Israel Day 10 - The Temple Mount, Hezekiah's Tunnel, and the Wailing Wall

e awoke in the morning at the David Citadel Hotel right outside the old city. We drove up right outside the wall at the southwest corner of the temple mount. On our way in, we walked over some recently made construction bridges over two archaeological digs that they are conducting in Jerusalem. As we walked over one of these bridges, we got our first view of the wailing wall. This is the one exposed area of the western wall to which the Jews have access where they can pray for the rebuilding of their temple.

We walked up onto the greater temple mount and stopped at one of the many "mosques" that have been built on the temple mount. Now you may be saying, "Why did you stop at a mosque?" Well this mosque was nothing more than a foundation of stones with an altar on it. These altars show the way to pray towards Mecca. The Muslims have built these all over the temple mount to make them "sacred sites" that non-Muslims can not walk on. In other words, they are making a power play for land.

As you walk around, you realize that there is the larger temple mount which was built around the original temple mount. This area was built by Herod the Great. There are beautiful olive groves all around this area. We walked past the area where Christ was scourged. The praetorium does not exist anymore but this picture is of a building that is over that area.

We then walked up the steps to the main temple mount. This is the place where both Solomon's temple and Herod's temple were built. It is also the place from which Christ will reign during the Millennial kingdom. Here is a picture of one of the sets of steps leading up to that mount.

As we walked on the temple mount, our breath was taken away. Not because of anything that was on the mount but rather the fact that you could almost feel the spiritual heaviness. As our guide said, this is the scrimmage line between the forces of good and evil. This section of land is truly the Lord's and because of that fact, there has been a battle throughout eternity for it. Here is the history of this small hill before you view the pictures...

• Abraham took Isaac to offer him to the Lord on Mt. Moriah in the book of Genesis.
  
• Roughly 10th century BC, King David conquers Jerusalem and purchases the threshing floor of Araunah in order to offer sacrifice to God as seen in 2 Samuel 24.
  
• 10 century BC, Solomon, David's son builds the first temple on top of the temple mount by building four walls and filling them in with dirt and rock on the top of the summit of Mt. Moriah.
  
• 586 BC, the temple is destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians.
• 516 BC, after 70 years of exile, Nehemiah, Ezra, and Zerubbabel, returned from Babylon to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and eventually the temple. This temple was by no means comparable to the beautiful work of Solomon's temple.
• In 19 BC, Herod the Great began work on the extension of the temple mount and the building of a greater extension on the second temple.
• In 70 AD, after the death of Christ, a Roman General named Titus destroyed Jerusalem as well as pulling apart every brick of the temple as prophesied by Christ.
• 132 AD, Hadrian built a temple to Jupiter over the site of the temple.
• 4th Century AD, Byzantine Christians destroyed the temple to Jupiter and then built a church in an effort of replacement theology.
• 638 AD, Khalid Omar conquers the city and the temple mount without much of a fight. Omar built a shrine to cover the site of Solomon's temple as the Muslims believe that Solomon was a prophet. He hired priestly families to run the shrine.
  
• In 691, the Dome of the Rock was completed and has switched ownership between many different hands between then and now.
• In the 1920s, Haj Amin Al-Husayni, Yasser Arafat's uncle, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, started stating that Jerusalem was the third holiest site of Islam even though the Koran never once uses the name of Jerusalem, perpetuating the lie that is still used to this day in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

Rabbinic tradition maintains that the rock on which Abraham was going to sacrifice Isaac is the same one on which the arc of the covenant was placed. Archaeologists have found staircases below the Dome of the Rock that would have lead up to the Holy of Holies in the original temple. They also found a rectangular shape incised into the rock in the center of the dome that was used for the arc to sit comfortably without tipping over. Until Yasser Arafat's uncle's claim in the 20th century that this was the place from which Muhammad ascended to heaven, Islam had never maintained that this site had anything to do with Muhammad.

The picture below is of the Dome of the Spirits or Dome of the Tablets. This is believed to be the bedrock on which stood the Holy of Holies from Herod's Temple. It is also believed that this could be the place where the Antichrist will try and build his temple (the 4th temple building) and also where the Lord will establish His temple (the 5th temple building) during the Millennial kingdom. Both of these temples are believed to be here because you can look down from the Mt. of Olives where the Lord will set His foot when He returns (Zech. 14) and He will then walk down the mount, through the East Gate (Ezek. 44:13), and into the temple to establish His kingdom.

