For hundreds of years it’s been received opinion in the West that the “Wailing Wall” where Rabbis come to pray with the swaying characteristic of traditional “davening” is indeed the site of the ancient temple of the Israelite kingdom.
Thus Aish.com:
“The Western Wall is a surviving remnant of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE.”
A central tenet of the Zionist ideology is that the Muslim place of worship that currently stands there, the Al Aqsa mosque, must be removed so that the future third temple can be rebuilt and the priestly sacrifices of ancient Israel restored.
It is an extraordinarily powerful belief, to which millions of Christian Zionists also subscribe.
In the end-times theology of many of these Christians, it is not until the temple is rebuilt that Christ can come again.
It is within the temple that Anti-Christ, according to these theologies, will enthrone himself, before demanding that the world submit to him.
But, the strange thing is the “Wailing Wall” is neither a remnant of the destroyed Jewish temple, nor its site.
It is, instead, the remnant of a Roman fort, Fort Antonia, where Roman troops were garrisoned to subdue the rebellions of the Jews.
There is absolute proof that the present site of the Jewish “Wailing Wall” in Jerusalem is NOT any part of the Temple that existed in the time of Herod and Jesus. In fact, that particular location that the Jewish authorities have accepted represents the Western Wall of an early Roman fortress (finally built and enlarged by Herod the Great). King Herod called it Fort Antonia, after the famous Mark Anthony who lived at the end of the first century before Christ.”
and this:
But in the time of Benjamin of Tudela (1169 C.E.), some Jews decided to reposition the Temple from that southeastern section of Jerusalem up to the Dome of the Rock. They also invented a new “second” Western Wall as a part of the supposed Holy of Holies by identifying it with that ruined balustrade at the western entrance to the Dome of the Rock. During this time (in 1169 C.E. and for the next 380 years), the Jewish people paid NO ATTENTION whatever to the “Western Wall” of the Haram esh-Sharif which is now called their “Wailing Wall.” Until the 16th century of our era, that western area produced NO INTEREST in the minds of the Jewish authorities or laity. Indeed, from the Crusades until the rise of the Ottoman Empire in 1517 C.E., the Jews customarily assembled in the very opposite direction — at the EASTERN side of the Haram on the Mount of Olives (or, at the EASTERN wall itself at what they called the Gate of Mercy if the Muslim authorities would allow them to get that close).”
As the author, Dr. Ernest L. Martin, goes on to show, the adoption of the current Wailing Wall as the site of the future third temple was an early modern development stemming from the mistaken belief of Rabbi Isaac Luria.
Luria’s Kabbala mysticism was to soon become the most influential theme in Judaism over the next few centuries.
It was out of Lurianic Kabbala that the heretical teachings of Sabbatai Zevi arose in the 17th century.
Zevi is the self-styled Jewish Messiah whose descendants and followers include the Rothschilds.
So, the first point is that the Wailing Wall has nothing to do with the earlier Jewish temples.
The second point is a theological one.
The belief in a “remnant” of the temple subverts Jesus’ own prophetic words in the Gospel, fulfilled completely within a generation of his death.
“And as some spake of the temple, how it was adorned with goodly stones and gifts, he said
As for these things which ye behold, the days will come, in the which there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”
– Luke 21: 5-6, King James Version. See also Matthew 24: 1-2, KJV.
Jesus also wept over the city of Jerusalem and predicted her destruction at the same time.
In 70 AD, some thirty years after the crucifixion, both prophecies were fulfilled when the Roman army under Titus sacked and utterly destroyed the city in one of the greatest blood-baths of the ancient world.
The Christians in the city, being warned by Jesus’ prophecy, did in fact flee and save their lives.
Not so the others. The Jewish historian Josephus Flavius provides an eye-witness account:
Then, when the flames suddenly shot up from the interior, Caesar and his generals withdrew, and no one was left to prevent those outside from kindling the blaze. Thus, in defiance of Caesar’s wishes, the Temple was set on fire.
While the Temple was ablaze, the attackers plundered it, and countless people who were caught by them were slaughtered. There was no pity for age and no regard was accorded rank; children and old men, laymen and priests, alike were butchered; every class was pursued and crushed in the grip of war, whether they cried out for mercy or offered resistance.
Through the roar of the flames streaming far and wide, the groans of the falling victims were heard; such was the height of the hill and the magnitude of the blazing pile that the entire city seemed to be ablaze; and the noise – nothing more deafening and frightening could be imagined.”
Even more terrifying is this account of portents before the destruction, also by Josephus:
“A supernatural apparition was seen, too amazing to be believed. What I am now to relate would, I imagine, be dismissed as imaginary, had this not been vouched for by eyewitnesses, then followed by subsequent disasters that deserved to be thus signalized. For before sunset chariots were seen in the air over the whole country, and armed battalions speeding through the clouds and encircling the cities.” (rendered in Chilton)
The Roman historian Tacitus adds his own testimony to the paranormal phenomena:
In the sky appeared a vision of armies in conflict, of glittering armour. A sudden lightning flash from the clouds lit up the Temple. The doors of the holy place abruptly opened, a superhuman voice was heard to declare that the gods were leaving it, and in the same instant came the rushing tumult of their departure.”
In the following century, several attempts were made to rebuild the temple, with no success.
The most famous was that by Emperor Julian, called the Apostate for his adoption of paganism and his virulent hatred for Christianity. Attempting to curry favor with the Jews in his campaign against the Christians, he determined to rebuild the temple at Jerusalem.
What happened then is treated as credulous embellishment by secular historians or, at best, a strange coincidence.
Contemporary testimony, however, is unambiguous:
“But though this Alypius pushed the work on with vigor, aided by the governor of the province, terrible balls of fire kept bursting forth near the foundations of the Temple and made the place inaccessible to the workmen, some of whom were burned to death; and since in this way the element persistently repelled them, the enterprise halted.”
The “embellishments” dismissed by secular historians were the multiple accounts of the appearance of images of the cross, both in the sky and on the clothes of the builders and the spectators.
One wonders if Rabbi Luria, with his subtle powers, knew exactly what he was doing when he made his “mistake” and picked a place removed from the real site of the unfortunate temple of Herod.