The Old Order and Its Last Signs

Everything in the Temple pointed beyond itself. Hebrews calls its service "a shadow of good things to come" (Hebrews 10:1), and the shadow was meant to give way to the substance. Scripture records one great sign that the moment had come: the veil of the Temple torn at the death of Jesus. Later Jewish tradition remembers others from the Temple's last decades.

This article gathers both and keeps them apart: what the Bible records, and what tradition reports.

The Torn Veil: The End of Separation

And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;

Matthew 27:51
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Perhaps the most violent and explicit sign of the transition occurred at the moment of Christ’s death. The Temple veil—a massive, thick piece of woven material separating the Holy Place from the empty Holy of Holies—was torn in two, from top to bottom. This was a physical miracle demanding a supernatural agent, symbolizing the immediate and complete removal of the barrier between a holy God and sinful humanity.

The veil symbolized the separation imposed by sin, restricting access to God to one man, the High Priest, once a year. Its tearing was heaven’s definitive answer to centuries of yearning, confirming that the priestly work of Christ had granted universal access to God’s presence.

Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; And having an high priest over the house of God; Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.

Hebrews 10:19-22
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The Empty Holy of Holies: An Arkless Sanctuary

When the Second Temple was dedicated, a crucial element was missing from its innermost chamber: the Ark of the Covenant. Unlike the Tabernacle and Solomon’s Temple, the Holy of Holies entered by the High Priest on Yom Kippur was empty, containing, as the Mishnah records, only a stone where the Ark once rested.

The empty sanctuary foreshadowed a critical truth: the days of relying on a physical box to house God’s presence were passing. The prophet Jeremiah had previously foretold a day when the Ark would no longer be necessary, suggesting a coming shift in the way God dwelled among His people.

And it shall come to pass, when ye be multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, saith the LORD, they shall say no more, The ark of the covenant of the LORD: neither shall it come to mind: neither shall they remember it; neither shall they visit it; neither shall that be done any more.

Jeremiah 3:16
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The arkless Holy of Holies pointed toward the ultimate reality that God’s dwelling would soon move into human hearts, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, making the physical Temple obsolete as the central location of divine presence.

What Jewish Tradition Remembers

The Babylonian Talmud preserves a tradition about the Temple's final generation (Yoma 39b): "during the last forty years before the destruction of the Temple," four things no longer happened as they once had. It is rabbinic tradition, written down centuries later, not Scripture, and it is recorded here as tradition.

  • The lot. On the Day of Atonement the high priest cast lots over two goats, "one lot for the LORD, and the other lot for the scapegoat" (Leviticus 16:8). The tradition says the lot for the LORD stopped coming up in his right hand.
  • The crimson strap. A strap of crimson wool was tied to the scapegoat, and part of it was said to turn white when the year's sins were forgiven, recalling Isaiah's promise. In those forty years, the Talmud says, it stayed red.
  • The western lamp. The westernmost lamp of the golden lampstand was said to burn on after the others. In those years it went out.
  • The doors. The doors of the sanctuary opened by themselves, until Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai rebuked them with Zechariah's words, "Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars" (Zechariah 11:1), which he read as a prophecy of the Temple's burning.

The promise the crimson strap recalled is this one:

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

Isaiah 1:18
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Josephus records a similar portent shortly before the war with Rome: the eastern gate of the inner court, which twenty men could hardly shut, opened of its own accord in the night (The Jewish War 6.5.3).

Forty years before AD 70 brings the reader to about AD 30, close to the years of Christ's death. The Talmud does not draw that connection, and Scripture does not report these signs, so they cannot bear the weight of proof. What can be said is that the Temple's own tradition remembers its last generation as a time when the signs of acceptance failed, and the New Testament explains why the yearly sacrifice was no longer needed. Of Christ, Hebrews says, "by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us" (Hebrews 9:12).

The Withered Fig Tree: The End of Pretense

Jesus cursed a fig tree that bore leaves but no fruit, and Mark sets the cursing on either side of the cleansing of the Temple (Mark 11:12-21), so that the barren tree interprets the busy, fruitless courts. It was a living prophecy against religion with outward show and no fruit.

The tree and the Temple both had leaves without fruit, and Jesus pronounced judgment on both. Of the Temple's great stones He said, "There shall not be left here one stone upon another" (Matthew 24:2), and within a generation it was so.

The Silence Between Testaments

The four centuries between Malachi and John the Baptist are often called the silent years, because no prophet spoke. Malachi's last words promised Elijah before "the great and dreadful day of the LORD" (Malachi 4:5), and the next prophetic voice was the one Jesus identified with that promise (Matthew 11:14).

Paul describes the coming of Christ as the time God had appointed:

But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.

Galatians 4:4-5
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John the Baptist's voice broke the stillness like dawn after a long, dark night, announcing that the long-promised One was already standing among them (John 1:26).

The Trial of Jesus and the Yom Kippur Pattern

The dramatic legal proceedings leading to Christ’s death unfolded in a way that have often been compared with the ritual of the Day of Atonement. Leviticus 16 required the selection of two goats: one designated for the Lord (to be slain for atonement) and one designated as the scapegoat (Azazel), to be released into the wilderness, bearing the sins of the people.

Some readers see the two goats in Pilate's choice between Barabbas and Jesus: one released, one put to death. The Gospels do not draw that comparison, and Scripture gives both goats to Christ. He is the offering whose blood is carried into the holiest (Hebrews 9:12), and He is the One on whom "the LORD hath laid… the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:6), bearing our sins away. Barabbas stands instead as a picture of every sinner: guilty, condemned, and set free because Another died in his place.

The Blood and Water: The Temple River Flows Again

At the cross, when a soldier pierced Christ’s side, blood and water immediately flowed out. This detail, emphasized by the Apostle John, points toward a final culmination of the Temple imagery. The crucified body of Christ became the new and perfect Temple, from which the true cleansing flows.

Many readers have connected it with Ezekiel’s vision of the Temple river, a life-giving stream that flowed from the sanctuary, bringing healing and life wherever it went. The physical body of Jesus, the true sanctuary, initiated this cleansing river that would cover the earth, providing eternal atonement and cleansing for all nations.

But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.

John 19:34
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The Prophetic Calendar: God’s Feasts as a Timetable of Redemption

Even Israel’s sacred calendar carries the inescapable shape of the Gospel. The seven appointed feasts (moedim) functioned as a prophetic timetable, outlining the steps of redemption. The first four feasts—Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, and Pentecost—have all been perfectly fulfilled in Christ’s first coming.

  • Passover: Christ, the perfect Lamb, slain for the sins of the world.
  • Unleavened Bread: the old leaven purged, as Paul applies the feast to the church (1 Corinthians 5:7-8).
  • Firstfruits: Christ's resurrection as the first to rise from the dead.
  • Pentecost: The sending of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church.

Hebrews treats the Day of Atonement as fulfilled already: Christ entered "into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us" (Hebrews 9:24), once, at the end of the ages. Trumpets and Tabernacles are often read as pointing to His return, the trumpet of 1 Thessalonians 4:16 and God dwelling with men in Revelation 21:3, though the New Testament does not tie those feasts to those events by name.

The Thread of Redemption

The history of the Temple, with its symbols of separation and ritual atonement, was never meant to be permanent. Its shadows were always meant to give way to Christ, and the light of the Temple gave way to the eternal light of the Son of God.

Whatever is made of the tradition of the crimson strap that no longer turned white, Scripture's own sign is plainer: the veil torn from the top to the bottom, and a new and living way opened into the holiest by the blood of Jesus.

And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

1 John 2:2
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