The restoration of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount – Part six

This is part six of a six-part newsletter.

Adam’s last words

In his last words to YHVH, Adam communicated his fear of being in God’s presence due to Adam’s having disobeyed the divine command. When we get to the last book of the Bible, one of the last things God declares touches on the healing of mankind’s fear and the renewal of intimacy between God and man: “And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, ‘Behold, the Tabernacle of God is among the people, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them’” (Revelation 21:3).

In the Book of Isaiah, YHVH describes Abraham as His friend: “But you, Israel, My servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, descendant of Abraham My friend” (Isaiah 41:8).

King Jehoshaphat declared the same truth, “YHVH, God of our fathers, are You not God in the heavens? And are You not ruler over all the kingdoms of the nations? Power and might are in Your hand so that no one can stand against You. Did You not, our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land from Your people Israel, and give it to the descendants of Your friend Abraham forever? They have lived in it, and have built You a sanctuary in it for Your name” (2 Chronicles 20:6-8).

Moses was also described by YHVH Himself as a friend of God. YHVH met and fellowshipped with him in the Tent of Meeting:  “So YHVH used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend” (Exodus 33:11).

Friendship with God is quickened when He comes and dwells with us: “Moreover, I will make My dwelling among you, and My soul will not reject you. I will also walk among you and be your God, and you shall be My people” (Leviticus 26:11-12).

If you build it, I will come!

The people of Israel stood on the shores of the Red Sea (the Hebrew term is Yam Suf –‘Sea of Reeds’) looking at the bodies of Pharaoh’s charioteers lying lifeless on the sands. Moses then gathered men of Israel together and sang a prophetic song of deliverance: “You will bring them and plant them in the Mountain of Your inheritance – the place, YHVH, which You have made as Your dwelling – the Sanctuary, YHVH, which Your hands have established” (Exodus 15:17). God homed in on a specific location – that was where intimacy would be restored – the Mountain of YHVH’s inheritance, where God’s dwelling and sanctuary would one day be established.

Later on, YHVH issued a command to build a Tent (also called a ‘Tabernacle’ – later called a ‘Sanctuary’) where He could meet with the Jewish people:

A pattern made in Heaven

The Tabernacle or Tent (later replaced by the Temple) was the location that God established where God and man could meet – a meeting-place which would result in intimacy, friendship, relationship. But its builders had to follow a divine pattern in its construction and operation – down to the letter. That complex of buildings would be detailed and beautiful, communicating spiritual truths and realities. YHVH gave Moses (and later, King David) some very specific commands on how to build it:

The first martyr Stephen in his final oration also made reference to this pattern:

God is like a top-notch wedding planner. When He hosts an event, a huge amount of effort goes into even the smallest details. But what were those details and patterns that Moses and David saw? Was it a building? And if so, where was that structure located and what did it look like?

A Temple beyond our three dimensions

Isaiah was launched into prophetic ministry at a sorrowful time in Judah’s history. Judah’s King Uzziah had just passed away, and that was when Isaiah received his powerful vision of the Heavenly Temple of God and His throne:

Nearly 800 years later, God gave John the Revelator a similar majestic vision of the same Heavenly Temple:

The Heavenly Temple

Daniel the prophet contributes other details about this Heavenly Temple:

Zechariah also received a heavenly vision of the Heavenly Temple on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

Joshua the High Priest was standing in the earthly Holy of Holies, making atonement for Israel’s sins. He had bathed himself many times that day and was wearing spotlessly clean priestly garments. But the Hebrew word for ‘filthy’ used here refers to excrement-covered garments. The prophet is watching as Joshua the High Priest stands in the Holy of Holies on earth. But at the same time Zechariah is seeing into another dimension. He is simultaneously observing what is transpiring in the Heavenly Temple. He sees Satan accusing Israel in God’s presence in the Heavenly Temple. And evidently there were many sins for which Israel needed atonement! Let’s remember that Zechariah would not have been allowed to enter the Holy of Holies on earth; only one man – the High Priest – was allowed to stand there, and only on one day of the year – Yom Kippur.

John the Revelator was granted, more than any other prophet, both to see and to communicate specifics about the Heavenly Temple and its courts. Here is a list of many of these precise details:

The Heavenly Temple is a real place, but it is beyond space and time. Its heavenly splendor is reflected on earth in Moses’ Tabernacle, in the Temples of Solomon and Zerubbabel/Herod, and in Ezekiel’s Millennial Temple.

Messiah in the Holy of Holies

A Messianic Jew wrote a letter to his fellow Messianic Jews – what is commonly called the Letter to the Hebrews. In that epistle he ties in all the Scriptural information we have looked at so far. He also reveals amazing details about Messiah Yeshua’s ministry in the Heavenly Temple:

In the days of Joshua the High Priest, the blood of a bull or a goat was presented on earth (and simultaneously in heaven, according to Zechariah’s experience) once a year to make atonement for Israel. After His crucifixion, Messiah Yeshua entered the Heavenly Temple, bringing with Him His own atoning blood. He appeared in the presence of God the Father, offering one sacrifice for sins, once and for all time. Yeshua then sat down at the right hand of the Father, “waiting from that time onward until His enemies are made a footstool for His feet.” This event is stressed eight times in the Scriptures: Psalm 110:1; Matthew 26:64; Ephesians 1:20; Colossians 3:1; Hebrews 1:3; 8:1; 10:12; 12:2.

The Heavenly Temple is the location where our redemption was ratified. It is where Messiah Yeshua sits at the right hand of God the Father, awaiting His own return to our planet.

The New Heavens, the New Earth and the New Jerusalem

After John the Revelator describes the Heavenly Temple in breath-taking detail, he moves on to describe the next phase of YHVH’s redemptive acts –  the New Heavens and the New Earth.

Peter powerfully describes these same events:

When this above prophecy comes to pass, everything that has existed in history – past, present and future – will be totally consumed by fire and will melt with intense heat. On that future day, the present Jerusalem, the present and future Temple Mount, the continents and the oceans – our entire planet – all will be destroyed.

Something amazingly new will be manifested when God presents His New Heavens and New Earth: the New Jerusalem. This city will be strikingly beautiful, and will possess very different dimensions than the original Jerusalem:

 This New Jerusalem is described as “the Holy City . . . coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Revelation 21:1). John adds: “Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls, full of the seven last plagues, came and spoke with me, saying, ‘Come here, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God” (Revelation 21:9-11).

This New Jerusalem is likened to a bride who gets adorned for her husband in anticipation of the marriage celebration. This text says that, in that city, Jew and Gentile will together be called ‘the bride of Messiah’ and ‘the wife of the Lamb.’ This New Jerusalem will be the residence of all the saints from all times – Jew and Gentile alike. And this New Jerusalem will not be part of the present creation; John tells us that it will be part of the New Heavens and the New Earth.

The New Jerusalem has no Temple

John adds an astonishing detail here. The New Jerusalem “comes down out of Heaven” toward the New Earth. The eternal abode of the saints, according to John the Revelator, will be in the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem, however, does not have a Temple in it: “I saw no Temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its Temple.” At the same time, other scriptures (Isaiah, Daniel, Zechariah and John) tell us that the Temple in Heaven exists, and that it is the center and focal point of Heaven. John clearly states that the New Jerusalem comes down out of Heaven but is not in Heaven. The Temple in Heaven continues to be the Temple in Heaven.

The omnipresent God can be both in the New Jerusalem and in the Temple in Heaven simultaneously (just as, in our day, He can be within us yet also in the Temple of Heaven). Though this biblical truth is hard for humans (bound by space-time) to handle, the biblical text leaves us, the readers, with a certain amount of tension – how does that all work out? Our tensions about this matter will probably remain unsolved until we actually enter the Eternal Order. 

For the saints in the New Jerusalem, Adam and Eve’s ancient longing for renewed intimacy with God will finally be fulfilled. All the promises of deep abiding fellowship made by the God of Israel to the Jewish people will come to pass (see Exodus 25:8; Leviticus 26:12; Isaiah 25:8; 35:10; 65:19; Ezekiel 37:27; 48:35; Zechariah 2:10). God’s application of these promises to believers from all the nations will also find its blessed fulfilment (see 2 Corinthians 6:16b):

Heaven, the Highest Heavens, and the Third Heaven

The Hebrew word for ‘heavens’ is shamayim (שָׁמַיִם) – literally ‘sham’ (there) and ‘mayim’ (water). So if one looks ‘up there’ to the skies, one sees ‘the waters up there’ – the physical heavens.

A reference in Deuteronomy refers to both shamayim (the physical heavens) and shmei hashamayim (the heavens of the heavens, or ‘the highest heavens’): “Behold, to YHVH your God belong heaven and the highest heavens (הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וּשְׁמֵ֣י הַשָּׁמָ֑יִם), the earth and all that is in it” (Deuteronomy 10:14).

Paul refers to a spiritual experience he once had, where he was caught up in the spirit to ‘the Third Heaven:’

It stands to reason that, if there is a Third Heaven, there needs to be a First and Second heaven. Most Bible students assume that the First Heaven is what is called ‘the sky’ or ‘the heavens.’ There is not enough biblical information to lock down the meaning of the ‘Second Heaven.’ Could it be outer space, or is it perhaps dimensionally beyond what people can normally see? Two passages from the New Covenant hint at these realities more than they clarify:

When the New Jerusalem comes down out of the New Heavens (as per Revelation 21:10), are those New Heavens part of the New Creation – what could be called ‘the sky?’ And is ‘God’s Heavenly Temple’ something even beyond that, in a spiritually different dimension than even the physically renewed ‘New Heavens’? These questions remind us of what David describes in Psalm 139:6: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is too high, I cannot comprehend it!”

