Epicenter 2.0

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  The article didn’t even make the paper’s front page. It was buried on page 13 of the A section. But to me, as well as to millions of evangelical Christians who believe in Bible prophecy, it was hugely significant.

  The following year Charles Dyer, senior VP at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, published The Rise of Babylon: Sign of the End Times. In it he described his experience attending an international festival held in Babylon in 1987 and provided even more firsthand details of the efforts of the Iraqi government to make the ancient city a symbol of the country’s future.276

  Both Burns and Dyer noted that construction in Babylon had stalled after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait because Saddam ran out of cash. But what was so significant about these and similar reports over the next few years was that they provided fresh evidence that a Bible prophecy so difficult for so many to believe for so long—a prophecy concerning the resurrection of an entire ancient city to modern power and prosperity—was actually beginning to come to pass. They also strongly suggested that when Iraq is flush with new petrodollars, Babylon will rise even more rapidly.

  That day may be sooner than most people think.

  On April 18, 2006, the New York Times reported in a front-page story that “Babylon, the mud-brick city with the million-dollar name, has paid the price of war. It has been ransacked, looted, torn up, paved over, neglected and roughly occupied. . . . But Iraqi leaders and United Nations officials are not giving up on it. They are working assiduously to restore Babylon, home to one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and turn it into a cultural center and possibly even an Iraqi theme park.” The mayor of the area says that, “God willing,” they will even build a Holiday Inn.277

  “The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is pumping millions of dollars into protecting and restoring Babylon and a handful of other ancient ruins in Iraq,” noted correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman. “UNESCO has even printed up a snazzy brochure, with Babylon listed as the premier destination, to hand out to wealthy donors.”

  “Cultural tourism could become Iraq’s second biggest industry, after oil,” said Philippe Delanghe, a United Nations official helping with the project.

  Gettleman noted, “What makes the project even conceivable is that the area around Babylon is one of the safest in Iraq, a beacon of civilization, once again, in a land of chaos.”

  “One day millions of people will visit Babylon,” said Donny George, head of Iraq’s board of antiquities. “I’m just not sure anybody knows when.”

  I asked Iraqi finance minister Allawi about this project when I met with him in Washington a few days after the article was published. He loved the idea of rebuilding Babylon—anything to attract investors and their capital and get the Iraqi economy growing again.

  “Cultural, religious, archeological, and biblical tourism is a big opportunity for Iraq,” he told me. “I think rebuilding Babylon is a wonderful idea, as long as it is not done at the expense of the antiquities themselves.” Then he added, “I don’t know about a theme park, though—maybe, as long as it’s done outside of Babylon, away from the archeological sites.”278

  It all sounded so natural, but what Minister Allawi was telling me was really quite historic. The highest levels of the new Iraqi government want to rebuild the ancient city of Babylon and make it a great center of commerce. The Hebrew prophets and the book of Revelation told us it was going to happen. Now it really is.

  That said, people like General Sada and his fellow Christians in Iraq have little time to think about the prophetic implications of their work at the moment. They are solely focused on making Iraq secure, creating jobs and economic opportunities, and getting the gospel of Jesus Christ to every Iraqi who is willing to listen.

  “What’s going to happen in the future?” Sada asks. “I am a man who believes in God’s promises 100 percent. I believe what’s in the Bible. Those [prophecies] will happen whether somebody will like it or not like it. . . . We believers see what is happening [in Iraq today], and the first thing that comes to our heads is that we are living in the last days. But how God thinks—his ways and his methods and his thoughts—are not like our own. It is very difficult for a human being to know and understand the thoughts and the ways of God. The most important thing is to believe in the [prophecies] that are going to happen.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: FUTURE HEADLINE

  JEWS BUILD THIRD TEMPLE IN JERUSALEM

  Jewish reaction to the War of Gog and Magog will take several forms.

  First and foremost, widespread atheism and secularism will collapse essentially overnight within the Jewish world in light of the supernatural protection of Israel. In turn, the world will see an unprecedented resurgence of religious expression among Israelis and among Jews worldwide. The question will no longer be “Is there a God in Israel?” The question will become “How can I know the God of Israel?”

  Some will join the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities in their newly urgent quest. Others may turn to more mystical forms of Judaism such as the Chabad-Lubavitch movement and the practice of Kabbalah, made famous by a number of Hollywood stars, including Madonna, in recent years. Still others will turn to faith in Jesus as Messiah and join the rapidly growing movement of messianic Jews in Israel and around the world. But nearly all Jews will become united around one central mission: rebuilding the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.

  It is difficult for most people in the early years of the twenty-first century to envision either the First Temple built by King Solomon or the Second Temple begun in the time of Nehemiah and Ezra after the Jews began to return from captivity in Babylon in 538 BC and later expanded by King Herod into the Temple of Jesus’ day. And it is nearly impossible for most people to imagine a Third Temple soon standing where the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aksa Mosque stand today. But when one looks at current and future events through the third lens of Scripture, the image of the coming Temple is clear.

