The Wailing Wall is Really a Roman Fort

Zionist Christians believe that a Third Temple will be rebuilt just before Jesus returns on what is today known as Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Some believe the anti-Christ will sit in the Temple first, and then Jesus will defeat him and take throne in the Temple where He will be offered sacrifices by the Jews and worshiped by them for a thousand years.

The Temple Institute is an organization in Israel that is preparing to rebuild the Temple, if and when, the Israelis can gain control of Temple Mount which is currently controlled by Muslims as this is the location of the Dome of the Rock.

Likewise, ministers such as John Hagee take donations from American Christians to “bless Israel” and to help rebuild the Temple. He has stated in the past that the Temple Mount “is where the temple of the lord Jesus Christ will be when he rules and reigns the earth from the city of Jerusalem for a thousand years.”

Christians who donate to such organizations and ministers are doing so in ignorance and lack of Biblical and historical knowledge. They do not know that in reality they are fueling hatred, ethnic cleansing, murder and the annexing of land and homes in Palestine as the Israelis often break international laws in their inhumane treatment of Palestinians, some of whom are Christians. Basically, Zionist Christians are supporting a form of terrorism and not Biblical prophecy. Little do they know, the Temple they long to see rebuilt will really be a rebuilt pagan fort.

The Wailing Wall, as it is called, is not the remains of Herod’s Temple, nor is Temple Mount the former location of the City of David, despite what many people. As a result, whatever is built there in the future, by the assistance of Zionist Christians, will not be the “rebuilding” of God’s Temple, but the rebuilding of an ancient Roman Fort that once housed pagan images.

American archaeologist and author, Professor Dr. Ernest L. Martin (1932-2002) proved in his work that the Wailing Wall was actually the remains of a Roman fort once known as Fort Antonia (see the Temples the Jerusalem forgot). A fort which was named after Marc Antony by the Romans.

According to Prof. Martin, the two Temples of the Bible were instead built 1/4 of a mile south over Gihon Spring.  In the 1970’s another Professor, Benjamin Mazar, former President of Hebrew University, stated that Haram al-Sharif, or the Wailing Wall, was in fact a Roman fortress and not part of Herod’s Temple.

In addition to Martin’s theory that the Temple was built in a different location, British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon stated that the City of David had once been a little rock ridge on the western bank of the Kidron Valley. Thus not in the location which is claimed today to be where the city of David was located or Temple Mount.

These claims are backed in history by the testimony of Flavius Josephus, a Jewish-Roman Historian, who quoted a Jewish commander at Masada in 73 A.D. stating that after the war of 70 A.D. nothing remained of Herod’s Temple:

Where is this city that was believed to have God himself inhabiting therein? It is now demolished to the very foundations, and hath nothing left but that monument of it preserved, I mean the camp of those that hath destroyed it, which still dwells upon its ruins. – Flavius Josephus, The War of Jews

So during Josephus’ time, shortly after the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D., the Temple apparently no longer existed in any state. Not a single wall or anything was to be seen. This proves that Jesus’ words did in fact come true:

And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. (Matthew 24:2)

John Wesley writes in his commentary on Matthew 24 that the Temple was known to have been completely dug up after the War of 70 A.D.:

Verse 2

[2] And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

There shall not be left here one stone upon another — This was most punctually fulfilled; for after the temple was burnt, Titus, the Roman general, ordered the very foundations of it to be dug up; after which the ground on which it stood was ploughed up by Turnus Rufus.

From the Talmud to Hebraica by John Lightfoot:

[There shall not be left one stone upon another.] The Talmudic Chronicles bear witness also to this saying, “On the ninth day of the month Ab the city of Jerusalem was ploughed up”; which Maimonides delivereth more at large: “On that ninth day of the month Ab, fatal for vengeance, the wicked Turnus Rufus, of the children of Edom, ploughed up the Temple, and the places about it, that that saying might be fulfilled, ‘Sion shall be ploughed as a field.'” This Turnus Rufus, of great fame and infamy among the Jewish writers, without doubt is the same with Terentius Rufus, of whom Josephus speaks, Rufus was left general of the army by Titus; with commission, as it is probable, and as the Jews suppose, to destroy the city and Temple. Concerning which matter, thus again Josephus in the place before quoted, The emperor commanded them to dig up the whole city and the Temple. And a little after, “Thus those that digged it up laid all level, that it should never be inhabited, to be a witness to such as should come thither.”

