Bible Backgrounds/Church History 2012
Vern Peterman · Apr 15, 2012
Bible Bkgds/Church History, No. 16
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926310534894

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We've got, this time, Persian culture. And as some of you may have caught on to, I sent out an email. We'll try to catch up with some other questions and topics along with that. So, anyway, Persian culture. We'll start with this map of Assyria, which we've presented before, but you don't have it in today's handout. The Assyrian Empire was an important backdrop, followed by the Babylonian Empire, and the Persians took over that. So here is the map of the Persian culture.

You do have this on the last page, color handout, should be on the top. And what we've done here is, though it's not identical and straight up and down, you also have a map on the bottom that's the current day political lines, so that you can make some comparison. It's also on roughly the same scale, so you can look at that and compare.

Here is Babylon, which is where the Jews were initially taken, and then you see three capitals of the Persian Empire at different points, Susa, Persepolis, and Pisargidae. On yours, I just put a line underneath it rather than a box. But those three were at various times capitals of the Persian Empire. In great part, Iran today is kind of the seat of the old Persian Empire. As a matter of fact, we have a neighbor who's Iranian and they refer to this. So, yes? Do you remember, for chance, what the parallel reading of this map is? What do you say? He's a map man. Yes. No. Oh, I don't know those figures offhand. Sorry about that.

Yeah, well, just in terms of the equator, what you have here, it's basically a warm environment except for up in the mountainous areas. And here you have Ethiopia, which not this last time, but the prior time I stopped in Ethiopia and spent an unexpected night there. And right below that down here at Uganda is where the equator The equatorial line is about in here. Fairly warm country. Pretty warm country in great part. Except for some of the mountainous areas. You do have some pretty tall mountains up in some of this area and up in here. You have this on the top of page one. Stan?

Did you say that the city of Pamelonia is Mosul today? No, let me go back to that. Here, Nineveh is Mosul. Nineveh is Mosul. What is the equivalent of Babylon? Babylon does not have an adjacent city, a major city to it, next to it, but it is near and south of... Baghdad. Yeah, Baghdad. 30 miles. Yes. Saddam Hussein had done some effort to try to reconstruct Babylon and we looked at that last week. So here's Babylon, Baghdad's up in this area here.

Now here is the divided kingdom and we've shown this diagram before just to show here's Assyria conquers Israel and then Babylon takes over and conquers Judah. And then the time period we're talking about here is at the end of the Old Testament period and then extended beyond it.

We'll take a little more look at the details there. But it's right at the end of that biblical Old Testament period and into the time between the Testaments. Yeah? How do you figure out what the close of the Old Testament Basically, it's about 430 is the last of it.

And Malachi, the last book, is in that period of time. You also have some other prophets. For example, Haggai writes in here to get them to motivate, to get the temple finished. So you have some Old Testament prophets in this period of time. And then Malachi, the last one, is among the last of those writing during this period of time.

Does that answer your question? Yeah, okay. Here, and you have this on page one of the handout here, here are the four empires that are between the Testaments. You have the end of the Persian Empire, which we're of course covering today, And then following that, the Greek empires, which we'll look at next.

And then the Hasmonean rulers, that's basically Jewish self-rule. It's basically an agreement with the Greeks. Look, we're going to rule ourselves, and you're not going to mess with us, right? Because the Jews had gone back and forth between the two Greek empires a dozen times, and they were getting sick of it. Yes? It's the period right after that. Here's the Greek empires.

Here's Alexander, he goes and conquers aggressively and does all this. Phenomenal impact, but he had no plan for succession. He was asked as he was dying, and it's a question whether he died of malaria or alcoholism, He was asked as he was dying, you know, who takes over? And he says, the strongest.

Yes. So is that, did the Maccabees then precede the Hasmonean period? No, the Maccabees you're talking about is here. And the Maccabees is a parallel term because the Maccabees is a military term, okay? whereas the Hasmoneans are a political term. That's the difference there. So you'll hear about the Maccabees, and in fact the Apocrypha has first and second Maccabees in it. You'll hear about the Maccabees who are a military group among the Jews, and the Hasmoneans are the political group. Okay.

