Gnosis Secret Gate to Garden of Eden

Excellent breakdown of Gnostic doctrine.

Abraham: Historicity and Origins

It is generally recognised by scholars that there is nothing in the Genesis stories that can be related to the history of Canaan of the early 2nd millennium: none of the kings mentioned is known, Abimelech could not be a Philistine (they did not arrive till centuries later), Ur could not become known as "Ur of the Chaldeans" until the early 1st millennium, and Laban could not have been an Aramean, as the Arameans did not become an identifiable political entity until the 12th century.[18] Joseph Blenkinsopp, Emeritus Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Notre Dame, notes that the past four or five decades have seen a growing consensus that the Genesis narrative of Abraham originated from literary circles of the 6th and 5th centuries BCE as a mirror of the situation facing the Jewish community under the Babylonian and early Persian empires.[10] Blenkinsopp describes two conclusions about Abraham that are widely held in biblical scholarship: the first is that, except in the triad "Abraham, Isaac and Jacob," he is not clearly and unambiguously attested in the Bible earlier than the Babylonian exile ; the second is that he became, in the Persian period, a model for those who would return from Babylon to Judah.[19] Beyond this the Abraham story (and those of Isaac and Jacob/Israel) served a theological purpose following the destruction of Jerusalem, the Temple and the Davidic kingship: despite the loss of these things, Yahweh's dealings with the ancestors provided a historical foundation on which hope for the future could be built.[11] There is basic agreement that his connection with Haran, Shechem and Bethel is secondary and originated when he became identified as the father of Jacob and ancestor of the northern tribes; his association with Mamre and Hebron, on the other hand (in the south, in the territory of Jerusalem and Judah), suggest that this region was the original home of his cult.[12]

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham#Historicity_and_origins

Editor's Note: The positional credibility of white Jews, black Hebrews, Christians, and Muslims is tragically faulty when the historical origins of the patriarch Abraham are examined in light of objective scholastic evidence.



This is the alleged Tomb of Abraham on the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. Is this really credible from an archaeological vantage point, or sentimental religious exhibitionism, at its finest?

US formally ends Iraq war with little fanfare

US formally ends Iraq war with little fanfare
By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press – 1 day ago

BAGHDAD (AP) — There was no "Mission Accomplished" banner. No victory parade down the center of this capital scarred by nearly nine years of war. No crowds of cheering Iraqis grateful for liberation from Saddam Hussein.

It took the U.S. military just 45 minutes Thursday to declare an end to its war in Iraq with a businesslike closing ceremony behind concrete blast walls in a fortified compound at Baghdad International Airport. The flag used by U.S. forces in Iraq was lowered and boxed up. On the chairs — nearly empty of Iraqis — were tags that listed not only the name of the assigned VIP, but the bunker to rush to in case of an attack.

With that, and brief words from top U.S. officials who flew in under tight security, the U.S. drew the curtain on a war that killed 4,487 Americans, by the Pentagon's count, and more than 100,000 Iraqis.

The conflict also left another 32,000 Americans and far more Iraqis wounded, drained more than $800 billion from the U.S. treasury and diverted resources from Afghanistan, where the Taliban and al-Qaida rebounded after their defeat in the 2001 invasion.

"To be sure the cost was high — in blood and treasure of the United States and also the Iraqi people," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told the roughly 200 troops and others in attendance. "Those lives have not been lost in vain. They gave birth to an independent, free and sovereign Iraq."

Many Iraqis, who saw their country devastated through years of fighting, disputed that.

"With this withdrawal, the Americans are leaving behind a destroyed country," said Mariam Khazim, a member of the Shiite Muslim sect that has dominated politics since the end of Saddam's Sunni-led regime.

"The Americans did not leave modern schools or big factories behind them," said Khazim, whose father was killed when a mortar shell struck his home in Sadr City. "Instead, they left thousands of widows and orphans. The Americans did not leave a free people and country behind them. In fact, they left a ruined country and a divided nation."

The low-key ceremony stood in sharp contrast to the start of the war, which began before dawn on March 20, 2003, with a "shock and awe" airstrike in southern Baghdad where Saddam was believed to be hiding. U.S. and allied ground forces then stormed across the featureless Kuwaiti desert, accompanied by reporters, photographers and television crews embedded with the troops.

Now, the final few thousand U.S. troops will head out in orderly caravans and tightly scheduled flights, leaving behind a nation free of Saddam's tyranny but fractured by violence and fearful of the future. Bombings and gun battles still occur almost daily. Experts are concerned about the Iraqi security forces' ability to defend the nation against foreign threats.

U.S.-Iraqi ties are no doubt closer than they were during much of Saddam's rule but are still short of what Washington once envisioned. Iranian influence is on the rise. One of the few positive developments from the American viewpoint — a democratic toehold — is far from secure.

"You will leave with great pride — lasting pride," Panetta told the troops seated in front of a small domed building in the airport complex. "Secure in knowing that your sacrifice has helped the Iraqi people to begin a new chapter in history."

Many Iraqis, however, are uncertain how that chapter will unfold. Their relief at the end of Saddam, who was hanged on Dec. 30, 2006, was tempered by a long and vicious war that was launched to find nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and plunged the nation into a bloodbath between rival Muslim sects.

An insurgency that rose up within months of the April 2003 fall of Baghdad scuttled reconstruction plans and forced the Americans to keep up to 170,000 troops in Iraq years after Saddam was captured.

Iraq nowadays is far quieter than at the height of the war, but with an uneasy peace achieved through intimidation and bloodshed. The number of Iraqi neighborhoods in which members of the two Muslim sects live side by side and intermarry has dwindled.

The forced segregation, fueled by extremists from both communities, has fundamentally changed the character of the country. And it raises questions about whether the Iraqis can heal the wounds of the sectarian massacres after the Americans leave.

Some Baghdad neighborhoods, such as Hurriyah, are still guarded by thick blast walls and security checkpoints. Widespread corruption, bureaucratic hurdles and electricity shortages continue to stifle Iraq's economy.

It was hard to find an Iraqi on Thursday who did not celebrate the exit of what they called American occupiers, neither invited nor welcome in a proud country whose capital, Baghdad, was once among the world's great centers of culture and learning.

Some said that while grateful for U.S. help ousting Saddam, the war went on too long. A majority of Americans would agree, according to opinion polls, though many initially supported the war as a just extension of the fight against terrorism after the 9/11 attacks.

One of the many ironies of the war is that Saddam had not tolerated al-Qaida, which planned and carried out the attacks. With Saddam gone and the country in chaos, al-Qaida in Iraq became the terror movement's largest and most dangerous franchise, attracting fighters from North Africa to Asia for a war that lingers on through suicide bombings and assassinations, albeit at a lower intensity.

The ceremony at Baghdad's airport also featured remarks from Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who served two tours in Iraq, and Gen. Lloyd Austin, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

Austin led the massive logistical challenge of shuttering hundreds of bases and combat outposts, and methodically moving more than 50,000 U.S. troops and their equipment out of Iraq over the last year — while still conducting training, security assistance and counterterrorism battles.

As of Thursday, there were two U.S. bases and about 4,000 U.S. troops in Iraq — a dramatic drop from the roughly 500 military installations during the surge ordered by President George W. Bush in 2007. All U.S. troops are slated to be out by the end of the year.

President Barack Obama had no comment on Thursday's ceremony but told soldiers at Fort Bragg in North Carolina this week that the "war in Iraq will soon belong to history, and your service belongs to the ages."

Despite Obama's earlier contention that all American troops would be home for Christmas, at least 4,000 forces will remain in Kuwait for some months. The troops could be used as a quick reaction force if needed.

