Bible Questions and Answer

Ezekiel 40 to 48 describes a future temple where priests offer sin offerings and other sacrifices. Many dispensational Christians believe this temple will be built during Christ's thousand-year reign on earth, which raises a hard question. Why would animal sacrifices return after Jesus' once-for-all sacrifice? Hebrews says that where sins have been forgiven, "sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary." Those who expect millennial sacrifices usually answer that they won't take away sin. They'd be memorials looking back to the cross, the way communion does, or they'd deal with ceremonial cleanness for a temple where God's presence dwells. Other Christians find this hard to square with Hebrews. They read Ezekiel's temple as a symbolic picture, written in the only worship language Ezekiel's readers knew, of God living with His people forever, fulfilled in Christ and the New Jerusalem, where John saw no temple at all. This question is one of the sharpest differences between prophecy views.