A river but no Temple

Since the New Jerusalem has no Temple, no Millennial river can bubble up from under such a Sanctuary. Nevertheless, John tells us that the New Jerusalem does have a river, and that this river bubbles up “from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street:”

The Good News according to John says that Messiah Yeshua came to tabernacle among His Jewish people. The Greek word skéné (σκηνή - meaning ‘tent’ or ‘tabernacle’) sounds somewhat similar to the Hebrew word Shechinah : “And the Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us. And we saw His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). In the New Jerusalem, Yeshua – our Tabernacling Messiah – will dwell among all of us, and all of us – Jew and Gentile alike – will be His people.

They who wait upon the Lord

As we wait, along with the saints of all the ages, for:

we remember the words of Yeshua, where He encourages us to draw near to God through following His word and longing for His return. Therein lies our strength and hope:

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

 FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

The restoration of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount – Part five

This is part five of a six-part newsletter.

No Temple on the Mount

Since 70 A.D. there has been no operating Temple on the Temple Mount. Since then, Messianic Jews have been excluded from worshipping within the Jewish community by their rabbinic competitors, being barred for the most part from synagogue attendance. But this is not surprising in light of the fact that Messiah Yeshua was also persona non grata in the eyes of Israel’s leaders.

Rabbinic Judaism restructured itself after the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D., developing liturgies and theologies which were a Rabbinic form of Replacement Theology: Since atoning sacrifices were no longer accessible, a decision was made to ‘replace’ them with quasi-atoning emphases on prayer services, acts of repentance, and good deeds. Modern streams of Judaism (especially Reform and Conservative) do not teach the need for atonement though Temple sacrifice and often see the concept as a primitive appendix. However, most Orthodox Jews pray and look forward to the eventual building of a Temple and the resumption of sacrifices.

Today, only perhaps 15% of all Jews (which includes a significant majority of Orthodox Jews) hope for the rebuilding of the Temple, though some traditional Jews might also lean in that direction. How are followers of Yeshua supposed to weigh in on this issue? A handful of Messianic Jewish leaders look warmly on the rebuilding of a Third Temple, but the overwhelming Messianic Jewish position is not to support such a move. Why is that? What prophetic issues are involved here?

The Mount of Atonement - Rabbinic or Messianic?

When national or even international sin rises to a high enough level, God must step in to bring righteous judgment (think ‘Noah’). Such was the case in Ezekiel’s day, when he was forced to prophesy: “Therefore on account of you, Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of ruins, and the Mountain of the Temple will become high places of a forest” (Ezekiel 9:6-7). The prophets called on the whole Jewish nation to repent, to confess sin and to make atoning sacrifice – the basic building blocks of a biblical and spiritual revival.

The prophets conveyed the divine challenge to repent, and stated that it is to be initiated par excellence from the Temple Mount: “Blow a trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm on My Holy Mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the Day of YHVH is coming; Indeed, it is near” (Joel 2:1).

The Scriptures tell us that, at various times throughout Jewish history, Israel’s leadership abandoned God’s pattern of atonement and set up counterfeit systems of atonement which simply could not get the job done. The prophets described this as a two-step spiritual dynamic: abandoning God and His commands; and replacing them with self-made traditions that cannot go the distance:

This was manifested in a striking way after Jeroboam and the Ten Tribes rebelled against King Rehoboam son of Solomon at Shechem:

Nearly 1,000 years later, Rabbinic Judaism set up a non-biblical system of atonement after the destruction of the Second Temple.  From 70 A.D. until 132 A.D. certain activities – liturgies, prayer services, acts of repentance, and good deeds – were advocated by the Pharisaic-rabbinic leadership as having atoning power. But these things were not true: there were no more Temple sacrifices, and the only effective atonement (Messiah Yeshua’s atoning sacrifice on the cross) was not recognized or accepted by the rabbis.

The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews (the Messianic Jews) challenged his readers that, as faithful followers of Yeshua, they would also need to bear the reproach of being associated with a crucified Messiah. That would involve stepping outside the confines of the major stream of Judaism that had rejected the Messiah, and instead holding faithfully to Messianic Judaism that honored and preached Messiah Yeshua: “For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the Holy Place by the high priest as an offering for sin are burned outside the camp. Therefore Yeshua also suffered outside the gate, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood. So then, let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach” (Hebrew 13:11-13).

The recognized leaders of the Jewish people had rejected King David’s Greater Son (see Matthew 12:6; 22:41-46). The purity of the Temple system had turned spiritually unkosher. The prophet Isaiah reminds us of a similar dynamic in his own day, where kosher atoning sacrifices turned unclean before the face of YHVH:

Messiah Yeshua wept over Jerusalem and prophesied that this city and its House (the Temple) were about to be destroyed, because of her spiritual rebellion and rejection of David’s Greater Son:

Once again the words of Isaiah could be applied to the people of Jacob: “The entire head is sick and the entire heart is faint. From the sole of the foot even to the head there is nothing healthy in it – only bruises, slashes, and raw wounds” (Isaiah 1:5-6).

A wing and a prayer on the Temple Mount

The Hebrew Scriptures do not avert their eyes when dealing with bad news. One astounding example of this is the prophet Daniel, who was given a startling prophecy by the angel Gabriel (Daniel 9:21) in 9:24-27. Gabriel lays out a clear and detailed time-line of some bad news coming down the pike. He refers to the people under discussion as Daniel’s Jewish people. Specific locations are described – the Holy City (Jerusalem), the Holy Place (within the Temple) also called the Sanctuary (the House of YHVH), and the place of sacrifice and grain offering (the holy precinct within the Temple compound). Messiah will come to the Temple Mount, and then He will be killed (cut off). Jerusalem and the House of YHVH will be destroyed. These events actually came to pass in 70 A.D. when the Herodian Temple was destroyed and the city of Jerusalem was largely destroyed.

Gabriel then looks down the corridors of time and focuses on an evil person who will eventually enter into a covenantal agreement with the Jewish Temple leadership, allowing for animal sacrifices and grain offerings to be jump-started. It’s worth noting that this future scenario pre-supposes that a rebuilt Temple standing will be standing at that time – and that event has not yet come to pass. This person will single-handedly halt these Jewish sacrifices and offerings after approximately three and a half years. And at that point someone enters the scene, “the one who makes desolate,” who enters “on the wing of abominations:”

Paul gives us apostolic commentary on this prophecy: “[T]he Day of the Lord . . . will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the Temple of God, displaying himself as being God. Do you not remember that while I was still with you, I was telling you these things?” (2 Thessalonians 2:2-5).

Messiah Yeshua adds greater detail: “Therefore when you see the Abomination of Desolation  which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the Holy Place – let the reader understand – then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains. Whoever is on the housetop must not go down to get things out of his house. And whoever is in the field must not turn back to get his cloak. But woe to those women who are pregnant, and to those who are nursing babies in those days! Moreover, pray that when you flee, it will not be in the winter, or on a Sabbath. For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will. And if those days had not been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short”  (Matthew 24:15-22).

These prophecies shed important light on some aspects of the Last Days, as well as the order of those events:

The majority of Messianic leaders today are aware of these coming apocalyptic events. This explains why they are not supportive of present efforts to rebuild the Temple or even to import red heifers to the country of Israel.

Trampling of the Temple Mount

Let’s look at one last prophetic passage which concerns the Temple Mount and the Holy Compound:

This passage notes that the actual Temple and altar will be under Jewish control for forty-two months yet future, while the Temple courtyard will be “given to the nations” – the Gentile nations (and their armies) who will trample the Holy City (Jerusalem), also for forty-two months.  The difficulty in interpreting this passage is not with what is written – the words here are very clear. The challenge come in interweaving other biblical texts which add color and detail to this scenario, yet at the same time make it difficult to smooth out all the dramatic details (see Zechariah 12; Ezekiel 37; etc.)

The Last Jerusalem Battle in front of the Temple Mount

Some of us would like greater clarity about events which are not clearly laid out in Scripture. As a result, there is a strong temptation for some of us to ‘fill in the blanks’ and to be dogmatic where the Bible is not dogmatic. An example of such a temptation concerns the gathering of the armies of the world against the Jewish people and the Jewish capital of Jerusalem. Passages like Ezekiel 38-39, Zechariah 12-14 and Joel 3:1-17 are tantalizingly terse in their descriptions. What can be concluded from these passages is that various events will occur:

There are still some pieces of the puzzle which are missing. This should hold us back from dogmatism in dealing with the interpretive tensions here. The key needs of the hour still are study, repentance and intercession.

Down on the threshing floor

The Scriptures have led us on an amazing journey as we have looked at the past, present and future of the Temple Mount – from Abraham’s place of sacrifice to David’s threshing floor. Zechariah shows us that all the nations will undergo a severe threshing as they attack Jerusalem and her Temple Mount. What was Araunah’s threshing floor will be the place of threshing and judgment for all the nations:

Ezekiel’s Temple and Jerusalem – the prophetic dimensions

What will occur on the Temple Mount during Messiah’s millennial earthly reign? Ezekiel’s prophecies convey the lion’s share of the information needed to receive a clear vision.

Many followers of Yeshua stay far away from Ezekiel, since he prophesies things that they do not believe, or do not want to believe. Many believers once scorned and smirked about Ezekiel’s vision of the Jewish dry bones returning to their Promised Land (Ezekiel 37:1-14) – until the Jewish people began to return to their Israeli homeland. Today, with over 1/3 of all Jewish people back in their ancient Promised Land, many Christians are more open to what Ezekiel prophesies regarding other Last Days issues.

In Ezekiel 40-48 the prophet makes 60 references to the future geographical location of the Temple and the Sanctuary. Detailed descriptions are given of the future altar, the future sacrificial system and the future professional functions of the priests. Some believers are taken aback by these things. Their understanding up to this point has been that God’s calling on Israel and His gifts to them (see Romans 11:28-29) have ended. These believers have been raised with a Replacement Theology framework, and have been taught that the Promised Land no longer belongs to the Jewish people, that there will be no regathering of the people of Jacob to the Land of Israel, that there is no more priority calling in Romans 1:16 and that Ezekiel’s 40-48 descriptions are simply spiritual allegory.