The U.S. will leave behind thousands of diplomats and security contractors.

"We will have to be working closely with the Iraqis to ensure the security of our civilians," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement.

Still, the disappearance of uniformed troops marked a defining moment in Iraq's history.

"It is a great achievement for the Iraqi people," said Hayder al-Abadi, a Shiite lawmaker in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's coalition. "Iraqi politicians have made their way and have made the independence and sovereignty a reality here. The Americans have committed a lot of mistakes in Iraq and they failed to protect the country."

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Abraham: The Archaeological Crisis {EXCLUSIVE}

NEYO'S LATEST PROJECT: Exposes the truth regarding the patriarch Abraham.

I AM a Black Hebrew Israelite! (PART ONE)

If you believe you are a Black Hebrew Israelite, then you have been misinformed!

The Oneness - We Are All One!

Not a Christian, Not a Hebrew Israelite, nor a Black Man.....but the Infinite One Self, the ineffable I AM is who I AM!

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

Kymatica (2009)

Kymatica by Ben Stewart: talismanicidols.org

Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt

"Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt: Advanced Engineering in the Temples of the Pharaohs." In part a study of the precision, symmetry and geometry of the Ramses statues at Luxor and Memphis. Includes studies of many other sites in Egypt and artifacts that prove that advanced technology was used in prehistory.

Revisiting Deuteronomy 28:15-68 {EXCLUSIVE}

Compiled and Arranged by Neyo Webster
Independently Researched and Verified

Are blacks in America under a perpetual curse by the God of the Bible?....read below....the truth will set us free.

John MacArthur
(On Deuteronomy 28:68) "but no one will buy you. Israel would be so abandoned by God that she would not even be able to sell herself into slavery. The curse of God would bring Israel into a seemingly hopeless condition (cf. Hos. 8:13; 9:3). The specific mention of Egypt could be symbolic for any lands where the Jews have been taken into bondage or sold as slaves. But it is true that after the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D.70., which was a judgment on the apostasy of Israel and their rejection and execution of the Messiah,, this prophecy is actually fulfilled. The Roman general Titus, who conquered Jerusalem and Israel, sent 17,000 adults Jews to Egypt." (MacArthur Study Bible, p. 279)

Treasury of Scriptural Knowledge
"bring a nation. Though the Chaldeans are frequently described under the figure of an eagle, yet these verses especially predict the desolations brought on the Jews by the Romans; who came from a country far more distant than Chaldea; whose conquests were as rapid as the eagle's flight, and whose standard bore this very figure; who spake a language to which the Jews were then entire strangers, being wholly unlike the Hebrew, of which the Chaldee was merely a dialect; whose appearance and victories were terrible; and whose yoke was a yoke of iron; and the havoc which they made tremendous.
# Nu 24:24 Isa 5:26-30 Jer 5:15-17 Da 6:22,23 9:26 Hab 1:6,7
# Lu 19:43,44
* as the eagle. # Jer 4:13 48:40 49:22 La 4:19 Eze 17:3,12 Ho 8:1 Mt 24:28
* a nation whose. # Jer 5:15 Eze 3:6 1Co 14:21

Robert Jamieson (1871)
"49. The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far--the invasion of the Romans--"they came from far." The soldiers of the invading army were taken from France, Spain, and Britain--then considered "the end of the earth." Julius Severus, the commander, afterwards Vespasian and Hadrian, left Britain for the scene of contest. Moreover, the ensign on the standards of the Roman army was "an eagle"; and the dialects spoken by the soldiers of the different nations that composed that army were altogether unintelligible to the Jews. (in loc.)

Keith on the Prophecies, commenting on Deut. 28:49-52
"Each particular of this prophecy has met its full completion. The remote situation of the Romans, the rapidity of their march, the very emblem of their arms, their unknown language and warlike appearance, the indiscriminate cruelty they manifested toward old and young, could not have been represented in more descriptive terms. The Roman Generals, Vespasian, Adrian and Julius Severus, removed with parts of their armies from Britain to Palestine, the extreme points of the Roman world."

Philip Mauro
"Close attention should be given to the last prophecy of Moses (Deut. 28-32) because of the clear light it throws upon the subject of our present inquiry. It foretells the history of the children of Israel, down to the very end thereof, showing that it would be a history of continued apostasy and rebellion, and of stubborn refusal to hear the voice of Jehovah by His servants the prophets; and it declares with marvelous exactitude and fullness of detail what the end of that nation was to be (Deut. 28:49-68). This has ever been accounted, by all who have given attention to it, one of the greatest wonders of prophecy.

And (Keith's Prophecies) proceeds to show, as many other commentators have done, how, point by point, in the minutest detail, the judgments executed by the Romans in the years 66-70 of our era, were prescribed by Moses.

Philip Mauro
Now the matter of chief interest for our present purposes is that, from this national destruction by the Romans there was to be no recovery. And in this, the prophecy of Moses is in full accord with that of Jesus Christ, recorded in Matthew 24 and Luke 21. For Moses said: "God will rejoice over you to destroy you, and to bring you to nought; and ye shall be plucked from off the land wither thou goest to possess it. And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from one end of the earth even to the other" (Deut. 28:63,64). This, according to this prophecy, was to be the end of their history as a nation.

Nor is there any promise of God, by any later prophet, of recovery for the earthly nation from this final destruction and dispersion at the hands of the Romans. For an attentive reading of the prophecies concerning "Israel," "Zion," and "Jerusalem," leads to the conclusions that such as are yet to be fulfilled relate to the heavenly people, country, and city, to which respectively those names properly belong; and that all prophecies of recovery intended for "Israel after the flesh" (I Cor. 10:18) were completely fulfilled in and after the return from the Babylonian captivity." (Hope of Israel, 6)

John Wesley (1754)
"But in the following he foretells their last destruction by the Romans. And the present deplorable state of the Jewish nation, so exactly answers this prediction, that it is an incontestable proof of the truth of the prophecy, and consequently of the divine authority of the scriptures. And this destruction more dreadful than the former shews, that their sin in rejecting Christ, was more provoking to God than idolatry itself, and left them more under the power of Satan. For their captivity in Babylon cured them effectually of idolatry in seventy years. But under this last destruction, they continue above sixteen hundred years incurably averse to the Lord Jesus." (in loc.)

Adam Clarke (1837)
"Verse 49. As the eagle flieth— The very animal on all the Roman standards. The Roman eagle is proverbial.
Whose tongue thou shalt not understand— The Latin language, than which none was more foreign to the structure and idiom of the Hebrew." (in loc.)

Duncan McKenzie
Deuteronomy 28:50 says how the nation enforcing God’s covenant judgments would be "a nation of fierce countenance, which does not respect the elderly or show favor to the young". Josephus recorded how the Romans showed no favor to young or old, slaughtering all indiscriminately-

They [the Roman army] poured into the alleys, [of Jerusalem] sword in hand, massacring indiscriminately all whom they met, and burned the houses with all who had taken refuge inside. Josephus, The Jewish War 6,8,5

God goes on in Deuteronomy 28 to say how when the covenant judgments came He would pluck the children of Israel off the land and scatter them from one end of the earth to the other. This was also fulfilled at AD 70 when the Romans scattered Israel among the nations."

