Solomon's Story
I inherited my throne from my Father David. It was said that I was the wisest ruler in the history of the world. I am known for my wisdom, vast wealth, and the fact that I had many, many wives. But my signature accomplishment was the construction of the great Temple in Jerusalem.
Before I built the Temple in Jerusalem, the Israelites worshiped by offering sacrifice outside the Tabernacle, which was the tent that housed the Ark of the Covenant. These rituals are described in the Book of Leviticus if you would like to learn more about them. The tent was much like the one outside your church except bigger. My father David thought that it was wrong for the Ark of God, the dwelling place of God on earth, to be in a tent while he lived in a palace so King David desired to build a temple for the ark. God did not let my father David build the temple because he committed the grave sin of adultery with my mother, Bathsheba, so the task of building the Temple of God fell to me.
It took seven years to build and looked something like the depiction on this slide. There were large, stone walls forming a courtyard around the main building. Before the doors to the main temple, stood a stone altar that was approximately five meters by five meters square and three meters high. Three fires burned on the top of the altar that the priests used for the holocaust offering—that is— the animal sacrifice. An unblemished lamb had to be offered as the sacrifice every day and shifts of priests rotated in for temple service each at the beginning of each new week.
The Temple had a large stone sanctuary lined decorated with cedar and covered with gold. Only the priests could enter the sanctuary area, and in the rear of the sanctuary, was the Holy of Holies, the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant. This was the golden box that contained the original stone tablets of the Ten Commandments. While temple sacrifice was offered every day at the Temple for hundreds of years, only the High Priest could enter into the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant was contained, and only then once a year on the Day of Atonement.
Thought there are many differences in the way the Church today worships God from my time as King of the Israelites—primarily the fact that there is no longer animal sacrifice— there are many essentials that are held in common.
1) Communal weekly worship
2) Daily Prayer
3) The sacrifice of the Mass. At every mass celebrated by the Catholic Church, the bread and wine are offered as an un-bloody sacrifice. They become the Lamb of God for us, just as the priests of old offered unblemished lambs as part of worship in the temple
So there is continuity in the worship of the Catholic Church and the sacrifice that was offered in the temple I built 3000 years ago.
Unfortunately, I was the last king of the united kingdom of Israel. After I died, my sons battled over the throne and Israel was divided into two kingdoms, as ten tribes became the federation of Israel in the North and the two remaining tribes became the Kingdom of Judah in the South with its capital in Jerusalem.
God sent many prophets to both Kingdoms to remind the people to stay faithful, but unfortunately, the Assyrian Empire conquered the Northern kingdom and the ten tribes of the North were lost forever. The Kingdom of Judah remained for a few more generations, and its people were known forever after as the Jews.