Deseret News staff writer Karen Boren recently attended meetings of the First Annual Temple Conference in Jerusalem.As branches on fig trees defiantly budded green during Israel's worst snowstorm in seven decades, this spring also brought stirrings of preparation for rebuilding of the Jewish Temple and the coming of the Messiah.
While four trips to Israel the past seven years have shown a movement toward such preparation, change is in the air in Jerusalem this year as never before.For example:
- Vendyl Jones, a former Baptist minister from Texas whose biblical archaeology at Qumran was the basis for the movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark," returns Friday, March 27, to the rocky hills of the Dead Sea continuing his 14-year search of the Ashes of the Red Heifer, needed to purify priests who will officiate in the temple Jews believe will be rebuilt in Jerusalem. Jones is using the text of the Copper Scroll, the only Dead Sea Scroll made of metal, as a map to discover where temple treasures may have been buried prior to the destruction of the former temple, wrought by Titus in 70 A.D.
- Followers of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, can be found at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv and on Jerusalem streets proclaiming the Messianic era, calling Jews to return to orthodoxy. Some go as far to call the 89-year-old Schneerson the Messiah.
- Gentile visitors to the Western Wall of Herod's Temple are being proselytized to become followers of B'Nai Noach - the seven Noahide Laws that place gentiles under the arm of Judaism. Women tourists at the Wall were given a pamphlet explaining that "God originally gave the seven laws to Adam, then after the Great Flood, God commanded them to Noah and his descendants (which includes everybody, even you.)" The pamphlet is identified simply "OHR Moshe" P.O. Box 500211 JERUSALEM.
This worldview was further exemplified when Jerusalem Rabbi Haim Richman answered a Christian who asked, "What will your Messiah be like?" He said, "Don't say `your' Messiah; he will be a global Messiah and will spiritually rectify all mankind."
- A conference at the Jerusalem Hilton Feb. 24-26 brought together for the first time the primary Jewish architects of a dream almost 2,000 years old - rebuilding the Jewish Temple. But the conference crossed an interfaith barrier that would have been unthinkable even 25 years ago. Jewish temple experts presented their research to a Christian group.
The meeting was convened by three Evangelical Christians. Authors and lecturers Chuck Missler and Don Stewart, and Lambert Dolphin, a world renowned expert on non-invasive archaeology and a founder of Stanford Research Institute.
Attended by 145 Christians from across the United States (including 12 Utahns), Jew and Christian alike shared their common interest in the fulfillment of the biblical prophecy of Ezekiel's temple and the coming of the Messiah.
There were archaeologists debating three possible locations of Herod's Temple. Rabbi Asher Kaufman, a name well-known to readers of Biblical Archaeology Review, and Dan Bahat, chief archaeologist for the Jerusalem region, presented compelling reasons why the ancient temple site was north of the Dome of the Rock or on the site of the Dome of the Rock. Missler, Stewart and Dolphin presented the research of Tuvia Saguiv who believes the ancient temple stood to the south of the Dome of the Rock.
The Temple Institute is another precursor of events that are yet to occur. The group is recreating the ancient implements needed for temple worship and opened its doors to show the beautifully crafted gold diadem of the High Priest, gold and silver mizrakim for the carrying of blood offerings and linen robes, woven in one piece, for temple priests to officiate in.
They are but a part of over 60 exquisitely crafted vessels the institute has recreated in preparation for the rebuilding of the temple. As to who will clear the way for the temple's reconstruction amidst the Arab-Israeli conflict surrounding Jerusalem - which is home to sacred religious spots for both groups - Rabbi Richman of the Temple Institute said, "We leave that up to God more or less or the government of Israel, whichever comes first."
And Gershon Salomon, Temple Mount Faithful leader, spoke of his mission to lay a cornerstone of the coming temple - a task that has reportedly given him the dubious honor of being the number one target on the Palestine Liberation Organization's hit list.
Salomon, who had nothing to say to any Christian until 1983 when he was introduced to researcher Lambert Dolphin, told the Temple Conference attendees, "Your existence as a group is one of the biggest signs of the period in which we are living. The period of the redemption of Israel and all the world."
Explaining his zeal and intensity to see a temple in Jerusalem again, Salomon said, "I had a dream, brothers and sisters, not to dream it but to fulfill it, to make the dream a reality. I feel we are living in a period when never before was the will of God so strong to bring his people to redemption.
"We hear the sound of the Messiah in what we hear in things in this country and in the revolution in Russia and Eastern Europe."