Will a Temple Be Rebuilt in Jerusalem?

At the Feast of Tabernacles just a little bit over a year ago, I was in Israel with about 175 other members when on the eighth day, several thousand Hamas fighters and other Arabs from the Gaza Strip invaded southern Israel there. They killed about 1,200 Israelis and citizens of other countries who were guest workers there in Israel and kidnapped about 250 more, taking them hostage into Gaza. About half of those hostages have since been either released or killed.

Unfortunately, there's still approximately a hundred that they don't know the fates of the hostages at this point, other than about half of them have been killed.

Hamas is holding their bodies there in Israel.

These atrocities shocked the world, but they weren't totally unexpected for those who are familiar with the charter of Hamas, the terrorist group.

Here is their seal, their coat of arms, you might say, which shows the Dome of the Rock and the cross swords, representing their determination to take control of the Dome of the Rock there in Jerusalem by force.

Of course, Islam's holy book, the Quran, calls for Muslims to fight against Jews and Christians until the Jewish religion and the Christian religion exist no more.

There is only one supreme religion over the earth, and that is Islam.

Hamas, Hezbollah, Lebanon, and other terror groups have been carrying out attacks against Israel for decades now. This attack a year ago was not unexpected.

What was surprising, however, was the success of the attack and carrying out their murderous aims of killing over 1,200 people and taking several hundred more hostage.

Another aspect of that attack that was surprising was a video from a Hamas spokesperson that was released three months after the attacks, released in January of this current year.

And in that video, one of the justifications for the attacks of October 7th was the fact that red cows had been brought into Israel.

And to anyone not familiar with the Bible, they would have to think that's one of the most bizarre rationales they've ever heard, particularly as a rationale for murdering 1,200 people.

And even to many of us in the church, that might sound strange because what do red cows have to do with Hamas and its motivations there? But it starts to make more sense when we understand that the red cows that were being referred to were animals for the Red Heifer sacrifice.

So what was this Hamas spokesman referring to? And what exactly is the Red Heifer sacrifice?

What does it mean for Israelis today? What does it mean for Muslims? Why would it be so upsetting to the Arabs there in Gaza? And all of these questions lead to a bigger question, which is, how does this play into end-time prophecies about Israel and Jerusalem? And in tonight's study, we will go through and answer a number of those questions, get some perspectives on this. So to begin—and I will be projecting all of the scriptures here on screen—but we'll begin back in Numbers chapter 19, where this particular—I hesitate to call it a sacrifice. You might call it a procedure as much as a sacrifice about the Red Heifer. And I say that because it's not your typical sacrifice. Yes, it does involve a sacrifice, but in many ways it's quite different from the other offerings and sacrifices that are described there in the five books of Moses. So beginning in verse 1 of Numbers 19, we read, "...Now the eternal spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, This is the ordinance of the law which the Lord has commanded, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, that they bring you a red heifer." A heifer is simply a female cow that has not born a calf.

So, "...bring you a red heifer without blemish, in which there is no defect, and on which a yoke has never come. You shall give it to Elazar the priest, that he may take it outside the camp, and it shall be slaughtered before him. And Elazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger, and sprinkle some of its blood seven times directly in front of the tabernacle of meeting.

Then the heifer shall be burned in his sight, its hide, its flesh, its blood, and its offal shall be burned." Offal is referring to the digestive tract and system of the animals and the undigested food, or partially digested food, that is there. And the priest shall take cedar wood and hyssop and scarlet, and cast them into the midst of the fire, burning the heifer." How many of you have ever participated in butchering a cow? Okay, a few. I was an Alabama country boy, so my dad, we used to raise a steer every year to provide beef for our family. So from junior high up to when I left home for college, I participated in that with my dad. I can assure you it's a lot of work to slaughter a cow or a steer there. And not to mention burning the entire animal, as is described here. This is not an easy task. This is not something that would be taken lightly here. It was something that would involve a lot of work. A great deal of work. Now, what did this sacrifice point to? What was the purpose of it? We'll see the explicit stated purpose in just a minute, but let's first turn over to Hebrews 9. And, of course, Hebrews gives a lot of different perspective on the sacrificial system and so on of the Books of Moses and tells us what it was pointing to. And here we see a reference to the red heifer sacrifice. So Hebrews 9 and verse 13, For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, referring specifically to what we just read about here, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offers himself without spot to God, clench your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. So here again we read about this specific red heifer sacrifice or procedure. You might also say stating that the ashes of the heifer were to make the unclean person clean again. But the point that is being made here in Hebrews is that this is nothing compared to the cleansing that is made available through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

And the sacrifices and the offerings in a bigger picture pointed toward Jesus Christ's ultimate sacrifice. And we see this in some of the specifics that we just read about this red heifer sacrifice.

Now this message isn't necessarily about the red heifer sacrifice, but to explain how it plays into end-time prophecy. So just a few quick points about how this pointed to Jesus Christ.

Specifics that we just read, the heifer is to be red, red colored. We would call it a brownish red.

Here, what's the significance of the color red? Well, red is the color of blood, of sacrifice pointing to Jesus Christ's sacrifice. The red heifer was to be without blemish. It was to be perfect, in other words, as was true of all of the sacrifices it pointed to Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ was perfect so that he could be our perfect sacrifice. It was also to be young, pointing to the fact that Jesus Christ would die as a relatively young man.

He would not live to old age, but would die relatively young.

It was never to have worn or carried a yoke. What is a yoke? Again, I'm an Alabama country boy. A yoke was something you put around a cow or an ox or a bull or a mule, so it could carry a burden or pull a plow or a sled or a wagon or something like that. So I think this is referring to the fact that Jesus Christ would not be burdened by sin as all human beings are. The blood was to be sprinkled seven times in front of the tabernacle. We'll read that in just a minute here. What is the significance of seven? Well, in the Bible, seven signifies completeness or fullness, and Jesus Christ's sacrifice was certainly full and complete and paid the penalty for all mankind for all time. The red heifer was the entire animal was burned with fire, again signifying the completeness of the sacrifice. Every part of the animal, including the skin, the organs, all of that, the bones even were to be burned. So again, signifying the complete and full and total sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Also, the red heifer was to be slain outside the camp. Jesus Christ was crucified outside the city walls of Jerusalem, the camp of Israel, during the holy days and especially at the Passover when he was put to death. And finally, the purpose of the sacrifice of the red heifer was to cleanse people from the contamination of death. And Jesus Christ's sacrifice saves us, cleanses us from the corruption of death and the death penalty. So again, the purpose of this message is to go into how all of this foreshadowed Jesus Christ, but to explain that a sacrifice or a procedure that sounds so odd to us today did have a very specific purpose.

And that was to point to the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ and how it cleanses all of us, all of mankind. So let's go back to Numbers 19 now. Pick it up in verse 7 and continue reading what would happen after the animal is slaughtered and burned. Verse 7, Then the priest shall wash his clothes, he shall bathe in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp, after the heifer has been killed, sacrificed outside the camp. The priest shall be unclean until evening. And the one who burns it, another individual who's involved, shall wash his clothes in water, bathe in water, and shall be unclean until evening. Then a man who is clean shall gather up the ashes, all the heifer that has been burned, what is left there, and store them outside the camp in a clean place. And they shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for the water of purification. And then it's specified here it is for purifying for sin.