Ovid Need, Jr.
"Deut 28:15-68 was fulfilled at least twice: it was fulfilled when Assyria moved against the Jewish nation in fulfillment of Isaiah's warning. (Note that even though God exalted Assyria as the rod of His anger, an instrument of chastising His people, when Assyria in its pagan pride exalted itself, God destroyed Assyria completely. God's people are still here; Assyria is nothing but dust today. Furthermore, one of the symbols of Assyria was a winged lion. See Deut 28:49.) Moses' prophecy was fulfilled again in 70 A.D. as Rome, under Titus, came against Jerusalem. Both Rome's and Hitler's ensign was an eagle. Deut 28:15-68 has been completely fulfilled (See our extensive study on Mat 21-24). The stammering lips and another tongue was God's judicial sign of judgment upon the Jews because they hardened their hearts against the simple truths which Moses and the prophet Isaiah spoke. " (Tongues, 4)

COMMENTARY FROM JEWISH SOURCES
Devarim/Deuteronomy 28:49-50: HaShem will carry against you a nation from afar, from the end of the earth, as an eagle will swoop, a nation whose language you will not understand, a brazen nation that will not be respectful to the old nor gracious to the young.

"Rambam comments on Deuteronomy 28:49 that Vespasian and his son Titus came from Rome to conquer the Land of Israel and destroy Jerusalem and the Second Temple. The awful conditions described though verse 57 took place during the siege of Jerusalem. A yeshiva student studying these lines in Warsaw on the night of Wednesday, August 30, 1939, would have read Rambam in the Hebrew, saying exactly what I quoted you. However, if he had time to follow the reading of the Torah in shul (synagogue) on September 2 and could concentrate upon it, instead of the screaming of the Luftwaffe overhead, he might have had a very different comprehension of these same lines. " (History through a Jewish lens: The War of Tisha B'av)

Editor's Note: I am starting to see more and more that NATIONALITY is an imaginative creation (illusion) of the collective human mind. Scientists have proven EMPIRICALLY through mitochondrial DNA studies that all human beings are descended from a small population (less than a hundred individuals) that emerged FROM AFRICA about 60,000 years ago, now called homo sapiens sapiens (modern man).

Source: http://www.preteristarchive.com/BibleStudies/Bible_OT/Deuteronomy/deuteronomy_28-49.html

Is this Credible?

Editor's Note: Based on the State of Israel's history of international espionage, is this a credible story? This guy is a former Israeli soldier and more than likely a Mossad shill.....and he lives in Queens, NY. Incredible!

Queens Man Freed In Overseas Prisoner Swap Arrives Home

A Queens man made an emotional return home Saturday after spending four and a half months in an Egyptian prison. NY1's Ruschell Boone filed the following report.
Back on U.S. soil and in the arms of his family, it was an emotional reunion Saturday at John F. Kennedy Airport for Queens resident Ilan Grapel. However, he kept the moment light saying he knows the first thing he wants to eat: Chocolate chip pancakes.

Grapel was released from prison as part of a prisoner swap between Israel and Egypt. He was arrested back in June during the Egyptian uprising accused of spying for Israel, which he denies.

He says he spent much of his time in solitary confinement.

"They did give me conditions to make sure that my health was attended to. I would get anything I wanted to eat," Grapel said.

Israel freed 25 Egyptians in exchange for Grapel, a deal Queens Congressman Gary Ackerman helped to secure. Ackerman and Grapel's mother met the 27-year-old in Israel after his release Thursday then flew to New York Saturday.

Ackerman says Grapel was volunteering for a legal aid group in Cairo, but was in Tahir Square with some of the protesters during the revolt.

"They use that to make charges against him that he was a spy," said Ackerman. "They had the perfect profile. He came there as an American to help with an American passport. They discovered that he was a duel citizen, who's also Israeli, who is also a jew. He also spoke Arabic."

Grapel is also a law student and a former Israeli soldier who once interned for Congressman Ackerman.

Grapel says he has asked the congressman for recommendations before but never thought he would have to ask for a recommendation for something we did.

"I don't think he expected that I would need a recommendation that I'm not a spy in Cairo and it was more than the one-minute letter but it actually had to be a four and a half month working from the first day of my capture until now. And things I didn't see because obviously I didn't have NY1 so I was not aware of what was going on," Grapel said.

"It's fantastic," remarked Grapel's mother.

Now that he's home, Grapel is expected to continue his law studies at Emery University next semester.

Source: http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/149848/queens-man-freed-in-overseas-prisoner-swap-arrives-home

QADDAFI DEAD: An NWO Joke!!!!

October 20, 2011
Qaddafi Is Killed as Libyan Forces Take Surt
By KAREEM FAHIM and RICK GLADSTONE
MISURATA, Libya — Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the former Libyan strongman who fled into hiding after an armed uprising toppled his regime two months ago, met a violent and vengeful death Thursday in the hands of rebel fighters who stormed his final stronghold in Surt, his Mediterranean home town. At least one of his sons was also killed.

Al Jazeera television showed footage of Colonel Qaddafi, bloodied but still alive, as he was dragged around by armed men in Surt. The network also broadcast a separate clip of his upper body, partly stripped, with eyes staring vacantly and an apparent gunshot wound to the head, as jubilant fighters fired automatic weapons in the air. A third video, posted on Youtube, showed excited fighters hovering around his lifeless-looking body, posing for photographs and yanking his limp head up and down by the hair.

Colonel Qaddafi’s body was seized by a brigade of Misurata-based fighters who had been fighting in Surt. They brought it to this port city in an ambulance and placed it in a private house. The local authorities had it moved to another house after a few hours, as hundreds of jubilant residents converged outside.

Reporters accompanying Ali Tarhouni, a deputy chairman of the Transitional National Council who went to view the body, saw Colonel Qaddafi splayed out on a mattress in a reception room, shirtless, with bullet wounds in the chest and temple and with blood on the arms and hair. Three medical officials arrived, presumably to conduct an autopsy.

Conflicting accounts quickly emerged about whether Colonel Qaddafi was executed by his captors or died from gunshot wounds sustained in a firefight. But the images broadcast by Al Jazeera punctuated an emphatic and gruesome ending to his four decades as a ruthless and bombastic autocrat who had basked in his reputation as the self-styled king of kings of Africa.

“We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Muammar Qaddafi has been killed,” Mahmoud Jibril, the prime minister of the Transitional National Council, the interim government, told a news conference in Tripoli. Mahmoud Shammam, the council’s chief spokesman, called it “the day of real liberation. We were serious about giving him a fair trial. It seems God has some other wish.”

Libyan television also reported that one of Colonel Qaddafi’s feared sons, Muatassim, was killed in Surt on Thursday, and broadcast images of what it said was Muatassim’s bloodstained corpse on a hospital gurney. There were also unconfirmed accounts that another son, Seif al-Islam, had been captured and possibly wounded.

Officials of the Transitional National Council told reporters late on Thursday that Colonel Qaddafi had been killed in a crossfire, when a gunfight erupted between his captors and his supporters in Surt — making the argument that he was not killed intentionally. Forensics experts outside Libya who viewed photographs of the body said the wounds appeared to have been caused by handgun fire at close range, and not higher-velocity assault-rifle fire from a distance.

In Washington, President Obama said in a televised statement that the death of Colonel Qaddafi signaled the start of a new chapter for Libya. “We can definitely say that the Qaddafi regime has come to an end,” he said. “The dark shadow of tyranny has been lifted and with this enormous promise the Libyan people now have a great responsibility to build an inclusive and tolerant and democratic Libya that stands as the ultimate rebuke to Qaddafi’s dictatorship.”

Libyans rejoiced throughout the day as news of Colonel Qaddafi’s death spread. Car horns blared and residents poured into the streets in giddy disbelief in Tripoli, Misurata and in the eastern city of Benghazi, where the rebellion against Colonel Qaddafi began in February and where it escalated into the most violent of the Arab Spring uprisings.