Now, getting back on track with our Persians here, Here we have this dust book of Zarathustra, which is actually a title of a writing by Friedrich Nietzsche, but this comes from the Zoroastrians. The Avestia is the holy book of the adherents of Zarathustra known as Zoroastrians. Interestingly, there are Zoroastrian congregations still around the world. They are greatly persecuted in Iran, but there are some in the United States. and in Australia.

They're dwindling, but they're still around. Ahura Mazda is the supreme god who is helped by benevolent acts of the adherents in worshiping fire, which they still do. They'll have fire altars and everybody, you know, worships around these fire altars, even now. And this was the symbol of Ahura Mazda Ahura Mazda was not the only god, but the supreme god. So there's still polytheism with a focus upon Ahura Mazda as the supreme god.

Now this is important. One of the key precepts of Zoroastrianism was not to force people to leave their homeland. So here are the Assyrians, and the Babylonians, and what do they do? They force people to leave their homeland. Both of them. Both of the prior empires forced people to leave their homeland.

So in order to restore the Jews back to their land, God brings in the next people who believe, it's like we have a doctrinal statement, right? In Zoroastrianism, one of the doctrinal points is you don't take people from their homeland. And so what do you do to fix that? You restore them to their homeland. Isn't that interesting? I think so too.

We showed this chart last time, so I won't belabor it, but just a comparison between the Babylonian and Persian Empire. The Babylonians worshipped lions, the Persian Empire worshipped fire, part of Zoroastrianism. The Babylonians punished with fire, Daniel chapter 3, and so the Persians, because they didn't care about lions, punished with lions.

And in the Babylonian Empire, the ruler could change their decisions, put them in the fire, no, take them back out. But the ruler could not change the decisions, which is why the Persian ruler was sorrowful that Daniel was going into the lion's den. He didn't want that, but according to the laws of the Persians, could not change it. So Daniel had to spend the night before he could be pulled out. It is a religious group.

It was the religion of the Medes and the Persians and it controlled their restoring the Jews back to their land as well as a great many other people and we'll see that in just a minute. Because the Assyrians and the Babylonians had relocated lots of people The Persians not forcefully, but as a matter of making it available, allowed people to go back and sent out edicts and even provided funding for them to go back to their land and rebuild their temples and rebuild the city walls, etc. And here's the bottom of the color page here. Pasarchidae and later Persepolis and Susa were the capitals of the Persian Empire. So you see that centered in Iran and then right close to the border there with Iraq is Susa. And then this has the modern lines so that you can make some comparison with the current national boundaries. Here is Persepolis, so you can see there's quite a bit of it still recognizable.

The archaeologists have done a good job of excavating and leaving things to some degree in place. Pasargadae here, and here is the tomb of Cyrus, the one that is mentioned in the Bible. So there's Cyrus' tomb. And then the next one is Sousa, and we'll revisit these names, especially Sousa. So here are the foundations at Sousa.

Here is one of the reliefs with some coloration. I suppose you could actually go back and recolor it photographically fairly easily, but one of the reliefs there. Now right here, are the foundations at Susa again, but there's a reason why I'm showing this particular shot, because right there, as the archaeologists dug down into that spot, they found a document.

And you have a kind of a black and white copy of it on your handout there on page one. This is the cuneiform text recording the actions and decisions of Darius. So very interesting that right at that spot, right there, they found that. And of course, previously we had, here's the alphabet, the cuneiform alphabet, so you could actually go back and reassemble what that sounded like. And on page two, here is the contents of that document.

And basically what he says is, you know, I built these palaces and I got this material here and these labors here and gives credit to Ahura Mazda, the Zoroastrian chief deity. Now, here's the philosophy of empire kind of chart that we've been using, and so we'll step through it. It continues to be very valuable as we look at what is the impact in scripture, right? The first one we looked at is Egypt, where the philosophy of empire was capture is needed for slaves and defense, but they're not looking at expanding the empire particularly, just Let's keep our boundaries and keep our approach to life.