But the biblical text does not see things that way. See what the angelic messenger instructs Ezekiel to do and say by:

YHVH the God of Israel then soberly instructs Ezekiel:

Ezekiel’s Temple and sacrifices

It is the God of Jacob who directly tells Ezekiel that certain Levites will in charge of certain aspects of the sacrificial ministry – slaughtering burnt offerings and sacrificing them on the altar in the House of YHVH:

The God of Jacob informs Ezekiel that the Davidic prince will in charge of subsidizing certain aspects of the sacrificial ministry, the grain and vegetable offerings – and all this on the Jewish feast days as described in Leviticus 23. The word ‘atonement’ is also mentioned in this passage.

These Scriptures clarify some aspects of what will be happening in this Last Days Temple. Sacrifices will be part of the divine program.

During the time of the Mosaic Covenant, sacrifices ‘covered over’ sins on a yearly basis (that is the meaning of the Hebrew word kaparah, from which comes the word ‘Yom Kippur’ or ‘Yom Hakippurim’ – the Day of Atonement).  These repeated sacrifices actually did not take away sin: “But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Hebrews 10:3-4). Those Mosaic sacrifices looked forward to Messiah’s New Covenant atonement. When believers take communion or ‘the Lord’s Supper,’ they are looking back in time and remembering what Messiah Yeshua did on the cross.  As Paul says, “In the same way He also took the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the New covenant in My blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes” (1 Corinthians 11:25-26).

In the same way as Mosaic sacrifices looked forward to Messiah Yeshua’s atonement, so the sacrifices in the Messianic Temple which Ezekiel describes seem to be a reminder – a memorial – looking back on Messiah Yeshua’s atoning sacrifice.

The return of the Shekinah

In Acts 1, an angel addresses the Apostles: “And after [Yeshua] had said these things, He was lifted up while they were watching, and a cloud took Him up, out of their sight. And as they were gazing intently into the sky while He was going, then behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them, and they said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Yeshua, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven’” (Acts 1:9-11). The angel told the Apostles that, in the same way as Yeshua departed, “in the same way” He will return.

Ezekiel informs us that in the same way that the Shekinah Glory, the Holy Spirit, departed from the Temple Mount, the Glory will return in the same way to the Temple Mount:

An interesting matter to consider: this passage describes the Glory of YHVH returning to a pre-standing Temple, the House of YHVH. This is the clear presupposition of this passage. But where does that pre-existing Temple come from? The passage does not explain the matter to the reader. Will that Temple be built before Messiah’s return, according to the specifications that YHVH gave to Ezekiel in chapters 40-48? Or is there some other solution? A prayerful ‘wait and see’ approach is best here.

In Ezekiel 44, YHVH Himself addresses the prophet, telling him to pay strong attention to the details regarding the rebuilt Temple, since they are extremely significant:

The stress that God puts on the Jewish people understanding these matters, leads us to consider making these issues a priority in our study of the Scriptures.

Get you up on a High Mountain, Zion!

At the time when Messiah Yeshua returns to reign over the earth from the Temple Mount, some geographical changes will occur across this planet. Isaiah points this out:

The highest mountain on earth, according to Isaiah, will be the Mountain of the House of YHVH. Ezekiel 45:1-8 also describes the future dimensions of the Temple Mount and its surrounding areas, the Levitical area, and Jerusalem with its surrounding farmland. The Temple itself will be approximately one mile square, while its surrounding area will be approximately 50 miles east-west and 20 miles north-south. The top strip will contain the Temple Mount at its center; the middle strip will be for the House of Levi; the bottom strip will have Jerusalem in the middle (ten miles square) with farmland on either side. These dimensions will require major geographical alterations. A space of approximately 30 miles north-south will lie between the Temple Mount and the city of Jerusalem.

Ezekiel describes this new geographic order at the beginning of his vision in chapter 40:

The Temple Mount river

A new river will bubble up from under the House of YHVH and will flow eastward to the Dead Sea.

This new river with fresh waters will flow out from under the Temple Mount and then split into two, half heading to the Dead Sea and half to the Mediterranean:

The prophet Joel also received prophetic revelation about this river:

The abundance of water flowing up from under the Temple Mount will change the climate of dusty Jerusalem. The city of God’s appointed feasts will end up looking like Venice, with rivers and canals:

The Temple Mount – a Throne but no Ark

Jeremiah was once granted a special revelation about Messianic Jerusalem. The Ark of the Covenant (which was originally located in the Holy of Holies on the Temple Mount) will no longer be located there. Instead, the very presence of King Messiah will be there, sitting on the Throne of YHVH which will also be the Throne of David!

These remarkable prophetic promises will surely come to pass. In our next newsletter, we will look at what perspectives the Eternal Order and the New Jerusalem will bring to the ‘prophetic table.’

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

The restoration of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount – Part four

This is part four of a six-part newsletter.

In 1762 Charles Wesley published an outstanding hymn “Almighty God of Love” which speaks of the Temple Mount in future prophecy:

       We know, it must be done, for God hath spoke the word,

       All Israel shall their Savior own, to their first state restor’d

       Re-built by his command, Jerusalem shall rise

       Her Temple on Moriah stand again, and touch the skies

Moriah

In King Solomon’s day Mount Moriah was known as having once been the location of the threshing floor of Araunah/Ornan the Jebusite (2 Samuel 24). ‘Araunah’ was most probably a Hittite or Hurrian title meaning ‘honored lord/municipal leader.’ The Jebusites were one of Jerusalem’s earlier settlers and the city was once known as Jebus. Araunah’s Jebusite ancestors had probably been living in Jerusalem/Jebus for some time, perhaps going back to days before Joshua.

The word ‘Moriah’ is found in only one other place in Scripture, in Genesis 22:2,14, where ‘one of the mountains’ in ‘the land of Moriah’ (eretz Moriah) is referenced. This site was identified in Abraham’s day as ‘the Mountain of YHVH:’

Considering that Isaiah 2:3 uses the same Hebrew phrase to describe the Temple Mount (וְנַעֲלֶ֣ה אֶל־הַר־יְהוָ֗ה אֶל־בֵּית֙ אֱלֹהֵ֣י יַעֲקֹ֔ב), there is reliable historical and linguistic support for assuming that the same location is being referred to.

There are more than 144 references in Scriptures specific to the Temple Mount, and 58 of these are prophetic in nature. The Temple Mount is a significant theme in the Scriptures, as well as an important focus in biblical prophecy.

A place with a chosen destiny

The God of Israel explained to Ezekiel the unique nature of the Temple Mount – it is His throne and footstool:

The God of Jacob explains to King Solomon that there is an eternal and abiding divine connection to the Temple Mount: it is where YHVH’s name, eyes and heart abide forever:

The Temple Mount is where the Shekinah (the Glory of YHVH) came to abide. The Glory departed from there in Ezekiel’s day. The Holy Spirit will return to the same location – a rebuilt Temple – in days yet future:

King David tells us that the Temple was built on the Temple Mount in God’s honor, and because He had a special heart-connection to that hill:

Though most followers of Messiah Yeshua are unaware of the present spiritual status and future destiny of the Temple Mount, the Scriptures have much to teach on this matter.

Location, location, location

The exact location of where the House of YHVH was to be built on the Temple Mount was communicated by divine revelation to Gad the prophet-seer (see 2 Samuel 24:11):

The revelation of the exact location of the House of YHVH came in the context of King David’s prideful national census, a portentous deed about which Moses had warned the kings of Israel:

When God established the Temple on the Temple Mount, He was authorizing a spot on the map where Israel would receive atonement and forgiveness for her sins – a place which the whole planet would see, recognize and eventually make pilgrimage to:

Supreme Court at the House of YHVH

King David waxed eloquent about one of the functions of the compound where the House of YHVH was located: it is not only a center of worship, but also the location of the Davidic Supreme Court. This court will one day be international in scope:

A Jewish priority for the House and compound

The Holy Spirit shares His intercessory heart with His followers throughout the earth. This company of day-and-night prayer people cry out to YHVH that He would bring the Jewish people into their international destiny. Israel’s salvation will bear physical fruit, and that fruit of the vine will be drunk by Jewish people, fearless and secure in the courts of the Temple Mount compound:

Jewish ingathering and worship on the Temple Mount

Isaiah’s prophecy describes a massive worldwide aliyah (Jewish return to Israel) which will be accompanied by a divine shofar (ram’s horn). This shofar blast will catalyze the return of the scattered Jewish people, and will culminate in holy Jewish worship on the Temple Mount:

A full Jewish restoration on the Temple Mount

The Temple Mount can be considered the future ground-zero for Jewish restoration – both physically and spiritually:

A holy Jewish nation on a Holy Mountain

The nation of Israel will not only dwell and worship on a Holy Mountain. The entire Jewish people will also be made holy, and this holiness will be internationally recognized:

Gentile participation in Temple Mount celebration, worship and sacrifice

The prophet Isaiah has much to say about the future Temple and events surrounding it. Some beautiful prophetic passages show that believers from the nations will be involved and participating in these events:

Gentile participation will extend to helping in the construction of the House of YHVH:

The nations will also help the scattered Jewish people to return to Jerusalem and to the House of YHVH:

The Temple Mount – a worldwide teaching center

The Temple Mount will be the site of a planet-wide conference center involving both teaching and training (“that we may walk in His paths”). This Temple Mount ministry will have worldwide influence and impact:

YHVH will dwell on the Temple Mount

God who defines Himself as omnipresent (see Psalm 139:7-12; Jeremiah 23:24) will do something nearly inconceivable for mankind: He will localize Himself in Jerusalem and on the Temple Mount:

Spiritual activities on the Temple Mount

The Hebrew Scriptures describe many different facets of worship that have occurred on the Temple Mount in times past. Many of these activities will be repeated in the future. Here is a partial list:

         “I will pay my vows to YHVH. May it be in the presence of all His people, in the courtyards of YHVH’s House, in the midst of you, Jerusalem! Praise YAH!” (Psalm 116:18-19)

            “Now these are the ones whom David appointed over the ministry of song in the House of YHVH” (1 Chronicles 6:31)

            “All of these were under the direction of their father to sing in the House of YHVH, with cymbals, harps, and lyres, for the service of the House of God” (1 Chronicles 25:6)

            “You will have songs as in the night when you keep the festival, and gladness of heart as when one marches to the sound of the flute, to go to the Mountain of YHVH, to the Rock of Israel” (Isaiah 30:29)

            “YHVH is certain to save me! So we will play my songs on stringed instruments all the days of our life at the House of YHVH” (Isaiah 38:20)

            “They have made a noise in the House of YHVH as on the day of an appointed feast” (Lamentations 2:7)

Messianic Jews on the Temple Mount

The New Covenant describes Messianic Jews at home on the Temple Mount. They fasted and prayed there, praised God there and gathered for fellowship, preached the Good News of Yeshua, fell into divine trances there, and did not do anything wrong against the Temple. They saw the Temple as part of their spiritual inheritance:

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

The restoration of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount – Part three

This is part three of a six-part newsletter.

Jihad – the sleeping dragon

Once a country is conquered by jihadi armies, those territories are considered as belonging to Islam forever. This Muslim principle is reflected in Jordanian King Abdullah II’s clear declaration regarding the Temple Mount in the summer of 2015: “Al-Aqsa is the entire al-Haram al-Sharif, and we accept neither partnership, nor partition.” The Temple Mount’s former Grand Mufti, Sheikh Ekrima Sa’id Sabri agrees: “Entrance of Jews is permitted as visitors, but not as worshippers. Jews call the place the Temple Mount and they say: ‘It is ours.’ We certainly will not allow them to enter one of our holy sites, to pray there and say that it is theirs.”

According to Israeli intelligence and security expert Brigadier-General (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser (former head of the Research Division of IDF Military Intelligence [AMAN], Palestinian national ideology has some foundational beliefs:

On June 9, 1974, the Palestinian National Council of the PLO approved the ‘Ten Points Program,’ also known as the ‘Phased Plan.’ Significant input for this plan came from North Vietnamese top General Võ Nguyên Giáp, who trained the PLO how to use diplomacy and guile in order to gain a territorial foothold in Israel, while simultaneously pursuing armed struggle as the main method of liberating that country. This strategy allowed and allows the PLO to work toward their goals in phases while disguising their real purpose, permit strategic deception, and give the appearance of moderation.

The retired President of Israel’s Supreme Court, Justice Moshe Landau (in an interview with Ha’aretz Magazine, October 6, 2000), makes the same point: “From the point of view of Islam, it is impossible to recognize the sovereignty of the Jews in any part of the countries which Islam claims for itself . . . As far as Islam is concerned, the entire land of Israel is waqf land. And legal experts know [what] waqf land means: it is property which is sanctified to Allah. And that is the reason that for Arabs/Muslims it is forbidden to give the Jews a foothold of control in this land, and they must be driven out from here.”

All of the Palestinian leadership – whether Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Palestinian Authority, or Arab-Israeli Members of Knesset – have a bottom line: what the Jews call ‘the state of Israel’ will never ultimately belong to the Jews. It is Islamic territory forever. As PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat declared on May 10, 1994 to a Muslim audience in a Johannesburg mosque: “The Jihad will continue . . . Our main battle is Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the first shrine of the Muslims. . . (N)ot the permanent state of Israel – no! It is the permanent state of Palestine . . . You have to come, and to fight and to start the Jihad to liberate Jerusalem, your first shrine . . . It is not their capital, it is our capital!”

Waqf spokesman Adnan Husseini says that the issue of Jewish control of the Temple Mount is “a closed file . . . The issue has been settled by Allah, and there will be no negotiations . . . Moslems can't discuss it and can't make any compromise. This is the stance that every Palestinian and Arab and Moslem will adopt, forever . . . If [the Jews] want to dream of something that was here 3,000 years ago, then we will dream about the situation before 1948, when there was no State of Israel” (in Faithful to the bitter end? Michael S. Arnold, August 18, 2000).

The undulating conflict between 1967 and 2022 between Israel and the Palestinians over supposedly ‘status quo’ issues becomes clearer when realistically viewed through this Islamic lens: to the Palestinians and the majority of Islamic leaders and theologians, all solutions except jihad are transitory, and all negotiations between the Jewish state and the Palestinians are brief and will soon vanish – like al-Aqsa’s temporary captivity at the hands of Israeli unbelievers.

The status quo keeps changing

World media often refers to something called ‘the status quo’ when talking about the Temple Mount. Their talking points focus on the hypothesis that the Jewish state is constantly ‘violating the status quo’ in its policies regarding the Temple Mount. What does this mean, practically speaking, and how does it interface with what is happening today on the Temple Mount?

To understand the term ‘status quo,’ we have to go back in history to 1054, when the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches went through a major split – what is known as ‘the Great Schism.’ In the Land of Israel, Roman Catholics/Franciscans quickly got the upper hand over the Greeks, bolstered by an infusion of European knights in the First Crusade. The Catholics received a position of authority known as the Custody of the Holy Land in 1217. When the Ottoman Turks conquered the Holy Land in 1517, the weakness and infighting of the Christian churches catalyzed both Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox to appeal to the Muslim Turks, seeking special protection and privileges. Control of Christian Holy Sites would ping-pong back and forth between these two Christian streams and violent clashes were not uncommon. Bribes to the Sultan in Istanbul often decided the outcome.

A stop-gap mechanism developed, later called ‘the Status Quo,’ which involved Turkish-authorized and enforced decrees (the ‘firman’) – legal documents laying out the rights, responsibilities and limitations of opposing Christian parties at a particular moment in history. The initial steps in this direction were negotiations held in January, 1699 at Carlowitz, Szerem (modern Serbia) between Leopold Emperor of Germany and Mustafa II, the Turkish Sultan.

In 1637 the Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem Theophanes III obtained a firman from Sultan Murad IV recognizing Orthodox control of significant areas of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In 1675 Sultan Mehmed IV granted a firman ordering the removal of Franciscan monks from the Holy Sepulchre and Rotunda. During Easter Holy Week 1757, Orthodox Christians annexed parts of the Franciscan-controlled church, leading Sultan Osman III to write a 1757 decree forming the basis of what was later called ‘the status quo.’

In 1852 Napoleon III demanded that the Sultan recognize France as the protector of Christian monks and pilgrims in the Holy Places, sending a French warship toward Istanbul. Tsar Nicholas I, champion of the Greek Orthodox, insisted on Russia being confirmed by the Sultan as the protector of the Holy Places and of all Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire. When the Sultan dragged his feet in responding, a Russian army invaded the Ottoman provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia (modern Romania) in July 1853. The Turks declared war (the Crimean War) and in November the Russians destroyed a Turkish fleet at Sinope in the Black Sea. This war was jump-started over the issue of the ‘status quo’ in Jerusalem!

In the meantime, Ottoman Turkish Sultan Abdulmejid I issued firmans in 1850, 1852 and 1853 in favor of his Protestant subjects granting them specific rights and protections. These firmans received international recognition in Article 9 of the Treaty of Paris (1856).

The first time we run into the term ‘status quo’ as connected to the Holy Places is in Article 62 of the Treaty of Berlin (1878): “The rights conceded to France are expressly reserved, it being well understood that the status quo with respect to the Holy Places shall not be seriously affected in any way.” This Status Quo has, with ups and downs, remained largely intact from 1757 to 1967. It is known in legalese as “The Ottoman Status Quo Arrangement in the Holy Places.”

How did Israel’s June 1967 liberation of Jerusalem affect these centuries-old patterns, and how did this issue morph into a significant international anti-Israel weapon vis-à-vis the Temple Mount?

“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (The more things change, the more they stay the same)

On June 7, 1967 Israeli paratroopers wept as their hands touched the ancient stones of the Western Wall. No one on that day imagined or expected that the State of Israel would soon continue the centuries-old discrimination against Jews, banning them from ascending to and praying on the Temple Mount. But this is exactly what happened.

At 10:00 am on June 7, then-commander of the 55th Paratroopers Brigade Motta Gur had radioed from his half-track: “The Temple Mount is in our hands!” Yet within a few minutes IDF Defense Minister Moshe Dayan radioed Gur, demanding that he immediately remove the Israeli flag from the Temple Mount’s Dome of the Rock, yelling “Do you want to set the Middle East on fire?”

These two diametrically opposed responses sum up the present quandary at the Temple Mount.

“Even as Chief Rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces Shlomo Goren famously stood at the newly liberated Western Wall and blew the shofar, Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan, contemplating his victory from nearby Mount Scopus, is said to have wondered, ‘What do we need all this Vatican for?’ For Rabbi Goren, the Jews had rightfully recovered their property, and a keystone of the Jewish faith. For Dayan, Israel was now burdened with a foreign religious artifact; the best it could do was to try not to upset Muslim sensitivities. These contrasting attitudes reflect two opposite approaches to Zionism: One that sees in it the partial fulfillment of the biblical vision of Jewish redemption, and one that sees in it a strictly practical answer to the problem of anti-Semitism and Jewish defenselessness” (in We Forget Thee, Jerusalem; Azure no. 30, Autumn 5768 / 2007)

Within a few days on June 14, 1967, “huge waves of people, more than 200,000 [Israelis], ascended to the last remnant of the Western Wall . . . on the holiday of Shavuot [Feast of Weeks/Pentecost]."

