were more like smash and grab people.

Well, what Cyrus does is gives an edict that the Jerusalem exiles can go back and rebuild the temple, and that happens in the year 540.

They don't get there then.

And Cyrus dies before they start.

How long did he reign?

25-ish years.

And so that's not very long for somebody to have accomplished just a little bit.

It's almost a full lifespan in the ancient world.

Average man lived to the age of 32.

Oh.

I thought they had people living a long, long time anyway.

When you're the king, you live longer, except you have to remember that the king is the one not at the back of the military lines, but at the front.

So Nebuchadnezzar was like, I mean, I don't know what to compare him to, the UFC heavyweight champion.

People tried to kill that guy and could not.

It's kind of cool, right?

Because he actually rescued the uh the Judeans and the Israelites.

And they had to get out of.

Nebuchadnezzar enslaved them.

Yeah, but I mean apparently that was God's plan.

That's what the prophets say.

Well, maybe he didn't mean it that way, but sounded to me like he saved them.

Since they had to go and the temple was gone.

It does create this interesting conflict.

So these people start to come back in 540.

Remember, there's already people living there worshiping God, and the people who come back are like, you're doing it all wrong.

And they're like, wait a minute, we're the people who've been doing it.

So there's a conflict between, you know, these people, these brain-drained people coming back that perceive themselves to be ivy leaguers in God's gift to Judaism, and the people who've been living there faithfully doing what they thought was the right thing.

And they won't work together.

The smart people say, like, you're just gonna do what we say, or nothing.

And there's a lot of conflicts.

Well, we already read some of them, the people of the land, like, we want to help you build the city walls.

And they said, we don't want your help.

Well, then they don't want there to be walls anymore, right?

Because they were willing to help, and now you don't want our help, and then we don't want anything.

Um, because the walls would have then kept them out, don't you see?

That's that's what's going on.

Well, they rebuild the temple, but please notice that the temple they build is actually taller than the one Solomon built.

According to Ezra, the temple is the same 60 cubits in length, but is 60 cubits tall.

So it is actually twice as tall as the temple that Solomon built.

Mike, the Pete, the brain brain that came back.

Yes.

Were they Judeans?

They would have been Judeans.

Were they both Judeans and Israelites?

Uh Israelites are wiped off the map.

We don't know anything about where they go.

Gotcha.

Other than they become the Samaritans.

But it's but the Samaritans are these very mixed race people.

So it's not like we've got a clear sign going back to Israel.

After 722, Israel's gone.

Um remember there's various legends like they go to Scotland or they're the Native Americans, that's what the Book of Mormon says.

Um, it's interesting that when they came back, they didn't back in four different ways, right?

When the Judeans come back, for the people from Judah, yes.

They don't all come back once.

Right.

That's right.

And the biggest wave is under their new king, now not their emperor.

See, this is what's different.

They used to have a king, stand alone, but now the king will be beneath the emperor.

The emperor will be Darius, right?

Rome.

Oh no, no, now it'll be this is the Persian Empire, so it'll be Darius.

And he's the son of Cyrus.

Actually, Darius is not the son of Cyrus.

Um there was a little dynastic overthrow, and Darius becomes the new dynasty.

Yeah.

Um, but do notice, they cry that the temple's not as good, but it's twice the height.

So it may not have all the gold gilding, but here's what I want to tell you, quite honestly, is the people who went to exile, they weren't the ones who came back.

They died in exile.

They've been gone at least 44 years.

At least a generation is like 22 years.

So they cried because it didn't look like it used to, based on the stories they were told by their parents and grandparents.

These people had never seen it themselves.

So that's really important to remember.

And they probably enslaved it.

Just like we do.

I learned in Sunday school Solomon was the richest man in the world.

He was not.

He was not, he was over a territory the size of Rhode Island.

Egypt was really rich.

If you want to verify that, take a Nile cruise and look at Luxor and Karnak.

