The old interpretation of ‘the desire of all nations’ as meaning Jesus Christ gave a literal fulfilment of the prophecy by His presence in the Temple; but that meaning of the phrase is untenable, both because the verb is in the plural, which would be impossible if a person were meant, and because the only interpretation which gives relevancy to verse 8 is that the expression means the silver and gold, there declared to be Jehovah’s.  That venerable explanation, then, cannot stand.  There were offerings from heathen kings, such as those from Darius recorded in Ezra vi. 6-10, and the gifts of Artaxerxes (Ezra vii. 15), which may be regarded as incipient accomplishments; but such facts as these cannot exhaust the prophecy.

It must be admitted that nothing happened during the history of that Temple to answer to the full meaning of this prophecy.  But was it therefore a delusion that God spoke by Haggai?  We must distinguish between form and substance.  The Temple was the centre point of the kingdom of God on earth, the place of meeting between God and men, the place of sacrifice.  The fulfilment of the prophecy is not to be found in any house made with hands, but in the true Temple which Jesus Christ has builded.  He in His own humanity was all that the Temple shadowed and foretold.  It is in Him, and in the spiritual Temple which He has reared, that Haggai’s vision will find its full realisation, which is yet future.  The powers that issue from Him shattered the Roman empire, have ever since been casting earth’s kingdoms into new moulds, and have still destructive work to do.  The ‘once more’ began when Jesus came, but the final ‘shaking’ lies in front still.  Every smaller revolution in thought or sweeping away of institutions is a prelude to that great ‘shaking’ when everything will go except the kingdom that cannot be moved.  Its result shall be that the treasures of the nations shall be poured at His feet who is ‘worthy to receive riches,’ even as other prophecies have foretold that ‘men shall bring unto Thee the wealth of the nations’ (Isaiah lx. 11; Revelation xxi. 24, 26).

In that true Temple the glory of the Shechinah, which was wanting in the second, for ever abides, ’the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father’; and in it dwells for ever the dove of peace, ready to glide into every heart that enters to worship at the shrine.  Jesus Christ is not the ‘desire of all nations’ which shall come to the Temple, but is the Temple to which the wealth of all nations shall be brought, in whom the true glory of a manifested God abides, and from whom the peace of God which passeth all understanding, and is His own peace too, shall enter reconciled souls, and calm turbulent passions, and reconcile contending peoples, and diffuse its calm through all the nations of the saved who there ‘walk in the light of the Lord.’

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ZECHARIAH