temple mount: opening heaven’s gates

The resurrection of the dead and the burial of the living? The most contested piece of real estate in the work. The Mount of Olives, The Temple Mount ( or the Dome of the Rock, third most important shrine in Islam), and one of the most heavily armed. A conflict about nothing and about everything? Bill Maher in Religilous ridiculed the Dome of the Rock and the Holy Land in general.

---Today, Jews are once again burying their dead in the Mount of Olives cemetery, but they are shocked to find gravestones being vandalized and destroyed once again by Arabs who live nearby. Visitors to the cemetery have also found themselves under a hail of stones. ---Read More:http://www.israeldailypicture.com/2012/02/mount-of-olives-3000-year-old-cemetery.html

Christopher Hitchens called it the narcissism of small differences and the Arab- Israeli conflict “trivial” but don’t tell that to the stone throwers and other fanatics that punctuate the holy air with an intensity of religious hatred that is difficult for a secular mind to comprehend; and the shopping arcade in the Old City turns on its ear the entire concept of modernism and consumerism in Walter Benjamin’s the Arcade Project. And what if the several hundred thousand missiles aimed at Israel actually end up destroying the holy sites: Judaic, Christian and Islamic; who will take the blame when their object of desire, or even idealized fantasy of the fetish object lays in ruins? Its hard to find a Golem when you need one.

The temple actually surrounds a piece of rock which in Islam it is assumed, or rather prophecized retroactively that  muhammed had risen from the dead and ascended to heaven. It is also assumed, especially when the apocalyptic meets the messianic, that the last battle between good and evil will be fought in this region of the world and good will prevail; every individual that survives this great test  will see that there is only one god in this universe and perhaps the last 5000 years has been something of a waste of time, a senseless  fighting over religion and anything else that can be attached to it. …

---Not a building as such but the ruins of two and a building. Not a beautiful piece of architecture as such, but the example par-excellence of political contested site. At the Temple Mount where a particular person walks can cause repercussions across many nations. For some Christians the Temple Mount is also an important part of their eschatology, prompting their involvement in the politics of the site. --- Read More:http://frankly-mr-shankly.blogspot.ca/2006/02/great-buildings-by-stephen-cox-19.html

ADDENDUM:


“The Arabs believe that the Jews’ Messiah will come through the Gate of Mercy (Shaar HaRachamim), leading to the Temple Mount, so they closed up the gate and have created a cemetery there to prevent Elijah, who is a Cohen, from entering,” he explained. Cohanim, those Jews who descend from Moses’ brother Aaron, are prohibited from being in the same area as the dead, for reasons of ritual purity.

A profoundly shocking video presentation depicting the wanton desecration of graves on Har HaZeitim was shown. Images of garbage strewn everywhere drew gasps from audience members as the historical and religious significance of this ancient cemetery was told.

Dating back thousands of years, Har HaZeitim has over 150,000 graves and it was noted that an additional 50,000 graves and markers were destroyed by the Jordanians during the years of 1948 through 1967, in which head stones were used for latrines and building roads….Read More:http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/154022#.T3mxt9Vb76M
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Hitchens:Most journalists have tacitly agreed that it’s off-limits to ask the former governor about the tenets of the Mormon cult. Nor do they get much luck if they do ask: When Bob Schieffer of Face the Nation inquired whether Mormons believe that the Garden of Eden is or was or will be in the great state of Missouri, he was told by Romney to go ask the Mormons! However, we do have the governor in an off-guard moment in Iowa, saying that “The [Mormon] Church says that Christ appears and splits the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. … And then, over a thousand years of the millennium,


t the world is reigned in two places, Jerusalem and Missouri. … The law will come from Missouri, and the other will be from Jerusalem.” Read More:http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2007/11/mitt_the_mormon.html

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