THE LOCATION OF THE FIRST AND SECOND TEMPLES IN JERUSALEM

I love the Lord - He always uses patterns and metaphor to show us the path.  Recently, I have come to understand that a long-held belief of mine may be crumbling.

Through time, temples have had sources of living water running through them.  I cannot say that it is a requirement - because it is NOT a hard/fast rule.  But where it counts, there is water associated with the temples.

In the Garden of Eden (in my favorite temple film with the Gentry devil), it shows things as they were with the spring of living water emanating out from the tree in the middle of the Garden, as the source waters for the four great rivers; Pishon, Gihon, the Tigris, and the Euphrates..  The temple in the New Jerusalem, as Spencer and many others have said, will have this living water emanating from it.

The Cardston Temple has a massive spring under it that they had to cap in order to build on that lot.  I have the feeling it will flow again one day with similar results and for the same symbolic reasons of the water coming from the temple in the NJ.

I know the St George temple was built in a springy and swampy area.  I cannot remember the details of the Manti and the Logan temples - whether they have a living source of water for the fonts, etc.

The temple in Nauvoo had a spring in the basement that was used to fill the font, etc.  I am not sure if it is still there - but I believe it was used to help determine the location (as well as the impression in the ground) of the original temple when the archealogical dig occurred in preparation for it's rebuilding.  Like the OJ Temple, there was not much left of it.  Just a grassy/swampy impression to give away it's old location.  Another tip of the hat to the clue of where the OJ temple is located.  There was a massive stone works still left on the traditional site of the old temple destroyed in 70AD.  Like the Nauvoo temple and the NJ temple site (just adjacent to the copper dome of the CoC impediment), it has not become a plowed field.  If truly located in the City of David, the plowed field metaphor would fit nicely.

Living water is a requirement in the OT scheme of things.  It was used to purify the Priests.  The women, as part of their purification rituals following menstruation, would ritually cleanse themselves in a mikvah (font), which required living (flowing, not stagnant) waters.  I guess you would not want to bathe in anything else, if you were a woman after spending 8 days holed up during Aunt Florence's visit....  At least not using the bathwater of the previous visitor to the communal pool....   If I were a woman under Jewish law, it would be:  "If it doesn't flow after Flo, I don't wanna go!"

So - this is a requirement.  Flowing, living water.  At, or near the temple.

I am not sure why I have been so dense until now - and I do not do a bunch of W&A, but I noticed that the little fountain in the cubicle has a faucet with no knob to turn it off, is always dripping (they do turn it off at night).  It would have been a lot easier to just have a bowl of stagnant water that they could dip their hands into to properly wet them for the washing ritual.  Indeed, the whetting is done from a source of flowing or living water.  This extra minor thing is done on purpose and is quite symbolic and goes back to the first temple and all the way to the GoE.

The only spring of living water (Gihon - and I am sure the nod to the source spring of the river Gihon in the GoE is no coincidence) in all of Jerusalem is below what I am going to start calling the Fortress of Antonia (where the Dome of the Rock is right now).  Just as with Nauvoo having the stones torn down to the grass they laid them on, the real temple site is likely in the City of David below the Fortress of Antonia where the blood of the daily ritual could be washed away - where the Priests could ritually wash prior to serving and where a mikvah might be located in the outer areas where women could come for that portion of their devotion and monthly ritual based on the lunar calendar of 28 days.  It kind of all comes together for me.  When it is all put in a Jewish perspective, it is all so beautiful and perfect.  Detaching ourselves (as Christians) from our nursing mother of Judaism, has come at a great cost of understanding, including having a good feel for the words of Isaiah.

Just as with the water that will begin to flow down from the lofty/hilly area in the the NJ, the living water will again flow in the OJ.  After an EQ in old times, the water flow was decreased from the spring of Gihon and the water became bitter.  Prophecy in Ezekiel states that an EQ will bring it back to life and that it will become a veritable river that will flow to, and heal, the Dead Sea - and I believe it will again be sweet, instead of bitter water.

In tunneling for mass transit in Jerusalem, they have uncovered large quantities of water that they figure have been trapped in underground reservoirs since the formation of the earth.  I have to wonder if this is what flowed in the Garden of Eden.  Water trapped from the time the earth was still a terrestrial sphere.  Holy water.  Holy water reserved for a time to come forth and heal the earth from the filth it has had to endure for the last 6,000 years.  There are trillions of gallons of this water just above the Dead Sea that they discovered in the last decade.  I have to speculate that there are trillions of gallons separate from the extensive Ogallala aquifer in the area around Kansas City, reserved for this same purpose.  Cleansing, pure and wholesome water.  Water that will come forward as the fonts of the deep are again broken up in the great EQ.  They say this primordial water is down there and that it is many times more plentiful than all the waters in our oceans.

Folks, we live in amazing times.  We have front row seats to all the events prophesied by the prophets.  That should fill your hearts with awe and wonder.  It should also be a humbling thing for us - for where much is given, much is required.  We bear a heavy responsibility to stay true to good principle in spite of those around us crumbling and turning to idols of clay (and political correctness)....

May God bless you in your endeavors to stay true to Him.