According to most Orthodox holy fathers such as Saint Ephrem the Syrian, Saint John Chrysostom , and Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, the Third Temple will never be rebuilt, and if by any chance the anti-Christian Jews do build it, it will certainly not be a lawful temple erected to God, but a synagogue of Satan dedicated to the Antichrist - the Man of Lawlessness.
The New Testament teaching regarding the Jewish Third Temple is as follows:
Christ's prophecy about the destruction of the temple : When the disciples showed the Lord the magnificence of the Second Temple, He replied: "Not one stone will be left here upon another that will not be thrown down" (Matt. 24:2). This was literally fulfilled in 70 AD.
Christ's conversation with the Samaritan woman: To her question whether one should worship on Mount Gerizim or in Jerusalem, the Lord replies that the hour is coming when the Father will be worshiped neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem, but “in spirit and truth” (John 4:21:23). With these words, Christ clearly abolished the Old Testament temple and sacrifices .
Christ as the New Testament Temple: With the words “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19), the Lord spoke of the temple of His Body. The New Testament temple was created by Christ in His resurrection – the Church of Christ.
That is why Orthodoxy considers any support or flattery of anti-Christian Judaism to be ungodly and soul-destroying. This is because Judaism rejected and crucified Christ as a transgressor of the law and is still waiting for another Christ – the Jewish Messiah.
In addition, Judaism is dedicated to restoring the Jewish Old Testament temple and its animal sacrifices in Jerusalem, which is nothing other than the apostasy of persisting in the Old Testament law that was overcome and fulfilled by Christ. His atoning sacrifice on the Cross eliminated the need for animal sacrifices in the Temple. He became the “Lamb of God,” making all Old Testament rites meaningless because the Truth they only hinted at had come.
After the deicide, the Jews tried unsuccessfully to rebuild the temple three times. After the destruction of the second temple by Vespasian and Titus (70 AD), the Jews revolted during the reign of Emperor Hadrian Aelia (reigned 117–138 AD) with the intention of restoring the Old Testament order and the temple, which had been destroyed by the coming of Christ. “ Not realizing that they were fighting against the judgment of God, ” as Chrysostom says, “ who had commanded that Jerusalem (as the Jewish spiritual center, ed. of the compiler) be abandoned forever, and it is impossible for anyone who fights against God to prevail. ” Rebelling against Emperor Hadrian, the Jews forced him to finally raze the city, destroying everything that remained of Jerusalem. He forbade Jews from entering Jerusalem by law, and on the site of the Temple he built a pagan temple dedicated to Jupiter, and renamed Jerusalem itself Aelia Capitolina.
The second attempt took place during the time of the holy Emperor Constantine. Upon learning of their undertaking, the emperor cut off their ears and, thus imprinting a symbol of disobedience on their bodies, led them everywhere as criminals, doing this as a lesson to all other Jews, admonishing them, wherever they lived, not to attempt the same thing as these.
The third attempt took place during the reign of Emperor Julian the Apostate (reigned 316-363). Here is how the event is described in the life of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem:
" When after some time the Emperor Constantius died, the lawless Julian took the throne. At first he secretly showed himself to be pious and good. But when Julian was established in power, he publicly denied Christ and gave the Jews great freedom. He allowed them to rebuild the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, and he helped them with the public tribute given to the Emperor. And when this godless work began, Saint Cyril of Jerusalem prophetically told his followers that the words of Christ would undoubtedly be fulfilled: Not one stone will be left upon another (Luke 21:6). Saint Cyril also prayed to the Lord Christ not to allow his enemies to complete the work they had begun, but to quickly stop their undertaking and thwart their plan.
And the Lord heard the prayer of His servant, and fulfilled his prophetic words. For one night there was a terrible earthquake, which not only destroyed everything that had been newly built, but also tore out and scattered the old stones that were still under the ground. All this was scattered like dust from that place by the invisible power of God. And when it dawned, many people gathered there, marveling at this miracle. And when the Jews thought to undertake the same work again, suddenly fire fell from heaven and burned up all the tools. And great fear seized all the Jews. And the next night, the signs of the holy cross appeared on the Jewish clothes, drawn, which could not be erased or washed off. Then the lawless Julian died in a campaign against the Persians in the year 363. "
Regarding the third attempt to build the temple, Saint Chrysostom states: "When the Jews took up this unlawful endeavor, stripped the foundations (of the remains of the second temple), removed a great deal of earth, and intended to begin construction, fire broke out from the foundations and immediately burned many people, as well as the stones in the place, and this unlawful enterprise ceased, for, seeing this, the Jews became mad and frightened."
