Is the Western Wall actually part of the destroyed Temple, or have world leaders been bowing before a lie? When Christian presidents and popes don kippot and approach with bowed heads, do they realize they're implicitly denying Christ's decree that not one stone would be left upon another? What if this holiest site in Rabbinic Judaism is actually just ancient landscaping built by an imposter king? And what does it say about Christianity that our leaders can't tell the difference between God's design and a sophisticated counterfeit? The Western Wall may be the perfect symbol for Rabbinic Judaism, but not for the reasons most people think.
The photos come almost weekly, it seems. If it’s not a leader from the United States, then from somewhere else, with a yarmulke on his head, shuffling in silently, head bowed, mumbling a quiet prayer. He places his hand upon the wall, closes his eyes, and appears to pray. Out of his pocket comes a piece of paper with a personal prayer written on it, and then he slips it into a crack on the wall.
The list of American leaders who’ve taken this pilgrimage to the wall is long. From presidents like Donald Trump to Senators like Lindsay Graham, from governors like Sarah Huckabee Sanders to Speaker Mike Johnson, from mayors like Eric Adams to
Supreme Court justices like Ruth Bader Ginsberg, it’s an American tradition. And America’s clergy also take the pilgrimage, from Billy Graham to Rick Warren, from Benny Hinn to Paula White, and from John Hagee to Pat Robertson, they have all donned the little hat and gone to pay their respects to the Western Wall.
The pilgrimage has been undertaken by American leaders since 1967, when Israel acquired East Jerusalem in the Six Day War. That year, the United Nations passed Resolution 242, drafted by the United States and Great Britain, which stated that Israel would give back the territory after negotiations. Israel initially accepted these terms in exchange for a right-standing with the rest of the world and promised to do so when peace negotiations ended. But when Israel eventually withdrew from other territories, like the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt and Jordanian territory, it it held on to East Jerusalem and the Western Wall location. Since then, the U.N. (including the U.S.) has accused Israel of breaking its treaty promises, but as with so many other agreements, Israel’s official narrative is that they have found a “loophole.” They claim that the agreement says they’ll withdraw, but it doesn’t say specifically that they’ll withdraw from everywhere.
Within days of taking East Jerusalem, Israel kicked all of the Palestinian residents out of their homes in what is called the Moroccan Quarter, and displaced hundreds of families (just under 700 people) in order to to renovate the wall complex. Previously, it was an otherwise unimpressive wall in a narrow alley. And with the homes razed to the ground, they turned the wall into a staging area for photographs and large public gatherings. The stage was set, at the expense of the area’s indigenous residents who had lived there for a thousand years while the Israeli’s ancestors were still getting kicked out of every country in Europe. Foreign dignitaries would be taken to the wall for a photo op, and undergo the wall ritual. And the rest is history
WHAT IS THE WESTERN WALL?
The brilliant political theater is thinly veiled in religious costuming, and the Western Wall is not as advertised. We are told that it is the holiest site in Judaism. Unfortunately, Christians don’t understand that not only have they been misled about what the wall actually is, every single American politician and Christian leader who undergoes this ritual is confessing that they don’t know the words of Christ, or they don’t believe them.
I’m going to explain why that is, but I really shouldn’t have to. Even without knowing all of the facts, a Christian should really think twice about kneeling, bowing, or prostrating themselves before the relics of a false religion. The fact that it’s a fake relic makes it even worse. And what I’m going to tell you is that despite the Western Wall not being what they claim, it ironically is most accurate representation of Rabbinic Judaism imaginable.
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The First Temple, or Solomon’s Temple, was designed by God Himself. According to the biblical account, it was built around 950 B.C. to the specifications God gave directly to David and Solomon. It is God’s house because God’s people built it and God consecrated it by dwelling there. That temple stood for about 400 years, until it was destroyed in 586 B.C.E. by the Babylonians, an event we understand theologically as God’s judgment against Israel for its centuries of infidelity and idolatry.
After seventy years, a remnant was allowed to return. Whereas the nation as a whole remained scattered, a small group came back to rebuild. It was they, the remnants of exile, who completed the Second Temple about 516 B.C., but to those who remembered, the new temple was a poor substitute for that of Solomon’s, and the Bible says they wept when they saw it, not out of happiness, but because by comparison, it looked pathetic.
In this temple, there was no Ark of the Covenant. There was no mercy seat. There was no divine fire from heaven. No Urim and Thummim. The Holy of Holies was empty. Whereas Solomon’s Temple had been defined by the visible manifestation of God’s presence, no such manifestation was seen at the dedication of the Second Temple. Haggai speaks of this temple when he asks, ‘Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory?’
This depressing “Second Temple” stood for some 500 years, until Herod the Great ordered it rebuilt. Around 19 B.C. Herod demolished it and rebuilt it from the bottom up, greatly enlarging the Temple Mount platform and surrounding the renewed sanctuary with elaborate courtyards and soaring retaining walls. His motivations were politics and legacy, not piety. Herod wanted to be remembered as a great builder and to win the support of his Jewish subjects, who despised him as a foreign-imposed ruler. His architects enlarged and adorned the sanctuary so that it far exceeded the earlier Second Temple in physical grandeur.