“I can’t believe it’s over,” said Tahir Busrewil, a 26 year-old tourist-industry worker in Tripoli who was imprisoned and tortured earlier this year, and who spent the past few weeks working with a militia to detain pro-Qaddafi loyalists. “Oh the relief! I never felt that happy about somebody being dead.”

Walid Fakany, an anti-Qaddafi fighter from the Western mountain town of Rujban who joined in the celebrations in Tripoli, said: “We can breathe, we can finally rest. Then we can move forward.”

Holly Pickett, a freelance photojournalist working in Surt, reported in a Twitter feed that she had seen Colonel Qaddafi’s body in an ambulance headed for Misurata, and that 10 fighters were in the vehicle with the body. It was unclear from her posting whether he was dead at that point. “From the side door, I could see a bare chest with bullet wound and a bloody hand. He was wearing gold-colored pants,” she tweeted.

Within an hour of initial reports of Colonel Qaddafi’s death, the Arab twittersphere lit up with gleeful comments, many of them hinting at a similar fate awaiting other Arab dictators who have sought to crush popular uprisings in their countries — most notably, President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen and President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. One of the messages read: “Ben Ali escaped, Mubarak is in jail, Qaddafi was killed. Which fate do you prefer, Ali Abdullah Saleh? You can consult with Bashar.” Another was more direct: “Bashar al-Assad, how do you feel today?”

A popular link led to a cartoon with portraits of the five dictators, the first three with big red X’s painted over them, while below them walks an angry-looking man toting a large brush covered with red paint. Written on the man’s clothing is the Arabic word for “the people.”

Mr. Jibril, the Libyan prime minister, said he had no details about how Colonel Qaddafi was killed, saying that more information would be provided when the government has a clearer picture of the chaotic events. But Mr. Jibril said he was confident that Colonel Qaddafi was not killed by NATO warplanes attacking a convoy, one of several unconfirmed accounts flying as news of the death was first reported.

A senior Western official in Europe who is knowledgeable about NATO’s operations in Surt on Thursday said that there had been strong suspicions for days that Colonel Qaddafi and his sons were hiding in three buildings in the northwest quadrant of the city that had resisted repeated ground assaults. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said both NATO and anti-Qaddafi fighters believed that the Qaddafis, if they were in those buildings, might attempt to flee at any time.

He said that American-supplied surveillance drones alerted NATO to an 80-vehicle convoy leaving that area of Surt at dawn, and that French Mirage jets blasted two of the convoy’s armed vehicles, forcing the others to disperse. That is when anti-Quaddafi forces on the ground attacked the remaining vehicles, including one that is believed to have been carrying Colonel Qaddafi and perhaps his sons, the official said.

In a statement from NATO’s Libya operations headquarters in Naples, Italy, Col. Roland Lavoie, a NATO spokesman, confirmed that the alliance’s aircraft struck two armed Libyan military vehicles near Surt, but the he said that NATO officers did not know who was in them. “It is not NATO policy to target specific individuals,” he said.

A BBC correspondent reporting from Surt, Gabriel Gatehouse, said he had spoken with fighters there who said they had found Colonel Qaddafi hiding in a large storm drain, dragged him out, disarmed him of his golden pistol and shot him to death when he tried to escape. Mr. Gatehouse quoted one of the fighters as saying that Colonel Qaddafi asked him, “What did I do to you?”

Mohamed Benrasali, a member of the national council’s Tripoli Stabilization Committee, gave a different account of Colonel Qaddafi’s end, saying hew was told by fighters from Misurata that Colonel Qaddafi was captured alive in a car leaving Surt. He was badly injured with wounds in his head and both legs, Mr. Benrasali said he was told, and died soon after capture.

Al Jazeera quoted an unidentified official of the Transitional National Council as saying Mussa Ibrahim, the former spokesman of Colonel Qaddafi, was captured near Surt as well. Reuters quoted the foreign minister of Niger as saying that Colonel Qaddafi’s despised former intelligence chief, Abdullah al-Senussi, had fled there on Thursday across the southern Libyan desert, as dozens of other Qaddafi loyalists and some of the colonel’s relatives have done in recent weeks.

As his regime melted away, though, Colonel Qaddafi himself defied repeated attempts to corner and capture him, taunting his enemies with audio broadcasts denouncing the rebel forces as stooges of NATO. The alliance’s bombing campaign neutralized his air force and heavy weapons during the uprising, under the auspices of a Security Council mandate to protect Libyan civilians.

Colonel Qaddafi’s elusiveness clearly vexed the Transitional National Council, and even with his death on Thursday it was unclear whether he had been deliberately targeted or had been found by chance.

His death followed weeks of futile searching, beset by scant hard information and by promising leads that went cold. As recently as a few days ago, American intelligence officials said they assumed the deposed leader had not left Libya but they knew little about where he might be hiding. A large convoy of vehicles spotted from the air driving south towards a remote town in the desert proved to be a false lead, one former American intelligence official said.

Before most Americans had heard of Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, Colonel Qaddafi was America’s top bogeyman. After a string of terror attacks he ordered in the 1980s, blunting his regime;’s power became a top priority at the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency. On Thursday, officers involved in that campaign expressed some gratification that Colonel Qaddafi had met his end.

“Some of us lost friends, both American and Libyan, to Qaddafi and his murders,” said William D. Murray, who was in charge of Libyan operations at the C.I.A. during the 1980s. “He died the coward he was,” he added. “Good riddance.”

For their part, officials of the transitional government were elated at Colonel Qaddafi’s death. They had been saying since his fall from power that once he was dead or captured, they could declare the country liberated and in control of its borders, and begin a process of unifying the country, bringing the proliferation of armed militias under control and holding a general election for a national council within eight months.

Earlier on Thursday, before news broke of Colonel Qaddafi’s death, Libyan fighters said they had routed the last loyalist forces from Surt, ending weeks of fierce fighting there. A military spokesman for the interim government, Abdel Rahman Busin, said, “Surt is fully liberated.”

The battle for the city, on the central coast east of Tripoli, was supposed to be a minor postscript to the Libyan conflict, but loyalist soldiers mounted a fierce defense for weeks, weathering NATO airstrikes and repeated assaults by anti-Qaddafi fighters. The anti-Qaddafi leaders were caught off guard by the depth of divisions in western Libya, where the colonel’s policy of playing favorites and stoking rivalries has resulted in a series of violent confrontations.

Surt emerged as the stage for one of the war’s bloodiest fights, killing and injuring scores on both sides, devastating the city and raising fears that the weak transitional leaders would not be able to unify the country.

The tide of battle turned nearly two weeks ago, when the anti-Qaddafi fighters laid siege to an enormous convention center that the pro-Qaddafi troops had used as a base.

Kareem Fahim reported from Misurata and Tripoli, Libya, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by Steven Lee Myers from Kabul, Afghanistan; Mauricio Lima from Surt, Libya; J. David Goodman from New York; and Eric Schmitt, Mark Mazzetti and Robert F. Worth from Washington.
Source: The NY Times, © 2011

GADDAFI PLACED $97 BILLION ON TABLE TO FREE AFRICA FROM IMPERIALISM!

GADDAFI PLACED $97 BILLION ON TABLE TO FREE AFRICA FROM IMPERIALISM!

Why They Want Him, Dead!

The Picture: War on Libya is War on Entire Africa
Source: Reuters Edited By: Quoriana
Posted: 2011/07/27

In 2010 Gaddafi offered to invest $97 billion in Africa to free it from Western influence, on condition that African states rid themselves of corruption and nepotism. Gaddafi always dreamed of a Developed, United Africa and was about to make that dream come true - and nothing is more terrifying to the West than a Developed, United Africa.

