Why Is the Al-Aqsa Mosque So Important?

Tom: Thanks, Gary. You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him. 

In this first segment of our program, Dave and I will be discussing his latest book Judgment Day! Islam, Israel, and the Nations, and we’re heading for the finish line as we begin the last chapter, chapter 15. And, Dave, it’s not as though we’ve been dragging our feet or anything, but since the time we started you’ve managed to complete a second edition, which is definitely an expanded version, so what have you added?

Dave: Well, Tom, this is not a newspaper, of course, or a weekly magazine, but since a number of events happened—the disengagement in Gaza, the resignation of Netanyahu, and a few other important things that happened in Israel—I thought since we’re coming out with another edition, we might as well bring it up to date, which we did. This book is probably—I don’t know, 40 or 50 pages longer than the other one. It’s getting pretty hefty now. And…

Tom: Well, it was heavy to begin with. I mean, just the title, Dave, it’s a heavy title.

Dave: Right, but we have included in addition some important appendices. We had a few before, now we have some more, and one of them pertains to an interview with an unknown someone—we cannot identify him or her—we will say, who was involved in the disengagement…

Tom: Of Gaza.

Dave: Right, of Gaza, and I think people would find it rather interesting. This person was a witness to this, and said that many of the Jews who were still in Gaza when the IDF came to take them out. Everyone was offered a very substantial amount of money, a house and so forth, if they would leave ahead of time. These people sacrificed all of that in order to stay there, because they were real Zionists. They sincerely believed that God gave them this land, which is true. They also believed, and some of the rabbis had told them, orthodox rabbis, that this would never happen, that God would not allow them to be put out of this land once they had reclaimed it. Well, that turned out not to be true, and that is causing some second thoughts among these people. After all, they only have, really, a tiny fraction of the land that God gave them, because they are under God’s judgment, although God has brought them back into the land. The Jews are in rebellion and in unbelief, and Israel itself is in rebellion when it even takes people out, when it even makes deals to give up land. And as we pointed out, that’s the basis of every so-called peace plan: “Israel give them more, give them more,” and God is angry because they are dividing His land. 

So there are some other appendices that I think are very moving and very important, so basically we’ve expanded the book. 

Also, for Christians out there, this is a very powerful testimony not only to the truth of Scripture, that the Bible is God’s Word, that the Jews are His people—I don’t see how anyone can read this and disagree. The prophecies, the prophetic proof is just overwhelming, but we also deal with, “Who is the Messiah?” And I guess we get into that in the last chapter. I did have it a little more to the front, and I felt in reading it over that I had gone a little bit too strong on identifying Jesus as Messiah too soon, because I hadn’t really given all of the evidence, all of the proof. So that’s another difference that Christians might bear in mind, because this book, hopefully, will bring many Muslims and Jewish people and Gentiles, as well, to faith in Jesus as the true Messiah, and I think the evidence is overwhelming. 

Also, we begin—the first page, I change that a bit. We may have mentioned that already on this program. I just lay it out. Let me read it, that’s the best way to do it. It’s fairly brief. 

Of course, we also have many more endorsements. We had an Israeli general, retired general, we now have an American retired Air Force general; two full colonels, Marine Corps colonels, retired. We have a former Palestinian terrorist who has endorsed the book, and so forth. So we did add some additional endorsements. 

Let me just read the first paragraph. This is p. 5, but it’s actually the beginning of the book: “The conflict between tiny Israel and the vast coalition of Arab Muslim nations arrayed against her is without question the most dangerous situation facing the world today. It is also the major subject of the Bible, in which are recorded in detail 2,000-3,000 years before they occurred, the events leading to today’s Middle East debacle. 

“Furthermore, a fact which political and religious world leaders surprisingly pay little attention, the Bible not only foretold the tragedy in detail, but declared its outcome. The consequences of this fact are logical and obvious. If the Bible is in error concerning Israel, its major subject, then all of the synagogues and Christian churches that claim to base their beliefs upon those scriptures ought to admit that fact and shut their doors. If, however, the Bible is true, then the nations of the world ought to govern their conduct accordingly, for if they do not, the consequences will be disastrous. The following pages throw out this challenge to the world.” That gives you kind of a basic idea of what this book is about.

Tom: Mm-hmm. Dave, before we start chapter 15, there’s an item in chapter 14 that we didn’t cover, and I think it’s fascinating. You point out that the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Temple Mount complicates any peaceful resolution between Jews and Muslims, but a solution could be presented, amazingly, by Muslims for Muslims.