Here is a picture of the East Gate. The Arabs have placed a cemetery in front of it from the outside because rabbinic tradition holds that good Jews can not walk through a cemetery because of the proximity to dead bodies. They have also sealed it up from the inside as you can see below.

We then went from the temple mount, around the southwest corner to go visit the Southern steps.

These steps were at the Ahulda gates, the place where non-priestly Jews would enter in to the courts prior to going to the temple. The stairs were thin and thick, skinny and wide, to make you slow your pace to be more reverent. 2000 years ago, these steps were called the steps of the sermons where rabbis would teach. Right next to these steps are large baptismal baths. These are most likely the only baths in Jerusalem where they could have baptized the 3000 people who came to know Christ in Acts 2:41. Thus, we know that these steps where probably the place that the later part of Acts 2 took place.

There is a story that our guide told us that when Neil Armstrong, who is a Christian, visited the Southern steps, he asked his guide if they were assured that Jesus walked on these steps and he said yes. Neil Armstrong then said something along the lines of, "I am more excited to walk on these steps than I was to step on the moon." I don't know how true this story is but it's kind of a fun one :o)

In Matthew 24 Jesus spoke to his disciples about the fact that even though the temple was mighty and beautiful, not one stone of the temple would stand on another. In 70 AD, this became reality as the Romans, led by general Titus, burned the temple. In the process, all the gold in the temple melted into the cracks. The Roman soldiers then pulled apart every stone to get at the gold and cast them down to the ground. Below is a picture of those stones. The stone in the forefront is the corner stone by which the trumpeter would stand calling people to the temple for prayer. It is inscribed with the words "To the trumpeting place."

Our day didn't stop there. We moved on to the City of David which is a smaller part of Jerusalem right outside the city walls. There you can still see the Canaanite wall of the fortress which David conquered and then established his city. It is directly below that wall that you can go into Hezekiah's tunnel. This was a tunnel that supplied the city with water in time of siege. Below is a picture of Palestinian villages across the Kidron Valley from the city of David. The Palestinians have built all of these buildings on top of Jewish tombs that were carved in the rock. They sadly now use these tombs for trash dumps.

After an amazing day going through the old streets of Jerusalem, we got a chance to eat some Israeli pizza (awesome!) in one of the shops in the Jewish quarter. It was so cool we had to take a picture.

We took a brief rest back at the David Citadel Hotel where we stayed and then went back later that night to view an archaeological dig that has gone deep down under the existing city to view the original wall of the time of Solomon. It was an awesome tour. Then we got a chance to pray at the wailing wall.

The women and men are split so Kelly and I had to split up.

These are definitely some of our favorite pictures because they show the Jewish people crying out for God to rebuild the temple and give it back to them. I got a chance to pray next to some of these men and hear their "wailing". I took the chance to pray that they might know their Messiah, Jesus, and that through Him, they would come to a saving knowledge of the God that we both serve. Praise God for his grace that He will eventually restore the Jews so that Jew and Gentile believers can worship Christ for all eternity. (Romans 11)

Here is a cool photo. Kelly really wanted me to get a close up picture of this since both of us have always heard that people write down prayers and roll them up to place them in cracks of the wall. It turned out to be a great picture.

That night, a group of us wandered down to Ben Yehuda Street. This is a street named for Eliezer Ben Yehuda, a man instrumental in bringing Hebrew back as the spoken language of Israel. The street became known for being one of the busiest areas in Jerusalem as well as the bombings that happened during the second intifada in the 1990s. Kelly, a friend of ours named Jeremy, and I sat down for a while at a coffee shop at the end of the street and watched all the people. As we watched the people socializing and having fun we thought to ourselves how similar Jerusalem is to any other city. Then two all black street bikes came tearing around the corner with sirens on. On the bikes were two men all dressed in black with uzzis strapped to their sides. It was then that we realized there is a very real danger in Jerusalem.

The three of us sat and talked about the goodness and grace of the Lord over some coffee in the middle of Jerusalem for an hour or two. Definitely one of my favorite moments on our trip. If you ever get to Jerusalem, they have great coffee :o)