Jesus Speaks of the Destruction of the Temple
(Matthew 24.1, 2; Luke 21.5, 6)

Mark 13 As Jesus was leaving the Temple, one of his disciples said, "Look, Teacher! What wonderful stones and buildings!"
²Jesus answered, "You see these great buildings? Not a single stone here will be left in its place; every one of them will be thrown down."

Troubles and Persecutions
(Matthew 24.3-14; Luke 21.7-19)

³Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, across from the Temple, when Peter, James, John, and Andrew came to him in private. ⁴"Tell us when this will be," they said, "and tell us what will happen to show that the time has come for all these things to take place."
⁵Jesus said to them, "Watch out, and don't let anyone fool you. ⁶Many men, claiming to speak for me, will come and say, 'I am he!' and they will fool many people. ⁷And don't be troubled when you hear the noise of battles close by and news of battles far away. Such things must happen, but they do not mean that the end has come. ⁸Countries will fight each other; kingdoms will attack one another. There will be earthquakes everywhere, and there will be famines. These things are like the first pains of childbirth.
⁹"You yourselves must watch out. You will be arrested and taken to court. You will be beaten in the synagogues; you will stand before rulers and kings for my sake to tell them the Good News. ¹⁰But before the end comes, the gospel must be preached to all peoples. ¹¹And when you are arrested and taken to court, do not worry ahead of time about what you are going to say; when the time comes, say whatever is then given to you. For the words you speak will not be yours; they will come from the Holy Spirit. ¹²Men will hand over their own brothers to be put to death, and fathers will do the same to their children. Children will turn against their parents and have them put to death. ¹³Everyone will hate you because of me. But whoever holds out to the end will be saved.

Solomon Builds the Temple

1 Kings 6 Four hundred and eighty years after the people of Israel left Egypt, during the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the second month, the month of Ziv, Solomon began work on the Temple. ²Inside it was 90 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 45 feet high. ³The entrance room was 15 feet deep and 30 feet wide, as wide as the sanctuary itself. ⁴The walls of the Temple had openings in them, narrower on the outside than on the inside. ⁵Against the outside walls, on the sides and the back of the Temple, a three-storied annex was built, each story 7½ feet high. ⁶Each room in the lowest story was 7½ feet wide, in the middle story 9 feet wide, and in the top story 10½ feet wide. The Temple wall on each floor was thinner than on the floor below, so that the rooms could rest on the wall without having their beams built into it.
⁷The stones with which the Temple was built had been prepared at the quarry, so that there was no noise made by hammers, axes, or any other iron tools as the Temple was being built.
⁸The entrance to the lowest story of the annex was on the south side of the Temple, with stairs leading up to the second and third stories. ⁹So King Solomon finished building the Temple. He put in a ceiling made of beams and boards of cedar. ¹⁰The three-storied annex, each story 7½ feet high, was built against the outside walls of the Temple, and was joined to them by cedar beams.
¹¹The LORD said to Solomon, ¹²"If you obey all my laws and commands, I will do for you what I promised your father David. ¹³I will live among my people Israel in this Temple that you are building, and I will never abandon them."
¹⁴So Solomon finished building the Temple.

The Interior Furnishings of the Temple
(2 Chronicles 3.8-14)

¹⁵The inside walls were covered with cedar panels from the floor to the ceiling, and the floor was made of pine. ¹⁶An inner room, called the Most Holy Place, was built in the rear of the Temple. It was 30 feet long and was partitioned off by cedar boards reaching from the floor to the ceiling. ¹⁷The room in front of the Most Holy Place was 60 feet long. ¹⁸The cedar panels were decorated with carvings of gourds and flowers; the whole interior was covered with cedar, so that the stones of the walls could not be seen.
¹⁹In the rear of the Temple an inner room was built, where the LORD's Covenant Box was to be placed. ²⁰This inner room was 30 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 30 feet high, all covered with pure gold. The altar was covered with cedar panels. ²¹The inside of the Temple was covered with gold, and gold chains were placed across the entrance of the inner room, which was also covered with gold. ²²The whole interior of the Temple was covered with gold, as well as the altar in the Most Holy Place.
²³Two winged creatures were made of olive wood and placed in the Most Holy Place, each one 15 feet tall. ^24-26Both were of the same size and shape. Each had two wings, each wing 7½ feet long, so that the distance from one wing tip to the other was 15 feet. ²⁷They were placed side by side in the Most Holy Place, so that two of their outstretched wings touched each other in the middle of the room, and the other two wings touched the walls. ²⁸The two winged creatures were covered with gold.
²⁹The walls of the main room and of the inner room were all decorated with carved figures of winged creatures, palm trees, and flowers. ³⁰Even the floor was covered with gold.
³¹A double door made of olive wood was set in place at the entrance of the Most Holy Place; the top of the doorway was a pointed arch. ³²The doors were decorated with carved figures of winged creatures, palm trees, and flowers. The doors, the winged creatures, and the palm trees were covered with gold. ³³For the entrance to the main room a rectangular doorframe of olive wood was made. ³⁴There were two folding doors made of pine ³⁵and decorated with carved figures of winged creatures, palm trees, and flowers, which were evenly covered with gold.
³⁶An inner court was built in front of the Temple, enclosed with walls which had one layer of cedar beams for every three layers of stone.
³⁷The foundation of the Temple was laid in the second month, the month of Ziv, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign. ³⁸In the eighth month, the month of Bul, in the eleventh year of Solomon's reign, the Temple was completely finished exactly as it had been planned. It had taken Solomon seven years to build it.

The LORD Condemns Israel for Idol Worship

Hosea 8 The LORD says, "Sound the alarm! Enemies are swooping down on my land like eagles! My people have broken the covenant I made with them and have rebelled against my teaching. ²Even though they call me their God and claim that they are my people and that they know me, ³they have rejected what is good. Because of this their enemies will pursue them.
⁴"My people chose kings, but they did it on their own. They appointed leaders, but without my approval. They took their silver and gold and made idols--for their own destruction. ⁵I hate the gold bull worshiped by the people of the city of Samaria. I am furious with them. How long will it be before they give up their idolatry? ⁶An Israelite craftsman made the idol, and it is not a god at all! The gold bull worshiped in Samaria will be smashed to pieces! ⁷When they sow the wind, they will reap a storm! A field of grain that doesn't ripen can never produce any bread. But even if it did, foreigners would eat it up. ⁸Israel has become like any other nation and is as useless as a broken pot. ⁹Stubborn as wild donkeys, the people of Israel go their own way. They have gone off to seek help from Assyria and have paid other nations to protect them. ¹⁰But now I am going to gather them together and punish them. Soon they will writhe in pain when the emperor of Assyria oppresses them.
¹¹"The more altars the people of Israel build for removing sin, the more places they have for sinning! ¹²I write down countless teachings for the people, but they reject them as strange and foreign. ¹³They offer sacrifices to me and eat the meat of the sacrifices. But I, the LORD, am not pleased with them, and now I will remember their sin and punish them for it; I will send them back to Egypt!
¹⁴"The people of Israel have built palaces, but they have forgotten their own Maker. The people of Judah have built fortified cities. But I will send fire that will burn down their palaces and their cities."