Psalm 74:3 'Turn your steps toward these everlasting ruins, all this destruction the enemy has brought on the sanctuary.
Since David said the temple ruins would be EVERLASTING and Solomon's Temple ruins, were NOT EVERLASTING David was obviously NOT talking about Solomon's Temple. So the only Temple that David could be speaking of is Herod's Temple destroyed in 70 AD and still in ruins. It is that Temple that David said the ruins would be EVERLASTING. Therefore by David's prophecy there can be no rebuilt Temple of God known as the Tribulation Temple.
Thanks for your comments. Let me ask you a question. Verse 1 of this psalm starts with -
'Why have you rejected us forever, O God?'
The 'us' in this context is the Jewish people whose land/sanctuary have been invaded and destroyed by their enemies.
Are you saying that this is a literal prophecy spoken by 'David' to show that the Jewish people have been rejected by God forever?
I certainly hope not. I don't think anyone would believe that to be true! And I don't think anyone reading the psalm in its context would think that the psalmist, even though he said that God had rejected the Israelites forever, meant this as a specific prophecy. A reading of the entire psalm shows that this was prophetic of how they felt... they felt like God had rejected them forever.
That being the case, nor can you take the 'everlasting' of verse 3 to be a specific prophecy of a single event.
What this psalm is prophetic of, as expressed by the psalmist graphic language, is how the Jewish people felt during these extremely difficult times. They felt that God had rejected them forever, they felt that the sanctuary was destroyed forever because God was silent through the whole thing.
There is clear evidence in the rest of the psalm that the psalmist didn't actually think that his people were rejected 'forever' or that the temple ruins were 'everlasting'. This is clearly seen in verses 8-9 which reads -
"They said in their hearts, “We will crush them completely!” They burned every place where God was worshiped in the land. We are given no miraculous signs; no prophets are left, and none of us knows how long this will be."
This shows that they didn't actually think that the rejection of the Jewish people was forever, nor that the temple was destroyed forever, (otherwise he wouldn't have made this statement), but because God was silent they had no idea how long the enemy would prevail, or how long the destruction would continue.
The rest of the psalm goes on to show that they did have hope for the future that God would intervene... they just didn't know when.
So, this psalm is clearly prophetic of how the Jewish people felt during these difficult times. To take one verse out of this psalm, without taking into account its context leads to wrong conclusions based on forced assumptions.
On a separate note, it can be seen from the writings of the early church fathers (specifically Irenaeus, Hippolytus and Justin Martyr), that -
- They believed in a literal temple to be rebuilt in earthly Jerusalem
- They believed that a literal man (antichrist) would desecrate that temple
- They believed that this was all part of Daniel's 70th week which was still future
- They believed that there would be a literal earthly kingdom reign of Jesus from a rebuilt Jerusalem.
- They believed that God would fulfill these and other prophecies made concerning the nation of Israel.
They believed this because Jesus spoke about a future temple (Matt 24:15 in connection to Dan 9:27). Paul spoke of this same event in 2 Thes 2:4. And John was given a vision of this same temple (Rev 11:1-2). Anyway, besides the Old Testament prophets, besides what Jesus and John foretold, besides the early church fathers, just turn on your TV! Israel is! And you only have to watch the news to see that everything is falling into place concerning Israel, and Jerusalem in particular, as the prophets declared. (See Zech 12 esp.)
Though we disagree, God Bless.