The Temple Mount and other joys

The vlogger I disparaged on the topic of Christianity is on far firmer ground here on the topic of Solomon’s Temple, which there have been a few posts on at N.O. Plus I included, long ago in the long book, various materials I had on file - sadly, that has now gone, I was in Russia at the time and no usb stick large enough.

Before going any further, it’s wise to explore for yourself the whole business of the Red Heifer.  And you might also consider this, seeing as we're getting biblical:

https://akhaart.blogspot.com/2021/04/people-next.html

And so to this video:

https://youtu.be/Vg7yRnDCAho

One thing he is very good at is showing geographic overview and it’s worth it, if only for that.  But the issues he raises are also interesting, even if he makes biased, pratty comments he's picked up for by his interviewees.  

He quotes a Muslim at one stage who said the Temple was not where the Jews claim it is.  The Muslims say it’s ‘elsewhere’.  Strangely, I had material on that.

What is 'elsewhere' or 'not here' anywhere?  Well, if you can wade through the novel’s dialogue to get to the meat, that latter is to the point.  I warn though that this is very, very long and not arranged by topic, only chronologically:

1. I'd point out here that the Shaykh is not Muslim, he's Druze, this is set in the north of Israel as she is now.

The car made its way onto the main route heading for the Via Maris and they were able to observe the Esdraelon Valley in greater detail, Mount Carmel behind them, Megiddo over by the horizon, Mount Tabor – they were impressed by the fertility of the valley – the endless cropped land, the low lying settlements here and there around the edge, the lake just north of Megiddo, the slight haziness of the atmosphere, partially obscuring Mount Tabor.

Hugh felt they were highly exposed here – exposed to the sea on their left behind them, exposed to anything and anyone sweeping down this broad, flat plain from the Yezrael Valley proper, further back, and equally exposed to the elements above.

Nikki suddenly came out with a comment he might have made. ‘I can’t see, Shaykh Tarif, how they’re going to get 200 million into this valley, large though it is.’

The Shaykh barely moved a muscle in his face before replying. ‘Mme Jensen, there is some question over that figure.’

‘Is the figure hugely exaggerated?’

‘The story has put an extra zero or two on the end, most people believe.’

‘But you believe otherwise?’

‘How many people do you think there are in China and India, Madame?’

‘So, it’s true after all.’

‘Time will tell.’

Hugh, who’d been listening to this exchange, looked out of his darkened window at the valley whooshing by and wondered about it all. Some birds, disturbed by the approaching vehicle, fluttered and squawked into the air, then airily landed again once the vehicle had passed.

2. The 'Oracle' in the story is a Druze higher-up, interviewing the terrible two.  To make it more difficult, she often answers a question before it's asked.

‘Missiles are today being launched from the Gaza, the Golan and the West Bank. The conflagration will begin. You were to be arrested on a pretext and taken for questioning. We cannot allow their particular form of questioning as you are destined for other things.’

‘Out of the frying pan and into the fire, so to speak.’

‘As you say, Albus.’

Nikki caught her breath and began to see the lie of the land.

‘Also safe under this hill. They followed on thirty minutes after you, but separately. They’ll go on a little journey tomorrow, sightseeing only.’

‘Any idea –’ began Hugh but he was cut short.

‘Yes, of course. It will be a cataclysm but not the final one. From this will come peace overtures by one who will step in and offer to stop this ‘warring madness’, to bring all parties to the table. He will be equally acceptable to both Muslims and Jews at first, but not to the Christians, with their apocalyptic vision; their marginalised numbers though will count for little and the Papacy will be silent again, as well as the Patriarchs.’

‘So the Da Vinci code was right,’ stated Nikki.

‘Look at the author’s name. Those who can see, may see,’ answered the Oracle. 

 Hugh asked, ‘Why will the Muslims break with this person?’

The Oracle smiled again. ‘You asked the correct question and perhaps the answer has also suggested itself to you.’

3.  This brings in the character Sophie, a trafficked sex slave, a unit they rescued, formerly servicing the high and mighties.  She survived into her 20s and is now 29.

‘What’s the Christian view of these times?’ asked Sophie.

‘It’s a bit complicated. The theory goes that as we approach the true end times, not the ones falsely believed to be so along the way, we’ll know it because of certain things happening. Firstly, there’ll be a ‘falling away’. This refers to lawlessness, children turning on parents, debauchery, all that sort of thing.

I think this starts the Tribulation, which lasts seven years but no one knows if that’s seven man years or what. It gets worse and worse as it goes on. Halfway through that, the antichrist enters the newly built Temple in Jerusalem, which suggests to me that the Muslims have been defeated. Up till now, he has posed as the friend of Israel but once inside the inner sanctum of the Temple, he now desecrates it in something called ‘the abomination of desolation’.

