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10 continued, and within twenty years after their return from captivity the Jews had a Temple ready for dedication. The Temple of Zerubbabel was finished 515 B. C., specifically on the third day of the month of Adar, in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king. The dedicatory services followed immediately. While this Temple was greatly inferior in richness of finish and furniture as compared with the splendid Temple of Solomon, it was nevertheless the best the people could build, and the Lord accepted it as an offering typifying the love and devotion of His covenant children. In proof of this Divine acceptance, witness the ministrations of such prophets as Zechariah, Haggai, and Malachi, within its walls.

About sixteen years before the birth of Christ, Herod I, king of Judea, commenced the reconstruction of the then decayed and generally ruinous Temple of Zerubbabel. For five centuries that structure had stood, and doubtless it had become largely a wreck of time. Many incidents in the earthly life of the Savior are associated with the Temple of Herod. It is evident from scripture that while opposed to the degraded and commercial uses to which the Temple had been betrayed, Christ recognized and acknowledged the sanctity of the temple precincts. The Temple of Herod was a sacred structure; by whatsoever name it might have been known, it was to Him the House of the Lord. And then, when the sable curtain descended upon the great tragedy of Calvary, when at last the agonizing cry, "It is finished," ascended from the cross, the veil of the Temple was rent, and the one-time Holy of Holies was bared. The