I mean, they just dwarf anything in Jerusalem.

That's what wealth will buy you.

Um okay, so they rebuild this temple slowly, they gild it a little bit, they settle into it.

The second temple version 2.0 is when Herod the Great enlarges it.

I don't it's it doesn't seem like he enlarged the building that God lives in.

Does not seem like that.

What he definitely enlarged was the platform on which that building stood.

And he did a lot of gilding out of that building.

So Herod really fixed that.

But just this one here?

Yeah, that's the one you see behind you, which you could fit like three and a half football fields in that build.

This was like three basketball courts.

So you just put that in perspective.

And the problem with it is that the temple, here's God's house, is built in a court or a precinct, and it's here on a mountain in Jerusalem, like on a hill.

Well, there's nowhere to build, you see.

There's nowhere to build.

So what Herod did was something very interesting, uh, he wanted that to be bigger because he believed a big temple would in fact bring more wealth to the city.

Especially with what he had in mind.

So, what did Herod do?

Herod built an arch over a valley and built the precincts of the temple much bigger on top of an arch.

The geography wouldn't support it.

So he manipulated the geography.

It would take five times the amount of stone to build that flat.

The arch holds it up just fine.

You can go see it today, and when you hear the disciples say, Look, teacher, what big stones?

One of them's like 57 tons.

So big, then people don't even know how they moved it today, still don't know how they moved that stone.

It's not even a rectangle, it's like got some indentations in it, but it's just huge, massive piece of limestone, and that's how Herod did it.

And how did it bring money in the city?

Just like in Athens, you hear the Acropolis, there's the temple up there, that was like also the shopping district.

Acro means high, and Polis means city.

It's the city above the city.

The Temple Mount was where all the vendors and market happened.

Outside of the temple in these courts.

And it would have been huge.

And Jerusalem is on the Silk Road, right?

It's on a major trade road.

Did you go there?

To Jerusalem, yes.

To that thing.

The temple?

Well, it's all burned down, but yes.

Yeah, the only thing left of that temple is the paving.

So, so all of this paving, and Jewish folk worship at this retaining wall that's holding it up.

That's called the Western Wall.

It's not part of the temple, there's a retaining wall.

It's not pretty either.

It's just the retaining wall with little bushes growing out.

Okay, that's temple, that's temple lore for the day.

I hope that was alright.

How did they get away from the temple being the center of their religion?

Who got away from it?

Oh, when it was destroyed?

Yes, when the was a major crisis.

So how did the Jews are their religion?

Yeah.

They did it by study.

And so keep in mind when the exile happens, there's still mostly just the Torah in scrolls.

They take that and they study it.

And there's a rabbinic belief still today that the study about sacrifice is just as good as doing the sacrifice.

So most Jewish people today have no interest in a temple and sacrificing animals.

Zero.

Right?

And that's part of the rabbinic movement.

So what happens when you don't have a temple is you've got to figure out another way to worship.

The bridge seems to be the Pharisees.

The Pharisees were people who did worship at the temple, but they also wanted religion to infest their everyday life.

So from the Pharisees comes not just worship by sacrifice, but worship by study.

And synagogues are places not where you go to pray in general, but where you go to study.

They're learning centers, the earliest ones.

Now you can pray at synagogues.

You read the Torah there.

Maybe around the time of Jesus early on, people were doing community prayers in synagogues, but we don't think much earlier than that it was happening.

That was part of what was found in Migdal or Magdal, where Mary Magdalene's from, as we found this Torah reading block in the synagogue.

So it looks like it might have been used for worship as well.

All of this is evolving stuff.

But the the daily ethic comes from the Pharisees.

The Sadducees were people who just kept the law of Moses, did the purity rites.

That was it.

You sort of have some somewhere along the line, it looks to me like the Jews stopped priests.

They have rabbis, but they don't have priests.

Yeah, there's no temple.

What would they do?