Here is a selection of the initiatives Libya has already put in place in Africa, as well as some of the projects it is planning, explaining why the West's illegal war against Libya also is a war against Entire Africa.

AFRICAN UNION: Libya is one of the biggest contributors to the budget of the African Union. A Libyan diplomat told Reuters Libya is one of five countries -- the others are Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa -- which cover 75 percent of the Union's budget. "Libya makes its full required contribution to AU funds. Not all countries do and that buys it influence," a senior African Union official said.

MALI: For several years Mali has been confronted with the activities of the radical Islamist militia Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in its northern deserts. Gaddafi’s money and diplomacy have helped to resolve conflicts in northern Mali between rebels and the government. In 2010 Libya has given Mali two security planes to combat insecurity in the north of the country. These conflicts could flare up again if Gaddafi exits the stage. Nowadays Gaddafi has many supporters in Mali who regularly march to protest against the Western-led military intervention in Libya.

CONGO: Libya has put $65 billion into sovereign wealth funds, including one which is specifically designed to make investments in Africa. The Libyan Arab African Investment Company, a vehicle of Libya's Africa sovereign wealth fund, owns Le Meridien, one of the biggest hotels in Congo. The hotel is undergoing refurbishment paid for by Libyan investment. In 2010, Libya planned to fund the building of a highway north of Congo's capital Brazzaville, where also the building of a mosque is planned.

LIBERIA: Libya has provided millions in investment projects, helping to strengthen the rule of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in one of Africa’s most impoverished nations. Gaddafi's help includes the funding of a rubber processing factory built in Gbarnga, Bong County, a technical and vocational school for the handicapped, as well as Libyan assistance in helping Liberia tackle the food crisis and renovation for the Ducor Intercontinental Hotel.

NIGER: Also in Niger Gaddafi has helped to prop up the government and the authorities would become more fragile without his financial help. Libyan Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi visited Niger in August 2010 and announced the creation of a $100 million investment fund for Niger as part of a strengthening of bilateral ties. Under earlier agreements, Libya is contributing 100 million euros for the construction of a Trans-Sahara highway in the north of Niger, according to sources close to Niger's foreign ministry. The local subsidiary of Libya Oil, along with Total, are the major players in Niger's fuel retailing business.

CHAD: Gaddafi has been a key supporter of the government, which would weaken if it lost his aid revenue. Chad has been plagued by civil wars and invasions after its independence from France in 1960. After years of unrest, Gaddafi seals a peace agreement for Chad between four Chadian rebel groups and the Chadian government in 2007, which agreement was signed in Sirte.
In 2010 Libya made a huge investment in Chad's National Telecom, which meant a boost of the number of the Chadian mobile phone users from 100,000 to two million.

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: Libya has helped to prop up the fragile government, sending paratroopers into the capital in 2001 to defeat a rebel assault. In 2008 Gaddafi played a role in the formation of a peace agreement between the government and rebel groups.

MAURITANIA: Gaddafi was the first head of state to visit after a 2008 coup which brought President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz to power. Aziz, who subsequently won a presidential election, has visited Gaddafi several times since then. Even Mauritanian opposition politicians have gone to Tripoli to pledge allegiance to the Libyan leader. Mauritania has debts to Libya of about $200 million. During discussions on debt relief in May 2010, the Libyan Central Bank announced Libya would provide $50 in grants to build a hospital and a university. The university is to be named after Gaddafi.

SUDAN: The 20,000-troop peacekeeping mission in Dafur, jointly supported by the African Union and the United Nations, could be hampered if the African Union (AU) loses funding from Gaddafi and destabilize the country. Gaddafi, who blamed the crisis in Darfur on Israel, made a number of attempts to broker peace talks between Darfur rebels and the Sudanese government.
In October 2010, Gaddafi warned ahead of a vote on possible independence for South Sudan that a partition of the country would be a “contagious disease” that could spread to other African states.

ETHIOPIA: The African Union, based in Ethiopia's capital, could find itself in financial trouble if it loses the massive support that Gaddafi gives it. Under his rule, Libya supplied 15% of the AU’s membership dues, and it also paid the dues of many smaller and poorer African nations. To seek for a solution of the Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict, Gaddafi has sent a special envoy to Ethiopia in 2000. In 2008, Libya's OiLibya bought Shell Ethiopia. This agreement also included retaining all Shell employees, who were hoping to work in a better environment since a long time

SOMALIA: The African Union peace keeping mission, whose 8,000 soldiers are crucial to the battle against Islamic radicals in Somalia's capital Mogadishu, could be severely weakened if the AU lost the financial support of Gaddafi. In 2008 Libya decided to grant an investment fund to Somalia through the Sahel-Saharan Investment and Trade Bank to fund infrastructures such as roads and bridges within Somalia.

GAMBIA: Libyan firms own two hotels and the "Dream Park" entertainment centre in Gambia. Gambian agriculture has received support from Libya, including a donation of seven new tractors. In 2009 Gaddafi gave two camels to Gambian President Yahya Jammeh as a gift. The Libyan and Gambian presidents have exchanged visits and senior Gambian officials attended ceremonies in September to mark the anniversary of Gaddafi coming to power. On September 7, 2009, Gambia celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Al Fateh Revolution: "In Libya everyone enjoys Freedom!".

The Power of Now {EDITOR'S PICK}

To make the journey into THE POWER OF NOW we will need to leave our analytical mind and its false created self, the ego, behind. From the very first page of this extraordinary book, we move rapidly into a significantly higher altitude where we breathe a lighter air. We become connected to the indestructible essence of our Being, "the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death." Although the journey is challenging, Eckhart Tolle uses simple language and an easy question-and-answer format to guide us.

A word-of-mouth phenomenon since its first publication, THE POWER OF NOW is one of those rare books with the power to create an experience in readers--one that can radically change their lives for the better. (from the back of the book)

Editor's Note: I have always been somewhat skeptical of self-help books. But the simple, and yet profound message of this book, rings with the truth of inner liberation that crosses all national, political, social, and religious lines. I highly recommend this guide to spiritual enlightenment.

The Quickening: Awaking as One

The Quickening from keith wyatt on Vimeo.

All around the planet hundreds of millions of people are waiting for events to unfold in the year 2012, that they... believe will bring either the birth of a harmonious new reality... or 'the end of the world. But what if those events were actually to take place THIS YEAR, in 2011? In Awakening As One's new film "The Quickening" we will explain why so many people have been experiencing the sensation that "Time is Speeding Up"; particularly since the Earthquake in Japan. And we will also show how research indicates that this accelerated experience of reality could peak sometime around October 28th, 2011; culminating in a global experience of Unity Consciousness, which would then lead to the experience of a harmonious new way of being. "The Quickening" will also take a look at the unfolding of current events and how they directly relate to Hopi and Mayan Prophecies, indicating that we are on the Cusp of Great Changes, which signify the shifting of the Age... and the Birth of a New World.
Source: http://vimeo.com/27240681

Israeli PM: Attackers will pay 'very heavy price'

By AMY TEIBEL - Associated Press | AP – 5 hrs ago

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's leader says anyone who attacks Israel will pay "a very heavy price."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also told a news conference that Israel will not reconcile itself to stepped-up attacks from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Squads of gunmen armed with heavy weapons and explosives crossed into southern Israel on Thursday and attacked buses, cars and an army patrol in one of the boldest attacks on the Jewish state in years, officials said. Israel said the Palestinian assailants from Hamas-ruled Gaza killed seven people after crossing through Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

Exchanges of gunfire across the Israel-Egypt border continued late into the evening, but it wasn't clear whether assailants were still at large within Israeli territory, Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said.

