The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 24
refuse to listen to the words of truth in their day of visitation. Terrible
blindness! strange infatuation!
Two days before the Passover, when Christ had for the last time
departed from the temple, after denouncing the hypocrisy of the Jewish
rulers, He again went out with His disciples to the Mount of Olives and
seated Himself with them upon the grassy slope overlooking the city.
Once more He gazed upon its walls, its towers, and its palaces. Once
more He beheld the temple in its dazzling splendor, a diadem of beauty
crowning the sacred mount.
A thousand years before, the psalmist had magnified God’s favor to
Israel in making her holy house His dwelling place: “In Salem also is
His tabernacle, and His dwelling place in Zion.” He “chose the tribe
of Judah, the Mount Zion which He loved. And He built His sanctuary
like high palaces.” Psalm 76:2; 78:68, 69. The first temple had been
erected during the most prosperous period of Israel’s history. Vast stores
of treasure for this purpose had been collected by King David, and the
plans for its construction were made by divine inspiration. 1 Chronicles
28:12, 19. Solomon, the wisest of Israel’s monarchs, had completed the
work. This temple was the most magnificent building which the world
ever saw. Yet the Lord had declared by the prophet Haggai, concerning
the second temple: “The glory of this latter house shall be greater than
of the former.” “I will shake all nations, and the Desire of all nations
shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts.”
Haggai 2:9, 7.
After the destruction of the temple by Nebuchadnezzar it was rebuilt
about five hundred years before the birth of Christ by a people who from
a lifelong captivity had returned to a wasted and almost deserted country.
There were then among them aged men who had seen the glory of
Solomon’s templ e, and who wept at the foundation of the new building,
that it must be so inferior to the former. The feeling that prevailed is
forcibly described by the prophet: “Who is
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