But on June 17, 1967 Defense Minister Moshe Dayan met with the Temple Mount’s Supreme Muslim Council (the waqf) and unilaterally authorized a new metamorphosis of the ‘status quo’ – that Jews who had liberated Jerusalem from centuries-long control by Islamic dictatorships, would themselves not be permitted to pray on the Temple Mount, and that the Muslim Waqf would remain in charge of the compound.

The Sheriff comes to al-Ḥaram al-Sharīf (Arabic for the Temple Mount compound)

Dayan described in some detail his meeting with the Waqf on that day. His recounting of that meeting is a riveting read. Here are a few excerpts:

Dayan’s new-and-improved status quo allowed for non-Muslims (including Jews and Christians) to ascend to the Temple Mount as tourists, but not as worshippers. Dayan was not an aficionado of Isaiah’s Messianic vision stressing the importance of Jewish and Gentile prayer issuing from the Temple Mount: “For My House will be called a House of Prayer for all the peoples” (Isaiah 56:7).

An April 2014 report by the Knesset Research and Information Center states that Dayan was attempting “to neutralize, as far as possible, the religious aspect of the Israeli-Arab conflict. He believed that leaving the management of the Temple Mount in the hands of the Muslim authorities would prevent an uprising in the territories of Judea and Samaria and in the other Muslim countries and would facilitate adaptation to Israeli control.”

Dayan’s new status-quo was then ratified by the Israeli Ministerial Committee on Holy Sites (Governmental Decision #761, August 20, 1967). It ordered Major General Shlomo Goren (then the IDF Chief Rabbi), by way of the Defense Minister and Chief of Staff to “cease all actions connected to the organization of [Jewish] prayer, measurements, and the like on the Temple Mount.” It added that, “When Jewish visitors enter through the gates of the Temple Mount for the sake of prayer, they shall be redirected by defense forces to the Western Wall.”  Dayan elaborates: “Although, understandably, no minister wished to take a formal position stating baldly that Jews were forbidden to pray on the Temple Mount, it was decided to ‘maintain the current policy,’ which in fact banned them from doing so. It was evident that if we did not prevent Jews from praying in what was now a mosque compound, matters would get out of hand and lead to a religious clash.” Dayan was nearly accurate: Ministers Zvi Warhaftig and Menahem Begin opposed this government decision.

The Israeli Supreme Court created a legal framework stating that, while Jews had the right to pray on the Temple Mount, the police hold the authority to prevent the realization of that right. In the words of then-Chief Justice Aharon Barak, “The fundamental point from which we begin here, is that every Jew possesses the right to ascend the Temple Mount, pray there, and commune with his Creator. This is an inherent part of religious freedom. This is inherently part of freedom of speech . . . As with all human rights, this one is not fully absolute. It is a relative right . . . In a place where the near-certainty exists that real damage will be inflicted on the public interest, if the human right to freedom of worship and expression are realized, we are permitted to restrict the human right, for the sake of safeguarding public order” (SCJ 2725/93, Gershon Solomon vs. the Chief Commander of the Jerusalem District).

“It’s true,” [Member of Knesset Aryeh Eldad] said, “that the original sin was when the Jewish People, immediately after the Six Day War in 1967, ceded its hold on the Temple Mount in an unholy alliance between the Chief Rabbinate and Moshe Dayan – each side for its own reasons.”

Dayan’s status quo arrangement was a continuation of what the Jordanian police permitted between 1950 and 1967 – the same specific hours of visitation allowed for non-Muslims (though now, Jews were also allowed to visit).

Nadav Shragai, senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, adds a closing note: “In granting Jews the right to visit the Temple Mount, Moshe Dayan sought to mitigate the power of Jewish demands for organized worship and religious control at the site. In granting administrative control to Muslims on the Temple Mount, he believed he was mitigating the power of the site as a center for Palestinian nationalism.”

Morphing the Temple Mount into the Western Wall

A decision was taken by top Israeli government leaders and reflected in Prime Minister Levi Eshkol’s statement to the Israeli Knesset on June 12, 1967: “Jerusalem has been reunified. For the first time since the establishment of the State, Jews pray at the Western Wall, the relic of our holy Temple and our historic past, and at Rachel's Tomb. For the first time in our generation, Jews can pray at the Cave of Machpela in Hebron, the City of the Patriarchs. The prophecy has been fulfilled: ‘There is recompense for the work, the sons have returned to their borders’” [Jeremiah 31:17].

For over 3,400 years Jewish people had been focused on the Temple Mount: “Come, let’s go up to the Mountain of YHVH, to the House of the God of Jacob” (Isaiah 2:3). But now the longed-for place of prayer and the fulfilment of prophecy would instead be connected to the Western Wall. The western supporting wall for one side of the large Temple Mount compound would become the central focus of Jewish religious practice. For the Jewish religious consciousness, the Western Wall would come to represent and replace the Temple Mount.  During the reign of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, a small prayer space was constructed outside of the Temple Mount in 1550 for the Jews, who were forbidden by Suleiman from ascending to the Temple Mount (for more background, see https://davidstent.org/the-restoration-of-jerusalem-and-the-temple-mount-part-two/; ‘Saladin and Suleiman’). Now Israel’s government was about to start streaming its own people away from the Temple Mount and into Suleiman’s ersatz prayer court. An Israeli government decision was quickly taken to expand the small walkway into a fairly large modern plaza.

“Do not fear the people of the land!” (Numbers 14:9)

This spiritual volte-face by Israel’s government hoped to postpone (or even avoid altogether) the unpleasant necessity of having to deal with the biblical and historical role of the Temple Mount in Jewish history. It was also fear-based – continued anxiety was expressed in many forums about how Palestinian Muslims (and international ones) might respond, were Israeli Jews to pray on the site on Solomon’s Temple compound – where Isaiah and Yeshua once ministered.

Such concerns are not new. Indeed they predate the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. In a 1929 British Mandate handbook published just prior to Arab riots which resulted in 133 Jewish casualties, the author wrote of an attempt to secure the formal transfer of the Western Wall to Jewish ownership four years previously. He noted that “the Military Governor . . . discouraged the pursuit of the matter in view of the sensitive state of Arab opinion.”

Some Israeli lawyers use the phrase “the severe political consequences of Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount.”

Israeli Supreme Court Judge Alfred Witkon says regarding Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount: “The situation is extraordinary, and I doubt whether there is a case akin to it in the history of our country or in the world. The situation is delicate and dangerous on an inter-religious basis, and the site is explosive. It would be foolish not to take into account the effects and the cost in manpower that the granting of the petitioners’ petition would entail.”

Israeli journalist Arnon Segal points out that “the ongoing inability to enforce Israeli law is the failure of the government to implement freedom of worship for Jews on the Temple Mount, for fear that the realization of this right would lead to bloodshed”  (“Police Officer: It’s Strange that Jews Can’t Pray on the Temple Mount,” Makor Rishon, October 10, 2014).

There is no question that the dynamic of fear has influenced some Israeli leaders.

There is a scholarly consensus that since 1967 Israeli laws regarding freedom of worship have been blatantly violated by Palestinians on the Temple Mount and have found to be not enforceable. From that perspective, Israel’s sovereignty has not been fully realized. 

Over the past century Palestinian leadership has continued to stir up riot and murder through falsely accusing Israel and the Jews of planning to destroy the al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock. A few examples would include:

Yigal Carmon, former IDF Colonel and head of AMAN (Israel Military Intelligence Service) under Yitzhak Rabin draws conclusions based on Palestinian actions and strategies: Carmon “no longer believes that the idea of two states is feasible. In his view no solution of any kind for the Israel-Palestinian conflict can be envisaged in the foreseeable future.” (in ‘Willful Blindness and the Mistake of Underestimation: The Oslo Gamble’ by Joel Fishman and Yossi Kuperwasser; Spring 2020).

Friends and enemies

In Muslim medieval Spain, an Islamic philosopher, theologian and historian named Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd ibn Ḥazm (994-1064 A.D.) made some astute observations in his Book of Morals and Conduct [Kitāb Al-Akhlâq wa’l-Siyar]:

As the world moves forward to the return of Messiah Yeshua and the restoration of Jerusalem, it will focus more and more on the Temple Mount. Zechariah 12:3 tells us that Jerusalem will become a heavy stone for all the people. Today’s fast-moving developments regarding this precious and prophetic piece of real estate point to days of challenge, shaking and promise. 

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

The restoration of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount – Part Two

This is part two of a six-part newsletter.

The invasion and occupation of Israel by jihadi forces in the 630’s A.D. introduced the new spiritual dynamic of Islamist spiritual colonialism. For the next 1,500 years Islam’s own form of Replacement Theology (combining both anti-Jewish and anti-Christian teachings) ran roughshod over biblical truths, morphing them into spiritual counterfeits. A more in-depth analysis of these changes can be found in the book ‘Jews, Arabs and the Middle East: A Messianic Perspective.’

Islam moved the spiritual goalposts, defining Judaism and Christianity as profanations of Muhammad’s ‘pure teaching,’ renaming and Islamizing Jewish territories, holy places, patriarchs, prophets and kings. As well as ethnic cleansing (when Islam banished all Jews from the Arabian Peninsula), Muslim dictators forced major population groups in the Middle East and south-central Europe to either convert to Islam or to face Sayf al-Islām – the sword of Islam. Arabic became the mandatory language, and Islam became the master religion. Hundreds of pre-existing ethnic groups across North Africa and the Middle East were forced to redefine themselves as Arabs, rather than Moroccan Berbers, Lebanese Phoenicians, Syrian Arameans, Coptic Egyptians, Iraqi Assyrians, etc. We will now consider the Islamization of the Land of Israel and specifically of the Temple Mount.