But the Jews were held as captive slaves in Egypt for 430 years. Next, we said there was Assyria where you relocate portions of captured people randomly, you scramble them, you put them in different places. So the Jews, when they were relocated, were not all put in the same place, but they were put in different places. And some other people from other locations, and we know where they came from, were put in Samaria. And so on into New Testament times, you had an impact from that. So the Jews were exiled and the Samaritans were a mixture of Jews and Gentiles.

The Babylonians, rather than having a random scrambling, they said, we're bringing everybody, starting with royalty, to the area around Babylon. We want them close. We'll keep an eye on them. That was their approach. So Judah, starting with royalty, including Daniel and his friends, carried off to Babylon. We said Assyria and Babylon were the closest of these empires in terms of their general approach.

Doesn't mean identical, but one of the things, for example, is relocating. They didn't relocate identically in the way that they carried it out, but generally their approach was relocate people. With Persia, we now have a different support the present culture, but require payment. And along with that, give people the opportunity, even financially supported, to go back home and to rebuild.

So that's how God used these pagan people to restore Israel back to their land and to rebuild the temple, the one that Jesus walked in, and to rebuild the walls and the gates. So the Jews returned to Israel in several waves, and we'll talk about what those waves are here in a little bit. Are we doing okay so far?

So those empires, looking at the philosophy of empire, every one of them had an impact on what we see in Scripture. And that's why it's valuable for us to go over the background as we say, okay, that makes sense, we know why Ezra was sent back, and Nehemiah was sent back, and why things happen the way they did in the Bible. Who would the Persian kings be that we could relate to in the Bible? Oh, we'll go through that list, okay? We'll go through every single one. And right there, page 3.

And these are the ones during the end of the Old Testament period, which relates to Jack's question here. Cyrus was the one who conquered Babylon. Remember, here's Daniel, and he's there in Babylon, and he gets called in, and because of this handwriting on the wall, you know, Mene, Mene, Tekel Therese. Wade, Wade, and found wanting. He gets called in and Daniel says, your time is up. You know, this party you hold tonight, that's the last hurrah because tonight is the end of your empire.

The Persians came in that very night and Cyrus then conquered Babylon and allows the Jews to return and that's Ezra 1.1. is where that's recorded. You think of it, that is a primary doctrinal point in the Zoroastrian religion. You don't take people from their homeland. Isn't that interesting? And so that's one of the first things he wants to do when he comes and takes over from the Babylonians.

And by the way, the Babylonians and the Assyrians relocating people, that just infuriated the Persians. They were livid. They just thought that was horrible. The most disgraceful thing you could do. So they immediately sent out orders to various people, you can go back. Next was Cambyses. Now, Cambyses stopped work on the temple. But you notice something, he didn't rule for that long. It's like the Lord said, that's not going to work. So he didn't rule for that long. So then you have Darius I authorized the completion of the temple. Xerxes is the next one. Esther was his queen. The Hebrew version of that name is Ahasuerus.

This is one of those instances where in different languages the same name gets pronounced differently. Right? In different languages the same name gets pronounced differently. We have, even in English, we've got names from other languages that we pronounce differently.

We say, for example, the city in Germany, we say it is Munich. Is that how the Germans pronounce it? No. We say that this major city in Southern California is Los Angeles. Is that how it's originally called? No, it's Los Angeles. So the reality is we do the same thing. We go and change the names.

The Hebrews called Xerxes Ahasuerus. The last one in the biblical period was Artaxerxes I authorized Nehemiah to rebuild Jerusalem and its wall. The last one during the biblical period. So I hope that answers your question in a little more detail, and yours too, Winnie, right? We okay so far? Okay. Here we are now, Persian kings after the end of the Old Testament period. So this is after the Old Testament is completed. No more prophets. are sent by the Lord.

We have Xerxes II, Darius II, Artaxerxes II and III, Arsus, and now Darius III was the one who was defeated by Alexander the Great at the Battle of Arbella near Nineveh, which is modern Mosul. And that, I think, answers your question there, Stan. So Nineveh was the Assyrian capital. Mosul is the modern name.