The series of attacks were the boldest against the Jewish state in years and stoked concerns that Palestinian militants might be exploiting instability in Egypt. Within hours, Israeli aircraft bombed southern Gaza in retaliation, and Gaza medical official Adham Salmia said five militants and one child were killed in a strike on a private home.

The attacks on Israelis began at midday. They came close together in time and location and appeared coordinated. Israeli security forces said they tracked down some of the assailants and killed seven in a gunbattle, military spokesman Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich said.

Defense officials said three of the bodies were booby-trapped. There was no immediate word on whether any of the attackers were captured alive or exactly how many in all were involved.

Israel said the gunmen started out from Gaza and made their way through Sinai, which borders both Israel and Gaza. Egypt and Hamas denied any involvement.

"The incident underscores the weak Egyptian hold on Sinai and the broadening of the activities of terrorists," Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in a statement.

"The real source of the terror is in Gaza and we will act against them with full force and determination."

It was the deadliest assault in Israel since a Palestinian gunman entered a religious seminary in Jerusalem in March 2008 and killed eight people.

Security in Sinai has deteriorated sharply since February, when longtime leader Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising. Many Israelis saw Mubarak as a source of stability with shared interests in containing Iran and its radical Islamic proxies in the region, such as Hamas. Mubarak also upheld the decades-old peace treaty with Israel.

Last week, Egypt moved thousands of troops into the Sinai peninsula as part of a major operation against al-Qaida inspired militants who have been increasingly active in Sinai since Mubarak's ouster in February. The militants have taken advantage of the security vacuum caused by the abrupt withdrawal of police forces. Authorities have blamed the militants for brazen attacks on police patrols as well as a string of bombings on a key pipeline carrying natural gas to Israel and Jordan.

Another concern is the potential for a sharp spike in violence as Palestinians prepare to ask the United Nations to recognize them as an independent state next month in response to stalled Mideast peace talks.

The West Bank-based Palestinian Authority is eager to avoid a resumption of hostilities. But Israel is on alert for a variety of scenarios, including attempted attacks from Gaza. The Islamic militant leadership of Gaza does not coordinate with the Palestinian Authority and seems ambivalent about its U.N. bid.

The attacks began when assailants targeted a packed passenger bus driving along a highway about 10 miles north of the Red Sea resort of Eilat, close to the border crossing into Sinai. Within the space of about an hour, along that same road, the attackers opened fire on one more bus and two civilian vehicles, and an army vehicle rushing to the area drove over an explosive device, the military said in a statement.

Around the same time, an undisclosed number of mortar shells were fired from the Gaza Strip at Israeli soldiers conducting routine maintenance work on the security fence along the Israel-Egypt border, the statement said.

In all, six civilians and one soldier were killed, said Israel's southern military commander, Maj.-Gen. Tal Russo.

Israel Radio said a vehicle had followed the bus, and two to three gunmen got out and opened fire with automatic weapons.

The vehicle carrying the assailants fled the scene, and Israeli security forces took off in pursuit, Israel Radio said. Channel 2 reported that two helicopters had been deployed to join the chase.

TV footage showed the bus pulled over by a red, rocky cliff. Windows and a door of the bus were shattered, and soldiers were patrolling the area on foot. Inside the bus, seats were stained with blood and luggage littered the aisle.

"We heard a shot and saw a window explode. I didn't really understand what was happening at first. After another shot there was chaos in the bus and everyone jumped on everyone else," passenger Idan Kaner told Channel 2 TV. He said the attack lasted three or four minutes until the bus was able to drive away.

The bus driver interviewed by Channel 2 did not provide details of the attack but appeared calm, smoking a cigarette in the driver's seat.

After that, an explosive device was detonated under the vehicle of a military patrol called to the scene, and a private car was also attacked.

Roadblocks were thrown up in the area and entrances and exits to Eilat were sealed. Senior Israeli security officials convened in an emergency session at the defense ministry in Tel Aviv.

The military said a "large number" of assailants were working in multiple squads. The Israeli military said three of the gunmen, members of the Hamas-linked Popular Resistance Committees, were behind the attacks, and their primary objective was to kidnap Israeli civilians or soldiers. Militants use captives as bargaining chips, and the PRC was involved in the capture of an Israeli soldier, Sgt. Gilad Schalit, who has been held captive in Gaza for more than five years.

"We are talking about a terror squad that infiltrated into Israel," said Leibovich, the Israeli military spokeswoman. "This is a combined terrorist attack against Israelis."

The driver of the bus said he had seen Egyptian soldiers open fire, but the chief Israeli military spokesman, Brig.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai said he was not aware of any Egyptian military involvement.

In Egypt, a senior security official denied that the attackers crossed into Israel from Sinai or that the buses were fired at from inside Egyptian territory.
"The border is heavily guarded," said a Sinai-based official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said the attackers came from Gaza.
"This is specific information. This is not an assessment. This is not an estimation.

This is very, very precise information that they came out of Gaza. We have no doubt." He would not provide more specific details.

Taher Nunu, a spokesman for the Hamas government in Gaza, denied the militants' complicity.

"Gaza has nothing to do with these attacks in Eilat," Nunu said.

In November, Israel began erecting a fence along the porous border with Egypt, in part to keep out Islamic militants operating in Sinai. The fence, which is to take up to two years to build, is expected to cover at least 87 miles (140 kilometers) of the 150-mile (250-kilometer) boundary.

Palestinian militants in Hamas-ruled Gaza have fired intermittent barrages of mortar shells into Israel for a decade, even after the Israeli military launched an offensive in the territory in late 2008. But in recent years Israel has not suffered the repeated deadly suicide bombings and shooting attacks of years past. The area of Thursday's attacks has been largely quiet since Israel and Egypt signed a peace deal in 1979.

PAGANISM: The Mother of All Religions - Paganism in Africa

PAGANISM The Mother of All Religions - Paganism in Africa

Keep in mind that all the African symbols and rituals (of its Mystery System) described in the following paragraphs preceded Ethiopian/Chaldean/Babylonian Albigensianism by over 100 years, Hinduism by over 1000 years, Judaism by over 3,000 years, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism by over 3,500 years, Christianity by over 4425 years and Islam by nearly 5000 years.

Africans invented religion from which all the religions of the world took their bearing, ideas, dogma, structure, symbols, architecture, rituals and traditions. African Osirianism was founded by many, consolidated by Ausar in 4100 BCE. Africans created several Gods and do not worship the 'One Source,' which they revere and which in modern time, we call Tu-SoS. No religion or spiritual movement worships the 'One Source.' The Jews do not worship Tu-SoS which they call En-Sof, instead, they worship the ten Gods they created and called Attributes of the One Source. Christians elevated Yahweh, one of the Jewish ten attributes and created numerous Saints of worship along side the elevated 'Attribute' of the unworshipped One Source. The Muslims converted the elevated Christian Saint or Attribute to Allah, and replaced the other Saints with their own Anubis for worship.

Africans created the spiritual trinity of Auser, a human, who after death became a deity, and whose Ghost pregnated his wife Auset, to produce Horus by 'Virgin Birth.' Christians, copying the African trinity idea, 4425 years after the African trinity concept, due to gross misunderstanding of the concept, created two, not three, personages in God the Father who is also the Ghost, and his Son. Mother is left out of the equation entirely and a doubtful and cheated human husband stands by in Joseph, playing no role in the trinity. Muslims do not believe that Allah can conceive anyone, so they created a Messenger.