Dave: Yeah. Well, Tom, the claim today by most Muslims is that the Dome of the Rock represents the place to which Muhammad went on his magical horse (a mule, actually, with a face like a woman), and during his night journey, and that he went from there up to heaven and talked to, you know, Jesus and the apostles, and they all recognized that he was the greatest, etc. And the verse from which they now supposedly get this is Surah 17:1, and it talks about Al-Aqsa. This is why they call the mosque up there the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Al-Aqsa in Arabic means the “farthest place of worship.” But interestingly enough, when this was built in Abd al-Malik in 692 AD, that verse was not put up there. You’ve been there, Tom, and you’ve seen the beautifully inscribed Arabic from the Qur’an and Surah 17:1, the only verse in the Qur’an that mentions Al-Aqsa, was conspicuous by its absence. Obviously, that was not why it was built. It was build by Abd al-Malik because he had been thrown out of Mecca by a rival caliph, and so he set this up in an attempt to start a new tradition, a new pilgrimage—have all the Muslims come to Jerusalem, but it didn’t go over very well. 

But anyway, he recaptured Mecca, and he abandoned this Dome of the Rock, okay? Now, they put that in. It was added not too many years ago to try to support what—I’ve tried to trace it down, I can’t be 100 percent certain—but I think this idea of Al-Aqsa, that this was Al-Aqsa, was invented by Haj Amin al-Husseini, Arafat’s terrorist great-uncle, who was the scourge of Jerusalem in the ‘20s and ‘30s. And in spite of that, Britain made him the Grand Mufti, a very interesting gentleman. We talk about him in the book, as well. He was a friend of Hitler’s, he was a friend of Himmler. 

Tom, you’ve been to Jerusalem to the Yad Vashem Museum, and there they have a telegram, a number of things from Himmler back and forth with Haj Amin, who then escaped during the war to Germany—broadcast over the radio, “Muslims, rise as one man. Kill the Jews. This pleases Allah.” And you know that Hitler gave him $500,000, I think, to help organize the anti-Israel riots and the slaughter of Jews in Palestine before he fled to Germany. And he was probably—and we pointed all of this out in the book—he was probably personally responsible for the murder of several hundred thousand Jewish inmates in some of these extermination camps, because there was a point when Hitler needed money, and he was willing to let some of these out, and it was Haj Amin who convinced him not to do that, okay? He’s a very evil man, and I think he’s the one that started this myth about Surah 17:1. And he didn’t put it up there, it was done more recently than that. 

But a very interesting interpretation of Surah 17:1 that was just put out a couple of years ago by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture—let me quote what it said in part: “This text [that is, Surah 17:1] tells us that Allah took his prophet from the Al-Haram [sacred mosque in Mecca] to the Al-Aqsa Mosque. But in Palestine, during that time, there existed no mosque that could have been the mosque most distant from Al-Haram mosque. [Of course—I’m interjecting now—of course the Dome of the Rock hadn’t even been built, and there was no mosque there at all, all right?] The Night Journey, which is called Isra, was not to Palestine, rather it was to Medina. It began at the Al-Haram Mosque, and the journey ended at the mosque of As’ad ibn Zurarah in Medina. The details of the journey of the Hijra [that’s Muhammad’s escape by night from Mecca to Medina] are the very same details of the Night Journey, the Isra, because the Night Journey of Surah 17:1 is indeed the secret Hijra.” That’s when the Islamic calendar begins. That was when he fled from Mecca to Medina. So now we have an official declaration from the Ministry of Culture in Egypt. 

Now, when the Antichrist appears and he says, “That indeed is true,” and the wording in the Hebrew in Daniel 9 is—you know, it says in the King James, “He will confirm the covenant.” Actually the Hebrew says, “He will enforce the covenant.” And I have asked so many Hebrew experts—I just asked a man from the Mossad, you know, an Israeli. He looked in the Hebrew and he said, “Absolutely. It says he will force this upon the world.” So it’s the Antichrist who will force the world to accept the temple to be rebuilt on Temple Mount. And he could very well say, “Yes, this is absolutely true, and Medina is the place,” and the Jews would be happy to help them pull that apart stone by stone and transport it to Medina, and I would say the other one has got to be moved as well. But anyway, this is where the temple belongs.

Tom: And it seems pretty straightforward, Dave, through my readings of speculations on how this would take place, how the temple would be built. You know, there have been sections of the Temple Mount that they said, “This particular point is where Abraham sacrificed Isaac,” and so on. But there is no need for that; it doesn’t have to be complicated, as you said.

Dave: Well, of course, the Muslims say Abraham sacrificed Ishmael. But I would agree that probably within the Dome of the Rock is the summit right there, and that would be where Abraham did sacrifice Isaac—well, he started to, and the Angel of the Lord, which would be Jesus, I believe, stopped him. So it’s very believable that this could happen, and in view of the wording in Daniel 9 that the Antichrist will enforce this, he will force this upon the world. But anyway, the whole world will worship Antichrist at that point. He will have such powers and so forth that I think that is probably what will happen.

Tom: Dave, chapter 15 you title “Destruction from the Almighty.” Now, before we get into the content of that chapter, let me throw you a little curve ball. You see, the chapter title implies, really, the punch line: “Destruction from the Almighty.” That is the conclusion of the previous 14 chapters. Well, what about people (and I know a number of them) whose habit it is to always read the last chapter first. Do you think that might put them off to the rest of the book? And by the way, I’m not one of those. If anything I might peruse the index first, if a book has an index, but what about it? Is that the punch line? Do they read chapter 15, and then, well, that’s it?