So this is the purpose of having these burned ashes of the heifer. They're gathered up. They are stored in clay pots, jars, outside in a clean place, as it's stated here. And that is the whole point of the sacrifice. And verse 10, and the one who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes and be unclean until evening. It shall be a statute forever to the children of Israel and to the stranger who dwells among them. He who touches the dead body of anyone shall be unclean seven days. And now it's going into what will happen with those ashes. So someone who touches the dead body shall be unclean seven days. He shall purify himself with the water on the third day and on the seventh day. Then he shall be clean. But if he does not purify himself on the third day and on the seventh day, he will not be clean. And here again we see another tie-in with Jesus Christ's sacrifice because what is the significance of the third day and the seventh day relating to this red heifer sacrifice? Well, at the time these instructions are given to Moses and the Israelites, third day and seventh day wouldn't have meant anything. Other than obviously the seventh day is talking about the days of the week is the Sabbath day. But knowing that this is all about the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and pointing to it, it points to Jesus being resurrected at the end of three days and three nights and also the fact that he would be resurrected late on the seventh day of the week. The weekly Sabbath resurrected shortly before sundown three days and three nights after he was placed in the tomb there. So it's all about the picture.

It's all about the picture of Jesus Christ's sacrifice. Continuing in verse 13, whoever touches the body of anyone who has died and does not purify himself defiles the tabernacle of the Lord. That person shall be cut off from Israel. He shall be unclean because the water of purification was not sprinkled on him. His uncleanness is still on him. And we'll skip down now to verse 17. Continuing with the instructions, and for an unclean person they shall take some of the ashes of the heifer burnt for purification from sin and rutting water shall be put on them in a vessel, a clay pot or vessel or jar of some sort. A clean person shall take hiss up and dip it in the water in which some of the ashes have been mixed.

Sprinkle it on the tent on all the vessels on the persons who were there or on the one who touched a bone, the slain, the dead, or a grave. And the clean person shall sprinkle the unclean on the third day and on the seventh day, again those two days pointing to Christ's sacrifice, and on the seventh day he shall purify himself, wash his clothes, and bathe in water. And at evening he shall be clean. But the man who is unclean and does not purify himself, that person shall be cut off from among the assembly because he is defiled the sanctuary of the Lord. So the whole point is to purify someone who has come in contact with a grave, a dead body, whatever the circumstance is, to purify that person from the contamination of death. That's the whole point of what is being described here. The water of purification has not been sprinkled on him. He is unclean. So that's really all the Bible tells us about this sacrifice-slash-procedure of the red heifer.

Nowhere else is it mentioned in Scripture other than what we read there in Hebrews, that this all points to the purifying sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the ultimate sacrifice there. Now, do the ashes of a sacrificed red heifer mixed with some water and sprinkled on a person or on everything he has touched, his tent, belongings, and so on, does that literally cleanse a person from touching something dead? No, it doesn't. It doesn't. It doesn't have any physical effect on the person at all. The main point of this picture, as we read about in Hebrews, again, points to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. None of that is spelled out until we get to the book of Hebrews there in the Bible. How often was this red heifer sacrifice carried out?

The Bible, again, doesn't mention it at all. Jewish writings from the 200s AD tell us there were only nine red heifer sacrifices from the time these instructions were given to Moses until the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 AD. So if you divide that out nine over roughly 1500 years, it averages out to about one sacrifice every 160 to 170 years. So this is not something, as far as we can tell, that was terribly common there. And of course, since the destruction of the temple in AD 70, there have been no further red heifer sacrifices over that 2000 years, almost, since the temple was destroyed. So why is this important now? Why would this have...

why would Hamas use this, the fact that Israel has these red cows? Why would this be such a bone of contention to them, anger them so much? Well, this all leads into a key question for tonight's study, and that is will a temple be rebuilt in Jerusalem? I think we are all aware, if we keep up with the news, the rumors, read everything on the internet there, that there are some religious Jews who want to rebuild a temple in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount, specifically on the Temple Mount. And this is an illustration of a model of Jerusalem in the first century from AD 30 that you can see in Jerusalem. It's right outside the Israel Museum, a very well-known tourist spot to see. And if you go to Jerusalem, be sure and see this. This is based on archaeological understanding, historical records of what the temple would have looked like in Jesus Christ's day there before it was all destroyed 40 years later by the Romans. So there are organizations and groups that are dedicated.

Their sole purpose of existence is to rebuild a temple and to reinstitute sacrifices there in Jerusalem. One of those, probably the most famous, most well-known, is called the Temple Institute. And during the feast, we, our group, was able to go through and tour that fairly small facility. It's maybe a third the size of this room that we're in, not very large at all.

But the Temple Institute, they are dedicated to preparing everything that would be needed to rebuild a temple and reinstitute sacrifices and have a functioning priesthood. So they have done things like recreate the golden menorah here. And you can see this in Jerusalem. It's actually worth probably hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it's behind a bulletproof plexiglass shield there to keep people from stealing it or vandalizing it. But they have rebuilt the menorah. They have rebuilt the table of showbread, the incense altar. They have made a lot of the priestly utensils, the knives, the incense shovels, all of the utensils, the priestly garments that would be needed to re-establish a functioning priesthood there. And they've even tracked down the lineage of Jewish males to determine which ones would have been descended from the priestly families. Cohen is a very Jewish name you may have heard of. Cune, cune, another, those are all forms of Cohen, which is the Hebrew word for priest there. So they have tracked down genetically those who would be eligible to serve as priests and are training them for their duties as priests, including sacrifices. But before these utensils could be used, before the priests could carry out their priestly activities, they would need to be ritually purified. And this is where the red heifer sacrifice comes in. Because for this to be properly done, according to priestly law, the instructions that we just read there earlier, a red heifer would have to be sacrificed, the ashes would have to be mixed in with water, and these temple sacrificial instruments, the parts of the temple that they prepared, the menorah, the incense altar, the table of showbread, and so on. And including one other thing, they've also made a portable altar that is big enough and portable so it can be erected in a very short time on which sacrifices could be carried out. So all of these things would need to be sprinkled with the water mixed with the ashes of a red heifer for sanctification and purification. So for this reason, having one or more red heifers that meet the qualifications, giving there in Numbers 19 that we just read about, is very, very important. And these religious Jews, these organizations, do have several red heifers that meet these qualifications. They were actually born and bred in Texas and were flown to Israel sometime between a year and a half, two years ago.