No one really knows what it’s about and some think it might already have happened in 70 AD or perhaps when Caligula desecrated the Temple. People who believe they're already long raptured are called preterists.

After the antichrist does this and declares himself, the real tribulation occurs – murder, torture, rape, pillage, with all good people wiped off the face of the earth, dying in horrible ways – that sort of thing.’

‘Thanks, Hugh,’ put in Nikki.

‘Somewhere along the line, the Messiah appears and saves the believers.’

4.  The terrible two are in dialogue, hardly conversation.

‘How did people like him get to be in charge of things anyway?’

‘You want a short, glib answer or a real answer, using my notes from my organiser?’

‘Go on.’

He went and got them.

‘In 1980, the UN report on the environment quoted Alice Bailey who comes into this again later. In 1982, the UN tried to get religious leaders to come into the environmental issue, using committees and meetings.

From this came the UN Global Committee of Parliamentarians on Population and Development ‘to provide information on global survival issues to parliamentarians, spiritual leaders and the media.’

This committee joined the Temple of Understanding which was at the church of St. John the Divine in New York and now made the committee a global forum.’

‘A Christian Church?’

‘Looked like it on the surface. This forum had meetings in Oxford and Moscow. At Oxford, the main speaker was James Lovelock, from the Lindisfarne Association and he said, ‘Orthodox Christianity, properly understood, is a distortion of the pure forms of religious truth … we must immediately return to the worship of the Earth goddess.’

Also connected with this forum was World Goodwill, whose occasional papers were published by the Lucis Trust. This trust was founded by Alice Bailey under another name – the Lucifer Trust.

Now came Global Education Associates with its Earth Covenant, Citizens’ Treaty, sustainable development and systems of responsible global governance . . .’

‘What’s it mean then?’

‘It means that behind all the fine words about sustainable development, goodwill, balance and harmony, behind all these vague feelgood sentiments is a slick media campaign with millions of dollars behind it with some clear objectives, including killing off Christianity and depopulating the world.’

Her jaw dropped. ‘So what we were doing in Paris, exposing the corruption -’

‘Was the tip of the iceberg,’ he answered. ‘The corruption is global, perpetrated by agents, witting and unwitting, of the entity you just heard about. It’s everywhere, at all levels. The UN is riddled with these people. Education, law, medicine, the media – at any significant level, these people are in place. It’s been going on for years, bit by bit, establishing people in positions of power, sympathetic to all this. It’s all sewn up.’

‘I feel ill.’

‘Not as ill as Sophie felt when she was in their power. There are two prime motivations for ordinary people who fall in with this evil. The first is personal aggrandisement – wanting to feel a big person, special, someone of substance, someone who makes a difference or has power -’

‘We all do that more or less.’

‘Yes but it’s what we do with it, where a person draws the line. When the power of the position starts outweighing the good of others in that person’s head, when she or he starts to feel ‘important’ – then he or she is now inside. And the other is the way altruism is played on. There’s a type of person who loves everyone, will help anyone and their innocent loving is manipulated and everything bad they’re asked to do is presented as if it is achieving good. Eventually, that person is enabling terrible things but thinks she or he is actually doing good.’

‘Aren’t there any good people?’

‘Who is ‘good’? If you mean people like SSF, they’ve all been either marginalised, condemned or rounded up, betrayed by the do-gooders themselves quite often.’

‘So,’ said she, ‘everything we’ve been doing is all for nothing.’

‘Do you remember what’s written over the gates of hell?’

‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.’

‘Their whole game plan involves planting in people’s heads the notion that there is no hope. People either go along with and join them or else they die or starve to death. We represent one tiny glimmer of hope and no doubt there are many others like us, scattered around the world, uncoordinated. But the danger is when we start to think we’re important, when we’re really only agents.’

‘People should have shouted it from the rooftops.’

‘Pundits did. The vast majority didn’t, until they started to feel the pinch and then didn’t know who to blame – they started with the traditional, visible blame-takers – the government – but the genuine government had actually moved offshore by then.’

She paused, then asked, ‘Can’t anything be done?’

‘You tell me. You know as much as I do.’

‘Hugh, we’re in the most terrible danger. I never realised what we were actually fighting.’

‘We’ve been fighting it since the start. Its agents have tried to snuff us out many times. You’ll notice we’re still living. Why would you say that is?’

‘There’s an equal and opposite force.’

‘Not equal. Superior in straightout firepower but woefully inferior in the world of intrigue.’