And right near there was the Battle of Arbello where Alexander the Great pivotally defeated the Persians. You have this historical timeline, and we'll in fact refer back to this even though it's on page 3. This shows the timeline of various events, and the first one we have on the list there is 538, Cyrus decrees the return of the Jews. So that's right here in this period.

Here is what is called the Cyrus Cylinder. I don't know if it's been relocated, but I saw it at the British Museum. And the Cyrus Cylinder basically is one of those that tells people you can go back to your homeland. and gives authorization. So a very interesting way to put writings. Imagine having a book and it's this big cylinder, right? What's that made of? Oh, it's clay. It's obviously been broken and somewhat restored.

And Isaiah told of Cyrus over a century before. This is very interesting. Here is a pagan ruler, if you will, But Isaiah, over a century ahead, says, it is I who says of Cyrus, he is my shepherd. He will perform all my desire. He declares of Jerusalem, she will be built and of the temple, your foundation will be laid. Very interesting, huh?

So now, here is the part of the contents of the Cyrus cylinder. You're asking, what's it made of? This is, it's made of clay, but this is what is on it. And so you have that, at least a part of it, on page three. And so it basically talks about rebuilding the cities and people going back to their land. So I compare that to Ezra 1, 1-4, and I'll let you follow through on that if you care to. So there's Ezra 1, 1-4. So it talks about in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia. In other words, he didn't waste any time. He didn't say, you know, when will I get around to it?

The Persians were so furious with the Babylonians and the Assyrians for relocating people, they immediately sent out orders for people to go back. To them that was just like top priority. They were livid. And that's one of the reasons they would attack. This is a vile, awful thing to take people away from their homeland. So very interesting how the Lord used that.

So the first return went from Babylon, which is where the Jews were primarily relocated from the Babylonian Empire, and sent them back to their homeland. From Babylon, and again it wasn't a straight line because there's basically a bunch of desert land on the straight line, but up along the river and then down is how they went. The next one, the Temple in Jerusalem is finally completed in 515 B.C. You see that both there and on the timeline, and that's on the chart on page 3. Ahasuerus becomes king of Persia in 486, or Xerxes, right?

And here's an interesting thing. This is called the Xerxes tablet. And he writes there, a great God is Ahura Mazda, who created this earth, who created yonder sky, who created man, who created happiness for man, who made Xerxes king, one king of many, one lord of many. I am Xerxes, the great king. And by the way, what is Jesus called Jerusalem in the Sermon on the Mount? The city of the great king. Very interesting. Okay. King of kings. Ooh, that's something we've heard before, right? King of kings, king of countries containing many kinds of men. The biblical title King of Kings appears to have originated from the Gentile emperors.

We see it in several different Old Testament books there, Ezra, Ezekiel, and Daniel, and then in First Timothy, and then two places in Revelation. But essentially a lot of the great king, the king of kings, lord of lords, those are all actually terms established by these emperors of the prior empires. Esther becomes queen of Persia in 479. So you have Esther and Mordecai were in Susa, which you see on the color map there and it's, I think, underlined in your copy.

There have been several different movies made. Some of them are, I think, pretty good and especially some of them are of good movie-making quality. So, at any rate, a number of those are available and you might take a look at those. Some of them are pretty well done and I've just got a quick shot from one of them.

As a result of the Jews being preserved from destruction during that time, the time of Esther, the Jews celebrate, and they celebrated just last month, March 7th and 8th, Purim. Purim and Hanukkah are the two Jewish feasts or festivals that were not called out in the Law of Moses. The others were all called out in the Law of Moses. But Purim from the time of Esther and Hanukkah from between the Old and New Testaments, those were called out after the Law of Moses. And Hanukkah, the only reference to it is John Gospel of John 10, 22, and 23. It's not called Hanukkah, but that's basically the only biblical recognition of it.