And last I read there were five of them that qualified since then. I've read that one of them sprouted some white or black hairs and was disqualified. So best of my current understanding, they have four heifers that would be suitable for this sacrifice. They are being kept in hiding in Israel because there are a lot of people, including every Muslim in every country around there, who would not want to see this red heifer sacrifice carried out. And they would be more than happy. They would be viewing it as a good deed for Allah to kill these red heifers before they could be sacrificed. So, as I said in the introduction, Hamas has used the fact that these red heifers exist in Israel as part of their rationale for launching their murderous attacks on Israel a year ago. Could one of these red heifers be sacrificed soon? Yes. Short answer, yes. In fact, there is an incentive for it to be done soon because the older the red heifers get, the more likely they are. And this has happened multiple times in the past, where the heifers get to be a year or two old and they sprout a few white hairs or black hairs and Jewish thinking disqualifies them. It can't be a mostly red heifer. It has to be a solid red heifer with no white on its chest or its legs or ears or tail or anything like that. It has to be solid red without any white or black or brown hairs on them. So, there is an incentive to sacrifice one or more of these animals while they are still pure red, lest they become disqualified through age. So, that incentive certainly exists. So, why don't the Israelis go ahead and do this? The short answer is it's complicated. It's complicated.

It's very complicated. There are many layers of complication with this, not the least of which is that Israeli society is very diverse. We tend to talk about Israelis or Jews as though they were all the same. We think American society is diverse. You haven't seen anything until you've gone to Israel. Most Israeli Jews, slightly more than half, are not religious at all. I mean, totally non-religious. They are agnostic, many of them. Many are atheist. Many are just secular, don't care one way or the other. Yeah, they acknowledge they're Jewish. They believe they're God's chosen people if they believe in a God, but they are not religious at all. They don't practice any type of Judaism.

So, that's a little bit more than half of the population.

It is generally only the Orthodox Jews. Orthodox Jews are only about 10% of the population. Israel's population is roughly 7 million right now, so only about 10% are Orthodox who are really practicing.

Orthodox Judaism is essentially the Phariseeism that we read about in the Gospels has been continued on pretty much without a whole lot of differences to today, and that's the Orthodox Jews. That's where their origins lie. But even among that 10% of Orthodox Jews, there is very strong division. Some of them believe that a temple must be built before the Messiah returns, and these are the ones who are part of supporting the Temple Institute and groups like that. They believe they must rebuild a temple, reinstitute a functioning priesthood, reinstitute sacrifices so the Messiah can come. That is their mission in life, and they are very vehement about that. However, and this is why it gets complicated, probably roughly an equal number of Orthodox Jews believe, no, we must not build a temple because that's the Messiah's job. The Messiah is going to rebuild a temple after he comes.

So if we get in there and try to rebuild a temple now, we're doing something that's only the Messiah's job. That's not our job. That's not our role, our responsibility. So again, it is complicated, really complicated. So we're talking about 10% of very religious Jews, but even they're divided. Maybe only half of them want to see a temple rebuilt. It's really a fairly small percentage that do believe a temple needs to be rebuilt, but that does not keep them from trying.

And every year, typically around Passover or around the Feast of Tabernacles, a small group of these very devout Jews will try to bring a cornerstone to the Temple Mount and lay the foundation for a new temple. They try to do it like clockwork and like clockwork. The Jewish authorities expect this, the Jewish police, and they put an end to it.

Why did they put an end to it? Well, because every year as we go to the Feast, somebody in our group will ask our tour guides, well, will a temple be rebuilt?

And the tour guide's response is always, well, we don't want to start a war with a billion Muslims in the world. And they say that somewhat jokingly, but yeah, there are a billion Muslims in the world and about seven million Israeli citizens, but only six million of those are Jewish. The other seven, the other million are Arab or other belief systems, Christian or whatever.

So again, this is a very, very touchy situation and a very complicated situation.

Jews are even banned from praying on the Temple Mount, much less bringing a foundation stone and trying to rebuild a temple there. This is an aerial photo of the Temple Mount viewed from the south with the famous Dome of the Rock there where the temple once stood, Solomon's Temple, and then later the Temple of Herod. And in fact, Jews and Christians are banned from praying on the Temple Mount. They have the Arabs, the Muslims control the Temple Mount from Jordan or through the government of Jordan. And there are very set visiting hours that you can come. Our group went there at seven o'clock in the morning there, so there are only specific gates that you can enter and exit the Temple Mount, specific routes you can take.

So sometimes Jews will go to the Temple Mount and they know they're banned from praying, so this has been known to happen where they will accidentally drop their wallet or a purse or their sunglasses or something and they'll bend over and they'll pray quickly. And the police are on the alert for that because there are Israeli police all over the Temple Mount, and if they catch you doing that, you will be immediately grabbed and escorted off the Temple Mount, Jewish or Christian, and they're on the alert for that kind of thing because prayer is banned. There are anything that might lead to an Arab riot, and there have been many riots started by this type of thing that have led to the deaths of dozens of people.

And so all of this leads up again to the key question for us when it comes to Bible prophecy, and that is, again, will a temple be rebuilt? What does prophecy tell us or indicate about that? Will a temple be rebuilt before Jesus Christ returned? And I might say, too, as was mentioned in the announcement earlier today, there will be a question and answer session after I've finished this presentation here. So if you have questions, you might be thinking about that here. So hopefully I'll cover most of the important aspects of it during this presentation.

So the question of will a temple be rebuilt in Jerusalem keeps coming up because of these ongoing tensions and ongoing controversies on the Temple Mount and the determination of groups like the Temple Mount Faithful and the Temple Institute to erect a new temple there and to reinstitute sacrifices and so on. And again, virtually every year they try to do this. It doesn't always make the news there or here because the Israeli government wants to keep a lid on that, to keep riots from breaking out there. It's interesting. The population of Jerusalem itself is roughly one-quarter Muslim. So if you have a quarter of your population in the city being Muslim and riots break out, it's not going to be pretty regardless of which side or which beliefs you might hold there. So let's take a look now at a couple of relevant prophecies regarding this question of reinstituting of sacrifices and a temple here. We don't have time to look at all of them, but I'll just pick out some that are key here and that seem to be the most definitive regarding this question. We'll start in Daniel 12 and verse 1. And notice the time setting that is given here. At that time, Michael, the Archangel Michael, shall stand up, the great prince, who stands watch over the sons of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was, since there was a nation even to that time. And at that time, your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book. So here we're given a clear time frame for this particular prophecy and a time of trouble, such as there never has been before. There's three places where such a time is talked about. Every time it's talking about the period of the great tribulation right before the return of Jesus Christ. And notice also another time marker here in the next verse, and many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt. So here this is clearly talking about the time of the resurrection of the dead at Jesus Christ's return. So this is the clear time frame for this prophecy to be fulfilled. So skipping now down to verse 8, after we've established the time frame, Daniel hears things from the archangel Michael and he says, although I heard, I did not understand. Then I said, my Lord, what shall be the end of these things? How is this going to play out? What's the end game? What's the point here?

And Michael responds to him, go your way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end. In other words, they're not going to be understood until the time of the end. Daniel wanted to understand and he's told, sorry, not now, not yet. It's not the time. Many shall be purified, made white, and refined, but the wicked shall do wickedly and none of the wicked shall understand, but the wise shall understand. And from the time that the daily sacrifice is taken away and the abomination of desolation is set up, there shall be 1,290 days.

Blessed is he who waits and comes to the 1,335 days.

