The Western Wall....or the....Wailing Wall....that was built roughly around 20 BC is inside Jerusalem's Old City. There is about three quarters of a football field that is visible. Herod expanded the area....built retaining walls....and filled them in with dirt....so it was a much larger....and flatter temple mount in Herod's day in Jerusalem than with Solomon's temple. As the narrative goes....the stones on the Western or Wailing wall....were the absolute closest to the Holy of Holies....thus the significance today....over other portions of wall that were older.
"But he answered them. 'You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you. there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down'." Matthew 24....in the Olivet Discourse....verse 2.
So there was the second temple and other structures on the temple mount when Herod was done restoring and remodeling. The question is....although the Western Wall was not part of the temple....but was a retaining wall....retaining the Temple mount....was Jesus referring in Matthew 24:2 to the stones that stand today....retaining the temple mount.....or was He not referring to the retaining stones....when He said that not one stone would be upon another before the Day of the Lord?
Everything else on the temple mount was destroyed by the Romans. If Jesus was not including the Wailing Wall stones....then that wall need not come down before Jesus returns.....but if Jesus was including the retaining walls on the temple mount....then they would have to come down before Jesus returned.
At the end of the Six Day War in 1967....self-proclaimed Israeli atheist general Moshe Dayan....thought it more important to return to some kind of peace with the Arabs....than to return the Temple Mount to the Jewish population. So today Jews can go up to the temple mount....they just can't pray on the mount.....although it was been done.
The Israeli government is today considered more....religious....than it has ever been....and building a third temple is not just the visions of wild-eyed fanatics. I would expect that if we see something similar to a world war....where the Middle East is part of it....that the Dome of the Rock will quickly....through some means....come down....and some sort of tabernacle at least for sacrifice would be hastily constructed.
There are so many evidences that Jesus is returning very soon. What we are seeing in all these intensifying judgments today such as the pandemic and the utter turmoil....including great delusion that if possible....even the elect would fall for....are as the beginnings of birth pangs that God's Word tells us about.......but if that Western Wall is indeed part of the temple stones that Jesus told His disciples about....and if it comes down....you would think that it would be hard for doubters to continue to deny the signs that Jesus said would be near!
Note: A tabernacle or temple will probably happen....but this is all the old law....and violently opposed to the gospel of grace. Christians should not be rejoicing in the possibility of a third temple....other than it would be a clear sign that our King is coming....and is near!