Yes? A slight sidestep, but I can look at that fourth month and the name of it. It seems like that was inherited from a pagan past. Oh, yes. This is a lunar calendar and some of the names of the months do relate to some of the pagan names. Yeah. The reality is that there is a similarity and a connection between names, alphabets, things like that, with some of the pagan cultures. Stan? Did you put that in the dropbox by any chance? This, I don't think so, but I can certainly pass it along. Okay, that's good to hear. Yeah. Now, here's Ezra goes to Jerusalem here. So then, We have that trip, and it's basically from Babylon.

And then finally, 444, right before the end of the Old Testament period, is Nehemiah is sent. Now, earlier they had built the temple, right? Nehemiah goes back to do what? To build the walls. So he goes from Susa, which would have been the capital by that time, to rebuild the walls. That's his assignment. And so you have the temple rebuilt, and now the walls rebuilt. Because both the walls and the temple had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian emperor.

Here is an old section of the wall, likely remaining from Nehemiah's time, relocated about in here. Which, by the way, is probably fairly close to where Jesus was crucified. And fairly close to where he was placed in the tomb. But that's an old section of the wall remaining from Nehemiah's time. A lot of the wall around Jerusalem now was built during Muslim occupation.

Now, here's an aerial view of the temple area, including the temple site and the old City of David archaeological excavations. We're going to revisit this shortly. What you have here, this is the Dome of the Rock and this is another mosque just down here.

Here is the area called the Wailing Wall or the Western Wall. It's up in here. And we'll be taking a look at some other shots along areas here. This is the northern part of what is called the City of David. And portions of that have been excavated. This is from an aerial shot from 1979. So here's the western of the Wailing Wall. You can see it kind of expanded. So here is the Temple Mount with the Dome of the Rock. And then this area down below it is getting into the city of David excavations. Now, and we're going to revisit that in a minute.

God provided that one or more Jews became prominent and or revered among the pagan empires. Here's Egypt. We have Joseph, right? Joseph became second in Egypt, right? And then we have Jonah having a prominent position in Assyria. In Babylon we have Daniel and his friends, and these are the pagan names, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And then you have in Persia Daniel and Esther, Mordecai, and Nehemiah are those who became prominent politically and otherwise in those empires. Significantly, Joseph in Egypt and Daniel in Babylon were the most powerful in terms of the positions that they had.

None of them a ruler, but oftentimes having very powerful secondary positions. Yes? The cup bearer, and of course, at first hand we might think, well that, you know, holding a cup, what's that? But the cup bearer is actually someone who is responsible for the food and drink safety of the king. So it's one, you know. Yeah, yeah, you're going to eat this first, make sure this isn't poisoned. Yeah. Somebody else have their hand up? Yeah. Yes, both Joseph and Daniel had very high positions in the empires where they were located.

The Persian Empire not only impacted the end of the Old Testament, but the New Testament as well. Let's take a look at some of that. Our word paradise is from a Greek word which came to them from the Persians. Paradesos in the original Greek was a Persian word that meant pleasure garden. And so here is Jesus speaking to the thief on the cross. Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise. a Persian word originally. Isn't that interesting?

2 Corinthians 12.4 and Revelation 2.7 also contain that same word.

Those are the three times that it shows up in the New Testament. Paradesos, interestingly, was not always heavenly. It occurs 28 times in the Greek Old Testament, translated by Jewish scholars. A review of those contexts indicates the word typically refers to an earthly garden, sometimes the Garden of Eden. So the New Testament use of it as a place that's heaven is a new kind of use in great part. By New Testament times it had a different significance. How about the wise men?

It went from Persian to Greek. In Matthew 2, 1-16 we read five times about some men called in Greek the Magoi. or in English they're called the wise man or the Magi. But we have it from Herodotus and we have the book reference there, book one, histories 1.140. The Persian word for the for the Medes priestly caste was written into Greek by him as Magoi.

And it's interesting in the book of Daniel in the Greek Old Testament, Daniel is head of the Magoi. Very interesting. He is given a particular part and that may be, I think probably, but it may be, where the Magi got the idea of where he was born King of the Jews. Why would that otherwise be significant to them except for Daniel?