Don't have time to get into the significance of these three different time periods. 1,260 days, 1,290 days, 1,335 days. We're not told what those times are, so we don't know anything would be speculation. But what is this referring to about the daily sacrifice being taken away?

This is referring to during the time the temple existed and the tabernacle before that, there were two sacrifices. They're called the morning and evening sacrifice. Actually, a better, more accurate terminology would be the morning and afternoon sacrifices because they were basically done at 9 a.m. in the morning and 3 p.m. in the afternoon. So, morning and afternoon sacrifice. Those two pointed to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ because when does he start to be crucified? 9 o'clock in the morning. Same time as the morning sacrifice had been done thousands upon thousands of times leading up to his death. When did he die in the crucifixion? 3 p.m. time of the evening or afternoon sacrifice. So, both those morning and evening sacrifices for centuries pointed forward to the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ again. So, what is this being, what is Daniel referring to here or the angel who's revealing this to Daniel here? These same phrases about the abomination of desolation and the sacrifices and so on are found in the preceding chapter, Daniel 11. Daniel 11 is a very long, very detailed prophecy that covers the period in the Middle East and Israel from the time of Daniel himself writing in the 500s BC on up until the time of Christ returns. It covers 2500 years, 2600 years or thereabouts. But this particular passage we'll zero in on is Daniel 11 and verse 31. And this is referring to a particular ruler by the name of Antiochus Epiphanes, who tried literally to stamp out practice of the Jewish religion in the years 168 to 167 BC.

So, we've jumped from Daniel's time in the 500s to Antiochus Epiphanes, 168, 167 BC.

And here is what Daniel foretold about this particular king in Daniel 1131.

And forces shall be mustered by him, and they shall defile the sanctuary fortress.

We'll talk about that in a minute. Then they shall take away the daily sacrifices that I talked about the morning and afternoon sacrifice and place there the abomination of desolation.

And I'll let the Jewish historian Josephus explain how this was fulfilled. And he has a section in his book, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 12, Chapter 5, Section 4.

And Josephus writes, So he, Antiochus Epiphanes, left the temple bare. In other words, he stripped the temple there that had been rebuilt, built originally by Solomon, destroyed by the Babylonians, rebuilt by Zerubbabel.

And now is stripped bare by this evil king, Antiochus Epiphanes.

He left the temple bare. He took away the golden candlesticks, referring to the menorah, and the golden altar of incense, and the table of showbread, and the altar of burnt offering, and did not abstain from even the veils, which covered the entrance to the holy of holies.

He took those away, which were made of fine linen and scarlet. He also emptied it of its secret treasures, presumably referring to the gold and silver utensils that were used at the temple, and left nothing at all remaining. And by this means cast the Jews into great lamentation, for he forbade them to offer those daily sacrifices which they used to offer to God according to the law. And when the king had built an idol altar upon God's altar, so he strips everything out of the temple, builds a new altar which sits out in front of the temple, over the top of the altar for the sacrifices there, and he slew swine, slew pigs upon it, and so offered a sacrifice neither according to the law nor the Jewish religious worship in that country.

He also compelled them, referring to the Jewish people, to forsake the worship which they paid their own God and to adore those whom he took to be gods, and made them build temples and raise idol altars in every city and village, and offer pigs swine upon them every day. So this is what I mean when he's determined to stamp out the Jewish religion in its entirety.

The apocryphal books of first and second Maccabees, they're not in our Bibles, but they were written not long after these events, and they go into quite a bit of history relating to that. They give a few more details. I'll quote just two brief sections here. Second Maccabees 6 and verse 2, Antiochus defiled the Jewish temple, quote, by dedicating it to the Olympian god Zeus, end quote.

Antiochus Epiphanes, I might mention, he is from Syria, but he is descended from Alexander the great generals who inherited the kingdom, inherited Alexander's empire after he died. So they are their Greek thinking. They worship the Greek gods, their Zeus and others. So he dedicates the temple in Jerusalem to Zeus, who is the primary god of the Greeks. And first Maccabees 1.55 also tells us, the same evil people offered sacrifices on the pagan altar erected on top of the altar in the temple, end quote. So what this is telling us is apparently what Antiochus did. Antiochus, by the way, I mentioned a little historical anecdote. The Jewish people, and we see this occasionally in the Bible, they love to do what are called word puns. They will take a word and change a letter or two as an insult. So Antiochus Epiphanes means Antiochus God manifest. You might think of the word epiphany. So Antiochus, the epiphany, the revealing of God, he viewed himself as divine, as a god. The Jewish people so detested him, they changed one or two letters and they called him Antiochus Epimenes, which means Antiochus the madman. And that's the way he viewed him because of his attempted destruction of the Jewish religion, trying to stamp it out. So apparently what he did was to erect a statue. Well, we just read that, that he dedicated it to the Olympian god Zeus.

And he apparently erected a statue of himself, a statue of Zeus, but with his own face on there because he believes he is descended from the gods. And he wants to be worshipped. That's a constant theme of this pagan worship of this time. And this thinking is very much in common with how the Greeks, going back to Philip and to Alexander the Great, the son of Philip of Macedon, here's a coin from Alexander's reign depicting him as, let's see, which of the gods was it?

Their coins and statues of Alexander depicting himself as Hercules, as the sun god Helios, the god Pan, and others. Here he is depicted as Helios, the sun god there.

And the Romans picked up this same practice, and Roman emperors like Nero and others had statues made of them, depicted as Hercules and other gods and so on that they worship. So it would have been very much in keeping for Antiochus Epiphanes, who himself is god manifest to erect a statue of himself as god in the temple of god, as we read about there in the book of Maccabees.

Going back to Daniel 1131, is the temple specifically referred to in this prophecy?

Not in the way it's translated, however, the Hebrew there, where it's translated as sanctuary fortress, the Hebrew phrase words there are mikdash me'oz, which means a sacred place, sanctuary, or holy place, mikdash. That's the common word used everywhere else in the Old Testament for the tabernacle or the temple. And this me'oz means, as shown here on screen, a place or means of safety, protection, refuge, or stronghold. And the temple located where it was on the highest hill overlooking the city of Jerusalem would have also functioned as a fortress there. You typically built your temple and your fortress on the highest point overlooking the city for protection there against the enemy. So in context, the only thing this phrase could be referring to is the temple there in Jerusalem. So it's telling us that Antiochus would defile the sanctuary fortress, and we read from Josephus in 1 and 2 Maccabees how that happened.

Then they, Antiochus, Epiphanes, army, and officer, shall take away the daily sacrifice and place there the abomination of desolation, apparently referring to this statue of himself depicted as the god Zeus there. So here we see what happened in fulfillment of this original prophecy from Daniel 11 and verse 31. That, again, timing of this is 168 or 167 BC. The daily sacrifices are ended. The temple altar is defiled by sacrificing pigs on it, and a statue of this pagan king is set up there in the temple. And in Daniel 12, 11, which is a follow-up on this, Daniel tells us that history is going to repeat again shortly before Jesus Christ returned.

And Jesus refers to this specific prophecy in Matthew 24, which is, of course, the Olivet prophecy shortly before he is crucified just a few days before that. So let's turn over now to Matthew.

