Jerusalem: History, Archaeology and Apologetic Proof of Scripture

Here are a few of the 500 photos and diagrams from the "Jerusalem" book coming in out in December.

"The People of the Ruler WHO WILL COME . . . "

I touched on this briefly today in my introduction during church in order to get some focus on this topic. We will be following up with more and more details as time allows, possibly during the Sunday night Bible study after a few weeks in "The Political Platform" book. We will be addressing these exact verses on Tuesday night over the next few weeks since we are covering Daniel 9 right now.

Daniel 9:26 – The coming anti-Christ is described as being a descendant of the people who destroyed the Temple and Jerusalem in 70 AD. The people who destroyed the Temple and Jerusalem in 70 AD were the Tenth Roman Legion (Legion X or Leg X in the photo). History records that the Tenth Roman Legion broke through the city wall, dismantled the Temple, tore down Jerusalem’s walls and were stationed in Jerusalem for the next 200 years. Indeed, they were Roman citizens who were commissioned as Roman soldiers, but the people in the Tenth Roman Legion were not from the city of Rome or from Italy. The people who destroyed the Temple and Jerusalem in 70 AD were from the land that is today Turkey and Syria.

POINT: Here is another definition of the religion, the region and the person of the anti-Christ. If the anti-Christ were to arise today and this verse were fulfilled in our time he would most likely be a Muslim leader who rose to become a Caliph and the Twelfth Imam. If this is correct then Islam would be the religion of the anti-Christ. According to Scripture the religion of the anti-Christ will desire to occupy the Temple Mount, radically deny the Christian God and destroy the Jews. Oh, and by the way, the religion of the anti-Christ executes their opposition by decapitation. At this point in history it is not a stretch to see the connection between Islam and the anti-Christ. Only time will tell. . .

The photo is of a Roman column just inside the Joppa Gate in Jerusalem where the Tenth Roman Legion was stationed for 200 years after destroying the Temple and the city in 70 AD. Walid Shoebat gives great references to people through church history who suggested this same connection of Islam and the anti-Christ. Below are just three examples (it was refreshing to finally get to quote from John Calvin.):

John Wesley (1703-1791):

Indeed, the iron teeth closely match Islam. Ever since the religion of Islam appeared in the world, the espousers of it . . . have been as wolves and tigers to all other nations, rending and tearing all that fell into their merciless paws, and grinding them with their iron teeth . . . that many countries, which were once as the garden of God, are now a desolate wilderness; and that so many once numerous and powerful nations are vanished from the earth. Such was, and is at this day, the rage, their fury, the revenge, of these destroyers of human kind.

Martin Luther (1483-1546):

The Turk (Ottoman Muslims from what is today Turkey, or the descendants of Tenth Roman Legion) is the flesh of antichrist. They help each other in their murderous work. The latter slaughters bodily by the sword; and the former spiritually by doctrine.

John Calvin (1509-1564):

It does seem that the fourth iron kingdom was in fact both the pre-Papal and the pre-Islamic undivided Pagan Roman Empire, as well as the later Western-Roman Papal and the contemporaneous Eastern-Roman Islamic Empire into which it then subdivided. . . Thus they correspond to the two legs of the later Roman Empire - Islam and the Papacy. . . The defection has indeed spread more widely! For, since Mohammad was an apostate, he turned his followers, the Turks, from Christ. . . The sect of Mohammad was like a raging overflow, which in its violence tore away about half of the Church. . . In Daniel 11:37, that Prophet predicted the coming of a terrible tyrant. This is how he described that tyrant: 'neither shall he pay regard to the God of his fathers, nor to the desire of women.' Applied to the Unitarian Muslims, this might well mean that they would ignore the Trinitarian God of their forefathers.

If nothing else it is interesting to see how the writers from the 1500-1700's describe Islam. They are definitely not calling it a religion of peace, but instead see it clearly as a religion of war that destroys the societies that it infests. It would be nice if we understood world history and the Scriptures. Our blindness and ignorance will be our curse and our judgment. At least our fall will be just and self-inflicted.

Like I said above, we will need to continue this discussion.

New Sunday Night Bible Study

Beginning on Sunday night, September 12 at 7:00 Galyn Wiemers will begin teaching through his new book The Political Platform of the Lord and King. This will be an eight week class and will be held in the ICN room at Valley High School on 35th Street (Valley West Drive) in West Des Moines, Iowa. Some details and maps are below:

Final Words of "Jerusalem 101"

The book "Jerusalem 101" is finished. The unedited version fills three 3-ring binders and has somewhere around 700 pages made up of 400 photos, maps and diagrams. Tim Vaniman has the first 2 sections edited already. I have just finished the final chapter which opens with these words:

"Israel lost their temple in 586 BC and were taken into Babylonian captivity by Nebuchadnezzar just as Jeremiah prophesied. In 539 BC Cyrus of the Persians sent them back to Jerusalem to rebuild their Temple just like Isaiah had prophesied. In 168 BC Antiochus Epiphanies of the Grecian Empire in Syria (Seleucids) desecrated the temple to end the Jewish sacrifices, but was resisted by Judas Maccabeus who cleansed the Temple to restore the daily sacrifice in 164 BC just like Daniel had prophesied. In 70 AD Titus and the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, dismantled the Temple and scattered the Jewish people just like Jesus had prophesied. Since then, history has watched almost 2,000 years of Gentile (Roman, Byzantine, Muslim, Crusader, Ottoman, British) domination of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and the people of Israel which, of course, Jesus told us would happen:

This is the time of punishment in fulfillment of all that has been written. There will be great distress in the land and wrath against this people. They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. - Jesus in Luke 21:22-24

This verse sums up well what the photos, images and descriptions in this book testifies to have been the situation in Jerusalem from 70 AD until now. Even the Temple Mount today continues to be “trampled on by the Gentiles” and their pagan religion. Today we watch Jerusalem, waiting for the Age of the Gentiles to be fulfilled.

Even though many of the words and the set times spoken of by men like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Jesus and others concerning Israel, Jerusalem and the Temple have come to pass, many of their words spoke of days yet in the future. They spoke of events that have yet to be fulfilled, a Temple that has not yet been built, sacrifices that have not been restored and a generation of people who has not yet lived their lives. There is yet a future Jerusalem that includes a Temple to the Lord on the Temple Mount and a Jerusalem filled with Jews who are the descendents of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Even prophets of the New Testament and members of the church age attest to this fact in scripture.

The Apostle Paul writes to the Romans concerning the future of Israel:

I ask then: Did God reject his people? By no means! . . . Again I ask: Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all! Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. But if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their fullness bring! . . . For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? – Romans 11:1, 11, 12, 15

Why do we watch? Why do we wait? Because, according to Paul's words, the “fullness” of Israel and their “acceptance” of God’s plan in Jesus, the Messiah, will result in “greater riches” and “life from the dead” (the resurrection into the kingdom of God).

The photo of the Golden Candle Stand shows one piece of the Temple furniture prepared by the Jews for use in the Temple they plan to build on the Temple Mount. The caption under the photo in the book reads:

This is a photo of the Golden Candle Stand prepared by The Temple Institute specifically for use on the Temple Mount in the next Temple. All the furniture, utensils and clothing required for the operation of the Jewish Temple have been prepared by The Temple Institute and are ready to be moved to the Temple Mount when the time comes. This includes the recently built stone altar that sets in the collection waiting to be moved to the Temple Mount even before the Temple is built so that sacrifices may begin as soon as possible.