According to tradition, he doesn’t need the Beith Hamikdash standing to step into his role. Maimonides says he’ll build it - not a condition for his coming, but a mark of his reign. Take King Herod: he rebuilt the Temple, grander than before, yet tradition never crowns him Messiah—lacking David’s line and redemption’s spirit, he was no king of ours. Imagine the true one, as some say, by the riverside, washing his wounds one at a time, not borrowed from elsewhere. And yet history brings caution: there’s deep fear in assimilation, stretching back to the Hellenization of the Greeks and led to the Maccabean Revolt; and in Spain, conversion couldn’t erase the cultural identity, only deepened the dread.