  Ezekiel spends two chapters describing the War of Gog and Magog, but the next nine chapters describe the future “house of the Lord.” And Ezekiel was by no means alone. The Hebrew prophet Isaiah tells us, “In the last days, the mountain of the LORD’s house will be the highest of all—the most important place on earth” (Isaiah 2:2). The prophet Micah echoes this statement. Daniel speaks of an end-times Temple that will be desecrated by a future enemy of God (known by Christians as the “Antichrist”), and this view was verified in the New Testament by the apostles Paul and John and by Jesus Christ himself.279

  The question Jews and Christians have been asking themselves since the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70 is, how in the world will the Temple be rebuilt?

  In recent years, prominent Palestinian leaders—including Yasser Arafat—have fiercely denied that a Jewish Temple ever even existed in Jerusalem and have explained in no uncertain terms that they bitterly oppose the building of a future Temple. Among the recent statements made by Palestinian leaders:

  “Jews never had any connection to Jerusalem.”

  “The Jews never lived in ancient Israel.”

  “There never was a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.”

  “The Temple didn’t exist in Jerusalem. . . . It was in Nablus.”280

  Jewish leaders counter that Israel, Jerusalem, and the Temple Mount were given to them by God and that God’s plans cannot be thwarted by the Palestinian Authority or radical Islamic terror masters in Iran, Saudi Arabia, or anywhere else. The Temple Mount has, therefore, become a flash point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the site of numerous violent clashes since the Israelis took control of the Mount during the Six Days’ War of 1967.

  Security experts now believe that the Temple Mount is the most dangerous square mile on the planet. Israeli police and intelligence forces maintain tight security around the site to prevent Jewish or other extremists from trying to blow up the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aksa Mosque. After all, not only would such an attack be morally wrong, it would be incredibly dangerous. Fo
r if the dome and the mosque were somehow destroyed by a terrorist attack, this could unleash a war of horrific proportions as the wrath of a billion Muslims turned against Israel.281

  The vast majority of Christians and Jews oppose such violence. I do too. We are convinced that the Temple will be built because the Bible says it will. We simply are not sure how it will happen. But the “War of Gog and Magog” may provide the answer.

  One possibility is that the God of Israel will use the supernatural judgment involving a massive earthquake, hailstorms, and firestorms from heaven to destroy the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aksa Mosque, clearing the Temple Mount for the building of a Holy Temple to worship him. This is the scenario I put forth in The Ezekiel Option and The Copper Scroll.

  Another possibility is that while the supernatural events do not destroy these Islamic sites directly, the destruction of Israel’s most dangerous enemies could make it possible for the government of Israel to dismantle the dome and the mosque when the smoke of the war clears and to then rebuild the Temple.

  Still another possibility is that the postwar environment will create a situation of such religious tolerance that the Jewish Temple, the dome, and the mosque will all be able to somehow coexist side by side.

  Do we know for certain how it will happen? No, we don’t. But we do know for certain that something will happen to make construction of the Third Temple possible—maybe within our lifetime. And we know that there is a growing movement of Israeli Jews urgently preparing for that day.

  A MOVEMENT TO REBUILD

  Gershon Salomon is a descendant of ten generations of Jerusalemites and an Israeli military officer who became convinced in the 1960s that the Messiah was coming soon and that God had chosen him to help prepare the way. So in 1967, after Israel reunified Jerusalem, Salomon formed an organization known as the Temple Mount Faithful with seven provocative objectives.

  Among them: “liberating the Temple Mount from Arab (Islamic) occupation . . . consecrating the Temple Mount to the Name of G-d282 so that it can become the moral and spiritual center of Israel, of the Jewish people and of the entire world according to the words of all the Hebrew prophets . . . [and] rebuilding the Third Temple” for the “coming of the King of Israel, Messiah Ben David.”283

  Salomon believes that Israel is the epicenter of the world, Jerusalem is the epicenter of Israel, and the Temple is the epicenter of Jerusalem, and it is there in the Holy of Holies that the Messiah will reign. So for the past forty years, he has been writing and speaking all over Israel and around the world, trying to teach people about the centrality of the Temple in Jewish life and the importance of establishing the Third Temple before the coming of the Messiah. And more than ever, Salomon is convinced that day is increasingly close at hand.

  In 1998, for example, Salomon told his followers that as Israel’s fiftieth anniversary approached “we see how events are steadily moving toward the fulfillment of G-d’s end-time promises to the people of Israel.” He specifically noted that “the prophet Ezekiel prophesied that in the end-times of the redemption of the people of Israel, a terrible war will break out in the land when Gog and Magog with many other nations come to the land of Israel and try to destroy the people and State of Israel” and that “G-d said that He would bring this enemy from the far north against the mountains of Israel.”