Here's another one, Matthew 5.41 where Jesus is speaking to the Jews.

He says, whoever forces you to go one mile, and that's milion, it's not the same as our million, milion, go with him too. A milion is a thousand paces of a Roman soldier, just short of five thousand feet. A Roman soldier could require anyone to carry his burden, one milion, This practice seems to be traceable to the Persians, who in the Persian mail system could force people to carry the royal mail for a specified distance. So the Persians started that tradition and Romans said, hey, that's a good idea. We're going to force people to carry our stuff. And so that's what they did.

And so that's why you see it incorporated into the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5. Yes. carrying Jesus' cross? Yes. It was part of the same set of rules, or as the Roman soldiers were given a set of rules, and the same set of rules would have said the Roman soldiers could force you to carry things for a mile. They could force somebody like Simon of Cyrene to carry this cross piece. It was called a petibulum. It was the cross piece. And yeah, I'm going to force you to carry this. Because that's part of our rules, I can do that. So they had a set of rules like that.

We studied, I think it was in Matthew 8, where the Roman centurion came to Jesus in Capernaum and said, you know, you can heal my, and it's often translated servant, but it could well have been a son. The word is somebody in my household. So it could well have been a son. That centurion could have forced Jesus to come to his house under the set of laws that the Romans had.

But what's interesting is he said, that's not necessary. You can heal him from here. So that's very interesting that the centurion would not only have that amount of faith, but also be that gracious when he had the legal right to force Jesus to come to his house. That's very interesting.

But you're right, Stan, that's under that set of laws that becomes apparent in a few places, and in that one case in Matthew 8, the centurion could have forced Jesus to come, but didn't. and talk about the main impacts of the Persian culture, to provide for the return of the Jews to their land and the reconstruction of Jerusalem's temple and walls as we read to the end of the Old Testament, and to provide for words and practices that would remain on into the New Testament era coming through to us via the Greek New Testament. So even though we have the New Testament written in Greek, we have Greek words and practices that were taken over from the Persians, right? So this is the end of the Persian culture. We have the Greek culture. But as I mentioned in the email that at least some of you got, I want to cover some other things. I think Stan, you had a question and I'd like to address it. The question is this.

Did the Egyptians, when the pharaoh died, practice killing the other court officials and servants in order that they would also be put into the tomb with the idea that they would all be resurrected according to their mythology. Resurrected and then the servants and court officials would be there to help the Pharaoh in the afterlife.

The answer to that is that sometimes happened. It was not prominent. In other words, they didn't regularly do that. It was a minority of the cases. But they sometimes did do that, apparently, in exactly which cases the Egyptologists will argue about. I'll let them do that. But the summary is, in a minority of cases, they did it. But it was done, just so it wasn't the majority practice. So, anyway, that's the answer to that question. I've got another question, though. Let's see, hopefully you can see this. This is the Western or Wailing Wall.

This is the edge of the Temple Mount constructed initially under Herod the Great, who wasn't all that great. Here is the Dome of the Rock, which was built centuries later by the Muslims. And so we'll take a look here. Here's the aerial view that I showed before. And what you'll find is here's the wailing wall. Here's the city of David and to the south. This temple mount here was where the temple that Jesus walked in, the temple that was rebuilt under the Persians, was located in this area.

Here is, now look right over here, see this? Here is the view of that in broad daylight. This place here is the connecting point for what was called Robinson's Arch. Yeah? Is that the same wall that Nehemiah came back to reconstruct? No, because this one here was constructed under Herod the Great some years later. Then where's Nehemiah's wall? I showed that on a previous map. Let me go back to it quickly if I can. This is Nehemiah's Wall. Here's Robinson's Arch.

This was broken down and bricked up. by the Muslims. And see this rubble down here? That's what's left over of the Romans shoving the temple building stones off of the Temple Mount. They broke the temple down entirely. As Jesus said, not one stone left upon another and this is where they dumped it. Archaeologists have gone through that but decided for the case of just being able to show people and left this remnant of those blocks.

