This article is from the May 2007 issue of the Pentecostal Herald. It briefly describes the city of Jerusalem in history (His story) and prophecy.
Jerusalem: City of Christ or Antichrist?
by Irvin Baxter
As the international community desperately tries to forge a peace agreement in the Middle East, the blockade to an agreement always boils down to the status of the city of Jerusalem.
Why? It makes no sense! Why should this small city of 724,000 people, located in a barren desert, possessing no valuable natural resources, and having no strategic military value, be the most disputed, fought-over city on the face of the earth? Why?
As of today, forty wars have been fought over possession of Jerusalem --more than have been fought over any other city on earth. What is the magnetic attraction that seems to beckon the kings of the earth to the “City of God” like the irresistible siren’s song? There is more here than meets the eye!
Moriah
It all began around 2000 BC. God had made a promise to Abraham that he would have a son. In this son, Isaac, all the nations of the world would be blessed.
However, one morning God spoke to Abraham: “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of” (
Genesis 22:2). From that day forward, Moriah was a marked mountain.
About a thousand years later, King David decided to number the children of Israel. This action angered God, causing Him to send a terrible plague upon the people of Israel --killing 70,000 men. David cried unto the Lord that the plague be stayed.
God sent the prophet Gad to King David telling him to buy the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite and to offer there a sacrifice, after which the plague would be stopped. The threshing floor of Araunah just happened to be the same Mount Moriah that God had chosen for Abraham’s sacrifice a thousand years before.
David paid six hundred shekels of gold for the place that is today called the Temple Mount. When David offered his sacrifice there, God answered from heaven by fire upon the altar of burnt offering. Seeing this, David said, “This is the house of the Lord God, and this is the altar of the burnt offering for Israel” (
1 Chronicles 22:1). Then he commanded that the house of the Lord should be built there.
God refused to allow David to build His house because he had shed much blood. God said, however, that David’s son Solomon would build the house of the Lord there on Mount Moriah --the Temple Mount.
Soon after Solomon became king, construction began: “Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem in Mount Moriah, where the Lord appeared unto David his father, in the place that David had prepared in the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite” (
2 Chronicles 3:1)
I Will Put My Name There
Solomon’s Temple was completed on the Temple Mount in 968 BC. At the Temple’s dedication, Solomon prayed his famous prayer: “If they sin against thee, (for there is no man which sinneth not), and thou be angry with them, and deliver them over before their enemies, and they carry them away captives unto a land far off or near ... if they return to thee with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their captivity, whither they have carried them captives, and pray toward their land, which thou gavest unto their fathers, and toward the city which thou hast chosen, and toward the house which I have built for thy name: then hear thou from the heavens, even from thy dwelling place, their prayer and their supplications, and maintain their cause, and forgive thy people which have sinned against thee” (
2 Chronicles 6:36, 38-39). From that time until this day, the people of Israel face toward Jerusalem and toward the Temple Mount itself when they pray.
After Solomon’s prayer of dedication, fire came from heaven and consumed the sacrifices; the glory of the Lord filled the house. (See
2 Chronicles 7:1-2). Later, “the Lord appeared to Solomon by night, and said unto him, I have heard thy prayer, and have chosen this place to myself for an house of sacrifice ... Now mine eyes shall be open, and mine ears attentive unto the prayer that is made in this place. For now have I chosen and sanctified this house, that my name may be there for ever: and mine eyes and mine heart shall be there perpetually” (
2 Chronicles 7:12-16).
Satan heard this declaration concerning the dwelling place of God’s name and said: “If God wants His name in Jerusalem, guess where I want mine.” Thus the wars over Jerusalem and the Temple Mount began.
Solomon’s Temple was completed in 968 BC and stood at the center of Jewish worship for the next four hundred years It was destroyed in 586 BC when Judah was carried away captive into Babylon for seventy years. The second Temple was built by Zerubbabel in 516 BC and continued to stand on the Temple Mount until being destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.
For the next 1,878 years, the Jewish people were sifted through the nations without a place to call home. Control of Jerusalem was passed from the Romans to the Muslims to the Christian Crusaders to the Muslims to the Holy Roman Empire to the Egyptians to the Ottoman Turks.
On November 29, 1947, the United Nations partitioned the land known as Palestine --creating a Jewish state and a Palestinian state The United nations refused to allow Israel to have its historic capital, Jerusalem, deciding to keep it for itself, declaring it an international city. Israel reluctantly accepted this arrangement, but the Arabs rejected it, launching war against the newborn state of Israel.
When hostilities finally ceased in 1949, Jerusalem was a divided city. Israel controlled West Jerusalem, while Jordan controlled east Jerusalem containing the old city and the Temple Mount. Israel declared Jerusalem its capital, but the United Nations refused to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital because it continued to claim sovereignty over the city.
After the reunification of Jerusalem by the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel annexed all of Jerusalem, declaring it the “eternal, undivided capital of the nation of Israel.” The United Nations has continued to resist Israel’s choice of Jerusalem as its capital and has asked that all embassies be located in Tel Aviv rather than in Jerusalem. The United Nations recognizes the chosen capital of every nation on earth except Jerusalem --the place where God chose to place His name.
The Antichrist Will Claim Jerusalem
The most hotly contested city on the face of the earth today is Jerusalem. Israel says she will never surrender it. The Palestinians say it must be the capital of their yet-to-be-formed state. And the United Nations still claims jurisdiction over the holy city.
As the international community desperately tries to forge a peace agreement in the Middle East, the blockade to an agreement always boils down to the status of Jerusalem. Paul said that the Antichrist will stand on the Temple Mount claiming ultimate authority there. “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God” (
2 Thessalonians 2:3-4).
According to Scripture the world’s last war (Armageddon) will be fought over control of Jerusalem. It is described by Zechariah, “For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city” (
Zechariah 14:2). The world community is going to come against the nation of Israel.
Zechariah prophesied the way this last battle will turn out: “Then shall the Lord go forth and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east ... and the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with thee. ...And the Lord shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one Lord, and his name one” (
Zechariah 14:3-9).
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