The Temple Mount

I have always been interested in the history of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.  Why is there a mosque sitting on the site most sacred to the Jewish religion?

The Al Aqsa mosque sits upon a rocky outcropping at the centre of the temple mount.  This is alleged to be the rock where Abraham was ordered to sacrifice his son by Jehovah.  When he demonstrated his obedience God stayed his hand, so the dogma goes.

I have my own ideas on this.  I believe that Abraham was an intelligent Rabbi and spiritual leader of his people.  He figured out that you did not have to kill people to worship God.  For me the lesson here is “Don’t kill children, you can substitute them with a Goat or a Lamb, or a Dove, or a Fatted Calf.”

Abraham is important because he is a father to three religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  All three lay claim to his legacy.

The rock on the temple mount became the central focus of the Jewish religion.  At some time around 832 BCE Solomon is held to have constructed the First Temple.  However there is no archaeological record for this construction.  This temple was allegedly destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar after the siege of Jerusalem in 589-587 BCE.  The Jews were clearly a problem for the Babylonians who felt it necessary to exile the leadership to their capital where they could monitor them.

In 538 BCE Cyrus the Great allowed the Jewish leaders to return to the city of Jerusalem.  They immediately set about re-establishing the temple, but not without opposition from others in the area.  Some form of Jewish Temple existed on Mount Zion until the Hellenistic Period.

Following the conquest of the east by Alexander the Great, and the division of his empire, Judea became a pressure point between the Ptolemaic Egyptian lands and the Seleucid lands.  In 167 BCE Antiochus III drove out the Egyptians under Ptolemy V.  The Seleucids clearly saw the Jews as loyal to the Ptolemies and set about reducing their power base.  The temple was looted, services were stopped and the buildings were dedicated to Zeus.  Judaism was effectively outlawed.

In 160 BCE following the revolt of the Maccabees the Temple site was again back in Jewish hands and was cleansed and re-dedicated.

Between 20 and 18 BCE the temple was totally rebuilt by Herod the Great, a client king of the Roman Empire.  This is the Temple where the Christian Jesus is alleged to have overturned the tables of the moneychangers.

The temple was the centre of Sadducee control of Judaism.  Jesus was from a Pharisee sect and did not hold that worship needed to be tied to a particular pile of stones.  The money changing incident was a demonstration of belief by Jesus.  Abraham said “don’t kill children – kill animals instead” and Jesus said “don’t kill animals – the simple act of breaking your daily bread can be worship of God”.

This is not a message designed to sit well with the Sadducees, who made a profit on every sacrificial animal sold on the temple mount, and who also made a fortune on the Currency Exchange market when the rural hicks found that their silver was no good in the temple.  They had to buy “Temple Silver” to purchase their sacrifice.  No wonder the Sadducees had a problem with Jesus!  He was threatening their entire economic foundation.

Ignoring the economics and religious dogma, the Jews were not comfortable citizens of the Roman Empire, and rose up in rebellion (notice a pattern here?).  The “Great Revolt” lasted from 66-70 CE.

The Roman Emperor Vespasian sent in his son Titus, who besieged Rome in 70 CE, punished the population and burned the temple to the ground.  The destruction of the temple removed the power base from the sects that were centralised there.  In this power vacuum the new “Christian“  religion was able to prosper.

The subsequent Bar-Kokhba revolt in 132-136 CE sealed the fate of the Temple Jews, who were massacred by Hadrian’s troops in large numbers.   It also firmly established the distance between Judaism and Christianity.  Following the revolt both Sects were barred from Jerusalem.

By this time the Christians had already established Golgotha as their primary site of worship.  There is no doubt that the Jews would have had issues with Christian worship on the Temple Mount, despite their common link to Abraham.

The Christians therefore opted to venerate the site of Christ’s death and the associated tomb.  When Hadrian expelled the Jews and Christians from the city he had a temple dedicated to Venus constructed on the Christian site, presumably to remove their power base.

