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Is It Actually in the Bible?
Phrases people quote as Scripture. The real verse, or the honest answer that there is not one.
A Rebuilt Third Temple in Jerusalem Is the Key End-Times Prophetic Marker to Watch For
The Old Testament prophets themselves fold the hoped-for new Temple into a New Jerusalem and a new creation: a rebuilt physical Temple was never actually the point.
Revelation 21:22, in every translation this tool compares.
Revelation 21 says point-blank that there's "no temple" in the New Jerusalem, because "its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb" (21:22). That looks jarring if you're expecting a literal rebuilt Temple as the fulfillment of prophecy, but treating that as John "spiritualizing away" the plain sense gets it backwards, since four Old Testament prophets already do the same move. Ezekiel's restoration promises (Ezek 34, 36-37) are cast in edenic terms (wild animals banished, seasonal abundance, safety), describing a renewed land and people, not just a rebuilt building. Isaiah 65:17 and 66:22 ("I create new heavens and a new earth") are directly quoted at Revelation 21:1 and 4, folding Jerusalem's restoration into a restoration of the whole creation. Jeremiah 3:16-17 goes further, saying the Ark of the Covenant "shall not be made again" and that Jerusalem itself will be called "the throne of the LORD": hard to square with a plan requiring a rebuilt Temple with an Ark inside it. And Zechariah 6:9-13 has a priest-king figure called "the Branch" who builds the Temple while ruling from a throne, read here as pointing to the Messiah rather than a construction project.
There's a New Testament thread underneath this too: John 2 has Jesus say "destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up," and John tells us he meant his own body: a reading Paul repeats when he calls believers "living stones" built on Christ the cornerstone (echoing Isaiah 28:16, which Matthew 21:42 and Acts 4:11 apply to Jesus). So when Revelation says there's no temple because God and the Lamb are the temple, that isn't a new idea invented at the end of the book: it's the same "the temple is a person" logic the rest of the New Testament already runs on.
On a modern rebuilt Temple specifically, Heiser's own conclusion is that it wouldn't fulfill any of this even if built: the Old Testament ties a restored Jerusalem to a restored, edenic creation (no more hostile nations, real peace), and a physical Temple rebuilt today would likely inflame conflict rather than usher in that. It could still get built for political or religious reasons, but that would be a different thing than the fulfillment of prophecy the popular narrative expects.
