Rabbi Interrupts Netanyahu's Speech to Call for the Building of the Third Temple

While speaking recently of the importance of Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was interrupted by Rabbi Yehuda Glick to call for the building of the Third Temple. At the Kohelet Policy Forum on January 8, Netanyahu said, “If Israel is not present on the hills of Judea and Samaria, Islamists will take over instead.” Rabbi Yehudu Glick immediately yelled, “Same with the Temple Mount!” (“Rabbi Glick,” Breaking Israel News, Jan. 8, 2020). Glick told the media afterward that they must keep the idea of the Third Temple alive. “You have to keep saying it. If you don’t say it, you’ll forget it.” Glick, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, survived an attempted assassination in 2014 when he was shot four times in the chest by Muslim terrorist Mutaz Hijazi. Hijazi, a member of the Islamic Jihad who had spent 11 years in Israeli prisons, was killed four days later in a shoot out with Israeli police. Glick is the author of Arise and Ascend, a guidebook for Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount. He is associated with the Temple Mount Faithful, which is one of the organizations preparing to build the next temple. In an interview in 2015, Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, head of the Temple Institute, said that all of the materials for the operation of the temple are “all ready in crates in the basement, so that when we reach Jerusalem there will be trucks that unload everything, and we can get to work” (“Ariel’s Jerusalem,” Arutz Sheva, May 7, 2015). In Jewish tradition, the rebuilding of the temple is associated with the coming of the Messiah. According to Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides or Rambam) (1135-1204), one of the highest rabbinical authorities, any Jew of the family of David that starts rebuilding the temple is a potential Messiah. Maimonides was looking for a Messiah who would rebuild the temple “on its original site.” Other rabbis have broadened this so that it is not necessarily required that the temple builder be of the lineage of David. Shimon ben Kosiba was considered a Messiah in the second century when he led a revolt to recapture Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. He was named Bar Kokhba (“Son of the Star”) based on the Messianic prophecy of Numbers 24:17, and a coin was struck depicting the temple with the ark of the covenant inside and the Messianic star on the roof. By this tradition, it is simple to see how the Antichrist or his false prophet will be looked upon as the Messiah. Israeli tour guides, though most of them are “secular Jews” as opposed to “religious,” talk about the coming of the Messiah from the Mount of Olives. One told us in 2019, “You Christians are looking for the Messiah to come again, and we are looking for him to come. It is a difference of only one word. We are all looking for him to come to the Mount of Olives.” The Jews in Israel are primed to accept a Messiah who comes from the Mount of Olives and establishes peace between Israel and her neighbors and announces the rebuilding of the temple. The Antichrist described in Bible prophecy will fit this bill with perfection. Probably he will come across to Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives to make this point. (For more on the Third Temple building preparations see Jews in Fighter Jets: Israel Past, Present, and Future , available from Way of Life Literature, www.wayoflife.org.)

(Friday Church News Notes, January 17, 2020, www.wayoflife.org [email protected], 866-295-4143) 

---