Long before today’s frequent temple trips for many Church members or yearly temple announcements with locations around the globe, houses of the Lord began with God lovingly reaching out to His newly delivered people in a desert abode.
“Temple ordinances and covenants are ancient,” said then-Church President Russell M. Nelson in October 2021 general conference. “In every age, the temple has underscored the precious truth that those who make covenants with God and keep them are children of the covenant.”
The Bible Dictionary’s “Temple” entry explains that “whenever the Lord has had a people on the earth who will obey His word, they have been commanded to build temples in which the ordinances of the gospel and other spiritual manifestations that pertain to exaltation and eternal life may be administered.”
This next year, as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints study the Old Testament in “Come, Follow Me — For Home and Church,” they’ll find connections between ancient and modern covenants, ordinances and temples.
Here’s an overview of four paramount houses of the Lord to look for in Old Testament study:
1. Tabernacle of Moses
After God delivered the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery and into the wilderness (see Exodus 14), He didn’t leave them without His divine guidance. And the tabernacle of Moses — a portable temple — is unmistakable evidence of that.
The Lord manifested His presence over the tabernacle as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night (see Exodus 13:21). Numbers 9:17 even recounts that the cloud led the way on the Israelites’ journey.
On Mount Sinai, the Lord directed Moses how to build the tabernacle and requested a willing offering of the Israelites’ finest, most precious materials (see Exodus 25:1-7).
Yet the cost of these supplies paled in comparison to the rich purpose such a structure would have. In Exodus 25:8, the Lord urged, “Let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them.”
This sanctuary stood “in the midst of the camp” (Numbers 2:17), with the tribes of Israel building their tents around the tabernacle.
So, how was the tabernacle structured? It consisted of three areas:
- The outer courtyard: This outside area, which had an altar of sacrifice and a laver of water, allowed a symbolic cleansing from a fallen world while drawing closer to God’s presence. Aaron and his sons were washed, anointed and clothed here (see Exodus 40:12-15).
- The holy place: The first room of the tabernacle housed a table of shewbread (see Exodus 25:23-30), a seven-branch candlestick to give light (see Exodus 25:31-37) and an altar to burn incense every morning and night (see Exodus 30:1-9).
- The Holy of Holies: Passing through a veil led to the tabernacle’s most sacred place, which held the ark of the covenant (see Exodus 26:33-34). Only the high priest could enter here, and only once a year — on the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur — to ritually atone for the Israelites’ sins (see Leviticus 16:29-34).
2. Temple of Solomon
A few centuries or so after the Israelites wandered in the desert, David — the second king of Israel — told Nathan the prophet his desire to build a permanent temple structure. “I dwell in an house of cedar, but the ark of God dwelleth within curtains,” David explains in 2 Samuel 7:2.
The king began gathering materials for this house of the Lord (see 1 Chronicles 22:14), but it would later be built by his son, Solomon, the next king of Israel. His temple was built in the design of the tabernacle, with the dimensions of each part doubled.
As Solomon built this temple, the Lord gave him a promise: “If thou wilt walk in my statutes, and execute my judgments, and keep all my commandments to walk in them; then ... I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will not forsake my people Israel” (1 Kings 6:12-13).
Amid the temple’s seven-day dedicatory services, “fire came down from heaven, and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices; and the glory of the Lord filled the house” (2 Chronicles 7:1).
The temple of Solomon was completed in seven years, finished in Jerusalem in about 1005 B.C. It would later be burned to the ground by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, in 587 B.C. (see 2 Kings 25:9).
3. Temple of Zerubbabel
The Babylonians took the people of Judah in captivity for 70 years. Then Cyrus, the king of Persia, conquered Babylon and permitted the Jewish people to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem (see Ezra 1:1-2).
Zerubbabel — a governor who was appointed as the representative of the Jewish royal house — directed the rebuilding of the temple, with help from Haggai and Zechariah (see Ezra 5:1-2).
In his 1912 book “The House of the Lord,” Elder James E. Talmage, then of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, wrote, “While this temple was greatly inferior in richness of finish and furniture as compared with the splendid temple of Solomon, it was nevertheless the best the people could build, and the Lord accepted it as an offering typifying the love and devotion of His covenant children.”
Herod, king of Judaea, captured Jerusalem in 37 B.C., and the temple of Zerubbabel was partially burned by fire in the process.
4. Temple of Herod
In 17 B.C., to gain popularity among the Jewish people, King Herod proposed to rebuild the temple of Zerubbabel. Priests began work on the structure, but it wouldn’t be completed until A.D. 64. A short time later, the Romans would destroy the structure in A.D. 70.
Although the site was expanded and divided into courts, Herod’s temple itself was placed on the exact site of the temple of Solomon. It was visible from every part of the city.
The grounds of Herod’s temple proved a prominent setting in Jesus Christ’s earthly life, from infancy to His last days of mortality. As a baby, the Savior was presented at the temple, following Jewish custom (see Luke 2:22-33). After He cleansed the temple in His last week of mortality, “the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them” (Matthew 21:14).
And after His Crucifixion on Calvary, “the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom” (Matthew 27:51) — a symbolic manifestation that the Lord opens the way for God’s children to return to Him.
