Muslims Using Temple Denial to Delegitimize Jewish Race

You can’t open a newspaper in Israel these days and not see the self-righteous, hate-filled quotes of the leaders of regional Muslim majority nations condemning Israel for actions on our Temple Mount.

The King of Jordan is outraged over Israel’s actions. He said, “Any more provocations in Jerusalem will affect the relationship between Jordan and Israel.” He also said, “We join Muslims and Christians everywhere in rejecting threats to the Arab character of this holy city.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has warned of a new violent uprising, an intifada, because of clashes at the temple Mount.

So just what is Israel’s heinous crime?

Jews are visiting the Temple Mount! Our Temple Mount!

The Muslim world is seeking to paint a picture of Jerusalem as a city that is historically ethnically Arab (despite that fact that Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab nation). These Islamic Truthers, if you will, deny that there ever was a temple in Jerusalem.

Long-time Israeli diplomat and author Dore Gold coined the phrase “temple denial” in his 2007 book, The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City.

The goal of temple denial is to delegitimize, by Islamic pseudo-intellectuals and politicians, the Jewish historical claims to Jerusalem. Arafat was the first to popularize this fabrication. He claimed at the 2000 Camp David accords that the Jewish temple was in Nablus, not Jerusalem, and without any fact or evidence, that claim spread across the Middle East, according to Ambassador Gold, like wildfire.

However the Wakf, the Islamic authority that Israel allows to oversee the temple Mount, made a crucial mistake. In 1999, they permitted bulldozers to remove—are you ready—9,000 tons of dirt, without any archaeological supervision, from the temple Mount, in order to make a new entrance. This would be the archaeological equivalent of rape, as within that dirt should be a treasure trove of evidence that the temple Mount was the center of Jewish life from the time of King Solomon.

These 9,000 tons of dirt were unceremoniously dumped in the famous Kidron Valley. In 2004, some Israeli archaeologists got permission to start the Temple Mount Sifting Project. They arranged for hundreds of archaeologists and even tourists to help them sift through the artifact-rich soil. Recently a 10-year-old Russian tourist found a coin dating back to the time of King David and his son Solomon. This lends proof to a Jewish presence on the Temple Mount going back to around 1,000 B.C.

In addition, two half-shekel coins were found, one dating back to the time just before the temple’s destruction and the other, to the time of the Hanukkah story, a little more than 150 years before Yeshua. Now this is huge, because Jews were made to pay a half-shekel temple Tax for its maintenance.

When they came to Capernaum, the collectors of the half-shekel came to Simon Peter and asked, “Doesn’t your rabbi pay the temple tax?” (Matt. 17:24)

The Muslim outrage over Jews visiting their “supposed” Holy Site is a fake controversy.

What isn’t fake is that this piece of real estate is the most contested and controversial patch of land in the world. And for good reason: All of heaven and hell, angels and demons, all of the worlds spiritual forces will collide at this place for the final battle.

“Then the Lord will go out and fight those nations as He fights in the day of war. On that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is to the east of Jerusalem. And from east to west the Mount of Olives will be split in two ” (Zech. 14:3-4)

The Temple Mount is only a short walk form the Mount of Olives. Yeshua will take up His throne and the nations will come and worship Him, according to Zechariah 14:16, on the Feast of Tabernacles. {eoa}

Ron Cantor is the director of Messiah’s Mandate International in Israel, a Messianic ministry dedicated to taking the message of Jesus from Israel to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). Cantor also travels internationally teaching on the Jewish roots of the New Testament. He serves on the pastoral team of Tiferet Yeshua, a Hebrew-speaking congregation in Tel Aviv. His newest book is Identity Theft. Follow him at @RonSCantor on Twitter.