But unlike the First Temple , God’s presence wasn’t there. The Holy of Holies remained empty. Herod, identified as an Edomite, was a murderer from the beginning, taking aim even at the infant Messiah. Herod built a splendid third version of the structure, the first to be constructed by someone not within the covenant. Simply put, he was a Jew in name only because as king, he was legally declared to be a Hebrew, but he wasn’t one in reality.
CHRIST’S DECREE OF DESTRUCTION
One of the things about being a Christian, is that typically you want to believe the things Jesus said. Unless, perhaps, I missed something in Sunday School, I think that’s how it’s supposed to work. And Jesus had severa prophecies about the temple that are important to consider. When he gave them, he spoke openly and without parables or riddles so that his audience would not miss the point.
As the crowed was admiring the temple structure - which was practically brand-spanking new after its latest completion - and Jesus prophesied exactly what was going to happen to it. In Matthew 24:2 Jesus said…
“See ye not all these things? there shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”.
And again in Mark 13:2, Jesus said, “Not one stone will be left on another; all will be thrown down.” Luke used almost the same word, “As for these things which you see, the days will come when there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down” (Luke 21: 6).
This wasn’t hyperbole. This wasn’t exaggeration for effect. Calling it a prophecy is somewhat of an understatement. Jesus wasn’t clairvoyant. Jesus was God in the flesh, so He didn’t merely prophesy, He gave a decree. Those words were uttered by the Son of God, who cannot lie, so His listeners were obliged to believe it from the moment that it escaped his lips. And it wasn’t too terribly wrong before Jesus’ words rang true.
The Romans then destroyed Jerusalem in 70 A.D., fulfilling Christ’s words with brutal precision. Josephus, the Jewish historian and eyewitness to the event, recorded the astonishing fact that the conquerors who razed the Temple to the ground left so little behind that another observer of the scene could scarcely have guessed that the area had once been the site of a great city. Not a single stone had been left standing. Just like Jesus had said.
So if the Temple was destroyed without one brick left upon another, what’s the Western, or Wailing Wall?
WHAT IS THE WESTERN WALL?
The Western Wall is a retaining wall, built as a landscaping and anti-erosion tool used when Herod expanded the complex. Not only is the wailing wall not the special, dedicated temple of Solomon, nor even the Second Temple later built by Ezra, it’s just a mundane, thoroughly uninteresting terraforming mechanism. It’s no more sacred than an ancient horse stable.
And Herod wasn’t exactly covenant Israel. He was an Idumaean, or Edomite, a descendant of Esau. Having secured his throne, Herod “the Great,” as he is incorrectly known to posterity, attempted to kill the baby Jesus. He’s also the man who rebuilt (and in the process transformed) what is known as Herod’s Temple.
Christians who visit the wall and accept the narrative that it is a remnant of the Temple are presented with a conundrum. Their belief would, in effect, be a denial of Christ’s prophetic decree. That’s not a small theological problem. That is, in essence, calling Christ a liar and pronouncing his prophecies false.
In reality the Western Wall is a façade, a brash construction thrown up by a trickster trying to pass itself off as something grander. It’s no more holy than the foundation of a 1st Century manicurist hut.
The theological irony is rich. The Temple Mount that the Israelis offer the world as the emblem of Rabbinic Judaism is a site that no Moses, David, Solomon or post-exilic remnant ever built. Herod was a man who later tried to kill the Messiah. The practice of shoving prayers into the walls’s cracks is because of the Rabbinic claim the Holy Ghost still lives there, which we know from Christ, isn’t where the Spirit of God is hanging out. And when Christ came and fulfilled the law and the prophets, He became the final sacrifice, rent the veil, and opened direct access to God, at which point the whole purpose of the Old Testament religion was accomplished.
Just as the Western Wall pretends to be the Temple, Rabbinic Judaism pretends to be the religion of Moses and Abraham. But the Talmud isn’t the Torah, and Rabbinical authority isn’t Mosaic authority.
Most gentiles, including most Christian leaders, miss the difference. It’s an old, archaic wall, therefore it must be a relic of the Temple. They see Jews praying at the wall and assume that they represent an authentic continuation of Old Testament religion. They don’t know enough about Scripture and history even to spot the forgery. But by participating in the charade at the wall, they are tacitly subscribing to theological claims that go against what Christ and His own prophetic words.
THE HUMILIATION RITUAL DECODED
When political leaders are trotted out before the Western Wall they are required to wear a kippah, and are instructed to keep it within sight at all times. They are asked to approach with their heads bowed and at a crouch. Sometimes they kneel or genuflect before the wall. They’re told to touch the stones, and let their hands remain there, and to stroke the wall beneath their fingers, to lightly caress it. And then, they put their prayers written on paper into the wall itself, as though the wall can grant their wishes. The entire performance signals a kind of religious submission to the Talmud’s theological claims.
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