Recently, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has once again been in the spotlight of the world, with both sides retaliating against each other and the number of casualties skyrocketing. Since Israel's restoration in 1948, and especially since Israel seized East Jerusalem in 1967, there has been no cessation of conflict between the two sides, with five wars alone.
So, where is the focus of the conflict between the two sides? Today, we will continue from the previous article, where the prophets predicted the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, will there be three wars in the prophecy? Tell us about the Third Temple and the story behind it.
This focal point is the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in East Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam. However, the Israelites said that this is also our holy place, that we have built two temples here, and that we will build a third temple here to welcome the Messiah. Your mosques have robbed us of our territory. (Note: Messiah, another name for Jesus Christ.) The word Messiah derives from the Hebrew word māshīah, which originally meant "anointed one," and the Greek translated it as christos, leading to "Christ," and thus "Messiah" is "Christ." ）
Al-Aqsa Mosque built on top of the temple
The appearance of the Ark of the Covenant, the main character in the temple
Why was it so important for the Israelites to rebuild the temple? For the temple was where they kept the ark of the covenant. The Ark of the Covenant is one of the most important holy objects in the Bible, which preserves the Ten Commandments, the law written by God himself to the Israelites, and there is a golden throne on the top of the Ark, which is where God sat when he came down to communicate with the prophets and priests of the Israelites, so the Ark of the Covenant is also called God's dwelling place on earth.
The Ten Commandments
Although the temple was destroyed twice, the Israelites always believed that they should rebuild the temple because the Hebrew Bible says that the temple should be rebuilt and the Messiah will come again. There is a similar saying in the Bible: The Lord you seek will suddenly enter into his temple. And when the Messiah came, his temple was ready for him. The Messiah appeared, and that was the resurrection of the dead, the day of the Last Judgment. The good guys go to heaven, and the bad guys are thrown into the lake of hellfire.
So for the Israelites, in order to be saved to heaven, this Third Temple had to be built. But as we mentioned in the previous article, rebuilding the Third Temple was difficult. One of the big questions is that the Ark of the Covenant has been gone for 2,500 years, can it still be reborn? So how did the Ark of the Covenant appear and how did it disappear? Why was the Ark of the Covenant so important to the Israelites?
This has to start from 3,300 years ago, when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, when the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt, and God couldn't stand it anymore, so he instructed Moses to take them back to their hometown in Canaan, which is now Israel. Moses performed many miracles along the way. This included splitting the waters of the Red Sea and allowing the Israelites to walk through the land in between.
Moses split the Red Sea with his bare hands
Seeing these miracles, the Israelites expressed their fear of God and God's servant Moses, and God was kind to them, and they complained that the water was too bitter, and God sweetened it; Complaining that there was no meat to eat, a large number of quails flew into the camp in the evening, and roasted quails with cakes, which are more delicious than this in the world. Three months later, the Israelites came to the foot of Mount Sinai, where God performed miracles in the air, preaching the Ten Commandments, including honoring the elderly, refraining from idolatry, murder, adultery, stealing, perjury, and coveting other people's possessions. After that, Moses went up to the mountain and learned from God about the laws governing Israel. That's 40 days.
God Moses received the Ten Commandments
And it came to pass, when he was coming down from the mountain, that God gave Moses two tablets of stone with the Ten Commandments inscribed on them, and said, Go back and make a cupboard of acacia wood, and put it away, and it shall be covered with gold inside and out, and four gold rings shall be placed on the four corners, so that it may be carried up." On top of the ark I am to install a seat of pure gold, and when I come down to meet you, I will sit down, and I will hammer out of gold two cherubim (the cherubim are also known as angels of wisdom, and together with the Seraphim, they are one of the highest angels) and put them on both ends of the throne. The cherubim will spread their wings high to cover the mercy seat, and they will spread their wings toward the mercy seat and guard it.