Furthermore, according to Adam Clarke, Josephus documented, without knowledge of Jesus’ words, how the complete destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple had occurred in 70 A.D., showing that Jesus’ prophecy came true long ago:

This chapter contains a prediction of the utter destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem, and the subversion of the whole political constitution of the Jews; and is one of the most valuable portions of the new covenant Scriptures, with respect to the evidence which it furnishes of the truth of Christianity. Every thing which our Lord foretold should come on the temple, city, and people of the Jews, has been fulfilled in the most correct and astonishing manner; and witnessed by a writer who was present during the whole, who was himself a Jew, and is acknowledged to be an historian of indisputable veracity in all those transactions which concern the destruction of Jerusalem. Without having designed it, he has written a commentary on our Lord’s words, and shown how every tittle was punctually fulfilled, though he knew nothing of the Scripture which contained this remarkable prophecy. His account will be frequently referred to in the course of these notes; as also the admirable work of Bishop Newton on the prophecies. -Adam Clarke, Commentary on Matthew 24

So why do Christian’s in America believe that the Wailing Wall suddenly exists today in the remains of an Ancient Roman Fort?

It is because Christians are intentionally mislead to believe this lie by Zionist Ministers.

Professor George Wesley Buchanan, a United Methodist, wrote a research article entitled, Misunderstanding about Temple Mount, published by the Washington Report (August 2011), which highlights facts that Zionist American Christians are unaware of concerning Fort Antonia. In this article Prof. Buchanan states that it is a widely known fact among Scholars that the Wailing Wall is really a Roman Fort:

While it has not been widely published, it assuredly has been known for more than 40 years that the 45-acre, well-fortified place that has been mistakenly called the “Temple Mount” was really the Roman fortress—the Antonia—that Herod built. The Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque are contained within these walls. The area is called the Haram Al-Sharif in Arabic…

He goes on to state that while this discovery was a bit shocking to scholars at the time, it was proven to be a fact by the research of Kathleen Kenyon and Benjamin Mazar proving that the Wailing Wall is not the remains of Herod’s Temple or the location of the City of David:

 This news was preceded by another shock, when the English archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon discovered in 1962 that the entire City of David in the past had been only that little rock ridge on the western bank of the Kidron Valley. Less than 10 years later the historian Benjamin Mazar learned that the Haram had undoubtedly been the Roman fortress.

Thus the area where the Wailing Wall is located was once held, not as a sacred place, but instead as a well-known Fort that housed images of pagan deities:

“In biblical times the Haram was not a sacred place. Instead it was the place that Orthodox Jews considered defiled and the most despised place in the world. Within these walls were found no remnants of any of the earlier temples but rather an image of Mars, the Roman god of war. The 1st century Jewish Roman historian Titus Flavius Josephus said the Romans always kept a whole legion of soldiers (5,000-6,000) there, and that there were stones in its walls that were 30 feet long, 15 feet thick, and 7 1/2 feet high. While excavating the area, Mazar found these very stones there in the Haram…

“After two violent wars with Rome, the City of David was so completely destroyed that it could not be recognized as a city. The Roman emperor Hadrian decreed that it would be used as an area where the Upper City could dump trash and garbage. It continued in that condition for hundreds of years,”

“It is not likely that a fourth temple (3rd Temple being Al-Aqsa Mosque) will ever be constructed, either in the City of David or in the Haram. Israel already has diverted the water formerly used for sacrifices away from the former temple area and is making the City of David into a park. Orthodox Jews would oppose having a temple in Herod’s hated fortress. Jews had no interest in the Haram until after the Crusades, when they misunderstood that it was the Temple Mount. If the temple were ever built, it would have to be placed somewhere in the Upper City or a suburb of Jerusalem—not in its former site or in the old Roman Fortress,” wrote Dr. Buchanan.

Another interesting thing to note is the Wailing Wall is made of limestone, which was common for a Roman Fort. Herod’s Temple, however, was made of white and green marble according to the Jews and Josephus as noted in Adam Clarke’s Commentary on Matthew 24:

The Jews say the temple was built of white and green-spotted marble. See Lightfoot. Josephus says the stones were white and strong; fifty feet long, twenty-four broad, and sixteen thick. Antiq. b. 15. c. xi. See Mar 13:1.

