Dear Friends

One of the principal issues that the Lord has laid upon my heart is to warn and speak out against the evil of the establishment of a Palestinian State. This state would bring to an end the all-embracing purposes of God in relation to his plan and future for Israel.

If it is true, as we can read in Ezekiel 43:2,4,5 and in 2 Thess. 2:1-4, that the Lord will not be able to come in glory and majesty before the erection of a third Jewish Temple, then clearly the devil will do all that is in his power to stop this Temple from being built.

I think it is safe to say that no one among the real believers and children of God in the world believes that the Lord will come to a mosque. For it does not say He will come through the East Gate of the Dome of the Rock, but through the Eastern Gate of a house, God's Temple, that has not yet been built.

And even though, according to 2 Thessalonians, the man of sin will make a short and devastating dash for this temple, even there it is still called "the temple of God." It is not, as so many Christians are taught, "the temple of Antichrist."

When, some years ago, the booklet was published "88 reasons why the Lord will return to the earth this year" -- by Rosh Hashanah 1988 -- I said that, living in Jerusalem, I needed only to look at the Temple Mount and at the mosques standing there, with no sign of any temple, to know that my Lord could not yet come.

It is therefore quite significant, that at the very end of chapters 40-48, after he describes this holy and magnificent Temple in the most glorious and detailed way, the prophet Ezekiel concludes with the beautiful and emphatic statement:

...and from henceforth the name of the city (of Jerusalem) shall be called: "The lord dwells there".

In other words, only after the Temple has been built will Jerusalem become the residence of the King of kings, the President of presidents, the Prime Minister of prime ministers.

If this is so, then it is quite understandable - very understandable - why the Evil One is doing everything in his power to thwart this plan by asking, through the pressures of the nations of the world, for a Palestinian State that will in all likelihood bring the Temple Mount - now sporting four mosques and a part of the old Arab side of the city of Jerusalem - in the possession of this Arab Muslim entity called Palestine. If this state comes about, it will preclude any possibility of the Jews ever again being allowed to build the Temple as they have been biblically instructed to do.

For anyone who knows His Bible, not only is it absolutely against God's will and purpose to divide the land He has given in its entirety as an everlasting possession to one people, (not to two) - see also God's warning in Joel 3:2 of judgment on the nations that do so - but in that land the Temple Mount - or as it is also called: "God's holy hill" - is by far the most important place or piece of real estate in the world! It is the place where God's very destiny with His people and their land and city will fulminate, as all the prophets have foreseen. To see this 'holy hill of the Lord' become part of the capital of a Palestinian Muslim state would be an enormous victory indeed for the Evil One.

How does most of the Church sleep through this, unaware of the enormous, enormous battle Israel is facing, among all the other battles, specifically on this issue? The question of the Temple Mount was the sticking point in the meetings in Camp David between Arafat and Prime Minister Ehud Barak during the last months of the Clinton administration! Arafat walked out from these meetings in the end because he wanted, he demanded, the possession of all the Temple Mount.

It is as the Psalmist puts in writing concerning the ultimate spiritual significance of this hill:

"Why do the gentiles rage and the people imagine a vain thing? ...
He Who sits in heavens shall laugh; the LORD shall hold them in derision ...
(and say): 'Yet have I set My king upon My Holy Hill!"

This is what the devil is so afraid of - because he knows that
"When the Lord shall build up Zion, He shall appear in His glory."
(Psalm 102:16)

God requires the restoration of Zion, of His house, before He can come and save this world from itself. This is what the devil knows, and this is why he has all the nations of the world already agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state that will grab this hill away from Israel's control, so that the Temple will not be able to be built, and Jesus' return will, if possible, be barred.

This is why it is so significant as we pray and battle in the spiritual in order to see these things played out upon the earth. This is what true prayer is all about, to see God's will "done on earth as it is in heaven," as He has declared it to us in His Word.

And on earth, God does not have many among the sons of men on His side. But the God of Gideon, who only needed 300 committed men, can do it again and see His purposes, His wonderful purposes, fulfilled, by just a few dedicated men and women.

To see this battle played out on earth, especially in relation to Israel, is quite amazing. Even in Israel there are Hellenistic forces again at play as there were in the past, driving gentile-ised Jews like Shimon Peres and many others to use their influence and get Israel to succumb to these pressures of the world; to accommodate them and give in to them in order that Israel will become accepted as a partner by world - in the process having lost her Jewish destiny and soul to the detriment of the whole world.

In Israel, these two camps are nearly equally divided - on the one side those who wish to be faithful as a Jewish Nation to the purposes of God, and on the other, those who want to accommodate the wishes of this world - to be assimilated into the way of the gentile nations.

In 1996, the day after Benjamin Netanyahu beat Shimon Peres by a tiny margin in the race for prime minister, a journalist from the extreme secular left Israeli newspaper Haaretz interviewed the defeated labor Party leader as follows:
Interviewer: What happened?
Shimon Peres: We lost
Interviewer: Who is this we?
Shimon Peres: The people of Israel
Interviewer: Then who won?
Shimon Peres: Call it, the Jews

These simple, straightforward, yet chilling words express the enormous battle being waged for the soul and destiny of the Jewish people. May we stand together with all those people of Israel who want that biblical, God-willed destiny to be fulfilled, to save this planet earth from itself and open the gates of this city, returned to the Jewish people, that the King of glory can come in and redeem this earth, and fill it once again with the Glory of the Lord as the waters cover the seas!

In the battle for God's purpose for His people and Zion!

Jan Willem van der Hoeven, Director
International Christian Zionist Center
Jerusalem, ISRAELeee

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