The wisdom of Solomon

One of the first things Islamic Caliph ʿUmar ibn al-Khattāb did upon entering the city of Jerusalem/Aelia, was to make his personal pilgrimage to the rock (al-Saḵrah) around which King Solomon’s Temple had been built. Based on its location, the Caliph wanted to place a Muslim prayer house on top of the area, thus claiming it for Islam :

Building an Islamic mosque on Jewish ruins

‘The Jewish way’ – as Caliph `Umar bin al-Khattāb described it to Ka‘b al-Aḥbār – involved the honoring of the physical location where the Holy of Holies once was located. This tradition was codified over 400 years before the interaction of al-Khattāb and Ka‘b, as evidenced by this quote from the Mishna, Seder Zera’im, Tractate Berachot, chapter 9:5:

The Islamic quotes presented above shed light on the perspectives and strategies of the first Muslim rulers regarding the Temple Mount:

Islam showed itself to be Replacement Theology (RT) on steroids. Whereas as Christian RT allegorized Jewish gifts and calling (violating Romans 11:28-29), teaching that God had finished with the Jews and that Israel’s chosen status now meant ‘chosen for exile and persecution,’ Islamic Replacement Theology used the same psyops against BOTH Jews and Christians, claiming that both groups were now under Allah’s judgment and were destined to become victims and slaves of Islam. 

Clash of the Caliphs

About 638 A.D. Caliph ʿUmar ibn al-Khattāb took possession of Jerusalem. He established an initial prayer house on the Temple Mount on the spot where he ascertained were the ruins of Solomon’s Temple. But it was a small and unimpressive mosque. The Frankish (French) pilgrim Bishop Arculf visited Jerusalem between 670-690 A.D. and wrote:  “On the spot where the Temple once stood, near the eastern wall, the Saracens have now erected a square house of prayer, in a rough manner, by raising beams and planks upon some remains of old ruins. This is their place of worship, and it is said that it will hold about three thousand men.” But soon the clash of power politics between competing leaders in the Muslim world caused Jerusalem’s Temple Mount to take on an importance that its original Islamic founders would never have imagined possible. The small prayer house would soon be giving way to a large and splendid prayer hall known as Jami' Al-Aqsa.

After Muhammad’s death, jostling over succession turned into civil war. The first Umayyad caliph Mu’awiya I (reigned 661–680) passed on hereditary succession to his son Yazīd I who lived in Syria. This decision was actively opposed by Caliph Abd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr of Mecca. According to famed jurist and theologian Sheikh Ibn Taymiyyah,  Caliph Ibn al-Zubayr revolted against the Umayyad Dynasty which was located in Damascus, blockading the roads leading to the hajj pilgrimage in Mecca. According to Shi’ite historian al-Yaʿqūbī,  the Umayyad Caliph ‘Abd al-Malik of Damascus then prevented his subjects from travelling to Mecca because al-Zubayr was forcing those pilgrims to take a rebel bayʿah (a pledge of allegiance) to the Meccan upstart:

Faking history

Like Israelite King Jeroboam in 1 Kings 12:25-33, who set up a syncretistic altar and priesthood at Dan for the Ten Tribes in  “the month that he had devised in his own heart,” so Caliph ‘Abd al-Malik established a ‘pious forgery’ – a substitute hajj pilgrimage to the Temple Mount instead of to Mecca, to a falsely labeled mosque that he now chose to call Jami' Al-Aqsa (the Distant or al-Aqsa mosque). The original ‘Distant Mosque’ (al-Aqsa) was located in al-Juʽranah, Arabia (see https://davidstent.org/7719-2/), but now for political reasons it was morphed into a new ‘Distant Mosque’ (al-Aqsa) on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. The Night Journey (al-’Isrā’ wal-Miʿrāj) legend was altered and falsified – Muhammad now flew to Jerusalem, landed on the Temple Mount and from there ascended to heaven.

After Mecca’s Caliph Ibn al-Zubayr was slain by enemies in 692 A.D. during the Siege of Mecca, the Umayyads began to back-pedal on Jerusalem’s importance and it began to recede, both theologically and politically.

But, as Winston Churchill traditionally said, ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste!” The new legend of Muhammad’s ascent to the seventh heaven (Sahih Bukhari, Volume 1, Book 8, Number 345) paved the way to introduce new theological symbolism and powerful political meaning: During Muhammad’s supposed ascent, he was joined by the prophets of the eclipsed religions – Judaism and Christianity. Adam, Jesus, Seth, Joseph, Aaron, Moses, and Abraham all gathered together in heaven, next to Allah’s throne, where they prayed behind Muhammad. Thus Judaism and Christianity were symbolically passing the baton of leadership on to Islam right in front of the Throne of Glory. This supposed revelation about the coronation of Islam was powerful propaganda, intending to showing its superiority to its rejected step-sisters Judaism and Christianity.

Jerusalem was now being shaped by Islamic theologians and leaders into a powerful propagandistic tool in the fight against both Judaism and Christianity.

The architecture of the new Dome of the Rock was crafted accordingly. It would be placed in the center of the Temple Mount, so that circumambulation (walking around the building as an act of liturgy) could take place around it. The Dome was built with eight walls, double the holiness of Mecca’s Ka’ba which has only four walls.

The establishment of these ersatz buildings, names and traditions was part and parcel of a wave of spiritual deception and sleight-of-hand – nefarious satanic strategies vis-à-vis Israel, the Jewish people, Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.

Massacres, mosques and the Temple of the Lord

The Crusader conquest of Jerusalem in July 1099 was described by Muslim politician and chronicler Ibn al-Qalanisi in his Damascus Chronicles of the Crusades (written just after 1100 A.D.). Conservatively speaking, between 3,000 and 10,000 Muslims were massacred on the Temple Mount. The Jews of Jerusalem (numbering several hundred) gathered in their synagogue (probably the ‘Cave’ synagogue at Warren’s Gate, abutting the Temple Mount), which was then burnt down by the Franks (French Germans):

The Crusaders renamed the Dome of the Rock as Templum Domini (the Temple of the Lord), and the al Aqsa mosque was renamed Templum Solomonis (the Temple of Solomon). They were then established as churches. The Temple Mount was declared off-limits to both Jews and Muslims. As far as the Crusaders were concerned, the Christian Church was the New Israel, and there would be no restoration of the Jewish people or of the Jewish nature of the Temple Mount.

Saladin and Suleiman

The Ayyubid Kurdish Sultan Saladin (Arabic, Ṣalāḥ ud-Dīn) conquered Crusader Jerusalem in October 1187 A.D. According to poet and traveler Rabbi Yehuda al-Ḥarizi, Saladin issued a manifesto in 1190 calling on Jews to return to Jerusalem and settle there (see ‘Saladin’ in the Encyclopedia Judaica).  Al- Ḥarizi compared Saladin's decree to the one issued by the Cyrus the Great over 1,600 years earlier. Permission was granted by Saladin to erect a synagogue on the Temple Mount, but within a few years that permission was rescinded. For 600 years after that point, the Temple Mount was off-limits to Jews.

Sultan Suleiman I (the Magnificent, 1494-1566) encouraged European Jews, especially the exiles from Spain and Portugal, to settle in Jerusalem. In 1550 he also instructed his chief court architect, Sinan Pasha, to design and oversee the building of an area for Jewish prayer in an alley abutting the Western [retaining] Wall of the Temple Mount. At that point in time all non-Muslims were legally prevented from entering the Temple Mount. A royal decree or firman was issued guaranteeing for all times the right of Jews to pray at this Western Wall. The Jewish prayer area was quite humble in dimension – only 4 meters wide and 28 meters long, occupying less than six percent of the Western Wall's total length of 488 meters. This small area could accommodate at most a few hundred people.

Mishnah commentator Rabbi Obadiah of Bertinoro, wrote after 1488 A.D. in one of his letters from Jerusalem: “No Jew is allowed to enter the site of the Holy Temple . . .  Jews have refused to enter these areas because of their uncleanliness.” One of the Rabbi’s students added in 1495 A.D. that “in any event, the Muslims would not permit [any Jew] to enter their holy place.”

Up to 1839 the Turkish authorities enforced an absolute ban on all non-Muslims to the Temple Mount. In 1839, following the Ottoman Tanzimat reforms and also due to British pressure, non-Muslims were permitted to enter Temple Mount, but only with special permission of the governor.

The entire Islamic and Crusader periods upheld stringent edicts forbidding Jews from ascending to or praying on the Temple Mount, while at the same time ‘honoring’ the Jewish kings and prophets who once walked through the ancient Temple precincts.

Rule Britannia

When Britain conquered Jerusalem on December 11, 1917 General Sir Edmund Allenby declared from the steps of ‘David’s Tower,’ close to the Jaffa Gate and Christ Church:

He then mentioned Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem, the mausoleum in Hebron (to be placed under exclusive Moslem control), the Holy Sepulchre “in remembrance of the magnanimous act of the Caliph Omar, who protected that church.” Allenby made no references to any Jewish holy places. This was not surprising, since the previous Muslim conquerors had long since removed any Jewish connections to those sites, making those places Islamic and not Jewish.

Allenby stated in his official report that “the Mosque of Omar [the Temple Mount] and the area around it have been placed under Moslem control, and a military cordon of Mohammedan officers and soldiers has been established around the mosque. Orders have been issued that no non-Moslem is to pass within the cordon without permission of the Military Governor and the Moslem in charge.” Allenby’s military order in one fell swoop invalidated the abovementioned 60-year-old British-influenced policy from 1839 which granted free Temple Mount access to anyone. Christian groups in England strongly protested and, as a result, the British Cabinet canceled this order three months later. Free access would remain in force for more than ten years. However, after the 1929 Islamist riots against the Jews, the Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini closed the Temple Mount to all non-Muslims. The British mandatory government condoned this closure order as far as Jews were concerned, and so Jews were barred from the Temple Mount for the next 38 years.