Would they get priests if they rebuilt the Well, there's I mean, you again, there's such a minority of Jewish people who are A, religious, and B, who have any interest in that coming back.

I mean, because it's religions moved on and evolved, right?

What's the difference between a priest and a rabbi?

Well, rabbi means rabbi means like my father or my teacher.

Okay.

So a rabbi is a teacher of students.

Okay.

A priest is somebody who cuts up animals.

So rabbis don't, I mean, it is interesting.

If you want to keep kosher today, the Jewish food law, it does have to be killed by a particular person in the Jewish community.

So now that would be sort of like a rabbi, sort of, but a butcher isn't teaching students, they're butchering animals.

So you we just have to consider those roles have changed.

But but some of the name, you know, some of the descendants, some people keep that, which is again why Kohen is still, you know, a Jewish name, because people keep up with that.

We have friends whose last name is Kohen and Priest.

Yeah.

A priest.

Okay.

The Hebrew word is Kohan, it just means priest.

So now that brings us into Haggai and Zechariah.

Is that okay?

Maybe we should start with Haggai.

And I don't want to lecture on that.

Maybe this is the the the asking point about what did Haggai do for you.

It's been a while, so I'm gonna be able to do it.

Same, two weeks for me.

I don't understand the question.

Well, I'm really just asking about your interaction with Haggai.

I mean, I'll just tell you the two points that I pulled out, three three points, was this accusation, hey, you live in luxury, but the temple is destroyed.

So, why are you living in fine homes when God's home lives in ruins?

It's a really interesting thought, because if you push it, if you push it to to its logical conclusion, right, the temple should be the nicest building, nicer than your homes.

And I think if you I mean I think maybe that makes maybe that makes sense.

Um the corollary that he says though is that hey, if you're wondering why you're not prospering more, it's because of this.

So if you'll build the temple, then you'll prosper.

That's a real interesting phrase.

And and that's when he sent the uh route.

And if you didn't build a temple, everything will begin to flower.

If you build it, it'll come.

And as soon as they started working on it, it began to flower.

So it's a really tough question.

Like, what do we do with that, right?

Does that mean the nicer churches we make, the more we'll prosper?

Does it mean that hey, when there was a temple, it mattered that there was a temple, but now there's not, so this is moot?

Does it mean that, hey, actually, because people thought God lived in a temple, they weren't being faithful to their own thinking, and Haggai's saying, listen, like you need to be faithful to your own thinking.

How long did it take to build a temple?

Um I don't know.

Let's just throw it in at 40 years, because everything takes 40 years in the Bible.

And the only reason I mentioned that is because you said that that all of a sudden things started to improve in terms of you know the drought.

I mean, droughts last, but they don't maybe some last 40 years, but

Is a long one, right?

I mean, remember Joseph's experience in Egypt 7 would be a really long one.

What's interesting is during the medieval period in churches, they were the center of commerce for the town.

Absolutely, they were.

So right here, I mean we've they didn't get too far away from the concept.

So it's hard to know if he's saying have the temple be the anchor of your mercantile district.

It's I mean, but I do think that's a possibility given what I what I what I told you about how this functioned, and like you're saying with medieval.

We don't know though if um I mean the interesting thing about temples and churches, right, is you have everybody's supposed to go.

And when you're supposed to go, you might as well do your business.

Because everybody's there.

But you also temple or church in the medieval days, um, you could see that from a long way off.

And so, I mean, you could you could you might want to make your way to that uh for commerce.

Yeah, and they're built along trade routes on purpose, right?

And there's city walls around them to protect merchants.

Yeah, and if you don't go to church, the local ruler will you know fog you or punish you in the Middle Ages.

In Judaism, I don't know about that, um, but you could find yourself cut off from your people if you don't go on high holiday days.

When in the media when were priests uh in the Roman Catholic tradition um prevented from having children?

Um well, you know what prevented from being married.

Clerical celib celibacy starts for the first time in the 560s and then it trickles down slowly after.

I mean, C E, that's right.