Now notice the dimensions Josephus quoted about the stones of Fort Antonia (30 feet long, 15 feet thick, and 7 1/2 feet high) and then the dimensions of the stones in the Temple (50 feet long, 24 feet broad, and 16 feet thick). These dimensions are very different in size. The Temple stones were almost double that of the Fort, not to mention they were made of a completely different material.

Furthermore, locals found three inscriptions in honor of the Roman leaders of the war against the Jews from 66-72 A.D (Vespasian, Titus, and Silva), along with an inscription for Hadrian from the war of A.D. 132-135.  For these images to be inscribed on these stones at Temple Mount proved that it could not be the wall of the Temple since the images included the war which was responsible for the destruction of the Temple in the first place, along with a 2nd century war that happened long after the Temple had been destroyed. Prof. Buchanan stated that these were appropriate inscriptions for a Roman Fortress and were:

…impossible for a temple that had been destroyed in A.D. 70—65 years before the inscriptions had been made.

Tourist today, however, are still told that the area is Temple Mount and the place where the Last Supper was held are all in the Upper City. Christians and Jews venerate the “Wailing  Wall” as sacred. They go there to pray at the wall. Jews and Christians insert prayers written on pieces of paper into the cracks of the wall. In fact the name Wailing Wall is only a nickname for what the Jews claim to be the Western Wall of Herod’s Temple. It is called the Wailing Wall because of the crying and sorrow felt over the destruction of the Temple. But they are really praying to and crying over an ancient Fort where pagan images were venerated. And now the area is used as propaganda to annex property from Arabs/Palestinians:

Israel’s antiquities authority has been digging a tunnel from under homes in the Arab East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan to the Western Wall Plaza. According to a recent “60 Minutes” interview, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat wants to create King’s Garden, a Bible-themed tourist park “adjacent to the City of David,” which requires demolishing 22 Arab homes in Silwan. The purpose of archeology is to provide archeological insights, of course, but excavations between the City of David and the old Roman fortress (the Haram) also have an anti-Arab political agenda.

While Christians in America are mislead:

Because innocent Evangelical Christians in America, under the guidance of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and John Hagee, have not been informed of these facts, they have thought there was some biblical or religious reason why it was necessary to destroy Islam’s third most sacred building in the world…. It is my hope that, once Christians learn of this mistake, they will stop following Mars and Phineas (Num 25; Ps 106:30-31) and work as zealously for peace, following the teachings of Abraham, the 8th century prophets (Mica 6:8), Jesus, and Paul…… This would make a tremendous difference to Jerusalem—and to the world.- Misunderstandings About Jerusalem’s Temple Mount By George Wesley Buchanan

Prof. Martin states in his book, ‘The Temples that Jerusalem Forgot’, that the Jews did not claim today’s Temple Mount as the location of the Solomon and Herod’s Temple until about 350 years ago:

…it was finally selected by the Jewish authorities only about 350 years ago and that wall had nothing to do with the Holy of Holies. Indeed, no Jew in history before the sixteenth century thought that outer Western Wall of the Haram esh-Sharif was holy and important. – The Strange Story of  the False Wailing Wall By Ernest L. Martin, PH. D., July 2000

In fact, the area was once a sacred Christian site,  not because the Temple was located there, but rather because a monastery was located in the area. However, Muslims, lying that the site was used as a dump by Christians to antagonize the Jews and Muslims,  took it over and are the first to claim it was Temple Mount.

The Jewish authorities in Jerusalem did not at first accept the site of the Christian dump as having any Jewish significance. It was only after the Muslims decided to clean up the area that some Jews became interested in the place of the later Wailing Wall.

The Jews continued to reject the site of the wailing wall for centuries and never made mention of any location of the Temple. This all changed according to Dr. Martin in the 16th century when a Kabbalah practicing Rabbi named,Isaac Luria,  claimed that the Wailing Wall was temple mount:

That Rabbi was Isaac Luria (referred to as Ha-Ari, “the Lion”), the creator of what became known as the Lurianic Kabbalah. Indeed, the Jews from the time of Benjamin of Tudela (1069 C.E.) until the rise of the Ottoman Empire (1517 C.E.) showed not the slightest attention to this formerly Christian part of the Western Wall as a place holy and sanctified to them. It was a Christian holy spot for many years. Then it was cleaned up by the Muslims to become a holy site to them. And eventually, the Jewish authorities felt it was also proper for them to recognize it – but they were the last to do so in Jerusalem.