The 1934 King’s Order-in-Council issued by the government authorities of Mandatory Palestine regulated the legal situation of the Temple Mount by confirming the Ottoman religious status quo regarding sovereignty.

Britain’s Mandate policy vacillated regarding Jewish access to the Temple Mount. In the end it affirmed Islam’s long-standing policies which prevented Jews from ascending to or praying on the Temple Mount. England simply passed the buck, kicking the can down the road by validating Ottoman anti-Jewish precedent and policies.

Jordan, the Temple Mount and the Mount of Olives

On May 28, 1948, toward the conclusion of Israel’s War of Independence, Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter surrendered and the Temple Mount fell under control of the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan. The entire Jewish population of Jerusalem’s Old City was exiled, the entire Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives was smashed to bits tombstone by tombstone, and for nineteen years no Jew was allowed to approach the Temple Mount or the Western Wall. This absolute ban was strictly enforced, despite provisions in the Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreement of 3 April 1949, Article 8, that called for “free access to the Holy Places and cultural institutions and use of the cemetery on the Mount of Olives.” Jewish visitors, no matter what their nationality, were forbidden from approaching the Temple Mount or entering the Old City of Jerusalem or ascending the Mount of Olives.

This state of affairs continued until June 7, 1967 when Israeli paratroopers led by Colonel Motta Gur crashed through the Lion’s Gate, wheeled left and charged up onto the Temple Mount.

The Temple Mount is in our hands

Gur radioed from his half-track to HQ: “The Temple Mount is in our hands!” The last time Jews had sovereignly controlled the Temple Mount had been over 1,800 years previous. Gur radioed headquarters: “The Temple Mount is in our hands.” IDF Paratrooper Brigade Chief Communications Officer Ezra Orni, and Chief Intelligence Officer Arik Achmon requested and received Gur’s permission to hang the Israeli flag over the Dome of the Rock. They entered the building, climbed up to any outer balcony and hung the flag outside on an available crescent-crowned pole. IDF Defense Minister Moshe Dayan was watching the scene through binoculars from Mount Scopus. He urgently radioed Gur and demanded: “Do you want to set the Middle East on fire?” The flag was removed. The paratroopers were soon joined by Rabbi Shlomo Goren, the chief army chaplain, who blew a resounding blast on the shofar (ram's horn) and pronounced an ancient Jewish prayer: “Blessed are You our God, who comforts Zion and builds Jerusalem!”

Next to show up at the Western Wall was Dayan, who read a statement to the press: “We have returned to the holiest of our sites and will never again be separated from it. To our Arab neighbors, Israel extends the hand of peace; and to the peoples of all faiths we guarantee full freedom of worship and of religious rights. We have come not to conquer the holy places of others, nor to diminish their religious rights, but to ensure the unity of the city and to live in it with others in harmony.”

Many Israelis saw the freeing of Jerusalem and of the Temple Mount as a miraculous deliverance of biblical and messianic proportions. A few days after the war over 200,000 Jews flocked to the Western Wall – the first mass Jewish pilgrimage to the Temple Mount in over 1800 years.

Ten days after the Temple Mount and the Western Wall were liberated, Dayan met with the Muslim religious authorities (the Waqf) of Jerusalem in the al-Aqsa Mosque. He announced to them that the Muslim authorities would be in complete charge of all religious activities in the mosques on the Temple Mount. Jews would have free access to the Temple Mount but would not be allowed to pray there. Jews could pray at the Western Wall.  The Israeli government subsequently accepted Dayan’s decision that forbade Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount. The rule was that Muslims pray on the top of the mountain while Jews pray below at the Western Wall. The Israeli government wanted to reassure the world that it would not take unilateral measures regarding the Temple Mount's sovereignty, but would leave this to be determined in final status negotiations. Israel prohibited the flying of an Israeli flag over the site, and refrained from extending its own laws governing Holy Places to the Temple Mount.

With this single decision Dayan created the basis for a status quo situation that has existed up to the present day. Yossi Klein Halevi notes: Israel jumped “from an unplanned victory to a spontaneous concession. No cabinet meeting authorized Dayan’s move. The Defense Minister simply took advantage of his popularity within the Israeli public to manage Israel’s most sensitive religious problem – an arrangement that has persisted ever since.”

Professor Shlomo Ben-Ami, former Israeli Minister of the Public Security, wryly said in the year 2000 “More than we are sovereigns over the Temple Mount, today we are its hostages.”

Does Jewish restoration entail the restoration of the Temple Mount?

Someone once noted that it is easier to get onto the back of a tiger in order to ride him, that to get off of him. The amazing miracle of God’s restoration of His people – albeit partial, and albeit without the national indwelling of the Holy Spirit – carries with it some challenging questions. Since the Return to Zion involves our nation’s return to the Temple Mount, how should we then think and plan regarding the Temple Mount? Since the nations of the Middle East view the restoration of the Temple Mount and its Jewish calling as a casus belli (a cause leading to war), how should we handle and proactively respond to such Islamist threats?

“Many appeals have been made to Israel's Supreme Court to permit Jews to pray on the Temple Mount. Despite the 1967 Law for the Protection of Holy Places which allows free access and freedom of worship to all religions everywhere, Jews and Christians are prohibited from praying on the Temple Mount, ostensibly to ensure public order. As Justice Menachem Elon, Deputy Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, explained, this prohibition was created because ‘the Temple Mount possessed extraordinary sensitivity that has no parallel anywhere.’”

The famous IDF General Moshe Dayan was concerned that a Jewish reclamation of the Temple Mount could lead to all-out Islamist jihad against Israel. He was also wary about what a zealous Judaism might catalyze were it to move in a xenophobic and totalitarian direction regarding both the Temple Mount and the Jewish state’s citizens.

Yet the Jewish people have a biblical calling to be a nation of prayer, a nation of priests, and a nation of teachers of both God’s word and God’s ways to the nations. Isaiah 2:1-4 ties that calling to a piece of real estate called the Temple Mount:

How can Israel move toward the fulfilment of that divine calling while avoiding the minefields about which Moshe Dayan was concerned? Is such an outcome even possible?

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

The restoration of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount - Part One

The consolation of Israel and the redemption of Jerusalem revolve around God’s promises to Jacob:

How would this happen? When would this happen? These questions captivated the hearts of the Hebrew prophets, as Simon Peter tells us: “As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Messiah in them was pointing when He predicted the sufferings of Messiah and the glories that would follow” (1 Peter 1:10-11).

The prophesied restoration of Jerusalem includes the future defeat of Israel’s foes – all those who oppose Jewish return and redemption:

In our day international opposition to these core biblical promises is the daily bread of most nations, whose leaders and analysts are blind to God’s heart and strategies. Superpowers, diplomats and politicians, rabbis and imams – an absolute majority fail to grasp sober biblical realities here.

Jerusalem of Gold

On Tuesday, January 3, 2023 Israel’s new National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir paid a quick early-morning visit to the Temple Mount (also known in Arabic as al-Ḥaram al-Šarīf – ‘the Noble Sanctuary).

International condemnation of the move immediately exploded. China and the United Arab Emirates (UAE, one of the co-signers of the Abraham Accords ‘peace process’) catalyzed a possible United Nations Security Council condemnation of Israel in response.

According to US State Department spokesman Ned Price, such Jewish visits to the Temple Mount by Members of Knesset are unacceptable violations of the status quo which will set back the prospects for a two-state solution. Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi described Ben-Gvir’s visit as a “dangerous provocative act,” part of “illegal Israeli measures that are undermining peace prospects  . . . and can only cause more violence.” UAE described the visit as part of “serious and provocative violations taking place there.”

Historically speaking, visits by Israeli politicians to the Temple Mount may not be common, but neither are they illegal. In October 2005 Israel’s Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra visited the Temple Mount as part of his security responsibilities and Palestinian Arabs did not respond with violence. On October 15, 2000 then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was interviewed on ABC television, stating that visits by Israeli Members of Knesset to the Temple Mount are “part of the legal right. It’s part of freedom of access to holy sites by everyone . . .  We are an open society, it is in the middle of our capital, and we cannot forbid it.”

A ‘politically correct’ world has come to the conclusion that Jewish prayer (or even Jewish physical presence on the Temple Mount) is illegal, dangerous, provocative and unacceptable. All diplomatic talking heads of the world are in agreement about this. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has added fuel to the fire with his statement regarding Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount: “Al-Aqsa is ours and so is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They [i.e. Jews] have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet. We won’t allow them to do so and we will do whatever we can to defend Jerusalem.”

Roman roots

At the time of the Babylonian invasion of Israel and the destruction of Solomon’s Temple (about 598 B.C.), Nebuchadnezzar banished the bulk of Jerusalem’s Jews to mournful exile by the rivers of Babylon. But at the same time a remnant was left in Zion: “The king of Babylon had appointed Gedaliah the son of Ahikam over the land, and put him in charge of the men, women, and children, those of the poorest of the land who had not been exiled to Babylon” (Jeremiah 40:7).

Roman Emperor Aelius Hadrianus (better known as Hadrian) took a more obsessive approach after the Bar Kochba Revolt (132-135 A.D.), issuing an edict banning Jews from living in Jerusalem or coming close enough to even see the city.  In Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History (Book IV; chapter 6; 2-4), Hadrian’s decree is described:

Justin Martyr in his First Apology (Chapter 47; written 155-157 A.D.) refers to Hadrian’s edict exiling all Jews from Jerusalem on pain of death:

The first nation to forbid Jews from living in Jerusalem or ascending to the Temple Mount was the Roman nation.