In those stones they found one and a half of the signs that were at the entry gates of the inner temple that said Gentiles should not go past here or on penalty of death. So they found those. Those were the ones that were there when, remember when Paul went in and the rumor was that he brought a Gentile into that inner area and they had this riot start up based on the false rumor. Those were the signs that were up there that warning, you know, death penalty.

Yes. Oh, not in Hebrew, but in Greek because it wouldn't do any good to have warning signs in Hebrew, right? So yeah, it's written in Greek, but they found, there should have been three, they found one and a half of them. So some of the others must have gotten completely destroyed or not found yet.

Here is a reconstruction by the Israel Antiquities Authority funded by, excuse me, funded by them and done through UCLA. And so this is a model. Those of you who signed up for the Bible backgrounds fully loaded had the opportunity to download. They actually made movies of this. So this is Robinson's Arch. Here's the place where you saw the rubble. Let me back up. So there's where the arch connected and here's all the rubble. So the rubble was located here. Robinson's Arch included this.

And so people could come up here and then go up into the temple area. There was a roadway from where Jesus held the Last Supper going up to Robinson's Arch. a fairly direct roadway up there. And there were several different ways to get into the temple area, but this would have been the closest one. And so Jesus probably went with the disciples at numerous times from where they had the Last Supper up into the temple area using that arch.

Now, what I have here, and I don't have it in your handout, But one fellow, and feel free to take a look at it or even borrow it, one fellow who has done a lot of work on the Temple Mount and looking at the archaeology of the Temple Mount is Leon Rittmeier. And so that is his website. And he's got large maps and reconstructions and diagrams and pictures. The Temple Mount is fascinating.

There are, even today, various tunnels that go around there. There was, and the last time that I'm aware of that it was seen was in the 1800s, there was a huge water cavern underneath the Temple Mount. I mean, really huge, and why would they need a large water cavern underneath the Temple Mount?

If they're under attack, they have a place to store the water. Good, that's one. What would be another use for having a large amount of water? Purification. Yes, in other words, you look at it, and you've got all this blood and ashes and stuff like that from the sacrifices. How do you clean it up? And so that would be another reason. So whether for constant purposes at the temple or under attack, having a large amount of water underneath the temple mount would be very useful. Yes?

I don't know if this is coming to my mind, but the temple mount is supposedly where Abraham would have offered Isaac, is that it? Yes, it is where Abraham would have offered Isaac. The Muslims say that's where he offered Ishmael. It is also the place where, you know, this would have been location for Melchizedek. King of Salem, right? Jerusalem, right? King of Salem. And it would also be the place of the original Solomon's Temple on the same location. Yes. Is that also Mount Zion? Let's see, Mount Zion is actually to the north. Yeah, just a little. Let's see, I don't have a Jerusalem map in this slide set, but I could show you.

Moriah would be the name you're thinking of. So, at any rate, so Rittmeyer would be a good one. I've not met him. He is associated with Dr. Bryant Woods, who spoke here about a decade ago in this room. And the one I have below that is World of the Bible, and that's Randall Price, and I have met him.

But those are both good sources for finding information about the Temple Mount and biblical archaeology in general. Rittmeier is, I would say, probably the world's foremost authority on the structure of things in the Temple Mountain, the history of it. He was the, they called him a historical architect for the City of David excavations that took place just to the, let's see if I can find it, just right in here. So he has focused his entire career, and he's getting older now, but he's focused his entire career on the archaeology and the structure of things around the Temple Mount.

Yes? I'll ask a typical man, when Jacob saw the ladder leading to heaven, at that site, was that in that neighborhood too? I don't think so. Don't think so. Yes? Here is the, let's see, I don't have a shot of it particularly. The City of David starts in here and then continues farther down kind of off the screen, you know, farther down.