Osirianism's Holy day is Sunday. Ausar's birthday was converted from 26th to 25th December by the change in the Roman calendar, and was celebrated annually. A yearly pilgrimage was also performed to Auser's burial site, and Ausar's symbol was a tree without branches. Variations of these concepts were copied by all religions and spiritual movements. Africans believe and worship ancestors, which is what Jesus, Mary and the Saints are to Christians. Africans believe in reincarnation, and Christians too are expecting the return of Jesus. Some say he has returned already while others are expecting his second coming.



The Persian religion was founded by (Ethiopian-Chaldean) invaders who ruled them from about 4000 BCE. Although their religion was not as profound and comprehensive as its mother source, the Mystery System of Egypt, it was rooted in the mysteries too. Zoroaster (525 BCE) refined it into Zoroastrianism. Holy day Monday. Text: Avesta Gathas. God: Ahura Mazda. Rallying figure, Zoroaster. Hinduism 3200 BCE, founders were Ethiopians known in India today as the Dravidians. Holy day, Thursday. Text: Vedas. Judaism 1230 BCE, founders: Abraham (African from Ur/Canaan) the Patriarch, and Moses (Nubian Egyptian) the law giver. Supreme source: En-Sof. Rallying figure, Moses. Text Tora/Talmud. Holy day, Saturday.

Buddhism's founder Buddha, born (563 BCE) a Dravidian (or Black.) Holy day, Thursday. God's name, Varuna. Ralling figure, Gautama the Buddha. Confucianism's founder, Master K'ung or K'ung-fu-tzu (Latinized as Confucius.) He was Black and was born around 551 BCE. Holy day, Wednesday. God: Tien. Text: Mencius Analects. Shintoism 6th century BCE, founder, autochthon the Negroid. Holy day, Monday. Text, Kojiki/Nihonji. God: Tanka Kami. Rallying figure, Shinto. Taoism 6th century. Founder, Lao-tze, the wise one, born 604 BCE. Holy day, Tuesday. Text: Tao-te-Ching. God: Tao. Rallying figure, Lao-tze. Holy day, Saturday.

Jainism founded 6th century BCE by Vardhamana with the title of Mahavira (the great hero.) God: Brahma. .Holy day, Thursday. Text: Angas/Agama. God: Jiva. Christianity's founders, many, including Paul of Tarsus, Augustine of Hippo, consolidated by Emperor Constantine 325 CE. Holy day, Sunday. Text: Bible. Rallying figure, Jesus Christ (adapted from African Hero myth, 4425 years older than the Christian copy Jesus), birthday of Jesus adapted from (Osiris') 25th December date; pilgrimage to Jerusalem (copied Osiris' pilgrimage to Abydos, begun 4425 years earlier and lasted until Emperor Constantine turned African Virgin Birth myth to Jesus reality in 325 CE). Until then, Constantine observed the African Pagans' yearly pilgrimage, as the head of Pagan Rome. . Islam 622 CE, a Kushite (African) religion, 1000 years old before birth of Muhammad and refined by Muhammad the prophet whose birthday was 570 CE. His birthday is celebrated yearly; there is also yearly pilgrimage to Mecca, which was already being observed from 1000 years earlier. Holy day, Friday. God: Allah. Text: Koran.



Sikhism. Founder Guru Nanak (1469-1538) 15th cent. CE. Holy day, Monday. Text: Guru Grauth Sahib. God: Timeless one. Rallying figure, Nanak. Mhuri ye Kutanga (Myk.) Founder, several African religious icons. Osirianism married with modern science to launch mankind's ultimate spirituality, 2009 CE. Leader, the Khu Mkuu, the Ameer spiritual. Text: Myk. Holy day, Sunday. Supreme Source: Tu-SoS.

Osirian Trinity: Ausar, Auset and Heru (father, mother and son) represented with two fish facing opposite directions. The pyramid is the House of Heru (Horus.) Two weeping eyes in the pyramid represent the eyes of Horus, the supreme one, the child and master of nature, in his house. Judaism's Trinity replaces Osiris, Isis and Horus with Jehovah, Shekina and Messiah (father, mother and child.) Buddhists' Trinity, two fish facing same direction, two eyes of Buddha in image facing three directions. Jainism's Trinity symbol: eyes in pyramid; Krishna as a child of nature Christianity's Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Ghost represented with eye of Jehovah. Jesus, like Horus, is child and master of nature.

Egyptians' worshipped cross was Heru's Ankh, looking like Ghana's fertility doll. Christians adopted the cross symbol but created over 40 kinds of crosses, confusing followers about which one Christ died on. Egyptian priests offered bread and wine at Osirian worship rituals. Christians offer bread and wine at their Lord's Supper.

Egyptian Serpent Goddess Merestseger is the guardian of the Valley of the kings. In Asiatic religions: the goddess holds two snakes she tamed. Indian androgynous divinity of the Krishna sect holds two snakes and the Ankh. Christianity's Eve receives an apple from the snake. The serpent was regarded by Egyptian leaders as a sacred, creepy, crawly, wise reptile and an emblem of sovereignty and was embossed on the front of headdresses. Christians turned the serpent into the symbol of Satan to tempt Eve. Genesis chapter 3, claims that it became a creepy reptile as punishment for deceiving Adam and Eve.



Egyptian Virgin Mother was Auset; the Holy Ghost Ausar; and the Virgin Birth Son, Heru. Goddess Auset (Isis) with her only son Horus, flee to Egyptian swamps to save him from Set, his Uncle and King of Egypt. Krishna's Goddess Yashoda, a virgin, flees with her son, Krishna to save him from a tyrant ruler. Christian's Virgin Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt to save Jesus from King Herod.

Egyptian Deity, Djehns the Sayer, the Logos (word) tells Virgin Auset that she will give birth to a son, the righteous divine hair namely, Heru. In Christianity, an Angel announces to Virgin Mary: “You will conceive in your womb and give birth to a son.”

Egyptian symbol of the Supreme spirit (Heru) is the flying wings spread out. Rosicrucians use the symbol. Christians use the Dove, an ancient Egyptian symbol and the Greek Phoenix, as the symbol of the Holy Spirit. Osirian Goddess Maat (with wings) handles the orderliness of the world. Christian Angels are Deities' messengers, with wings like those of Maat. There are nine ranks (as in the Mystery System) of choirs of Anglels: Seraphim, Cherubim, Principalities, Powers, Virtues, Dominions, Thrones, Archangels and Angels.

The symbol of the Anointing of Osiris by an Egyptian priest is Osiris as a female figure sitting, being anointed by a male priest standing before him, and pointing to the head of Osiris. Christians' Jesus is being baptized or initiated by John the Baptist. Jesus is kneeling while John stands pointing hand to the head of Jesus.

Osiris rises from his tomb after his massacre by his brother, Set. Osiris comes out of his tomb, with four Gods bellow the tomb holding him up. Christian Resurrection: Jesus too rises from the Sepulcher.

Osirian's most powerful creature symbol is the sefer a.k.a griffin. In Asiatic religions, the supreme power creatures' symbol, especially that of the Saviour, is the griffin. .

Egyptians' Lucky Girdle. Egyptians believed that the cowry shell had protective powers because it resembles the female sexual organ. It was considered effective as a fertility charm to safeguard pregnancy, when worn low down on a woman's body. Sections of the Girdle had divider beads dropping and representing (a) Heh, god of millions of years, symbolizing long life (b) side locks of youth for vigour (c) fish amulets to prevent drowning. Asiatic religions use amulets and charms as (holy) praying objects. Indian religious charm, Tefillin–tefillin, contains passages from the Toran and are worn while praying. Islam uses the beads. Christians pray with rosary and also have the prayer wheel.
Egyptian saying: Amun (God) is One without a second. His unity is Absolute. Beloved one or love itself God. God is love. In Christianity, Jesus answered: O Lord our God is one Lord. 1 John 4:8 8. He that loveth not knoweth not God: for God is love. Mathew 6:6; Mark 12; Paul 1 and John 4:8.

