Through the Bible – Day 335

₄₇Now the man measured the inner courtyard; it was fifty metres square. I also saw an altar in front of the temple.

₄₈We walked to the porch of the temple, and the man measured the doorway of the porch: it was seven metres long, two and a half metres wide, and the distance from the doorway to the wall on either side was one and a half metres. ₄₉The porch itself was ten metres by six metres, with steps leading up to it. There was a column on each side of these steps.

₁Next we went into the main room of the temple. The man measured the doorway of this room: it was three metres wide, ₂five metres long, and the distance from the doorway to the wall on either side was two and a half metres. The main room itself was twenty metres by ten metres.

_3-4Then the man walked to the far end of the temple's main room and said, “Beyond this doorway is the most holy place.” He first measured the doorway: it was one metre wide, three metres long, and the distance from the doorway to the wall on either side was three and a half metres. Then he measured the most holy place, and it was ten metres square.

₅The man measured the wall of the temple, and it was three metres thick. Storage rooms two metres wide were built against the outside of the wall. ₆There were three levels of rooms, with thirty rooms on each level, and they rested on ledges that were attached to the temple walls, so that nothing was built into the walls. ₇The walls of the temple were thicker at the bottom than at the top, which meant that the storage rooms on the top level were wider than those on the bottom level. Steps led from the bottom level, through the middle level, and into the top level.

₈The temple rested on a stone base three metres high, which also served as the foundation for the storage rooms. ₉The outside walls of the storage rooms were two and a half metres thick; there was nothing between these walls ₁₀and the nearest buildings ten metres away. ₁₁One door led into the storage rooms on the north side of the temple, and another door led to those on the south side. The stone base extended two and a half metres beyond the outside wall of the storage rooms.

₁₂I noticed another building: it faced the west end of the temple and was thirty-five metres wide, forty-five metres long, and had walls over two and a half metres thick.

₁₃The man measured the length of the temple, and it was fifty metres. He then measured from the back wall of the temple, across the open space behind the temple, to the back wall of the west building; it was fifty metres. ₁₄The distance across the front of the temple, including the open space on either side, was also fifty metres.

₁₅Finally, the man measured the length of the west building, including the side rooms on each end, and it was also fifty metres.

The inside walls of the temple's porch and main room ₁₆were panelled with wood all the way from the floor to the windows, while the doorways, the small windows, and the three side rooms were trimmed in wood. ₁₇The panelling stopped just above the doorway. These walls were decorated _18-20with carvings of winged creatures and had a carving of a palm tree between the creatures. Each winged creature had two faces: a human face looking at the palm tree on one side, and a lion's face looking at the palm tree on the other side. These designs were carved into the panelling all the way around the two rooms.

₂₁The doorframe to the temple's main room was in the shape of a rectangle.

In front of the doorway to the most holy place was something that looked like ₂₂a wooden altar. It was one and a half metres high and one metre square, and its corners, its base, and its sides were made of wood. The man said, “This is a reminder that the LORD is constantly watching over his temple.”

₂₃Both the doorway to the main room of the temple and the doorway to the most holy place had two doors, ₂₄and each door had two sections that could fold open. ₂₅The doors to the main room were decorated with carvings of winged creatures and palm trees just like those on the walls, and there was a wooden covering over the porch just outside these doors. ₂₆The walls on each side of this porch had small windows and were also decorated with carvings of palm trees.

_1-2After the man and I left the temple and walked back to the outer courtyard, he showed me a set of rooms on the north side of the west building. This set of rooms was fifty metres long and twenty-five metres wide. ₃On one side of them was the ten metres of open space that ran beside the temple, and on the other side was the pavement that circled the outer courtyard. The rooms were arranged in three levels ₄with doors that opened towards the north, and in front of them was a passage five metres wide and fifty metres long. ₅The rooms on the top level were narrower than those on the middle level, and the rooms on the middle level were narrower than those on the bottom level. ₆The rooms on the bottom level supported those on the two upper levels, and so these rooms did not have columns like other buildings in the courtyard. _7-8To the north was a screening wall twenty-five metres long, _9-10and at the east end of this wall was the door leading from the courtyard to these rooms.

There was also a set of rooms on the south side of the west building. ₁₁These rooms were exactly like those on the north side, and they also had a passage in front of them. ₁₂The door to these rooms was at the east end of the wall that stood in front of them.

₁₃The man then said to me:

₁₅After the man had finished measuring the buildings inside the temple area, he took me back through the east gate and measured the wall around this area. ₁₆He used his measuring stick to measure the east side of this wall; it was two hundred and fifty-five metres long. _17-19Then he measured the north side, the south side, and the west side of the wall, and they were each two hundred and fifty-five metres long, ₂₀and so the temple area was a perfect square. The wall around this area separated what was sacred from what was ordinary.

₇My dear friends, I am not writing to give you a new commandment. It is the same one that you were first given, and it is the message you heard. ₈But it really is a new commandment, and you know its true meaning, just as Christ does. You can see the darkness fading away and the true light already shining.

₉If we claim to be in the light and hate someone, we are still in the dark. ₁₀But if we love others, we are in the light, and we don't cause problems for them. ₁₁If we hate others, we are living and walking in the dark. We don't know where we are going, because we can't see in the dark.

₁₅Don't love the world or anything that belongs to the world. If you love the world, you cannot love the Father. ₁₆Our foolish pride comes from this world, and so do our selfish desires and our desire to have everything we see. None of this comes from the Father. ₁₇The world and the desires it causes are disappearing. But if we obey God, we will live for ever.

₁₈Children, this is the last hour. You heard that the enemy of Christ would appear at this time, and many of Christ's enemies have already appeared. So we know that the last hour is here. ₁₉These people came from our own group, yet they were not part of us. If they had been part of us, they would have stayed with us. But they left, which proves that they did not belong to our group.

₂₀Christ, the Holy One, has blessed you, and now all of you understand. ₂₁I did not need to write to you about the truth, since you already know it. You also know that liars do not belong to the truth. ₂₂And a liar is anyone who says that Jesus isn't truly Christ. Anyone who says this is an enemy of Christ and rejects both the Father and the Son. ₂₃If we reject the Son, we reject the Father. But if we say that we accept the Son, we have the Father. ₂₄Keep thinking about the message you first heard, and you will always be one in your heart with the Son and with the Father. ₂₅The Son has promised us eternal life.

₂₆I am writing to warn you about those people who are misleading you. ₂₇But Christ has blessed you with the Holy Spirit. Now the Spirit stays in you, and you don't need any teachers. The Spirit is truthful and teaches you everything. So stay united in your heart with Christ, just as the Spirit has taught you to do.

₂₈Children, stay united in your hearts with Christ. Then when he returns, we will have confidence and won't have to hide in shame. ₂₉You know that Christ always does right and that everyone who does right is a child of God.