The rebuilding of the temple was not finished until the third day of the twelfth lunar month (Adar 3) of the sixth year (515 B.C.E.) of the reign of the Persian Darius I. That was more than four years four lunar months later than Jehovah’s prophecy of Haggai 2:6-9. After that would come the inauguration of the rebuilt temple. Following that, Jehovah would fulfill his word and fill that sacred house with glory. (Ezra 4:24; 6:14, 15) Hence the shaking and rocking of things to fulfill his prophecy in connection with that literal rebuilt temple at Jerusalem would have to occur during that period of time (520-515 B.C.E.), as a primary fulfillment of the prophecy. The records of history would have to show how the prophecy was fulfilled in the international affairs of that particular time. It was indeed a time of considerable disturbance for the Persian Empire.

21. Why should we today be interested in a larger fulfillment of the prophecy of Haggai 2:6-9?

²¹ However, we must remember that the rebuilt temple at Jerusalem was typical. It was a small-scale representation of Jehovah’s greater temple, his spiritual temple where his dedicated people worship him today. So the larger and final fulfillment of Haggai 2:6-9 is the fulfillment in which we today should be interested.

‘And I will rock all the nations, and the desirable things of all the nations must come in; and I will fill this house with glory,’ Jehovah of armies has said.”​—Haggai 2:6, 7.

24. What questions arise as to the application of those prophetic words?

²⁴ How, though, do we know that those thrilling words transmitted to us by Jehovah’s prophet Haggai do not just apply back there in that prophet’s time or a “little while” after? How can we be sure that those same words have a modern application in our own day?

25. (a) The answer is indicated for us in what quotation made later to people of the same race? (b) Why did those people need to be careful because of an impending catastrophe?

²⁵ We know, because, a long while after Haggai’s prophecy, in fact, about 580 years after, those prophetic words were quoted under divine inspiration and were given a future application, to the end of this international system of things. As with Haggai’s prophetic words, this quotation of his words was made to Hebrews, to the descendants of the patriarch Abraham the Hebrew, only these latter Hebrews had become Christians in the first century of our Common Era. (Genesis 14:13; Hebrews 1:1, 2; 2:16) The quotation from Haggai’s prophecy was made to them about ten years before the destruction of Jerusalem and its rebuilt temple by the Romans in the year 70 C.E. Consequently a great change was impending, and the Christianized Hebrews had to be careful now that they did not suffer harm and loss along with those unbelieving Hebrews who still clung to the earthly Jerusalem and its material temple.