We're fast-forwarding now from Antiochus's actions, fast-forwarding about 200 years into the future where Jesus refers to Daniel's prophecies here.

And he says, therefore, when you see the, quote, abomination of desolation, same phrase that Daniel used there, spoken of by Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place, and either Jesus is or Matthew says, whoever reads, let him understand. In other words, pay attention, see what Daniel told us about this, and yet, he said, let him understand. If Daniel told us about this, and you'll understand this prophecy, then let those who were in Judea flee to the mountains. And notice also that Jesus adds another detail that was not in Daniel's original prophecies. Jesus adds the detail, this abomination of desolation will be standing in the holy place. Standing in the holy place, dead. Daniel didn't mention that detail, but Jesus does. The term holy place had a very specific meaning when Jesus Christ says these words. Who was he talking to? He's talking to his disciples. Where is he telling him this? It's the Olivet prophecy. They're on the Mount of Olives. They're looking down at the temple, which is just downhill from Mount of Olives. You've been there, you've looked out over the temple Mount. The angle isn't quite as high as this, but you can look down and see the whole temple and the courtyards and colonnades and porches and all of this. So this term, the holy place, had a very specific meaning that everybody understood at that time. It's referring to the Jerusalem temple in general. Temple could have been used for the specific building or the whole complex, the whole temple mount there with the courtyards, the courts of the Gentiles, the court of the women, and the colonnades or porches, as they're called, all of this.

Or it could have referred specifically to the one building itself, that is the temple there with the holy place where the priests could go in and the holy of holies inside of that. So it could have referred to any of these from the entire temple complex down to the specific structure there. But that's what this holy place is clearly referring to there. And of course, the disciples know that. They're familiar with Daniel's prophecy. They're familiar with their national history. And that evil guy in Tychus Epiphanes trying to stamp out the Jewish religion and ending the daily sacrifices and setting up the abomination of desolation. So they all know that. They're standing there as Jesus is saying these words, and they're looking out at Jerusalem and seeing exactly what Jesus is talking about. So the clear meaning of Jesus's words is that an abomination of desolation will be set up in a physical temple. And it's warning that those in Judea should flee when this abomination is set up indicates that this is referring again to literal events at the time shortly before Jesus Christ returned. As we saw back with the time marker in Daniel 12 at that time, referring to the time just before the Great Tribulation and the resurrection of the saints, some might try to argue that, well, this is referring to the Roman destruction in 70 A.D. about 40 years after Christ gave this prophecy. Well, that doesn't work because there was a literal battle on the Temple Mount that Josephus goes into great detail about. Josephus was there. He was an eyewitness for that. And so there's a great battle on the Temple Mount. The Temple was set on fire and utterly destroyed in 70 A.D. So there was no temple for Romans to come along and set up a later abomination of desolation. The temple was utterly destroyed and hasn't existed for almost 2,000 years now.

So this prophecy of Jesus Christ has to refer to the time of the end. And the same prophecy of Daniel has to refer to the time of the end. So let's look at one more another prophecy here from the Apostle Paul. This is found in 2 Thessalonians 2 and verses 3 and 4. And what is really striking about this is it so echoes the first fulfillment of Daniel's prophecy with Antiochus Epiphanes. Daniel again prophesied in the 500s B.C. Antiochus in 168, 167 B.C. fulfills that prophecy.

Then Jesus Christ, 200 years later, says, you remember Daniel's prophecy? Well, it's going to happen again at the end time, 2,000 years from Jesus' day, which is our day. But it's remarkable. The echoes that we see of Antiochus Epiphanes in what Paul writes here. And Paul is a great scholar of his day. He knows his Jewish history and his Hebrew scriptures inside and out and backwards and forwards. So you can almost see Paul thinking himself of this initial fulfillment here.

So 2 Thessalonians 2, verses 3 and 4, Paul writes, Let no one deceive you by any means, for that day, what day, the day of Christ's return, will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God, or that is worship, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.

And as I mentioned earlier, Antiochus defiled the Jewish temple by dedicating it to the Olympian God Zeus, and again appears to have erected a statue of himself as Zeus there in the temple.

And in doing so, he would have been equating himself with the greatest of the Greek gods, and doing exactly what Paul describes here, exalting himself above all that is called God, or worshiped as God, so that he sits in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.

So again, the actions of this end-time man of sin that Paul is foretelling here, remarkably parallel exactly what Antiochus Epiphanes did from the historical sources that we read earlier. So Paul's prophecy here meshes perfectly with the first fulfillment of Daniel's prophecy with Antiochus Epiphanes establishing the abomination of desolation there, and with Daniel's prophecy of the end-time man of sin, or king of the north. And it meshes with other prophecies that there will be a literal temple in existence at which sacrifices will again be offered, but will be stopped three and a half years before Jesus Christ returned.

Because the daily sacrifices are taken away again a second time, not just in Antiochus' time, not just at the Roman destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in A.D. 70, but also at the time of the end.

Those sacrifices are taken away again. So by implication, if they're taken away, they have to be restarted again at some point for them to be taken away. So where does this leave us regarding end-time events? As I said earlier, it's complicated. It's very complicated. We have, again, a brief recap. We have some small minority of deeply religious Jews who view it as their mission to rebuild a temple so that their Messiah can come.

They could sacrifice a red heifer at any time, and typically they would do it. If it were to be done, they would do it before the spring holy days or before the fall holy days here. They don't have to, but that's just typically the way they would approach those seasons of the year.

So that could set in motion the re-establishing of sacrifices beginning again after a 2,000-year gap here. But there are also very religious Jews, equally religious, who believe that, no, we should not build a temple because that's Messiah's job, and we cannot do Messiah's job for him.

And again, at this time, a majority of Israelis are secular or non-practicing Jews who either don't care or may think even those religious Jews who want to rebuild a temple are crazy because who wants to bring a billion Muslims into a war against Israel? But if there is one thing that is constant about the Middle East over the last half a century, it has been change, constant change. There was the surprise 1967 war when a number of Arab nations attacked tiny Israel, and Israel miraculously won. And I don't use the word miraculously loosely. I think Israel has been delivered multiple times. Specifically so, these end-time prophecies can be fulfilled. There was the surprise attack on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, in 1974, the holiest day of the Jewish year. There was Israel's invasion of Lebanon in the 1980s to try to wipe out the terrorists who were constantly attacking Israel. There was the Iran-Iraq war back in the 80s. There was the Gulf war. There was the Iraq war. There was the Arab Spring, not that long ago, that toppled Arab dictatorships all over the Middle East. And the Middle East is still dealing with some of the repercussions of that. And then there was the surprise attack on Israel by Hamas a year ago, on the eighth day. And now we are on the verge of what could be an even bigger war than the Hamas attacks between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. What does Hezbollah mean? Hezbollah. The party of God in Arabic. The party of Allah. They view themselves as Allah's messengers to exterminate Israel, just like Hamas does as well. And then, of course, we have a rung on which has launched two waves of hundreds of missiles, drones, cruise missiles against Israel. And now the world is kind of waiting to see when and how Israel is going to respond to that most recent attack. And Hezbollah, I might say, has literally tens of thousands of rockets and missiles supplied mostly by Iran, pointed all over Israel and with the range to hit anywhere in Israel there, from north to south. Israel is a very small country. It's only about 150 miles north to south and about an average of about 35 to 40 miles wide. It's small. It's roughly the size of New Jersey. Very small state. And its enemies have missiles with a range to hit anywhere in the country now. And, of course, here in the United States we have an American government that, at times, is openly hostile to Israel, that is twisting their arms to not attack Iran's oil facilities or its nuclear facilities. Of course, we have Iran pursuing nuclear weapons, which they've openly stated they will use to destroy Israel and wipe them off the face of the map. So the Middle East is a powder keg in so many ways, so many ways that any number of fuses could be lit at literally any moment right now. So what would it take for a temple to be rebuilt?