These Jewish priests have kids, absolutely they do.

No, no, the reason I mentioned that is because you were talking about the medieval church.

And what I had, my understanding was that the reason that the Roman uh or the the pop's uh Roman um leadership um said thou shalt not have uh wives and thus children is because they didn't want these priests that were far from the absolute control of Rome to build these huge um um uh congregations, if you will.

And then as they had children, they would then their child would then become, and so they're building actually a kingdom that could in some ways um um affect Rome or maybe even take over Rome if it got big enough.

Yeah, I mean maybe even a slight twist on that is when there's children and families, then there's inheritance.

Exactly.

Yeah, I don't know about challenge, but just keeping goods.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's more practical uh issue than uh Paul's uh edict of you should be like me.

I mean, we don't really you know we don't really know when the decision was made how it was made.

We can see at a lot of different angles.

I will tell you this.

I mean, um I I have some understanding how like if if a priest is married to the church instead of a fan has a family, then they can spend all of their time doing that.

Yes, no distractions.

But I'm not really sure that's great because that's you know, it's sort of like turning somebody into a commodity of service, which I don't know if that's great.

Yeah, I think as a Roman Catholic, first of all, I did not know that there was a Pope saw at some point that said you cannot marry.

I I don't know what I thought, or I don't remember what I've been taught.

But um as a growing up Catholic and priests were not married, there was no doubt for the community, and we were in a small community, but the priest was always available for all kinds of things, for somebody who was sick, or somebody who was dying, he was always available, and there was no other thing.

He had his family to worry about.

Um and they traveled to all the little communities all around in Tel Texas and farm areas and all that, and they were they were serving the people 100%.

So no, no, yeah, but although the priests couldn't have families, some of the popes didn't.

Well, the priests did.

They were allowed to have two, and still today they're allowed to have like two children from non-marriage, depending on what country you live in, which is bizarre.

It's just strange to me.

It's it's it's back to Haggai, though.

Uh it's interesting point, too, is that wow, this temple looks a lot worse than you remember the other one looking.

But don't worry, I'm with you.

Build it and it'll flourish later.

But you just gotta build it.

Get the structure there, and we'll decorate it later.

Have you ever heard of a book called The View Over Atlantis?

No.

This is about it has a lot to do with those temples or the the beautiful churches in in England and not that way.

But it's basically what they're saying is that these edifices are built along what we now call the ley lines, you know, that where they can concentrate power in certain parts of the earth.

But I think it sounds like that's what he was saying.

You need to seize this spot and create this edifice so that you can get this power that I'm trying to bring to you.

It could be.

I mean, I think there's a lot of there's really a lot of potential.

You can see the staples in it.

That's what they were saying.

That I mean and in this book it almost suggests that they were able to use these lines to fly along for you know for levitation.

But they they had some reason to use these particular spots.

You know, and I mean I thought, well, that's interesting, you know, because they could bring these certain people out, um Chinese maybe who had the ability to perceive where the where the where these edifices are supposed to go and sense the lines.

And I always wanted that.

I was like, gosh, we should have done that in this country.

You know, put these buildings where they would concentrate the power in the uh what's the one.

Curiously, a lot of the churches are built on places in which there already were pagan shrines, people that were thought places that were thought to be thin places already.

And and and um I think it was um previous book.

Um change uh uh the um the church has to be facing in a certain direction.

Oh yeah, the yeah, there was yeah, yeah.

I know you don't have to have a relic anymore.

That's the big change of Attican 2.

I want to say, Yeah, we always we usually have our altar oriented toward the east so that we can have sunrise.

Right.

Not toward Jerusalem, but toward the east.

I I think that's I think that's what the book did.

Yeah, that's a long, long tradition.

Um that would be something like two things, but first let's move over Atlantis.

Haggai was right, yeah.

Build the temple.

Yes.

Is this about the time that the Jews are returning from Babylon?

Uh probably the second wave.