‘I don’t want to speak of these things again today.’

5.  This section I really need to remind the reader, should he/she still be around and not clicked out, is snippets of truths and legends woven into a story connecting the last subplot and the next. Under no circumstances should my view be seen as the gospel truth in this section - for gospel truth, you need to go to the gospel.  This below is a story told in docu fashion, all right?

‘The troubles are almost upon us. We, the Druze people, the Sons of Grace, are destined to lead the struggle of humanity against the Destroyer, to take the lead in these final battles. The armies will gather on this vast plain. The battle for this hill is militarily strategic but also for the mysteries.

The uqqal are here and unto us are given the mysteries of the origins of life. We are the obstacle to the Destroyer because we know what resides beneath the Temple in Jerusalem and we know where that which he seeks actually is. There is not just one ark. The Great Ark, the ark of Moses, is the greatest of these.’

‘Do you know where it is?’ asked Hugh. ‘I heard it’s in America.’

‘One is there but not the Great Ark.’

Suddenly, Hugh knew the answer, at least according to the Druze. ‘Then it has never been where they all seek?’

‘All has been taqiyya, dissimulation as you might say, most necessary to protect the mysteries against the unbeliever, the Destroyer and his legion.’

‘Tell us about al-Muqtana and the Book of Wisdom.’

‘To Lailah will be revealed some – this must wait until later. For now, we are discussing the exact arrangements of your flight.

Samuel, you are here as you will have charge of Magdalena and her child.  It shall be far better for you with us now than unprotected in the secular world.

Albus, you have one task only – to protect your child. The Destroyer will send many to seek but you will not be there. After he is born, there is a time and then he is safe. In your remaining time, you will protect mother and child.’

‘So,’ asked Hugh, ‘we’re not the two crying in the streets and then we get cut down?’

She smiled. ‘You are gentile.’

‘Carry on. We’re listening.’

She smiled again. ‘Lailah and Albus must flee with the child when he is born – there is danger for some time.’

‘What about Gabriella?’

‘She plays her part.’

‘And you?’

‘We play our part. It is fitting that Laila and the child should be under our protection for this duration. We are the Sons of Grace, روز, we are the cornerstone. We always were and we are today. The end though, is not far away. Our knowledge is contained in the Rasa’il al-Hikmah, the Epistles of Wisdom and if you were to know our language and know this wisdom, you would know the origins of the universe and whence mankind sprang.

Your own Bible is a book of wisdom but it is a summary of knowledge, the Anagoge, somehow given to the Juhhal and we find that an interesting act of faith for it to be given into the hands of those who cannot possibly interpret nor use it. The illumined know whence life sprang and to where it will return. It is contained within the point of conception, the point of birth and the point of death.’

‘Ah, that explains a lot. What worries me is that you mention the illumined and I know you have a five pointed star. Forgive me but that is symbolic of the Destroyer.’

‘Albus, don’t you yet know that with the Destroyer, black is white and white is black? Even his white is many coloured. He apes everything. He speaks of bearing light when he conceals it. He speaks of the cosmic balance and prevents it in the same breath. He says that light and dark are two equal and opposed forces. They are not. Light is a direction and darkness is whence we came. It can consume the light from below. This is taqiyya from the Destroyer, the father of lies. You surely know this, Albus.’

‘I’ve written of it many times.’

‘To answer your question of why the Destroyer destroys,’ spoke the Oracle, ‘jealousy, envy. That’s all it ever was. Ever. He was the lightbearer and the future of the universe was deposited in the conception of a baby and in its departure from the world. This is the soul. Souls confer power in this universe and he dearly wished to possess that power because it is the power to make Kings.’

‘Are you referring to the three Juwes?’

She laughed. ‘That was a poor attempt by two of the tribes who had been deluded by the liar. The power to make Kings is the power to make gods. God is only a technical term for one from an area of space and time that your brain is not constructed to comprehend.’

‘You mean wormholes and all that sort of thing? Stargate?’

‘It all refers to the same thing. The priestly class have only ever been one thing – keepers and preservers of the knowledge. The Destroyer has debased that through popular fiction, legends, myths. He creates new ones in the film industry each year.’

‘So there is no truth in any of that?’ asked Nikki.

‘It is all true but not in the way it is presented to the Juhhal of the west. We are indeed of another dimension, both geographically and in terms of our fundamental construction.’

‘You’ve lost me there,’ said Hugh.

‘It is perfectly possible for the metaphysical and the physical laws to coexist. Do you accept a non-physical world, Lailah?’

