The Narrow Path Ministries

I am a part of a group of Christians who meet together for fellowship outside of the institutional church system. I left my church of 24 years over a year ago to pursue this less traditional path because I felt a yearning in my heart to be part of an ecclesiastical model based on the apostolic patterns of the early New Testament church.

In the denomination to which I used to belong, you’d be hard-pressed to attend a service in which someone did not get up and say, “Like David said, I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord.” They are wrapped up in the mindset that the brick and mortar churches they attend every Sunday actually comprises “the house of the Lord.” If I were to suggest that perhaps their million-dollar structures are no more important to God than the corner convenience store, they’d be highly offended.

However, their ecclesiology flies squarely in the face of what the early church taught, that God no longer dwells in houses made with hands, but the individual heart of the believer is the “house of God.”

I do not have anything against traditional church-goers, believing that a large portion of the Body of Christ can be found among them. However, I do not find church buildings, in and of themselves, to reflect the kind of stewardship God requires of His disciples. I believe investing in people, rather than in buildings and pastoral salaries, is more in line with the values of the kingdom of God. There remains, however, one argument which traditional church-goers maintain to justify their adherence to their church buildings that continues to stump me: Jesus’s own adherence to the brick and mortar temple as exhibited in John 2:16-17.

Now, it seems to me when I read 1 Chronicles 17 that God never really wanted a temple. Even in light of verses 11-14, where God states that Solomon will build Him a house and his throne will be established forever, it seems God is referring to the coming of the Messiah, seeing as how neither Solomon’s rule nor the temple lasted forever.

Did God somehow change His mind, i.e.: “Okay, I really didn’t want a temple, but since you guys went to all this trouble of building me one, I’ll dwell in it”? Those who justify large, beautiful, expensive church buildings always point to Solomon’s temple as a God-ordained precedent, but although their logic seems faulty to me, I can’t quite make a scriptural or logical case against it because of Jesus' zeal for it. And His zeal here confuses me. Why such zeal when God seemed to have such disdain for buildings as Stephen pointed out in Acts 7:49-50? And why would Jesus refer to the temple as His father’s house, only to have his disciples several years later proclaiming that the temple was not the house of God (much to Stephen’s detriment).

(I am new to this forum, so I apologize if this question has been covered already and I’ve missed it. If so, please direct to me that thread. Thanks!)

You are doing what 100 of thousand are doing and I believe God is seperating the sheep from the goat. We are the house of God. He dwells in us. As you know one day we will go to the house Jesus has prepared for us and we will worship in the temple where God the Father abides. I agree with you.

I pastored for many years a traditional church under a denomination and during that time I felt uneasy in my spirit. I left the confines of this denomination 4 years ago and now have meetings with other believers in a assisted living home chapel. There are many different denomination but we are of no denomination. We have name for our fellowship and it is called the Remnant. We dont take up offerings, we don't have any programs. We simply worship the Lord in spirit and in truth.

Hi Royal Oddball 2:9,

Jesus, in His lifetime, acknowledged the legitimacy of the Mosaic ordinances and of Solomon's temple.

Even though it was the tabernacle (not the temple) that God initiated, and the temple idea was of human origin (that is, it was David's idea, not God's)—yet God honored David's heart's desire, revealed actual plans for the temple (1 Chron.28:11-12) and prophesied that David's son Solomon would build it (2 Samuel 7:12-13).

When Solomon built the temple, he dedicated it to God (1 Kings 8:22-65), and God told him that He accepted it as a place where He would dwell amopng His people, and toward which they could pray and approach Him (1 Kings 9:3). This was reason enough for Jesus to regard the temple—whether Solomon's, or Zerubbabel's, which replaced it, as "my Father's house."

However, God told Solomon that He would only continue to regard the temple so long as Solomon's descendants would honor God. Otherwise, He said, He would forsake the temple and drive the children of Israel out of their land (1 Kings 9:6-8). To show that He meant business, God actually fulfilled these threats with a short-term exile and destruction of the temple, in 586 BC.

At the end of the exile, when the temple was about to be rebuilt, God predicted that a time would come yet again when He would forsake the temple. It would be made desolate due to a particular "abomination," its sacrificial system would cease, and the sanctuary would be destroyed by a "prince" and his people (Daniel 9:26-27). These predictions were eventually fulfilled through Titus and the Romans, in AD 70.

At the end of His ministry, Jesus announced that the time had come for the temple to be left desolate (Matt.23:38—Note: "your" house; no longer "my Father's" house), and that its actual destruction would be accomplished within a single generation from His time (Matt.24:1-3, 34).

About the same time, Jesus announced privately to His disciples that His Father was about to occupy a new "house," comprised of "many dwelling places" (John 14:2). This "house" is the Church, as a corporate community of believers (1 Cor.3:16-17/ Heb.3:6/ 1 Tim.3:15/ 1 Pet.2:5/ Eph.2:19-22/ Rev.3:12) and the "many dwelling places" are the Christians, considered individually (John 14:23).

Before Jesus established the New Covenant, in the upper room, it was appropriate to consider the Jewish tabernacle, and later, the temple, as the "house of God" (e.g., Ps.42:4; 55:14/ Matt.12:4). However, ever since God abandoned the Jewish temple, and came to inhabit the spiritual temple (made of "living stones"), it has never been appropriate to consider any earthly building as "the house of God."

Therefore, there is no reason to take the temple of Solomon as a precedent for building church buildings. The true church "building" is built out of people (Eph.2:19-22). It is not human contractors, but only Jesus, who can build His Church (Matt.16:18).

Thank you! That answers my question quite sufficiently!