Matthew 12:6
I tell you, something greater than the temple is here
I was listening to a lecture by Ray Vander Laan on the subject of King Herod and his massive building projects. He said that some of Herod’s buildings used columns that were cut from a single piece of stone, over fifty feet tall, and said to be so large in diameter that “three rabbis could barely touch fingers around them”. This was the image in my mind as I was thinking about the Temple. It occurred to me that there are signs in the New Testament that the original Jewish temple system was about to change, or had already been changed by the advent of Jesus into the world. Jesus referred to himself as a temple, saying that if it were destroyed he would raise it up again in three days. On the day of the crucifixion the temple veil was torn in two, and fifty days later the spirit came down into the believers on the day of Pentecost.
We are the new temple. We are the body of Christ (of which He is the head) through which the power of the Holy Spirit works, to the glory of God.
My original idea for the painting was to show three rabbis around a column in the temple, and to the viewer it would appear that the rabbis were hugging the column,
like the children’s game, “Ring Around the Rosie”,
but I thought it might be too politically incorrect.
I wish I had painted my original idea.
The message is still there, and for that reason I want to show it, but I consider the painting itself to be a failure.
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