From here we roll forward to the construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Golgotha.  In 325/326 CE Constantine the Great began construction of two interlinked churches over the tomb and the peak the hill of Calvary.  This firmly established the Christian centre of Jerusalem as separate to the Jewish site.

Under Byzantine rule the Jews and Samaritans faced increasing persecution which led to a number of Jewish and Samaritan revolts.  The final revolt occurred when the Jews sided with the invading Sassanid Empire against the Byzantines.  In 602 CE under Sassanid occupation the Jews re-established control over Jerusalem for a short time, but the Sassanids ended up siding with the majority Christian population by 617.

The Jews then played the other side of the coin and supported the reconquest of Jerusalem by the Byzantines under Heraclius in 630 CE.  There were attempts by the Jews to re-establish a temple on Mount Zion during the Sassanid occupation and during the subsequent Byzantine re-occupation, but they were torn down and the site was left as a ruin.  It seems no ruler wanted to see the rise of a new Jewish power base.

So it was when Umar led the victorious Islamic armies into Jerusalem in 638 CE.  By agreement with the Christian Bishop his entry was a peaceful one.  Umar was invited to pray at the Holy Sepulchre.  He declined on the basis that Muslims might subsequently claim it as a Mosque, and invalidate his promise to protect Christian interests.  Instead he had the Temple mount cleared, and constructed a wooden mosque on the site.

Umar found a prime piece of real estate in Jerusalem, at the heart of the city, good location, nice views and absent of a formal place of worship.  So he took it over.

Subsequently the Ummah defined the site as “The Furthest Mosque” (al-Masjid al Aqsa), revealed to Muhammed on his mystical night journey undertaken in 621 CE.  This cemented the al-Aqsa Mosque  as the third holiest site in the Islamic world.

Over the years Caliphs improved the mosque.  It was destroyed by an earthquake in 746 and rebuilt.  It was destroyed by another earthquake in 1033 (a religious Jew might take this as a sign).  The current mosque largely dates from the 1035 reconstruction.

Under Crusader rule of Jerusalem from 1099 to 1187 the Al Aqsa was used as a palace.  It was restored as a mosque by Saladin and has remained as such to the present day.

During the six day war in 1967 when the Israeli forces gained control of the old city of Jerusalem they secured Jewish access to the Western Wall.  There were suggestions from some hawks that only a few sticks of dynamite stood between the Jews and their ancient site of worship.  But cooler heads prevailed on that day.

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Flag of the USA

We all know the story about how the Flag of the USA has 50 stars which represent 50 states and 13 stripes which represent the original 13 colonies.

All lies.  To begin with, there are not even 50 states in the USA, there are only 45.  The “District of Columbia” is not a State.  Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia are not states, they are “Commonwealths”.  Other commonwealths of the USA are Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands.  So the USA has 45 states and if you include districts and commonwealths the number is 52.  So why are there not 52 stars on the flag?

Also, why 13 stripes?  There were 24 British colonies in America when the rebellion began.  For instance, Florida was part of the British colonies, and is now part of the USA.  But it is not counted as one of the “original” colonies.

The truth is shocking.  When you hear the truth all will become clear.  Why are the USA attacking Afghanistan?  Why are they in Iraq?  Why do they bomb Syria?  Why did they support the “Arab Spring” revolts in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Bahrain etc?

Here is the truth, and please forgive me as I must bring you back in time all the way to the Crusades.

In the year 1120 the Crusaders found  a great secret, or treasure, in the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in the ruins of the ancient Temple of Solomon.  The order of Knights Templar was founded to guard this terrible secret.  So what secret could be so terrible?

What they found was an ancient prophesy from 1,000 BCE.  This prophesy spoke of a prophet who would arise in Mecca, that his name would be “Worthy of Praise” and that he would sweep the Jews from the face of the earth.  King Solomon was so worried by this prophesy that he had a great shaft dug on the Temple Mount.  He buried the prophesy in this shaft and covered it over.  He built a great temple on top of the shaft, in the hope that the God of the Jews would be praised, and would prevent the prophesy from coming true.

