The Abrahamic Family House as Outermost Court of the Third Temple

It's 10:35 PM on Tuesday evening. Earlier today, I attended a Panim el Panim Zoom class on right-wing antisemitism at 1 PM, then a Vegan Christian Discipleship School class titled "Will God ever bring back the temple practice of animal sacrifice?" from 2-4 PM. Each class covered very challenging material that I felt inadequate to properly address as it was unfolding. Call it learning curve management. I had enough energy afterward for a short walk in the fine spring weather, but then I fell asleep at 5 PM and did not wake again until after 10 PM. Now I am settling in for a late-night writing session, which is unusual for me, but I feel myself back in relative consolation. 

Rabbi Joshua Brumbach and Christian Vegan Discipleship-Maker Craig Wescoe have me thinking about the nature of the Messianic Third Temple. Rabbi Brumbach has me imagining the Third Temple as a world free from post-October 7 antisemitism on both the left and the right. Craig Wescoe has me imagining the Third Temple as a virtual vanguard of vegan, vegetarian, and flexitarian believers in Yeshua. Both have me wondering about the status of the Third Temple across the Christian-Jewish relations continuum. On the Christian and Jewish Christian side of this continuum, I can understand the Third Temple as the entire body of believers in Jesus Christ, i.e., the Church. But this can feel supersessionist, even colonial, from the perspective of indigenous Jewish rights. On the Messianic Jewish and Orthodox Jewish side of the continuum, by contrast, the Third Temple feels like it needs physical embodiment in the modern state of Israel, in the city of Jerusalem, and ultimately on the Temple Mount.

Insofar as I see myself from a post-supersessionist and distinction theological perspective, I am a remote Messianic Gentile in the Commonwealth of Israel, and it is up to the Jewish people, self-determining in their national homeland - not Messianic Gentiles like me - to decide the future of the physical Third Temple (cf. Jews should choose the next pope | Israel365 News). 

As a humble Christian discerning a possible call to Catholicism, I entrust it to the bishops to educate me concerning the nature and meaning of the Third Temple. Is the Catholic Church our Third Temple? Is the Pope our High Priest? How has this picture evolved since Nostra Aetate, and are we now in need of a Jerusalem Council II? (Cf. Synagoga and Ecclesia in Our Time | Bearing Witness Institute for Interreligious and Ecumenical Dialogue at Marist School and Pope Francis cared deeply about Holy Land, Jews, but left 'sour taste' after Oct. 7 | The Times of Israel).

Insofar as I understand myself to be an independent theologian and contemplative, I presently see the Gentile Church, the Ummah, and the Jews in Diaspora as comprising the Outermost Court of the Third Temple. This is perfectly well represented for me by the Abrahamic Family House in the UAE. I further see Israeli Jewish policy toward the Temple Mount in Jerusalem as the Inner Court of the Third Temple. This view is admittedly in some tension with the Olmert-Al-Kidwa Plan. Put another way, I oscillate between Cry for Zion Jewish unilateralism and Olmert-Al-Kidwa Israeli-Palestinian multilateralism on the issue of Temple Mount sovereignty. 

When I say that I see the Abrahamic Family House in the UAE as the Third Temple's Outermost Court, what do I mean by this? I mean that for present purposes, when I meditate twice daily (on good mental health days) and offer my burnt vegan sacrifice (my thanks and my prayers for world peace) to the God of Abraham, I think of the Abrahamic Family House in the UAE as the closest thing we have right now to a physical Outermost Court of the Gentiles in a physical Third Temple in the host region of the Arab League. Perhaps, if this is indeed a useful conceptual framework, the Jewish Israeli way forward to the restoration of the Inner Court of the Third Temple will be found somewhere in and through the work of the Abrahamic Family House. But this is a very tentative assertion on my part. I have much, much to learn about Third Temple theology, and am thrilled to have recently discovered Messianic Zionism in the Digital Age: Jews, Noahides and the Third Temple Imaginary, by Dartmouth Professor Rachel Feldman, to further guide me on this journey.