So you want to think this is happening a little after 520.

The first wave came in 540.

And I never knew, but they were is he part of one of the waves?

It would seem that way.

Yeah, he's on the ground.

It would seem that way.

Yeah.

Okay.

But they seem to be able to do that.

And uh so they came in and they basically took over.

Seems that way.

Yeah.

Um, there is one other interesting thing that you'll see in a couple of messages.

So they built that.

No, much smaller.

Much smaller, yeah.

Well, I was gonna say what the what I'm saying is they built, at least started building not Herod's wall, yeah, yeah.

Just the temple itself.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

That's it.

So that maybe the foundation there was Yeah, and probably also flat roofs still.

But yeah, yeah.

Herod, now Herod made that a little taller and more gilded, but he didn't much change that box.

Yeah, the box didn't get changed much.

Do you know what's fascinating?

Some of the what's fascinating that today's generally, today's Jewish people don't even go to temple.

Don't even are that that I that we know, they don't practice except for the Passover, you have a meal and you just gather people for a meal.

Um, but there's not a practice, a religious there isn't.

Welcome to European Christianity.

And I think the question is, should we practice something that's not life-giving or not?

So it's hard to know if the death of Christendom is really so bad.

I think the question is what's the life, what's the life within the Christian story and message, and is that happening or not?

The death of what?

Christendom.

Okay, like the kingdom of ruled by Christianity, the Holy Roman Empire, etc.

Um there is one other religious thought, yeah.

And it's such a shame.

Why can't you just be religious?

I think because there's so much junk associated with um traditional denominational churches that it's I don't really want to be a part of that.

And to be honest, I am not always really excited when people ask me, what like I was just on a tour program, right, with a bunch of people I don't know.

Well, what do you do?

Oh boy, you know.

I'm very teaching I'm very happy to be a priest.

I'm very happy to be a priest.

However, I'm also very aware that that word um is like an automatic button for a lot of people that takes them to places I don't want them to take it.

Even when it's a good thing, I don't necessarily want them to put me in that pigeonhole because of what that means to them.

So I think it's really tricky, and to be honest with you, I don't understand why people have gone to church as long as we have, because boy, there just wasn't a lot of life in it.

This wasn't a lot of life in it, and I can't understand why the Episcopal Church is not growing rapidly because there is a lot of life in it.

Um, and this book really brings up for us, I think, why do we even have sanctuaries?

That would be a really interesting thing to talk about.

Because I was taught that the church is God's home.

Well, I didn't think that's right.

I think God's home is like time.

Since God is everywhere.

If God's everywhere, how can God be more somewhere than another place?

So I think churches are not for God, they're for us.

And that's why I'm a big proponent of beauty in churches, because to be honest, churches are the last beautiful buildings in the United States, by and large, where you can hear beautiful music for free and be a part of it free.

That's silly.

I mean, somebody's paying for it, but um but I think we go to church, if we really think about it, to be inspired by beauty in the structure, in the liturgy, in the music, hopefully inspired by the liturgy of the word, which is what comes first, liturgy of the word, then liturgy of the sacrament, and hopefully, then to go out, like we just came into an airplane terminal to be, I hate to say refueled because that's a loaded word for me.

We come and meet together at this hub, and then we fly back out to live bigger life that we just nourish in ourselves and the community, and then bring back those stories from being tourists back into the hub and go out again.

So it's constantly out and back, and it has to be doing mission and ministry where we live and bringing it back and inviting tourists to come with this and see whether or not there's value in this for them or not.

And if there's not, then there's not.

There's plenty of people that visit here that don't come back, and I actually don't worry about that because you know, um, the style, the theology isn't for everybody.

I would just hate for people who are yearning for this to not know it's here.

A community of people who's inviting and welcoming, um, a place, you know, that's really designed to stretch us into bigger living, to include everybody at the Eucharist and in sacraments.

I think there's people who are looking for that.

Sometimes it goes wrong.