‘You mean ghosts, angels, that sort of thing?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well … I don’t think about it much but after Gabriella -’

‘It’s as well.’

Nikki asked, ‘Are you human?’

‘Me?’ She laughed. ‘The greater part of me, yes.’

‘Can mankind, under your guidance, meet and destroy the Destroyer?’

‘No. You do not understand the nature of these principalities – they are beyond any of us.’

‘Why won’t the one you call the power, the force, why won’t He protect His people from this monster?’

‘He does. Through faith, hope and charity.’

‘That’s Catholic dogma,’ said Nikki.

‘You are in error, Lailah. It is the basis of the soul ascended.’

‘But so much horror goes on, so much mutilation, prostitution of children, terrible things.’

‘And they will end. But with their end comes the end of this world.’

‘Why?’

‘Every man, woman and child has the god-essence inside.’

‘You mean,’ asked Hugh, ‘that every person, at the moment of birth, has elements passed to him which are godlike?’

‘At the moment of conception. That is why the prostitution of womanhood is one key to the Destroyer’s revenge. All perversion is spittle on the divinity of man. That is why our women are so chaste. The womb is, if you like to apply a secular term, the sepulchre of the new soul, the new god, and the Destroyer wishes to show that this means nothing.’

‘So the humanists are right,’ asked Nicolette, ‘that man can control his own destiny?’

‘Not at all. Look how Man has done throughout history.’

‘Yes,’ said Hugh, ‘but that’s because the Destroyer has laid traps, blocked his progress.’

‘Exactly. Man has no natural defences.’

‘So how can he be termed a god?’

‘No, he is not in himself – he has an essence of divinity imparted to him at conception. Have you ever heard, in your own faith, that every sperm is sacred? Each human is a unique design, absolutely without replication. The Destroyer wishes to possess this secret.’

‘The secret of Kingmaking.’

‘Yes and no. Anu and Ea thought that mating with humankind would produce a race of Kings, Lilith thought so too. The design of each human is unique. There are key components which cannot be replicated. Every sacrifice at a ritual of Ea is a vain attempt to capture this essence, the code, the DNA if you like. Science has isolated much of the design but it will never find the whole solution. That is locked up in the mind of the Almighty.’

‘Hence He is Almighty according to the major religions.’

‘Yes. You can use the analogy of many worldly things to understand it. The secret ingredients of Coca-Cola, the microchip, the uniqueness of a particular perfume. These can all be discovered one day by industrial espionage but the secret of the soul cannot. Hence He remains the Almighty.

There are those who know and those who don’t. There are leaders and followers. There are men and women, adults and children. The distinctions are fine. The Destroyer though – he wants to turn this on its head.’

‘How much danger are we in? Can the Destroyer’s agents destroy Nik- … er … Lailah’s child?’

‘But of course. The child is mortal, as you are. It’s just that his very existence conveys power, as I mentioned once before.’

‘So we, Lailah and I, are actually quite mortal at this moment and all could still be lost?’

‘That is so. It was your job to get yourself here, knowing what you knew was happening on the island. It is our job to guard you.’

‘What about Dan Brown’s book? Was it true?’

‘It was a perversion of many truths, woven into fiction. There are many signs in that work, however and much of it was based on fact.’

‘Which parts?’

‘The parts people did not understand … and yes I do.’

‘You like speaking in riddles, don’t you?’

6.  Further on in the story, the terrible two are with a third party, Frank [frankspeak?] - this section has a fair bit of the non-fictional to it.

Said Hugh, ‘Nikki heard something quite worrying at the last food delivery although it might not have fully registered with her. They’re halfway through rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem but they’re building it in the wrong place according to scholars. We were involved with trying to stop a certain Prince who is also involved. If he gets to Jerusalem in any official capacity, it’s curtains for the world I’d say. I’d say now is the time for our last hurrah with SSF.’

Frank suggested, ‘Chapter and verse Hugh … please, about this end of the world thing.’

‘All right. Rebuilding the Temple of Solomon involved razing to the ground the usurping golden ‘Dome of the Rock’ and Al-Aqsa Mosque. All Jews know and many others do too that since Bar Kochba’s revolt in A.D. 135, Judaism has asserted that only the Messiah is capable of rebuilding the Temple. So they’ve been waiting for a Messiah who could rebuild it.

The ‘Christian’ Right in America, actually in the hands of the enemy, started to call for measures to allow Israel to fulfil its destiny, which, together with the Jewish lobby in the U.S., influenced congress to produce a feasibility study, beginning with the joint administration of the Haram esh-Sharif site, something the Muslims were set against.

