Monday, March 15, 2010

Destroying the Temple

Luke 21:6 "As for these things that you see, the days will come when there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down." 

ταῦτα ἃ θεωρεῖτε ἐλεύσονται ἡμέραι ἐν αἷς οὐκ ἀφεθήσεται λίθος ἐπὶ λίθῳ ὃς οὐ καταλυθήσεται.

With all due respect to my Dispensational friends, this passage really seems to be speaking of the sacking of Jerusalem in AD 70.  That did indeed happen.  Now of course there could be multiple fulfillments of prophecy.  We see that in the Old Testament all the time.  Yet it just seems more plain to me that this would speak of the destruction of the actual physical temple.

What does this mean?  I haven't really worked it all out because I am not that aware of all the end-times stuff.  However, I do know that R.C. Sproul is a partial preterist.  That doesn't make it right, but it seems like a reasonable explanation.  I am still looking forward to Christ's second coming or, as my daughter puts it, when heaven comes down.

For a quick Greek bite, the phrase λίθος ἐπὶ λίθῳ is kind of interesting.  The second use of λίθος is in the dative so that the reader understands the preposition to refer to something on something else.

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