Ark of the Covenant
When Moses received the command to come down from the mountain, he made the ark of the covenant according to God's command, and set up a tent called the tabernacle for storing the ark of the covenant. In the tent there was an enclosed space enclosed by a curtain called the Holy of Holies, and in it was the Ark of the Covenant. Every time, when Moses went in to speak to God, a pillar of cloud came down and stopped at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.
tabernacle
The Wanderings of the Ark of the Covenant
For more than 40 years, the Israelites continued to walk in the desert, carrying the Ark of the Covenant with them. The Ark of the Covenant also performed many miracles that helped the Israelites. For example, when crossing the Jordan River, as soon as the feet of the priests carrying the ark of the covenant came into contact with the water, the river dried up, and the people crossed the river with ease. In the Battle of Jericho, the first battle of the Israelites to conquer Canaan, the Ark of the Covenant was carried out every day and circled around the city, with soldiers at the front, followed by seven priests and seven trumpets. On the seventh day, the Israelites carried the ark of the covenant around the city again, but this time it turned seven times, and then the priests shouted loudly, and the walls fell, and the Israelites took the city without bloodshed.
Battle of Jericho
Soon, however, the Israelites forgot what the Ark of the Covenant was for, and they began to carry it into battle, asking God to bless them with victory. But how can God listen to human commands and intervene in human affairs? As a result, the Israelite army was quickly defeated repeatedly, and in the end, in a war against the Philistines, even the Ark of the Covenant was taken captive. But after all, it is a holy thing, it is spiritual. The Phellishites soon found out that they could not keep the ark in place, because every time they went to the ark of the covenant it would bring disaster to the place, and in some places there was the Black Death, and in other places the people were afflicted with sickness, and then their priest spoke and said that it was better to give it back to the Israelites, and that it was their treasure. Seven months later, the wandering Ark of the Covenant returned to Israel, but the exile dealt a severe blow to the faith of the Israelites, who did not value the Ark of the Covenant until the time of King David, which was about 300 years after Moses, that is, 3,000 years ago.
The Ark of the Covenant of the Return
David is arguably the greatest king in the history of the Jews, and even Christians are proud to have Jesus as his descendant, and one of the most famous stories in the Bible, David's defeat of Goliath, is the story of his youth. At that time, David went to the battlefield to deliver food to his brothers, and just saw the giant Goliath in the enemy army calling for battle, and no one in the Israeli army dared to go out, but David was not afraid, he did not wear armor, so he walked out, just took a catapult and five stones in his hand, and threw out the stone in his hand with the catapult, and the stone hit Goliath's forehead, and the giant fell with a bang, and David also became famous in a battle and became a national hero. Later, he became a king as a matter of course.
Michelangelo's carving of King David
After becoming king, David was very grateful, saying that it was not appropriate for him to live in a luxurious palace while God's dwelling place on earth was in a tent, and he hoped to build a temple for the ark of the covenant. At the arrangement of the prophet Nathan, David saw God before the ark of the covenant. But God agreed with his suggestion and said, "Let your son build this temple." David obediently agreed, and quietly began the preparatory work, including selecting a site for the temple and purchasing building materials. Later, the temple was built in the hands of David's son King Solomon, and it took 20 years to complete, and the foundation alone was built for seven years, and the project was very huge, and the whole temple was built by Solomon.
First Temple manuscript drawing
The Ark of the Covenant was placed in a windowless chamber deep in the temple, the Holy of Holies, where God communicated. When the priests brought the Ark of the Covenant inside, the whole temple was filled with clouds, and everyone said it was the glory of God.
The Lost Relic—The Ark of the Covenant
Unfortunately, this elaborate temple was razed to the ground by the Babylonians 400 years later, and the Ark of the Covenant disappeared. However, many Jews believe that the Ark of the Covenant was not destroyed by the Babylonians, but was hidden somewhere in this world. After all, it is a holy thing, it is spiritual, it is the dwelling place of God in the world, how can some ordinary people be destroyed at will? Don't you see he floated around outside and turned back? Sadly, 70 years later, when the Israelites returned, the Ark of the Covenant did not appear when the temple was rebuilt. In fact, the Ark of the Covenant has not appeared since then.