And you know, the prophet's wrong.

He says Zerubbabel's gonna be God's signet ring, and he'll overthrow all the thrones on the earth.

Zerubbabel was a relative of David who apparently was very charismatic, but something really bad happened to him, like he got assassinated or something.

So there were a lot of high hopes for this guy, and then they just were gone.

They died with him.

Yeah, that's the name that Haggai himself mentioned, Zerubbabel.

Um, and he's gonna be God's own signature, right?

Signet ring.

Is that name?

Is that name mean something in Hebrew?

Yeah, I don't know what it means there.

So sorry, that's not significant.

It's a real guy.

Yeah, he just he just dies prematurely, apparently.

And um sometimes we get I think it's nice to know, sometimes we see a lot of hope and we raise it, and hey, it didn't work out.

I think that's part of life and part of faith life too.

Um, it says C-E R U B E A B E Yeah, zerubbable.

I thought it began with a J.

I do have a question that please um my wife and I who were having a discussion and three of the Roman Catholics.

Uh there I guess you have read that a piece of the um manger uh was moved from uh some church in um in uh I think it's Italy to another location.

I I just read this recently.

Are you familiar with this?

Anyway, no, yeah.

So my so supposedly I've been at this other church for 700 years.

Okay, so you take 2,000 on a 700, you get 1,300.

Okay, so I said, Chris, forgive me, forgive me, I said there is no way that this is a piece of the course.

And so how do Catholics view these these um relics?

Relics.

I you know, I as personally, um I I feel very Catholic, and I practiced and I went to Catholic school, and I feel very much as a Catholic, but some of the stuff that surrounds the Catholic Church to me is is just almost um thinking.

Well, it's hokey, and it's it's not and it makes the church generally look bad.

So people say, see, right away you said, oh, you're Catholic, and I think here it comes here.

Yeah, but Catholic means what universal?

Yeah, but being Catholic means you yeah, it doesn't mean the word itself means it's universal.

Yeah, it's it's I I think the I think just speculating uh what what Mike says, you know, we they don't have to have a relic in each church now because we only so many relics.

Uh I think it just kind of gives some uh some meaning to something something for for someone to focus on.

It would be like a statue or an icon.

But it's more than a lot of things.

And that's and that's where I that's where I was.

The Catholic, the the old Catholic tradition, and I don't know how long that's ended, that every church that was built should have a relic under the altar.

Okay, and we were all told that.

Now, what relics were in all the other churches I've been, I don't know, but it it it and maybe it is it is hoping, but spiritually or in my heart, if there is something that was connected with Jesus somewhere, somehow, there in that place, that's fine with but when I come into this church, I I feel that way.

I feel I feel, and I don't know if there's a relic or there's no relics here.

Yeah, but but I there's a sense of of a church space, and maybe it's just something buried in my heart and head, I don't know.

But there's the church space is a is holy to communicate.

So I think this is the I mean if I can say something positive about sanctuaries in the temple, the truth is we're physical people, and that's why we have sacraments, which are physical ways of participating in God's presence on earth.

Does God need that?

I'm sure God doesn't.

I'm positive we need it.

So I I'm I'm positive this is part of why.

Hey, look, you don't have any place that you can associate as a holy place, uh, a place that is a sanctuary, a place where you can look up and aspire to and be inspired by.

So build the dang thing so you can have that because you need it.

Otherwise, you're living like at Maslow's hierarchy level one, where you're getting your food or two, your food and your shelter, but what about your spiritual and moral and emotional needs?

Well, hey, you've got to create some room and some structure for those to prosper.

I would tell you, I'm positive that modern life is missing rites of passage.

There are no rites of passage.

When do you become an adult?

It used to be when you graduated high school because you got a job.

Well, it could be you get a job, but a lot of people with jobs are living with their parents, so are they adults or not?

Neither one of them knows.

So this is part of why we had things like confirmation and the sacrament of marriage because they passed you from one identity to another.