…at the beginning of the Ottoman rule, it was common knowledge both by Muslims and Jews that the former Temple was then recognized as being near or at the site of the Dome of the Rock. There is not one mention of the importance of the “Wailing Wall” that was located at the Western Wall of the Haram esh-Sharif in these early records. However, this was soon to change. A most eminent individual arrived on the historical scene who was to drastically alter the beliefs of the Jews — almost to a man, woman and child. This was Rabbi Isaac Luria. With the advent of Rabbi Isaac Luria around 1570 C.E., the “Wailing Wall” became a prominent holy fixture among Jews. This was because of the influence of Rabbi Luria. He was a most powerful mystic and religious leader among the Jews. The historical records reveal that it was Rabbi Luria who selected the former Christian holy site at what became the Wailing Wall. What this all shows is that not only Jews by this time did not know the precise area of the Temple site, but they and the Muslim Turks were now relying on a Christian traditional site to locate it for them. And what tradition did they select? It was a very negative and hostile Christian tradition that was designed to antagonize the beliefs of Jews and Muslims. Still, the Jews and Muslims reasoned that IF the Christians had for a long time cast garbage at the site where the Wailing Wall was finally selected (and the heap of rubbish had grown so high that the bottom of the pile had turned back into soil), then surely THE CHRISTIANS MUST BE RIGHT. This was Jewish and Muslim reasoning at the time. After all, the Jews and Muslim authorities readily admitted that no one of them knew the precise spot where the Holy of Holies had once been located. The actions of the Christians regarding the place of their “religious dump” impressed the Jews and Muslims.

 

What is interesting is the fact that there is still not a scholar today (whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian) who can inform any person dogmatically where the Holy of Holies was even at this start of the twenty-first century. All scholars and religious authorities are still in the dark regarding what they consider to be the exact spot for the Temple within the area of the Haram. The fact is, however, they are all looking in the wrong place. The Haram esh-Sharif (as I have adequately proved) is the military camp of Fort Antonia. The actual Temples of God were located 1000 feet further SOUTH from the Dome of the Rock and 600 feet SOUTH of the southern wall of the Haram esh-Sharif.

Interesting to note is the fact that the Jews before this time held another site to be the location of the Temple:

Up to the time of Rabbi Isaac Luria (who was born in Jerusalem 1534 and died 1572 C.E.), the Jewish custom (for almost the previous 400 years) was to assemble at the Eastern Wall at the Gate of Mercy (or, on the Mount of Olives) and pray westward toward the Dome of the Rock. They adored a balustrade they thought was the Western Wall of the Holy of Holies. But Rabbi Luria changed this. I will now show what prompted this action of acceptance. What the Jewish authorities did was to heed the words of Luria and from then on they began to assemble (as they do now) at their new “Western Wall.”

This is significant for anyone who wants to claim that the Jews would know the location of their temple and thus we should not question the wailing wall today, because this shows that the earlier Jews held another location as sacred up until the time of Rabbi Isaac. And as for Isaac, he was not a traditional Torah keeping Jew, but rather was a paganistic Rabbi of which the Old Testament Law spoke out against any Jew who adopted practices from the heathens:

In the middle of the sixteenth century, practically the whole of the Jewish people went over to a belief in the philosophies of a man named Rabbi Isaac Luria. He was the person who established what is called Lurianic Kabbala (a form of mystic Gnosticism) that led people into doctrines that were as foreign to Moses, Isaiah and Ezra as anyone could get (and this also includes the teachings of those Jews who wrote the Talmuds and other writings up the about the thirteenth century).

Rabbi Luria promoted as a prime doctrine that it was normal for the people who lived in one generation to appear after their deaths as other persons in the next generation (and his teaching did not require a resurrection from the dead, as Scripture demands). In other words, Luria believed and taught Reincarnation (Metempsychosis). And the whole of the Jewish nation at the time went over to believing his strange and anti-biblical teachings (while they continued to keep the Sabbath, food laws and other external rituals that identified the people as still being Jews). Note what the Encyclopedia of Religion has to relate about the influence of Luria.