Dr. Ernest L. Martin said that the Jewish Temples never were built on the present “Temple Mount” but were actually located a fourth of a mile south over Gihon Spring. Josephus, Eleazar and Jesus himself all seem to indicate that no sign of the Second Temple would remain. Also, descriptions of Haram esh-Sharif seemed to indicate that the current mooted site was, in fact, Fort Antonia.

Early Church Fathers and pilgrims spoke of a large rock outcropping as the Praetorium. Archaeologists have confirmed that the original City of David was built on the southeastern ridge of Jerusalem. Ancient Jewish law required that a live spring be located within the Temple for ritual purification, Davidic ‘living water’.

Aristeas viewed the Temple in about 285BC and stated quite categorically that the Temple was located over an inexhaustible spring that welled up within the interior part of the Temple.

Tacitus, in about AD105, stated that ‘the Temple at Jerusalem had within its precincts a natural spring of water.’ No natural springs have ever been found within the Haram esh-Sharif.

Sir Charles Warren examined all beneath the Haram, and found no archaeological remains identified with the Second Temple.

‘You’re right into this, aren’t you? Go on, it’s interesting.’

‘Well, as Jay Gary pointed out, in The Temple Time Bomb, in 2001, ‘If the Temple never was located at the supposed Temple Mount then a major obstacle dividing Israelis and Palestinians could be put to rest. He also pointed out that Dr. Martin died of a heart attack in 2002.

Now, as it’s not in the interests of the enemy to promote Arab-Israeli harmony, this story about the real location of the Temple has been largely suppressed. Therefore, while a big hue and cry about the Temple on the Mount was going on, the foundation stone of the new Temple, the real one, far smaller, in the correct place, has already been laid and foundation work is proceeding apace.

Meanwhile, the Prince, we’ve learned, has joined with the American President in permitting the cornerstone of the faux Temple to be laid – it doesn’t much matter where the Temple was built, as long as the Jews believe it is in the right place – this has caused the middle-east to erupt and it’s war.

Countries like Iran are now going hell for leather to build the nuclear device.

As for the secrets beneath the Temple Mount, whatever they are – the crucial kingmaking codes, the ark and tablets – they’re already elsewhere. So, there’s a coming conflagration over a dispute which need never have existed and that suits the book of the enemy. The Arabs see it all as the end times.’

‘And is it?’

‘Looks like it to us although there’ve been terrible times in the past when it all looked over. This does seem to fulfil the criteria though.’

‘How?’

‘Child against parent, dysfunction in all things, strange genders, mass movement of people, no one believing in God, zombie generations across the world, small pockets of resistance sought out and eliminated, rampant promiscuity as the form of ‘proper relations’, false prophets, false messiahs and so on. It’s the closest history has got where everyone’s involved in it, everyone’s lying and out for himself. Traitors everywhere.’

‘Traitors?’

‘Everywhere – within your own family, within your own marriage even. Nobody caring any more, drawn away, no values, no connection, no commitment to another human. Parallel lives under the same roof. If we can stay with our own partners, it will be a miracle.’

7.  Last one.

Nikki now demonstrated that ability to instantly move on, suddenly asking him, apropos of nothing in particular or so it seemed, ‘Tell me any more you know about the Temple – you know, you spoke of it before.’

She went into listening posture on the bed and he smiled.

‘Right. Jewish scripture says that the Temple can’t be rebuilt until the Messiah is imminent. Jumping over to Christian scripture, it says that someone will pretend to be that person, he’ll undertake the rebuilding, then he’ll desecrate it.

That’s the signal.

You’d say they could rebuild it at any time, right? Israel’s in charge of Jerusalem.’ She nodded. ‘Not a hope. The moment any Jews go up on that mount and touch that mosque, the entire Muslim world erupts. In the past, the Roman Emperor Julian wanted to rebuild it and got someone called Alypius of Antioch to do it, along with the governor of the province. Guess what happened?’

She shook her head.

‘Every time they tried to rebuild, balls of fire broke out near the foundations and burnt the workmen. It got so bad that they had to give the idea up. Not only that but Julian himself was killed elsewhere. Explain that.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Well, I’ll do it for you. It just happened to be the Galilean Earthquake of 363 at the time, hence the flames.’

‘Well, there you are.’

‘Yep but why did the attempt happen at exactly the time of the earthquake and why an earthquake at that time anyway? No one asks those questions. Every attempt has failed, even when there was no actual opposition.’

‘Yes, I see where that’s going – every time something happens which has a religious explanation, there’s also a natural explanation.’

‘In the end though, the sheer weight of incidents begins to count for something in people’s minds.’

Wasn't that fun?