Well, something would have to change in Israel in a major way, considering where their population is. Now, I don't doubt that more Israelis have become religious after the attacks of a year ago. I don't have any statistics I can cite to you for that. But there are several possibilities that could change Israeli society. One is that maybe Israel could win and spectacularly defeat Hezbollah and or Iran. And what they've done with Hezbollah, with wiping out Nasrallah and the pagers, the explosives, the planet, and that is just astonishing that they were able to pull that off.

Maybe they could do something equally spectacular against Iran and its leadership or Hezbollah and wipe them out and utterly defeat their enemies. And Israel could turn and thanksgiving to God and recognize that these are miracles that have delivered them. Maybe that could turn them to God. On the other hand, maybe Israel could suffer a crushing, near disastrous military defeat, like happened a year ago, but on a much broader scale. And they could realize if it's not for God's grace and mercy, we would not exist anymore. They could be nearly wiped out, in other words, and then turn to God in repentance and rebuild a temple and reinstitute sacrifices and thanksgiving for that. Or maybe they could just realize with a growing anti-Semitism that we see all over the world today that they're standing alone and they can't rely on anyone else but themselves. And maybe that could lead them to turn to God and to build a temple out of recognition of that fact.

So bottom line is there are all kinds of moving parts that could go in any number of different directions right now in the ever-changing Middle East. But we are blessed to have Bible prophecy, some of the specific prophecies that we've read tonight. There are others that didn't have time to cover here, but these prophecies do give us a roadmap of where things are ultimately headed in the Middle East and regarding Jerusalem specifically. So I hope this does give us a better understanding of the current situation there in Israel, where Israeli society is, and some of the things that could lead to major changes there, and some of the things that we might look for as Bible prophecy continues to march on to what is ultimately the very hopeful conclusion in the coming of Jesus Christ and the establishing of the kingdom of God here on earth.

So that concludes our study. So if we could have the lights come back up, I'll be glad to take any questions about that. We have officially 20 minutes here, but when I gave a preview of this in Denver and we had at least a half hour of questions, well, actually that was official, and then probably another 20 minutes of people coming up to me privately and ask me questions. So if you have any questions, I'd be glad to give what answers I can regarding any of this that we've talked about here. So let's see. There is a hand over there. Question, if you did not hear it, is have they found, archaeologically, a cornerstone of the temple that could be brought to the Temple Mount? The short answer is no. When the Romans destroyed the let me see. No, I don't have a photo of that. When the Romans destroyed the temple in AD 70, if you go and see the Temple Mount today, it's roughly the original height of the temple platform that existed in Herod's day, but if you look at the different layers of stone and you can find photos of this online, probably there's roughly 80 to 100 feet height that exists today, but it's not all Herodian from the first century. About 70 feet of it, 60-70 feet of it, is Herodian. It's original stone still in place. Above that, though, you have different layers, and if you know what you're looking for, you can make out Muslim rebuilding, reconstruction. You can make out Crusader reconstruction, roughly a thousand AD. You can make out more Turkish construction from the Ottoman Empire period and a little bit of British stonework in there, more modern stonework, but the original, probably 10 to 15 feet of stonework was basically bulldozed off by the Romans, utterly destroyed or utterly removed. If you go there to the Temple Mount, you can see huge piles of stones where the Romans pushed all the the paving stones and so on from Herod's time. The ruins of the temple, they essentially bulldozed all of that off, not literally bulldozed, but pushed it off to the sides of the Temple Mount, and you can see some of the piles still intact that the archaeologists left there. Why did they do that? Well, some of the historical sources say when the temple was burning, it had so much gold that the gold literally melted and ran down between the cracks and the stones, the paving stones, so the Romans, to retrieve that gold, literally pried up all of the stones, the first 10 or 15 feet, and pried it all off the edges and destroyed it. Also, Josephus uses an odd word. He says the temple in describing its burning says that it exploded. Now, that sounds odd to us for a stone temple, but limestone, which is what the temple is made of, and marble, which is a type of limestone as well. Limestone is very porous and holds water, and if it gets hot enough, limestone will literally explode, and that seems to be what Josephus is talking about. The fires were so hot there because of all the oil and all of the wood there that are used for the sacrifices that the temple parts of it at least literally exploded.

Could you identify an original cornerstone or even original stone for the temple? No, no.

Either burned, destroyed, shattered, pushed off the edges. So, to identify a particular cornerstone is belonging to the temple? No, it's impossible to do that from an archaeological standpoint there, but yeah, good question. So, they have carved their own stones out of Jerusalem limestone, and that's what they try to lay repeatedly there without success, so as not to start a riot or a war. Thanks. Sure, absolutely. Yeah.

Oh, right. Are they going to come back? Are they going to come back? Are they going to come back? Are they going to come back? Right, right. Right. Great question. That's another three Bible studies that cover that. No, great question and thank you for it. The question is basically how does Muslim and Muslim beliefs play into that? For those of you who are interested, a number of years back I did a three-part series, and you can find it on the UCG website. Just type in on the search engine, type in, quote, inside Islam, and there are three sermons that I did about Islam. After 9-11, I read everything I could get my hands on about Islam, bought a copy of the Quran, read dozens of books, hundreds of articles, because I believe everything the American public has been told that Islam is a peaceful religion. Yeah, right. So I was trying to reconcile everything I'd been told with— and you don't have to read far in the Quran, but I did a three-part sermon series on the history of Islam, contrasting the teachings of Islam with the teachings of the Bible, and how Islam plays into Bible prophecy, and this gets directly to your question. Bottom line—and I didn't get into this for time, but Daniel 11 and 12 talks about the time of the end and goes through the kings of the north, kings of the south, and it specifically says at the time of the end, the king of the south will push at— and it's an unusual term. Some Bible versions say it will attack the king of the north. The term is used of goats butting heads or pushing against each other. And if you've ever seen goats, you know what I'm talking about. There's a bighorn sheep who will full out bang heads, but this is more of a pushing and jousting type connotation. But the king of the south, whom we believe to be a leader— there's a word the Muslims use called the Mahdi, M-A-H-D-I, basically means their Messiah. They believe in a Messiah who will rise up at the time of the end and who will lead Islam in a global war against Christianity and Judaism. Very much—well, it's a mirror image of what we see Jesus Christ in Bible prophecy doing. We don't go into that level of detail in our Middle East in Bible prophecy booklet, but yeah, Muslims believe. This is spelled out very clearly. They have their holy book, the Quran. They also have another book of writing called the Hadiths, H-A-D-I-T-H-S, of Muhammad. And those are the sayings of Muhammad that didn't make it into the Quran. There's a lot of official Muslim belief that is not in the Quran, but they believe it.