Your first holy communion.

And God didn't need that, but we need it.

And that's yeah.

And relics are just symbols that we didn't make all this up.

That's all they are.

It's not made.

I'm positive.

I am positive that there is not a manger to be found because hey, animals ate hay off the floor.

So if you're looking for like a trestle, I think you're gonna be disappointed.

And you know, we went to Bethlehem and went to a shepherd's cave, right?

And they said this is where Jesus was born.

Only according to the apocryphal book of Thomas was Jesus born there.

Uh, the Bible says actually he was probably born in a house, depending which one you read, where animals live.

They lived in houses and they ate off the floor and they laid the baby in the floor.

Uh, that's not so bad because everybody slept on the floor.

So good luck finding the floor.

I you know, I mean, but the reason we look so hard is because we want physical demonstrable evidence.

I think there's a difference between physical magic and real magic.

And sometimes we'll settle for physical because real we can't prove.

But the sacraments are really physical ways to get into real magic.

There's no transubstantiation.

I don't think there's any transubstantiation, but I think the real magic is that God's presence is all of a sudden fully experienced.

Not changed, it was already there.

We just needed to experience it in the bread and the wine and the baptism and the confirmation and the doggone building.

I think that's I think that's the goal.

And uh thank you very much because I think what's sad though is people say, I don't need that, and yes, we do.

I don't know anyone who doesn't need that.

Because I can tell you you can be in a running club and you can have a good Community, and I do see running clubs are giving people communities, churches were not giving them, which is a damn shame for church life that we're not giving people community and care and acceptance and openness regardless of their pace or their injury, and running clubs do that, right?

But there is something else missing because the running club, in my own experience, is not connected directly with higher power.

It's not.

I do think community is really important, but I think there's some really nice things about language and space connecting us with something greater than ourselves.

Whether you're Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, whatever.

Like those are important connections we need.

And I you know I stopped going to St.

Bernadette because I lost that connection there.

Father Bob, I mean, he's a good man, but he just didn't do that.

And I started coming here, and you have you with the space, the people here.

I have found the connection that I had somehow lost when the Carmelites were there at St.

Bernadette.

It was different.

It was different.

And I'm positive that the Carmelites go.

While I'm here, after I go, three priests down the road, it'll be different again.

And I'll tell you, part of the reason I keep coming back to church, even when I don't feel like it working, is because I think if I do it long enough, it'll work again.

So what we need to do is give some people a sense that we gotta work at that, right?

So you had a tough experience once, me too, and it's awful, and yours might be worse than mine or whatever, but if you stay in the game, there's something to be.

And you see it happening in other people.

You can sit there and watch someone else responding or reacting, uh and and you go, wow, that little girl, that person, that couple, they have that connection.

And so, therefore, this is the right place.

This is the place to be.

It's it's a need.

It's I I maybe that sounds corny, but sorry.

No, and so so I think if you look at Zechariah's visions, it gives us visions for how we're supposed to use sacred space, right?

God's gonna gather the scattered horns of Judah and put them together.

So remember, an altar has a horn on each corner, and it's like there's a symbol of strength.

We don't really know functionally what they did.

Um, but the symbol of strength in the community has been scattered, and and and God's gonna put them all back together.

Um Jerusalem is going to draw all the nations, draw them, like appeal to them.

And this is one of those interesting things, right, that we have to think about.

Like I was always taught, hey, these heathen people, they're just godless.

And the question is, like, what are we doing that's appealing?

I mean, and like if we don't have any joy in our church life, why would any why would we want anyone else to have the misery we've got?

And why should they come and be miserable if it's not joyful for us?

I mean, this is an interesting thing.

I I see people go around and complain about their churches, and I'm like, go somewhere else.

Or change what you're saying, because the point is not for this to be some obligation in order to please God.

God wants us to be pleased with it.

I I think.

Yeah, yeah, I that's well, we've joined the Episcopal Church.