“LURIA, ISAAC (1534-1572), known also by the acronym [A’RiY, that is, Ha-Ari (ha-Elohi Rabbi Yitshaq, “the godly Rabbi Isaac”); Jewish mystic. Isaac Luria was the preeminent Kabbalist of Safed, a small town in the Galilee where a remarkable renaissance of Jewish mystical life took place in the sixteenth century. Not only did Luria’s original mythological system and innovative ritual practices achieve great popularity in Safed itself; they also exerted profound influence upon virtually all subsequent Jewish mystical creativity. By the middle of the seventeenth century, Lurianic theology and ritual practices had permeated much of the Jewish world. It has been observed that Lurianism was the last premodern theological system to enjoy such widespread acceptance within Judaism” (Vol.9, pp.54,55). Luria even adopted some theological teachings similar to Christian belief in the Trinity (that God is found to be One God manifested in Three Persons). Luria went even further. He used the same principle of interpretation of the early Christians, but he devised “ten different manifestations of God” (that he called Sefirot) that were supposed to represent “one” God. Luria’s top and foremost manifestation of his plural “Godhead” was a “Non-being” never known by Moses or the Prophets, or those Sages of the Talmuds. He called his final manifestation of the Deity as Ein Sof which means in Hebrew “No End” (or, simply, “the End is Nothing” or “Nothing is the End”) which is another way of saying in a philosophical sense “there is NO definable God” (or, all that there is in the Universe is NOTHING – or that God is a “God” who is in exile or in hiding). This was another way of teaching there is “no God” in the final analysis of things. In a word, it is a teaching advocating atheism.

Surely God would not rely on such a paganistic Rabbi whose doctrine leads others to atheistic thoughts to find the location of the Temple.

For further information see the link above in which Prof. Martin also details from Jewish accounts how the “Wailing Wall” was “discovered” in the 16th century in a trash pile of garbage from Christians who threw trash on the site because it was once the location of the Jewish Temple. Note as well the supposed Antisemitism and Islamaphobia from Christian’s who are throwing garbage there on purpose because of something that was once “Jewish”, showing how outlandish this tale is and how it was reported in the 17th century (at the early roots of Zionism) for political gain and purposes only.

Conclusion

The Wailing Wall in Jerusalem is a slap in the face to real Christians. Not only does its existence as the claimed remains of Herod’s Temple contradict Jesus’ words that the Temple would no longer stand, but it also is used as propaganda to steal money and gain sympathy from Christians who believe that this is a shared sacred site for Christians and Jews. Zionist Christians then send millions of dollars to Israel through donations to ministers such as John Hagee or organizations such as the Temple Institute for the rebuilding of the Temple which is nothing more than an ancient Roman Fortress, a pagan idol that the Bible condemned. So to all of the Christians who are waiting for a Third Temple to be built on this site, you are in a bit of a fix.

In all reality and Biblically speaking, the Third Temple already exists. When Jesus said, “Destroy this temple [speaking of the physical temple], and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19) He did. It’s not a physical temple as Solomon’s was, but the Third Temple, as John continues to pen, is the “temple of His body” (John 2:21). And what is the body of Christ? The Church.

The Third Temple already exists among the people of God. The Temple was built for a place for the Spirit of God to dwell, but now Christ has defeated death and sent the Helper, that is the Holy Spirit, which dwells within us, the believers. Peter makes it so clear when he writes, “you [the believer] also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

We are the temple. It is a living temple where we can offer up the spiritual sacrifices that God desires: “For if You desired sacrifice, I would give it; You will not be pleased with whole burnt offerings. A sacrifice to God is a broken spirit, a broken and humbled heart God will not despise” (Psalm 50:19-20 (LXXE) Psalm 51 in modern Bibles).

To build a physical temple and begin to offer sacrifices as in the Old Testament is to deny the work that has been accomplished through Jesus Christ. And it is to deny what God truly desires when speaking of sacrifice. What good is offering a physical burnt offering? It could never achieve anything anyway: “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins…Previously saying, ‘Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin You did not desire, nor had pleasure in them’ (which are offered according to the law), then He said, ‘Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God.’ He takes away the first that He may establish the second” (Hebrews 10:4, 8, 9).

Through Jesus Christ, the whole of the Temple rituals have been done away with. God’s desire is that we do His will. That is to serve Him wholly. To love Him and to love our neighbor. Not to burn animals on an altar in a physical temple that has been built by man.