So they believe—so yeah, again, Daniel's prophecy is quite vague, but it says the king of the south will push at the king of the north, and we believe to be a united Europe in some form combined with the papacy, Roman Catholicism, will push at—not necessarily attack, but will push at—is it all of this immigration? Is it the terrorism, the throat-slitting, the beheadings that are constantly going on in Europe every week that we read about? Slashings at concerts and murdering Europeans in the streets? I mean, at some point, Europe's got to come to their senses and do exactly what you said.

Expell, ban Muslims, stop the immigration, stop the problem, and start mass removals of Muslims from that. I think we're seeing the pushing taking place right now. With these devout Muslims—I mean, Muslims are very open. They want to conquer Europe.

Europe at one time was under mostly Muslim control. They went nearly to Paris when they came up through Spain and took Spain. They took most of Eastern Europe. The wars in the Balkans 20 years ago, 25 years ago, it was the Muslim population of the Balkans fighting against the Christians to try to take it over.

Did the American media ever talk about that? No, they didn't. So the pushing has been taking place and is taking place as we speak. It's when and how Europe will respond. And continuing with Daniel's prophecy, the King of the North invades North Africa and the Land of Israel, the Holy Land.

He stops apparently at the Jordan River because it says he doesn't take the land of Muwah ibn Ammon, which is modern-day Jordan. He does take Egypt, does take parts of Libya and North Africa, and apparently stops there. And then we apparently see what I've talked about here, the man of sin slash end or the king of the north. They're kind of mentioned hand in hand together there, so sometimes it's hard to distinguish exactly which of those two individuals who are allied together is being referred to prophetically at a given point. But the man of sin apparently sets himself up in the temple of God. This is after sacrifices have been reinstituted, stops the sacrifices, claims to be God in a rebuilt Jerusalem temple. That seems to be what is being described. It's bits and pieces that's here and there. There is not one firm specific timeline that spells all of that out in sequence. There's a lot of different prophetic threads that you have to put together, but Daniel 11 and 12 give the most detailed timeline. But yeah, that seems to be what will happen. That fits very well with Muslim theology. Islam is going to be the religion. They believe in their Messiah, the body, and he's going to lead them. The Iranians firmly believe in this. They have a specific term, the Twelfth Imam, I believe. Iranian theology is a little more specific. An imam is a preacher or leader of Islam. The Iranian, both the Shiite and the Sunni Muslims both believe in this leader, who is going to lead Islam to its rightful place and rule the world. So again, it's a mirror image of what Jesus Christ will actually do. So yeah, I appreciate the question. Yes, another question here. Yes. Right. Yes, yes. The question is, Ron Wyatt, who claims to have found the Ark of the Covenant, and is that important or how might that play into it?

Ron Wyatt, I'll be very blunt, is a complete fraud. I read Ron Wyatt's material, watched his videos 20, 30 years ago, believed him at first, until I started talking to archaeologists who have tried to find the same sites that Ron Wyatt supposedly visited.

And many people have tried to reproduce, to find the specific locations that Ron Wyatt described, and they don't exist or are totally different from the way Ron Wyatt presented. I'll give you one example of that. There's another. Ron Wyatt is deceased, so I'll say those about him. There's another individual whom I won't name because he is alive and has sued people, but he has taken a lot of Ron Wyatt stuff and run with it and also done similar publishing of it.

I have watched several of his videos, bought and read some of his books. Ron Wyatt did this. We'll show things like the supposed altar at Mount Sinai in Saudi Arabia, and we'll show this stone altar with an Egyptian-style bull on it and say, Here's here's proof.

This is Moses' altar because they came out of Israel and started worshipping the bull here, and this is a site where it must have happened. Well, if you move the camera a foot to either side, you see desert hunting scenes of nomads with bows and arrows hunting desert antelope and stuff like that. Do they show those in their books and videos? No, they don't. If you turn the camera around from that supposed altar and look 100-200 yards in the other direction, Oh, another thing Ron Wyatt claimed is there are these columns, white stone columns, that marked the boundaries of the camp of Israel so they wouldn't go near Mount Sinai when the law is being given and all of that.

If you turn the camera around, look in the other direction, you see buildings built by the Nabataeans in roughly 500-300 BC, a thousand years after the Exodus, and the columns date from the Nabataean kingdom a thousand years after the Exodus. But they don't tell you any of that. I've read quotes from books from these guys where they try to quote to prove a point, and they literally will quote the opening sentence of a paragraph and maybe the closing sentence of a paragraph that leave out the two or three sentences in the middle that totally disprove their point.

They're just utterly dishonest scholars, supposed scholars, so I do not have a high opinion of Ron Wyatt. I was hooked by him once, and he's a fraud. Oh, the Ark of the Covenant. Yeah, Ron Wyatt claimed to have found the Ark of the Covenant, complete with blood on it from Jesus Christ being sacrificed. Other archaeologists have tried to find that specific spot, and there's a very limited area in which it could be in Jerusalem, and nothing is there the way he describes it.

Nothing. Literally nothing. So it just does not exist. What happened to the Ark of the Covenant? It's another million dollar question. The Ark of the Covenant disappears from the historical record when the Babylonians surround Jerusalem 587, 586 B.C. The Babylonians take all of the temple utensils, table of showbread, menorah, all the knives, utensils, all of this to Babylon. Daniel 7, I believe it is, the handwriting on the wall, Belshazzar, the last king of Babylon, has a big feast.

He brings out all the temple treasures, goblets, dishes, and feasts with his buddies. They're to banquet on the night that Babylon is overthrown by the Medes and the Persians, and Belshazzar dies. The Israelites who return from Babylon bring back all the temple furnishings and utensils that have been taken to Babylon.

And these are prized trophies from war because in the thinking of the Babylonians, our God is greater than your God, so we take all of the stuff from your temple and we put it in our temples, which shows how our gods are superior to your gods. That's why they're doing that, to show their superiority over the Jews' God. So all of that is brought back, but there's no covenant, no Ark of the Covenant. There's no record of the Ark of the Covenant being taken to Babylon. Presumably, most archaeologists, and I would agree, believe the Ark was taken and buried somewhere underneath the Temple Mount.