The priest there said, we were talking about the Roman Catholics, and you said, well, you've got to take it that the Episcopal Church is Roman Catholicism without the guilt.

And there is more joy.

Well, there's we all have some, but they're here, there's a whole different attitude since you got here.

And we've been here a while, and there's more acceptance, uh, not so much judgment.

You know, you're gay, oh that's terrible.

And it's said repeatedly, it's not accepted.

This is not accepted in that.

This is more like we welcome you here.

No matter what, and I'll tell you when well I'll change to Roman Catholicism because of the fellow I was dating.

But um, I thought you were dating.

No, I don't know.

A change from Catholicism to the Episcopal Church, maybe.

Well, we all changed to Roman Catholics.

From yeah.

And then we became Episcopalian because my husband decided that they've been lying and made all these.

But you know, at the end of the day, to me, at the end of the day, there's not really a deep, deep difference of what happens in my heart or my soul or my being, my inner being.

Uh just because it's a paleon or another, those are just names.

Those are the church is much more, the episcopal church is much more willing to accept things and do change.

Yeah.

I I guess, I mean, so philosophically, I'm sure that's if that's true, that's true.

But you know, I know Catholics who want Episcopalians and so I'll tell you the the advice I got from my mentoring rector, and I think this is good advice.

He said, if you want to be a successful priest, here's all you have to do.

People don't even care if you're a heretic, they don't care.

If you get up and you say false doctrine, people don't even care as long as you love them and let them love you.

And that's the basic relationship.

And I think it's the basic relationship between whether a church is is life-giving and working for anybody who goes.

Do you love the people you attend with, not in spite of their warts, but knowing them?

Do you love them?

And will you let them love you?

If you don't do both, it won't work as a priest and it won't work as a church, and it won't be a joyful community.

But this interesting advice, people don't care if you're a heretic.

They just care if you're open to love.

And it is true even with between human beings.

You know, you love your kid because you love your kid, and he's kind of warts and all kinds, and they love you back.

I mean, it's a basic human and again, that mirrors that horizontal mirrors the particles between that.

Yes.

Yeah, warts, yeah, warts and all.

And you know, it's interesting.

The arch, I love arches, I love geometry, I love the idea of arches.

But arches have that kind of it's a curve, it's not a point, it's not a square.

There's there's just an arch of flowing.

It's an go like a circle, and it's just, oh, it's just beautiful.

And and I I think you can read Zechariah this way is that the community will be drawing through the building as long as the community architecture is properly performed, right?

So you can have a whole lot of space in the middle as long as you've got the pillars set right.

And what are the pillars?

I mean, I he doesn't name them, uh, but he kind of does.

God will remove all guilt.

That that comes in the first three chapters.

Um, so you said this interesting thing, and and I and I I'm kind of the word I'm overly attending to words.

I think the Episcopal Church is and should be full of guilt.

I hope what we remove is shame.

So shame is a feeling that there's something wrong with me.

Guilt is a feeling that I'm perfectly capable of making good and righteous and loving decisions and being in mutual relationships, but I made a bad decision.

So, because I'm capable, I will make a different decision next time.

I hope our church is full of that kind of guilt, but absent from shame.

The church I grew up in taught me to be ashamed of myself, and to be honest, it played on this feeling there's something wrong with me.

And the church said, there is something wrong with you.

You're a sinner and you're messed up, and God does not like you.

But but we can fix you up.

Do what we say, and we'll fix you up.

Okay, we have another group coming in.

Thank you for Haggai and Zechariah, and we'll read the rest of Zechariah next week.

One last thing, you know, we've worked in architectural things.

The keystone.

And the art the keystone is not the feeling guilt, not anyone, the keystone of a change.

Not feeling change.

Yeah, not yeah, that's that's not bigger, then that's that's it.

But hopefully, you have to build a scalp.

You know, it didn't just build a scale.

So you gotta hold it up while you get there, and hopefully that's what we're doing.