by Randy Maugans

“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?”-1Corinthians 3:16

Reason to read it: For purposes of debunking what is, at best, a confusing brew of pseudo-science and bad doctrine—which unfortunately has many people—including believers—in its thrall.

Reason to not read it: Devoid of solid doctrinal underpinnings, formed from unvetted “scientific” data, and lacking a coherency of narrative the book is a waste of time better spent in scripture studying doctrine valid prophetic structure.

David Flynn has been a fixture on the stage of crypto-Christian research for over fifteen years, cutting a wide path in exploring mystical and occult themes from the perspective of the Bible, appearing in numerous videos on YouTube and popping up at UFO conventions in support of his 2002  book, “Cydonia: The Secret Chronicles of Mars”.

“Temple At The Center Of Time” is slightly more Earth-bound—but not much, and far more grandiose in its reach toward tying together the disparate parts of his reaching studies into the mystic. None of that would be bad IF Flynn were better grounded in doctrine—He is not—and more consistent in both his scientific facts and the prophetic “projections” he attempts to hammer out of a cornucopia of of quasi-scientific data. The book is hopelessly confusing.

On the first point of doctrine (admittedly controversial now, as most Christians have NO idea what they believe or why), Flynn is an Israel-centric dispensationalist and believer in the pretribulational rapture (alright, MID-trib, according to his most recent appearence on Steve Quayle’s “Q Files” show). Both viewpoints completely color his presentation, and worse, they compel him to cobble together unrelated data points into complex theories which confound explanation by the author even in two hour stretches.

Having latched on to the prophecy writings of  Sir Isaac Newton—a noted Illuminist and member of the Royal Society—Flynn finds an ancestoral soulmate who provides a fertile bed 0f  crypto-Christian arcana through which to channel the contrivances of odd location distances (using Google Earth and two completely different measurement systems!), time-to-distance equations, use of an unexplained “Golden Cubit” (an Illuminist antecedent to the “Golden Ratio”), and numerous speculation on historical events.

Undoubtedly, Flynn counts on the inability of his clamoring fans to process complex data, which he uses to spin seemingly credible facts into wild flights of prophetic fantasy—or worse, the cartoonish prophecy that is the hallmark of Tim LaHaye and Hal Lindsey. Really, the elaborate pseudo-scientism aside, the book continues the vein of dispensational writings which still install “The Antichrist” in a restored temple in Jerusalem for a seven year tribulation to bring the Jews to a faith in Christ.

Examined at its core, “Temple At The Center Of Time” is the most recent of the many so-called “Bible Codes”: an external, Gnostic-based system of attempting to navigate the prophetic writ of end times events. Like all such systems, it suffers from circuitous logic and internalized reasoning (…if this, then that…) rather than using the PLAIN writ of the texts of the Bible to discern prophecy.

Worse: rather than go to scripture for his core validations, Flynn pulls into his sphere of influence the dubious “Book of Enoch”,  the  Babylonian Talmudic texts, and the Apocryphal Book of Second Maccabees along with assorted pseudipigraphal writings—and, for good measure, a citation from the equidistant letter spacing “Bible Code” software!

Flynn, and Newton’s assumptions—as well as those of most Israel-centric diviners of prophecy, rests on the assumption that the present site of the temple, with its extant “wailing wall” is the THE  Temple site. This is also the locus afixed by the reconstituted Sanhedrin and Temple Mount Faithful whose goal is to to remove the Al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques.

Yet, solid historical research by Dr. Ernest Martin indicates that this present temple is not only NOT the original location, but that it is, in fact, the site of a Roman armory called “Fort Antonia“. Dr. Martin’s research, based on extensive studies of archeological digs, manuscript research, and Biblical exegesis—and affirmed by numerous academic colleagues, represents best practices of research and demands to be heard and read by anyone serious about the truth of the fate of the original temple location.

Moreover, the present Temple site—esteemed, even worshipped, by both the Talmudic Jews in the land of Israel and the dispensational Zionist Christians of the post-Scofield era—not only represents bad history and terrible science, but is, in fact, BLASPHEMOUS! as it MAKES JESUS a liar:

“…verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”-Matthew 24:2

If Jesus truly is the Messiah, prophesied in the Old Testament as “That Prophet”, how is it that the western , or “wailing wall”, still stands? Aren’t the implications, both historical and theologically, worth examining with more rigor than the flights of fancy pondered by David Flynn in the mode of “science lite”? What IF the present Temple site, now held by Islam, is nothing more than a monument to the Roman God of War?

These are questions which any believer endeavoring in end times prophecy need to examine from a solid base of empirical, and scriptural understanding. Modern prophecy, as expounded by most of Evangelical Christianity, is predicated upon assumptions and biases of recent mint.

Not only is the question of the temple one of great academic interest, but your position on the question of what temple is truly the temple of God is a bellwether of your position in Christ—or in antichrist. Pop science and theological inversions are not the basis for an eternal decision.

“Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?”-Romans 6:16