Dave: By the way, this book does have a very extensive index which we were very careful about so that you can look up most anything in there, and it will take you where we deal with it in the book. 

Well, Tom, I never thought of that, but this is—you know, we begin in chapter 1, where I lay it out what I just quoted. Probably in the next page we take them to Joel:3:2I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.
See All... where God says in the last days He is going to bring all nations to Jerusalem to punish them, and we’ve dealt with that before. I don’t care what country you’re in—if I’m in Brazil, people ask, “Well, is Brazil in prophecy?” And in the US, “Is America in prophecy?” Absolutely! We just cited it from Joel:3:2I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.
See All...—all nations! 

Or if you went to Zechariah 14,:1, God says, “I’m going to bring all nations against Jerusalem.” Okay, now that would almost get us into predestination and so forth, which we don’t want to get into, but He’s going to bring them there. But they are going to come because of the hardness of their hearts, because of their hatred, rebellion against Him and their hatred of the Jews. The whole world is going to join together to come against Jerusalem to effect the final solution of the Jewish problem, which Hitler wanted to effect, but he failed to do. He had identified, and we point that out in the book as well, 11 million Jews in East and West Europe. He only managed to do away with about 6 million. Okay, so all nations are going to be brought there, and that includes the United States! That includes everybody! There is no way you can escape that. God says “all nations,” He means all nations, okay? 

Now, He’s going to bring them there to punish them for two things, and we’re going back over a little something, but I’ll do it very briefly. Two things He is going to punish the world for: Number one, they scattered His people everywhere by anti-Semitism, hatred—chased them, you know, from country to country. Okay, that’s been going on for centuries, but we talk about a number of prophecies in this book that can only occur in our day, okay? Number two: He is going to punish them for dividing His land, and we document how that has been divided by the British under their mandate. They gave most of it to the Arabs; they gave most of it to Jordan, to create Jordan. And then UN Resolution 181, November 29, 1947, it’s called “The Partition of the Land,” and they made the division between Israel and the Arab nations, and then every so-called peace proposal since then is: “Israel, give them more land, give them more land.” Pressure from the United States—we just talked about the disengagement—pressure from the United States. And now Condoleezza Rice says, “Okay, you’ve gotten out of Gaza, but now what about the West Bank?” So God is angry. 

Okay, so we have warned people from about page two or three, and the title, that’s where we’re going.

Tom: Right, and then again, even if somebody has read the last chapter, “Destruction from the Almighty,” the details on how this plays out, having them be brought up to speed in today’s time with regard to everything that has to be in place, they’re not going to put themselves off, Dave, at all.

Dave: Tom, I just want to read some of the scriptures, as we close. It’s not a pleasant closing, as you said. This is on p. 363, and I’m quoting some passages from the Bible; we give you the footnote for all of them. “Howl yea,” this is from the Jewish prophets, “Howl ye, for the day of the Lord is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty.” That’s where we get the title for the last chapter. It’s a destruction from the Almighty. God is going to intervene in this earth, and He is going…Wow! His judgment will be horrible. “Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man’s heart shall melt; And they shall be afraid; pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames. Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.” I think he’s talking about the whole world. 

I’ll just jump down: “Alas, for the day of the Lord is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.” 

And we read of this is in Ezekiel 38, for example, where God says—there again He says, “I’m going to bring all nations…” and then the language becomes frightening. “This whole world will shake at my presence: every fish, every creeping thing.” God is coming back to this earth, and it’s at that point, Zechariah:12:10And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.
See All..., that Israel will recognize their God is their Messiah. It says, “They will look on me,” this is Yahweh speaking, “whom they have pierced.” Okay? A resurrected Man comes back, and He is Yahweh. 

Jesus said, “I and my Father are one.” And that is going to be the destruction of the nations that are there, thinking that they will destroy Israel.

Tom: So, Dave, we’ve got about a minute left, but just to give our listeners an idea of what we are going to be talking about, you start off by saying, “Israel will not go down to destruction without using its ultimate weapons,” meaning nuclear armed missiles. Now, how that fits in with God’s judgment, with God bringing destruction. And we are also going to talk about the battle of Armageddon, which the Bible prophesies will take place, and we’ll discuss how that’s going to develop and at what point it will take place.

Dave: You understand, we all know that Iran is developing nuclear missiles so that they can destroy Israel. That’s their purpose. This is what they say: “Wipe them off the map.” Israel cannot wait for the United States or the United Nations or anyone else. They will have to do what they did to Iraq in 1981. And I can tell you, I mean, Israel will go in and do it! And they are preparing for that, training for that right now. They are the best in the world, and Iran will not be able to stop them. They have to take matters in their own hands, and they are not going to go down at Armageddon without using their ultimate weapons either, and they’ve got plenty of weapons.