Holy Week: Jesus Foretells His Resurrection in the New Covenant

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

Now what did Jesus mean? Did he simply mean that he would die and then rise again—his body would be destroyed and then raised up in three days? If that's all that he meant, then why did he refer to himself as the temple? And why would he say words like this in the temple itself, knowing that most people would take him to refer to the temple building and all that goes on there?
I think the answer is that both for those who had ears to hear, and for those who thought this through after his resurrection, Jesus meant: When I die, the temple dies. When I am destroyed, the temple is destroyed. This whole system—all these sacrifices, all this blood flowing to make atonement for sins, all this priestly activity surrounding the holy place where God's presence dwells—it all ends when I die. You destroy me and in dying I destroy the temple.     John Piper

11 But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building;
12 Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.    From Hebrews 9