Byzantine alterations

The anonymous Bordeaux Pilgrim arrived in Jerusalem in 333 A.D. while Constantine the Great was on the Byzantine throne. In his Itinerarium Burdigalense, he mentioned that Jews were only allowed into Jerusalem once a year (probably on the Ninth of Av) to ascend to the Temple Mount and mourn over its destruction (probably reading Jeremiah’s Lamentations). Here is his description of the Temple Mount: “There are two statues of Hadrian. Not far from the statues is a pierced stone to which the Jews comes every year and they anoint it and they lament with a groan and they tear their garments and then they withdraw.” Hadrian’s total ban of Jews from the Temple Mount was preserved by Constantine with only slight modifications.

Toward the end of the Byzantine period (circa 630 A.D.) Emperor Heraclius arrived at Jerusalem, defeating the Persian invaders and massacring Zion’s Jews. These events are described in ‘The Annals of Eutychius of Alexandria’ (10th c. A.D. – chapter 18; part 2; 6-8):

The Christian Byzantine Empire in Constantinople continued Hadrianic Roman policies, forbidding Jews from living in Jerusalem or going up to the Temple Mount.

It might surprise some to discover that, during Byzantine rule, Christian religious focus in Jerusalem was not on the Temple Mount. Much of the compound had actually been turned into a garbage dump, though remains of a possible small church mosaic were discovered there by Robert Hamilton in 1938-42. But there was fear, as Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem expressed, that the Jews would once again try to rebuild their Temple.

Under Byzantine rule, two things were crystal-clear:

Christian (and later, Muslim) fears that there might be a future connection between the Jewish people and the Temple Mount was expressed also by Sebeos, a 7th-century Armenian bishop and historian. In Chapter 31 of his History, he wrote about this dynamic:

Muslims and Christians cooperate in banning Jews

The tsunami wave of Muhammad’s jihadi armies crashed upon the shores of the Land of Israel between 635-640 A.D. The city of Jerusalem (also called Aelia, one of the Roman names of Jerusalem, based on the Latin Aelia Capitolina) was besieged in November 636 A.D. The official general of these mujāhidīn (jihad warriors) was Caliph ʿUmar ibn al-Khattāb, Muhammad’s father-in-law. It is traditionally believed in Islam that he was the author of the Pact of Umar (Arabic, Al-'Uhda Al-'Umariyya), a terms-of-surrender agreement (purportedly written down in 637-638 A.D.) between the Islamic forces and Jerusalem’s Christian leadership. Here is a portion of that document, according to the Muslim historian al-Ṭabarī (circa 900 A.D.)

The Islamic conquerors chose to maintain the Roman and Byzantine status quo, legally preserving Jerusalem as a judenrein (Nazi pejorative term meaning ‘cleansed of Jews’) city.

Modern Islamic apologists defend this policy as “in conformity with the Jews’ position in Jerusalem, which had been decided since the Emperor Hadrian . . . The Muslims did not take Jerusalem away from the Jews . . . The Muslims received it from the Romans.”

According to Islamic law, conquered lands which become ‘Islamic charitable trusts’ (waqf) can never be ceded, sold or mortgaged to non-Muslims. According to Islamic law the Temple Mount is waqf, and thus it is forbidden for it to fall under Jewish control or oversight. Herein lies the intractable heart of present tensions.

According to Islamic tradition, Muhammad bestowed the Holy Land’s first waqf in an endowment involving Hebron, bequeathing it to Tamīm ibn Aws al-Dārī, a former Christian priest who converted to Islam. The Islamic perspective on how this affected the future legal status of the Holy Land is revealed in this Muslim comment: “By making this endowment to him, the Prophet was in fact staking Islam’s claim to legitimate ownership of Palestine.”

Jerusalem, Mecca or a small village in the desert

In modern Sunni Islam, the three holiest mosques, in descending order, are – Mecca (al-Masjid al-Ḥarām), Medina (al-Masjid an-Nabawi) and the Temple Mount prayer hall (Jami' Al-Aqsa). Yet this Islamic tradition runs into problems when confronted and contradicted by Islamic history.

Shi'ite Islam (10-13% of all Muslims) traditionally looks to Najaf, Iraq as its third site –  the Sanctuary of Imām 'Alī  (Ḥaram al-ʾImām ʿAlī) – and not the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Muhammad originally had his followers face Jerusalem and the Temple Mount in prayer. This prayer focus is known as the qibla in Arabic. Yet this lasted less than 18 months: “Narrated Al-Bara: The Prophet prayed facing Bait-ul Maqdis [i.e. Arabic for ‘The Holy House’ or Jerusalem] for sixteen or seventeen months but he wished that his qibla would be the Ka`ba [at Mecca]” (Sahih al-Bukhari 4486; 2.142-143; Book 65, Hadith 13). Muhammad then changed the direction of prayer to Mecca, which cause no little confusion among his followers. According to the Quran, Allah’s response was to use scorn and ad hominem attacks against any questioners: “The Statement of Allah ‘The fools [pagans, hypocrites and Jews] among the people will say, “What has turned them [Muslims] from their qibla [prayer direction]?”

According to the 8th-century Arab historian al-Waqidi in his Kitab al-Tarikh wa al-Maghazi (‘Book of History and Campaigns’), Muhammad had a group of supporters in the city of al-Ta’if, a two-day’s walk from Mecca. Muhammad would spend the night in the half-way point – the village of al-Juʽranah. Near the village were two mosques, ‘The Nearby Mosque’ (al-Masjid al-Adna) and the ‘Distant Mosque’ (‘al-Masjid al-Aqsa’). Muhammad would pray in one of them before setting out on his day-long journey. The Qur’an (17:1) tells a story that one night in 630 A.D. a miracle occurred to Muhammad; the Creator took him to the ‘Distant Mosque’ (‘al-Masjid al-Aqsa’) to reveal some miracles. Muhammad’s contemporaries understood the reference in this passage literally. They knew that ‘al-Masjid al-Aqsa’ was near the village of al-Juʽranah, half-way to Ta’if. There were no mosques or Muslims in Jerusalem at that time, and Jerusalem was not at all what al-Juʽranah’s residents would have thought about.

It should be noted that when Muhammad died in the year 632 A.D., he had never visited Jerusalem.

Later internal Islamic politics led to the spreading of false propaganda. Muslim theologians began to ascribe the al-Masjid al-Aqsa as being the same as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. One needs to remember that in Muhammad’s day Arab jihadis had not yet set foot in Israel, nor had they built a mosque there. Such ‘unimportant issues’ were swept under the Middle Eastern carpet as Islamic Replacement Theology christened the Temple Mount with a counterfeit name and destiny.

One historical vignette written down by 9th-century historian al-Tabari describes an event in 637-638 A.D. As Kaʿb al-Aḥbār (a Jewish convert to Islam) approached the Temple Mount with Caliph ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, the former began to remove his shoes in respect for the holiness of the Temple Mount. The Caliph rebuked him, saying: “By Allah, O Ka‘b, in your heart you are still a Jew, for I have seen how you took off your shoes [before entering the Temple Mount]. But we Muslims were not ordered to sanctify this Rock (al-Saḵrah); we were only ordered to turn [in prayer] towards the Ka‘ba [in Mecca].”

According to early Islamic understanding, the Temple Mount in 637 A.D. was not considered by its Islamic conquerors to be a holy place.

One way and the only way

Islam believes that there is only one way and one Prophet: “Certainly, Allah’s only Way is Islam” (Quran; Surah 3 Ali 'Imran' Ayat 19). Islam believes that it is the only true religion; that Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon and Yeshua were Muslims; and that Jews (and Christians) falsified the Scriptures. Islam believes that the Jews have lost their claims to their gifts and calling, to the Temple Mount, and to any prophetic or covenantal claims to the Land. Based on this theological foundation, Islam does not see itself as coexisting in peace with other religions, but rather as replacing them. This is why Jihadi Islam deliberately built its mosques on top of synagogues, churches, monasteries and pagan temples. This is why Islam founded a network of laws to denigrate Jews and Christians (the dhimmi status).

Islam’s self-understanding refuses to allow sovereign Jewish existence on any lands once occupied by jihadi forces. This includes all of Israel and especially the Temple Mount. Knesset Member Ben-Gvir’s brief walk around the Temple Mount compound is seen as serious, provocative, illegal, and a violation of the status quo – because that is exactly how jihadi Islam sees the Jewish people’s existence in the Land of Israel, in the city of Jerusalem, and on the Temple Mount.

The Islamic vision for the Jewish people was stated clearly by both Muhammad and Caliph ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb:

Marionettes and the restoration of Jerusalem

In Genesis 27:22, Isaac spoke dramatic words: “The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” Today at the UN the voice (and the vote) of the nations can be seen as ‘the hands of Esau.’ But what is more troubling is the voice coming through loud and clear – a voice which is demonic in nature. That voice opposes YHVH’s restoration of Israel to their land and to their Temple Mount by issuing condemnations against Jacob and against the God who makes promises to Jacob.

The blind repeating of Hadrianic, Byzantine and Islamic falsehoods by the UN, the US, the UAE, France, China, etc., shows that, spiritually speaking, the nations of the world are behaving like marionettes on a string, roaring their anger and rebellion against the One who sits enthroned in the heavens and laughs (see Psalm 2).

The prophetic confession of John the Baptist’s father Zechariah is also our prayer at this time: may YHVH bring to the Jewish people “salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us!” (Luke 1:71).

In the next newsletter, the unique contributions of the Crusaders, the Ottoman Turks, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the dynamics in the aftermath of the June 1967 Six-Day War will be considered, as well as Israeli Minister of Defense General Moshe Dayan’s fateful decisions regarding the Temple Mount, and the connection between today’s ‘status quo’ and the Last Battle.

How should we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

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