Babylonian soldiers destroy the First Temple
However, among the Jews, there was still a rumor that the Ark of the Covenant was still alive. The Jewish scripture, 2 Maccabees, says that the prophet Jeremiah, who prophesied about the Babylonian invasion of Jerusalem, took the Ark of the Covenant and buried it in a cave, and then told his followers that this place should not be known until God gathers His people again and accepts them.
The Rumba people of South Africa claim that their ancestors brought the Ark of the Covenant to the south and eventually hid it in a deep cave in the Dumkh Mountains, their spiritual homeland. This statement sounds a lot like a sequel to Jeremiah's story. So was the Ark of the Covenant really brought to Africa? In 2008, Parfitt, a Jewish expert from the United Kingdom, made a special trip to South Africa to investigate, and later said that the Ark of the Covenant had been taken to Senna, Yemen, and then to East Africa and then to the mainland. Soon after, however, the Ark of the Covenant self-destructed, and the Rumba priests made a replica that was discovered by a Swedish missionary in the 1940s and later housed in a museum of human sciences. Also in Africa, St. Mary's Church in the Ethiopian city of Axum, claimed that the Ark of the Covenant was kept in a vault near them.
So what did the Israelites themselves say? They say that the Ark of the Covenant never left and was hidden in an underground vault on the Temple Mount. In 1981, there were three senior rabbis in Israel (rabbis, a special class of Jews, a teacher and a symbol of the wise, referring to those who have received formal Jewish education, systematically studied the Judaism scriptures such as the Tanakh and the Talmud, served as spiritual leaders of Jewish communities or Jewish churches, or taught Jewish doctrine in synagogues, mainly learned scholars. They said that they dug an underground passage based on the map of the ancient temple and connected it to the passage under the temple, and followed the passage to a secret room, where they saw the Ark of the Covenant.
Biblical archaeologist Veron also claimed to have discovered the Ark of the Covenant in 1982 in an underground chamber 20 feet below the site of Jesus' crucifixion, outside the ancient city of Jerusalem. So could the two chambers be the same? Is the Ark of the Covenant in it? If so, the original that Moses created? Whether it is a replica or not, there is no clear word so far.
The purpose of the war was to rebuild the Third Temple
However, whether or not the Ark of the Covenant can be found, the construction of the Third Temple was already in the Israelites' plans. In a 2010 poll, nearly half of Israelis wanted to rebuild the temple, and they had already set up a temple rebuilding institute to begin funding, blueprint design, and building equipment and appliances as instructed in the Bible. In the early stages of this work, the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant (the tribe of Levies of Israel) were already being searched for by DNA testing. For Moses stipulated that only Levitical priests were allowed to carry the ark of the covenant.
Levite priests
Even more confident was the appearance of a prophesied red heifer born in Israel for the rebuilding of the temple. Red heifers are very common, and in order to fulfill the prophecy, the institute imported red fur cattle from foreign countries a few years ago and began to cultivate them themselves. In a 2020 report, the institute claimed to have bred an Israeli-born red heifer, but he still had a small piece of white hair on his body and did not meet the requirements. However, it is already very close to the goal, and it seems that everything is ready, and only the east wind is owed.
Red heifer
Now everyone should understand another reason why Israel is desperate to destroy the Palestinians. Nor is it possible for the Arabs and the Palestinians to give up this treasure. In short, no one can take a step back, they can only stumble. Especially for Israel, after all, the reconstruction of the Third Temple symbolizes the reappearance of the Ark of the Covenant, the most important holy relic of the Israelites, and the coming of the Messiah, and then waiting to go to heaven, everything is ready, and the earth is missing, and the person dies in a hurry.
So what do you think will be the third temple to be built? And in what way will it be built? If it was really built, and the priests of Israel also carried the ark of the covenant out and processed, I wonder if the "Messiah the Messiah" will come for a cup of tea?