The Temple Mount, I've walked all over it, everywhere you can go, all around it. The Temple Mount is limestone. It's very porous. It's honeycombed with caves and tunnels and cisterns, so there's all kinds of potential hiding places there. There are maps of all of the cisterns and tunnels that have been discovered there over the last, since the British were there in the 1880s or thereabouts. A Dutch archaeologist by the name of Lane Rittmeyer has written extensively about that. He's done more documentation on the Temple Mount than anyone, and has done several books about it. He has copies of all the maps and cisterns and everything that can be photographed. He had special permission to get in and photograph areas where Westerners are not allowed into. He's done the most documentation of it, but nobody's ever found a shred of evidence of the Ark of the Covenant. There are rumors that it's spread for decades of it having been brought down to Ethiopia and being stored in a church there. But there's no hard evidence of that. There are people who claim to have seen it there, but no photos or anything like that. It's just one of the big mysteries. Nobody knows. Most archaeologists who believe the Bible think if it still exists it is probably buried somewhere in the Temple Mount. But again, any archaeology of the Temple Mount is impossible because it's controlled by the Muslims, and it would start another war. Yes, over here. Yeah, the question is about alternative theories about a different location for the Temple. Are those valid? There are two ideas about that. One is...well, let's see. Let me back up to the photo I showed earlier. Here's the Dome of the Rock we're familiar with. Another view along this wall in the foreground, you see a gray dome there. That's called the Al-Aqsa Mosque. There are some ideas, some people who would place the temple as being roughly between those two. That is one theory. Another theory is the temple is actually built above the Gihan Spring, which is about a third of a mile downhill from there.

That idea has been popularized by a gentleman I referred to earlier who I will not name. He's written a book about that. Specifically, I was referring to him when I said he will quote a sentence out of a paragraph, delete several sentences, omit several sentences, that directly contradict and disprove his point. He is just a dishonest scholar there. There is no reputable archaeologist who—there are a handful, two or three, who believe it might be on the temple mount between the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. By temple, I'm talking about the location of the original Holy of Holies there. Most scholars who do believe the Bible would place it at the Dome of the Rock, that it sits directly over the Holy of Holies. The Muslims themselves, I actually have a copy of a tour guide, you might say, to the temple mount that was published in 1925 by the Muslim Authority agency that controlled the temple mount. And they say, yeah, this is where Solomon's Temple was and Herod's Temple was. Now they totally deny it a century later, but I have a copy of it, and that's what the Muslims themselves admit. And they say, that's why we built the Dome of the Rock there, is because it was the same site of Solomon's Temple and Herod's Temple. I could go into more detail about the other things you mentioned if you want to talk later. I wrote an article 10 years ago or so in Beyond Today magazine called The Battle for the Temple Mount that gives about 10 different archaeological evidences, proving that this is the location of the temple. One, I'll just mention quickly, everywhere they excavate, you can see the photos here, all along the southern wall, all along the western wall, which is on the right-hand side. Everywhere they excavate in there, they find Jewish ritual baths. What is a ritual bath? You might think of a jacuzzi. It's about the size of a jacuzzi. It has steps that go down before a Jewish worshipper would go to the Temple Mount. They would rinse themselves to purify themselves. So they go to the temple to be cleaned before God. And literally everywhere they dig around there, they find Jewish ritual baths. If this is a Roman fortress, as these other people believe, it makes absolutely zero sense to have Jewish ritual baths all around a Roman fortress.

It makes no sense whatsoever. I've seen them. Two times ago, when I was there, I asked a tour guide how many of these ritual baths have they discovered. He said, well, I don't know. I'll ask my supervisor. He went over 100 at that time. That was 10 or 12 years ago. Over 100. If you walk around there, you can see them all over the place if you know what you're looking for. So, yeah, Jewish ritual baths. Why? Because they're going up to the temple to worship God. So they ritually immerse themselves and go up. Also, the number of entrances. There's about 10 or 12 documented entrances, doorways, gateways to the temple platform there. If you build a fortress, do you build a dozen entrances into your fortress? No. You use a minimum amount of entrances because it's a fortress. It's to defend the place. So you might have three or four gates. You don't have a dozen gates. There are many other things. You can look up the article online, but the battle for the Temple Mount. It's all about that archaeological debate there and rewriting history, frankly. So, yeah, good question. Yes. Okay, yes. Question, how long do I think it will take to rebuild the temple?

There are... I'm not an engineer. My dad was a stone mason, so I know a lot about stone masonry.

It's hard to work with, but it depends on the number of people you would have.

Herod, the actual temple part here, I think, was done in less than a year. Although the whole complex was under construction for several decades. We're talking about everything, the porches, the colonnades, all of that. But it depends on how many workers you have, how many trained stone masons, and so on. Herod actually took members of the priesthood because only the priests could be part of the holy place and holy of holies. So he actually trained priests to be stone masons. And I don't doubt that that's probably what is taking place in Israel right now. And they already have a portable altar that could be set up within an hour or two, is my understanding of it. It's basically prefabricated.

And so I would think they could do a functioning temple within a month, maybe, depending on how fancy and how ornate. We don't see the size of that building that Herod built, but it was 15 stories high.

I mean, that's like a lot of our higher skyscrapers in our buildings. And Herod learned his architecture in Rome. He lived there for a number of years, in his younger years. So he learned his architecture and construction methods and all of that. So he was an expert builder. And you can still see the temple platform to this day there. So remarkable. Yeah, I don't know. I hadn't thought about that question, but I would think some form of functioning temple could be done in as little as a month or so. The reason I hesitated partly about your question is, some people believe, and I wouldn't 100% rule that out, is that all they need for sacrifices is just an altar itself and some form of tabernacle.

And you could argue that from a biblical standpoint, because sacrifices were carried out at the tabernacle. The tabernacle is a cloth enclosure with wooden posts, and something like that, obviously, could be done in a few days to a week or two. So some people believe that is how that will be fulfilled. I don't think so because of the historical detail we have that I covered in the passages. But maybe a possibility that's how it would be done, too. Or maybe that would be a stopgap measure as they're building a temple, theoretically. And this did happen while Herod is constructing his temple, is they did institute the sacrifices first before the temple itself was built.

So that's another possibility there. Okay, last questions. I can't take it just because one of our people is in the prison of Tabernacle. Can you please comment on the basis of that? Right. Right. Right. Okay. Yeah, two questions. First one I answered.

Their second one, would the red heifer sacrifice have to take place on the temple mount, or could it be done somewhere else? That one, there is nothing specified in the Bible. I mean, where the original was done was while they're in the wilderness.

So, Jewish tradition, once the temple was built in Jerusalem, Jewish tradition is that it was done on the Mount of Olives, where the red heifer was sacrificed and burned. And it's my understanding. Well, again, I mentioned Jewish, it depends on which rabbi you talk to, because these different groups have their own rabbis, and their interpretation would be binding for that particular group. So, what I've read is the rabbis would generally think it could be done on the Mount of Olives, or should be done on the Mount of Olives. And that's also where they would erect this portable altar there for a red heifer sacrifice. And I've read on the Internet, and everything on the Internet is true, so they have a specific place already set aside reserved for it on the Mount of Olives. I've been to a lot of places on the Mount of Olives, and there's very little of it that is unoccupied, where you could have the size for something like that. So, I'm not sure how much, not sure what they have in mind, or about that specifically. So, good question. So, thank you all for your questions, and for your attention, and for coming out here.

So, yeah, official time is up, but if you have questions, feel free to catch me. I'll be down here in front of the stage, or catch me tomorrow or any other time during the feast. I'd be happy to go into more detail. So, thank you all. Have a good rest of your Sabbath day, then.