Saint Gregory the Theologian also describes these divine signs in detail: In his sermons against Julian, written immediately after this event, he describes in detail the earthquake, fire from heaven, and the appearance of crosses on the clothing of the Jews.
This is also witnessed by the church historians Socrates Scholasticus and Sozomen: In their works History of the Church, they record how the Jews began work on the construction of the Third Temple with great zeal, but were forced to flee by "divine fire" and a "terrible earthquake."
It is important to note that these supernatural events are also confirmed by the pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus, who had no reason to invent "Christian miracles", which further strengthens the credibility of the reports themselves about the miraculous interruption of the construction work of the Third Jewish Temple.
Saint John Chrysostom also says in this regard: "Just as it is impossible for people to destroy what God has built and wants to last, so it is also impossible for them to rebuild what God has destroyed and wants to remain destroyed. Therefore, so that the Jews would not continue to be shameless, nor would they attribute the desolation of Jerusalem and the temple to people, God did not allow the temple alone to be destroyed, but He caused all its miraculous signs and all the things that had their principle from heaven to disappear: the fire that consumes the sacrifices, the voice above the ark of the covenant, the shine of the stones from the breastplate of the high priest, and all other such things."
Quoting the Old Testament prophets in detail, Saint Chrysostom states in several places: "that God's wrath against the Jews is final, that God has once and for all turned away from them, that He has finally and irrevocably abandoned them, that He has given them over to unceasing misery, that they are deprived of all forgiveness, that God's punishment of the Jews is final, and that henceforth there will be no more lawful offerings, no sacrifices, no priesthood, and no king among them" (except for the lawless one at the end of time when the Jewish false messiah, the son of perdition, - the antichrist, author's note).
"Since you killed Christ," concludes Chrysostom, "since you raised your hands against the Lord, since you shed precious blood, for this reason there is no correction for you, nor ultimately forgiveness and justification."
The construction of the Third Temple is one of the most sensitive eschatological issues for Orthodox Christians. It is a clear sign of the end times and the arrival of the Antichrist. Tensions are growing around the antichrist state of Israel, which has not yet taken control of all of Palestine and Jerusalem. Especially since the Temple Mount is home to Islamic holy sites — the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock (Golden Dome), which must be removed in order to build the Third Temple.
Since its inception in 1948, Israel has been striving to declare Jerusalem its capital and to frame the territory of the "biblical" "God-promised" borders of "Greater Israel" that extend from the Nile to the Euphrates, in fact over most of the territory of the Middle East. In order to realize this truly antichrist project, continuous bloody wars and operations to overthrow Arab regimes are being waged in the Middle East, of which the most important and decisive is certainly the current war between Israel and the USA directed against Iran.
Uncritical and unreserved support for Israel is being forced upon Christians around the world by the Protestant heresy of dispensationalism preached by Christian Zionists. They claim that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land, the restoration of the State of Israel, and the construction of the Third Temple are fulfillments of biblical prophecy and that Christians are obligated to support them as God's chosen people.
This apostate attitude of Christians towards Jews and Israel is also contributed to by the heresy of Judaizing ecumenists who, contrary to the teaching of the Church, see the unrepentant deicide Jews as "God's people", and consider God-rejected Judaism to be of equal power and salvation to Christianity, a belief in some common Judeo-Christian god, to whom they pray together, regardless of the fact that the Lord said that the God of the Jews is the devil himself (John 8:44).
In order to defend our flock and Orthodox Christians from these antichristian heresies and errors, this year we have added the following anathema to the anathemas of the Act of Orthodoxy Sunday:
" To those who teach contrary to the Church that God outside of her — as the only true People of God and the New Israel — also has a Jewish people, who were rejected and cursed because of deicide, and to whom God's blessings and promises supposedly still belong; and who support the state of Israel as the alleged fulfillment of biblical prophecies, attributing Divine blessing to that which is the fruit of apostasy and human lawlessness; and to those who blaspheme that those who crucified Christ can be saved without baptism and who remain uncondemned in that sin of deicide to this day; to bishops and clerics who go to the synagogues of Satan for joint prayers with those who in their books and traditions do not cease to utter abominable blasphemies against the Savior Christ, denying His Divinity, Incarnation and Resurrection; to those who deceive the Orthodox that the Jews are still God's people today and that they are some kind of "elder brothers" to us, thereby rejecting the prophets, the Holy Apostles and the Holy Fathers; and to all who, with their ecumenical flattery, aid the Jews in the mystery of iniquity and prepare the throne of the Antichrist in the temple which they want to rebuild in Jerusalem, for the purpose of subduing all nations under the feet of their father the devil - ANATHEMA! "
Source: https://uteshiteljevo.blogspot.com/2026/03/blog-post_2.html?