1 Corinthians 3:16-17 — Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 — What! know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.

Saying that ancient shrines and statues are “false idols” that have to be smashed Islamic State (ISIS /ISIL) militants are bulldozing the ruins of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud, Iraqi government officials say.

Nimrud is the modern name for Calah, one of the ancient capital cities of Assyria built by Nimrod:

And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city. (Genesis 10:8-12)

The destruction of such a culturally and Biblically significant treasure is, to be sure, tragic. It’s not the first, of course. Many ancient cities are lost and gone with no memorial. Some have left sad remnants behind. At around the same time as the foundation of Nimrud,  Ramesses the Great, the greatest and most powerful pharaoh of the Egyptian Empire was focused on building cities, temples and monuments. He established the city of Pi-Ramesses in the Nile Delta as his new capital and main base for his campaigns in Syria. He is also known as Ozymandias. The poet Shelley wrote a poem about his monumental statue that ends:

Nothing beside remains: round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The destruction of history is sad, and bleak — but there is a destruction of temples that is sadder and bleaker by far, and it happens every day. It is the destruction of human “temples”. Paul makes it plain in his letter to the Corinthians that they are individually, and collectively, temples at should be devoted to the service of God and not the world and never immorally defiled. I need not waste many words describing how far we are from that ideal!

Amidst all this dark destruction, personal and historical, we should not forget a blazing torch that lights the whole picture. There was another temple …

Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body. (John 2:19-21)

Jesus died, and was raised. The rebuilding of that temple provides the means for the restoration of every “temple” of which Paul spoke. And all those cities and buildings? …There is another city coming, and another temple…