Two thousand years later when the Crusaders dug up this prophesy they saw that it had come true.  The prophet was Mohammed and his name means “praiseworthy”.  The armies of Islam were sweeping the world.  When this prophesy came to light there was a secret meeting between the Pope in Rome, the Patriarch in Constantinople and the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem.  They agreed to a plan to set up an organisation to combat Islam.  This organisation was the Knights Templar.

From the very beginning the Knights Templar was set up with great wealth and great secrecy.  To cover their real purpose they were given a role to “protect pilgrims on the roads to the holy land”.  But this was only ever a cover.

At this stage I want you to remember two images.  One is the image of the Templar Banner, red crosses on a field of white.

The other is the banner of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, gold crosses on a field of blue.

To cut a long story very short, the Knights Templar amassed a huge treasure.  They then used this treasure to establish a country, the USA, which has the purpose of fighting Islam  They pretended to disappear, and had a sham trial of the order by the French King in 1307.  In truth they went into hiding.  They searched for a home where they could establish their new kingdom.

Look at any image of the Ships used by Columbus and what is the first thing you will notice?  The Templar cross!  Yes, Columbus was a member of the Templar order, on a mission to find a country in the New World where the war against Islam could grow.  Columbus was not the only Templar sent to establish the new world.  Look at the “San Antiago”, the ship of Amerigo Vespucci, look at the “Mathew” the ship of John Cabot, or “The Golden Hind” the ship of Francis Drake and even the Mayflower.  What they all have in common is that they carry a white flag with a red cross.  They were all Templar ships.

When the founding fathers of the USA designed their flag they did not want to be obvious.  So the flag of the USA has a hidden set of meanings.  We can begin with the Templar Cross.  They took a simple white flag and on it they wrote the Islamic Creed, the Shahada.  It reads

Lā ʾilāha ʾillā l-Lāh Muḥammadur rasūlu l-Lāh

which means There is no god but God, and Mohammed is the messenger of God

Put a number against each word in the creed.

1Lā 2ʾilāha 3ʾillā 4 l-Lāh 5Muḥammadur 6rasūlu 7l-Lāh  

They placed these words in a vertical column on the flag, 7 words, each of which was then covered with a red stripe, a symbol of the triumph of the Templar Cross over Islam.  So the stripes actually say “Death to the Islamic Creed”.  On the original flag, stored in the Smithsonian Museum in a secure vault, the Shahada is actually embroidered beneath the stripes in a green silken thread, as green is a colour sacred to Islam.  This is why there are 7 red stripes on the US flag.  7 stripes for 7 words.

So what do the stars mean?  The Star is a symbol used in Islam to represent the Hope that one day all the world will submit to Allah and his prophet Mohammed.  The religion is based on 5 pillars;  1 Shahada (the creed) 2 Salat (pray 5 times a day) 3 Zakat (give alms to the poor) 4 Sawm (fast during Ramadan) and 5 Hajj (make a pilgrimage to Mecca).  The 5 pointed star is the symbol of the 5 pillars of Islam.

There are 49 countries in the world that have majority Islamic populations.  The blue section of the flag of the USA is based on the blue flag of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.  There are 49 white stars to represent each of the majority Islamic countries, and one more star to represent Muslims who live as a minority in other countries.

If the USA succeed in conquering a Muslim country and converting it back to Christianity they will replace the white star with a gold cross.  The aim of the USA is to have a flag with 50 gold crosses.  If this happens the Prophesy of the Ancient Temple of Solomon will be broken.

Every morning in every school in the USA children make a pledge to the Flag of the USA.  Soldiers in the US Army make the same pledge.  The words of the pledge are:

“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

So you see, this is a prayer to make the world one nation under a Christian God.

Anyone buying this?  I love a good conspiracy theory!

PS, if you see Muslims burning a US flag, tell them they are burning the words of the Shahada.  That’s blasphemy, punishable by stoning to death!