And so it was at various points within the walls. I don't think all of it's within the walls now, but it was at various points within the walls. Earlier on, what happened is the city of David was kind of the founding area, and then they built Solomon's Temple, so you had that here to the north of it. And over time, different wall constructions got built and Jerusalem got larger as well. Where Nehemiah built his wall, which is centuries after the time of David, was again in some different locations. And then the Muslims have relocated the walls all together.

Yes? to the Muslims. Was that the British that did that? When they divided up Jerusalem? They gave the land? Well, where they did the mosque and stuff? Oh, yeah. Now part of Palestine or something, right? Yeah, in other words, you look at it, what happened is, the history of this goes farther back. Muhammad died in 632, right? And supposedly, and I think this is highly contested, but supposedly, you know, this is the place that he ascended from and the place where Abraham offered up Ishmael and all that. I think it's all bogus, but that's my opinion.

So then what happened is the Muslims then came and took over as a part of their, excuse me, remember they had a three-way military assault? They went They went throughout the Middle East and then headed into Asia, to North Africa, and up into Europe. But one of the things they did once they took over this area is start building some of these structures. More recently, the Muslim group that's in charge is called the Waqf. W-A-Q-F is how they typically spell that in English.

So they're in charge of the Temple Mount now, and they don't allow Jews on the site. So, real interesting, but yeah, they control it. One of the things that has gotten a lot of negative attention is they've actually denied that the Jews ever had a temple on the Temple Mount, which is historically ridiculous. But anyway, they deny that the Jews ever had a temple, and they've actually gone in there with construction equipment and scraped off anything that might have any evidence of being Jewish.

What has happened is the stuff that they scraped off, the Jewish archaeologists are going through, they're sifting through it, and they found some very interesting things. Lots of smaller items, but nonetheless, they found some valuable things going through there. Things even relating back to the time of Manasseh. Yes?

Yeah, in other words, if you look at it, there have been two temples, Solomon's temple, and then the second temple that was built during the time of the Persians, upgraded while still active under Herod, and then destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. The Bible indicates that there will be a third temple, and then in the book of Ezekiel it describes a fourth temple. So there have been two temples, there will be two more temples. One during the Tribulation period and the one during the Millennium will be much larger. Much larger. And Ezekiel describes that actually in a fair amount of detail.

Other questions? Yeah, Stan? So it's interesting, if there's going to be a temple built during the tribulation period, and if the mosque is there now, and let's just make a supposition that the Muslims will be the one world religion along with Sharia law, so how would they ever get permission to build the temple during the tribulation period when the mosque is there and that's probably going to stay there? Yeah, it's a good question.

And this is an area that's subject to dispute. Very interesting. I have a number of pictures of the rock. Now, is this Dome of the Rock, right? Well, inside is a rock. And that's the rock, supposedly, that Abraham offered up Ishmael. But what's interesting is there is a square or rectangular indentation in the top of the rock. that is the exact dimensions of the Ark of the Covenant. Very interesting.

But, then you have some, and this is again contested, you have some who believe that the proper location for the temple is actually to the north. over here and if that is the case, and again it's contested, but if that were to be the case then you could have the Dome of the Rock and the Jewish Temple both on the Temple Mount. So that could be one of the things that the Antichrist does as far as the treaty is concerned to allow them to build their Temple at the same place where the Mosque is. Right, to allow them to build their Temple and to use it and The example of breaking a treaty during the middle of the treaty, that's what Muhammad did. He had a 10-year treaty with the leaders of the city of Mecca. Three years into the treaty, he broke it and attacked them.

So the pattern is already established. Very interesting, right? So, yeah, so it brings up some questions we don't really know the answer to definitively. I'm sure the Lord does. And people living during that time, we won't be here, will be, you know, if they're biblically aware, they will know how it works out. So, yeah, good question. We need to pray and quit. We have people ready to break down the walls here. Okay.

Lord, we thank you as we look at these things. Some fascinating questions. It is clear that you are the God of history. You are the one who manages history to the end that all things will be summed up in Christ. And we just thank you for the insights that we have here. Thank you even for the questions we don't have clear answers to yet. But we give you thanks in all things. We just pray in Jesus' name. Amen.