Ezekiel 46:19-24

19-24. The kitchens of the priests are now described. “Then he brought me through the entry,… and behold, there was a place on the hinder part westward” (R.V.). See L in chart facing page 209. The kitchens where the priests prepared their own meals from the sacrificial offerings (Ezekiel 44:29) were at the west ends of the inner court. Nothing was allowed to pass from this inner court to the outer, for ceremonial and practical reasons. (See note Ezekiel 44:11-19.) In the “outer court” (Ezekiel 46:21, R.V.), in each of the four corners were the kitchens in which the other offerings of the people were boiled or baked by the Levites (Ezekiel 44:11-12; Leviticus 8:31; see M of chart facing page 209).

It is almost universally recognized that these closing paragraphs of this strange prophecy cannot be taken literally. “But,” says Dr. Terry, “if the last two chapters are explained as ideal pictures, so must the others be, for they are all parts of one great symbolic vision.… What, then, is the real import of these concluding chapters? Our answer is that, like the corresponding conclusion of John’s Apocalypse, this vision of the restored and perfected temple, service, and land symbolizes the perfected kingdom of God and his Messiah.… Of the times and the seasons of the completion of the Messianic kingdom Ezekiel utters no definite word. Like the descent of the new Jerusalem in the visions of John (Revelation 21:2), which was seen after the overthrow of Gog and Magog and their innumerable host (Revelation 20:8-9), this final glorification of Israel also follows the overthrow of the last enemies. This is the only natural, logical, and pictorial order consistent with the grand ideal of triumph. This interpretation of the symbolism necessarily excludes all Jewish carnal theories of a literal restoration of Jerusalem and the Jewish state. The notion prevalent among some schools of Second Adventists, that at

Christ's second coming Jerusalem and the temple will be rebuilt and become the throne center of the kingdom of the Messiah, is inconsistent with a rational interpretation of the prophets and the spiritual nature of the kingdom of Christ" (Apocalyptics).