  Salomon went on to explain that “the coming war will be the final war undertaken against Israel by her enemies,” for “in it G-d will terribly defeat them.” After this war, he concluded, “the new era will start” and “the Third Temple will be the House of G-d, the only building on the Temple Mount. . . . Mashiach Ben David [the Messiah, Son of David] will be the King of Israel and all mankind.”284

  In July of 2001, on the Jewish holiday that marks the destruction of the first two Temples (Tisha B’Av), Salomon and his supporters tried to enter the Temple Mount to lay a four-and-a-half-ton cornerstone they had carved out of limestone to serve as the beginning of the Third Temple. The Israeli authorities denied them access, but Salomon, convinced that he was on the winning side of history and that victory was near, was undeterred. So every year since, he and his group have repeated their efforts, only to be stopped by the local police as well as Israel’s Supreme Court, none of whom want an Islamic revolt on their hands.285

  “G-d expects Israel to rebuild the Temple now and then He will send Mashiach Ben David,” wrote Salomon. “Our activities and struggle brought this idea very close to fulfillment, and we know that time is short and that it will soon come to pass.”286

  Rabbi Yisrael Ariel is another Israeli building a movement dedicated to rebuilding the Temple. As one of the first Israeli paratroopers to reach the Temple Mount during the Six Days’ War, Ariel became gripped with the notion that he was part of prophecy coming to pass. He went on to immerse himself in the study of Scripture and became one of Israel’s leading rabbis.

  “It is so very difficult to describe the feeling that filled us during that extraordinary time in the life of the nation,” Ariel once wrote, so expectant was he that the Messiah’s appearance was imminent and so disappointed over the next few years when nothing happened. He would later explain that “in the passing of time as I pursued my studies, I discovered that our expectations were simply misplaced. . . . The more I studied the more I began to understand that we had only ourselves and our own inaction to hold accountable: G-d does not intend for us to wait for a day of miracles. We are expected to act. We must accomplish that with which we have been charged—to do all in our power to prepare for the rebuilding of the Holy Temple.”287

  So Ariel founded the Temple Institute in 1987 “to rekindle the flame of the Holy Temple in the hearts of mankind through education” and “to do all in our limited power to bring about the building of the Holy Temple in our time.” The institute, whose headquarters I have visited in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City (not far from the Western Wall), thus serves an educational function similar to the Temple Mount Faithful. But it also goes an important step further.

  Ariel and his team are conducting meticulous historical research to understand the look and size and function of the sacred vessels and implements the Scriptures say were once used in the Temple. What’s more, with the understanding that these same sacred utensils will one day be used in the Third Temple, Ariel’s team is rebuilding them using the same materials of gold, silver, copper, and wood, and they are doing so with the finest craftsmanship. Though many of the items can be seen on display at his headquarters, Ariel insists that these are not showpieces. He and his team expect them to be used . . . and soon.

  “These are authentic, accurate vessels, not merely replicas or models,” his Web site explains. “All of these items are fit and ready for use in the service of the Holy Temple. Among the many items featured in the exhibition are musical instruments played by the Levitical choir, the golden crown of the High Priest, and gold and silver vessels used in the incense and sacrificial services. After many years of effort and toil, the Institute has completed the three most important and central vessels of the Divine service: the seven-branched candelabra, or Menorah, made of pure gold, the golden Incense Altar, and the golden Table of the Showbread.” Ariel and his team are also “currently creating the sacred uniform of the Cohein Gadol, the High Priest. This project, the culmination of years of study and research, has been underway for several years. To date, the High Priest’s Choshen (Breastplate) and Ephod [the High Priest’s garment] have already been completed.”288

  Meanwhile, a dramatic new effort has been launched in Israel to rebuild the Temple—the re-creation of the Sanhedrin.

  “A unique ceremony—probably only the second of its kind in the past 1,600 years—is taking place in Tiberias today: the launching of a Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish-legal tribunal in the Land of Israel,” read a story in the Israeli press in January 2005. The Sanhedrin was “a religious assembly that convened in one of the Holy Temple chambers in Jerusalem” and was made up of “71 sages” in anci
ent times.289 Organizers of the new Sanhedrin also announced their intention to convene seventy-one rabbis, meet regularly, solicit architectural plans to build the Temple, and examine ways to restart animal sacrifices, something not done in Israel since the first century.

  “It is appropriate that the Sanhedrin convened to discuss this lofty matter [of the Temple’s location] this week,” Sanhedrin spokesman Rabbi Chaim Richman told Arutz-7, an Israeli news service, “as the Torah portion is Terumah—the portion of the Bible which begins to deal with the preparations for the Tabernacle. Though seemingly esoteric, the preparations for building a Tabernacle and the Temple are at the center of who we are as a people.”290

  A RED HEIFER

  One specific headline to be watching for amid such preparations will center on the birth of a red heifer, one that according to Jewish law must be sacrificed prior to the purification and consecration of the Temple and those entering it.

  In Numbers 19 we learn that the Israelites were required to bring “a red heifer, a perfect animal that has no defects and has never been yoke to a plow” and give it to the high priest, whereupon it would be slaughtered and burned. “Then someone who is ceremonially clean will gather up the ashes of the heifer and deposit them in a purified place outside the camp. They will be kept there for the community of Israel to use in the water for the purification ceremony. This ceremony is performed for the removal of sin” (Numbers 19:2, 9).

  “For the lack of a red heifer’s ashes, there is simply . . . no way for Jews to purify themselves to enter the sacred square, no way for Judaism to reclaim the Mount, no way to rebuild the Temple,” wrote one Israeli journalist on the intensifying interest in Israel in finding such a red cow.291