You also, as living stones, are built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
(h) The apostle Paul, upon his conversion, went to the temple; and while there he saw a vision of the Lord, but the Lord commanded him to get out of the temple and even out of the city of Jerusalem (Acts 22:17ff); but Paul had difficulty understanding this, and seemed to think that something could still be accomplished in the temple.  Although expressly forbidden to go back to the city of Jerusalem (Acts 21:4), Paul, through some misunderstanding of the Spirit's message, even though it was reinforced by the entreaties of Luke (Acts 21:12), nevertheless went to Jerusalem and even into the temple, where, except for God's repeated intervention, he would have suffered death.  The temple establishment organized a mob to slay Paul; through the duplicity and reprobacy of the high priest himself, they set up a phony trial in the hope of assassinating him; a group of brigands under the direction of the high priest bound themselves with an oath neither to eat nor drink until they had slain Paul.  After those wicked events, there is never any record of any child of God subsequently entering that temple again; but it was tragic that they were compelled to learn the hard way the truth that Jesus had spoken, namely, that the temple was a "den of thieves and robbers."