Egyptian “Ab” heart represents Osiris. A person with pure light heart is Osiris himself. He is as light as feather. Every person's heart is weighed on Goddess Maat's feather scale. To balance on it, is to be Osiris pure and sinless. It is Osiris' conquering power over all. Christians' Sacred Heart shows sacred heart of Jesus within a stylized crucifix. It combines a flaming heart, surrounded by a crown of thorns and other Christian imagery. Buddha's Foot print is his overall supremacy. It carries among other signs, the Swastika. Hindu's God's emblem of well-being, is the 8-fold path wheel of enlightenment. In Islam, Allah's hand, or the hand of Fatima, Muhammad's daughter, displaying five fingers, represents the 5 supreme pillars in Islam.



Timeless Quotes:

“God' was asleep for the nearly 100,000 years of human existence as Homo sapiens, and over 10,000 years of African religious domination of the world, until the Romans conquered Africa some 2000 years ago in 49 BCE. With White ascent in world's politics for the first time, 'God' suddenly woke up from his deep slumber and sent his only begotten son (a White child, of course) to redeem the world. Religion is racial politics for power and world domination, and not to be outdone, Asians countered the Caucasians with Buddha, and the Arabs followed suit with Muhammad.” Naiwu Osahon in 'My mission for my race.'

“The African was the first to discover iron but had built no cannon, because he had not had serious need for one. The secret of gunpowder was known only to the African priests who used it solely for religious purposes at rites such as the Mysteries of Osiris. The African was at peace with himself and in no hurry to conquer the world when African invasion by aliens began to turn into an avalanche. From that technical standpoint mainly, Africa became quite vulnerable.” Naiwu Osahon in Slavery Holocaust.

Diop in African origin of civilization tells us that Africa “became tempting, irresistible prey for the West, provided with firearms and far-ranging navies.” O.A. Ladimeji in (Nationalism, Alienation and the Crises of Ideology) makes the point more directly: “Our conquest was made possible, not by the means of production, but by the means of destruction, the technology of murder.

“Even now, they keep the world in check with their intimidating stockpile of nuclear weapons. Their children play roulette with it but they do not want Iran, North Korea, not to talk of Africa to challenge them, let alone to acquire the arsenal to defend themselves against their (the West's) constant harassment and unending exploitation and suppression.” Naiwu Osahon in The end of knowledge.

Sources:
NAIWU OSAHON Hon. Khu Mkuu (Leader) World Pan-African Movement); Ameer Spiritual (Spiritual Prince) of the African race; MSc. (Salford); Dip.M.S; G.I.P.M; Dip.I.A (Liv.); D. Inst. M; G. Inst. M; G.I.W.M; A.M.N.I.M. Poet, Author of the magnum opus: 'The end of knowledge'. One of the world's leading authors of children's books; Awarded; key to the city of Memphis, Tennessee, USA; Honourary Councilmanship, Memphis City Council; Honourary Citizenship, County of Shelby; Honourary Commissionership, County of Shelby, Tennessee; and a silver shield trophy by Morehouse College, USA, for activities to unite and uplift the African race.

Naiwu Osahon, renowned author, philosopher of science, mystique, leader of the world Pan-African Movement.

Attached Images
African Goddess Mawu.jpg (72.4 KB)
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Adam and Eve and Serpent.jpg (35.0 KB)
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URL: http://cozay.com/forum/f3/paganism-the-mother-of-all-religions-paganism-in-t2117/

The Strange Story of the False Wailing Wall

Expanded Internet Edition - July 1, 2000

The Strange Story of the False Wailing Wall

[The secular dates in this article rendered B.C.E. and C.E. (meaning "Before Common Era" and "Common Era") are identical to the false religious dates B.C. and A.D. ("Before Christ" and "After our Lord") which erroneously became standard in Christian countries (though 3 years off) in the sixth century of our Era.]

There is absolute proof that the present site of the Jewish "Wailing Wall" in Jerusalem is NOT any part of the Temple that existed in the time of Herod and Jesus. In fact, that particular location that the Jewish authorities have accepted represents the Western Wall of an early Roman fortress (finally built and enlarged by Herod the Great). King Herod called it Fort Antonia, after the famous Mark Anthony who lived at the end of the first century before Christ.

It was formerly called the Baris in the proceeding hundred years and it finally became known as the Praetorium in the New Testament period (the central military edifice in Jerusalem where the commanding general of a Legion of troops had his headquarters). This rectangular type of building clearly resembles most permanent military camps that the Romans constructed throughout the Empire to house their Legions.

Indeed, when the Bordeaux Pilgrim visited Jerusalem in 333 C.E., he looked east from an area in front of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (then in its final stages of being built) and said he saw this Praetorium directly eastward with its walls (he mentioned "walls" in the plural – meaning the southern and western walls) firmly entrenched in the bottom of the Tyropoeon Valley. This central valley of Jerusalem (the Valley of the Cheesemakers) separated the eastern mountain ridge of the city (the original Mount Zion of the Bible) from the larger and more extensive western ridge.

What the Bordeaux Pilgrim provided in his writing is a perfect description of what we call today the Haram esh-Sharif. It is the remains of Fort Antonia. This Herodian structure housed the Tenth Legion left by Titus after the Roman/Jewish War of 66 to 73 C.E. The Tenth Legion continued its presence within its walls for over 200 years — until the Legion left for Ailat on the Red Sea in 289 C.E. The Haram esh-Sharif (Fort Antonia) is the only remaining part of the Jerusalem that existed in the period of Herod and Jesus. And the present Jewish authorities have mistakenly accepted its Western Wall as being the wall of Herod’s Temple. They are wrong! It is actually the Western Wall of Fort Antonia.

But how did the present "Wailing Wall" get erroneously selected by the Jewish authorities as a holy place for the Jews? As I have abundantly shown in my new book "The Temples that Jerusalem Forgot" and in my supplemental articles on the ASK Web Site, the Jewish authorities in and around Jerusalem from 70 C.E. until 1077 C.E. (for over a thousand years) only showed their religious interest for the location of the Temple at the area positioned over and around the Gihon Spring. This was at least 1000 feet south of what later became known as the Dome of the Rock. This is the exact area that the Genizah documents from Egypt show the Jewish authorities wished to live (to be near their Temple) in the time of Omar, the Second Caliph (638 C.E.). The Jewish records show (mentioned in my book and supplemental articles) that it is without doubt the southeastern ridge of Jerusalem that contained the Temples of Solomon, Zerubbabel and that of Herod.

However, with the period of the Crusades, things begin to change. After a period of 50 years (from 1099 to 1154 C.E.) during which no Jewish person was allowed into the City of Jerusalem, we then have records that a few Jews began to return to Jerusalem. It was only at this time (around 1054 C.E.) that some Jewish people started to imagine that the Christian and Muslim identification of the Dome of the Rock for the site of the former Temples might have relevance. This was first mentioned by Benjamin of Tudela. It was this Jewish traveler in about 1169 C.E., who first suggested that the region of the Dome of the Rock should be considered the site of the former Temples. This was a great error, but within a hundred years after Benjamin all Jews in the world came to believe it (I will explain why the Jews erroneously did so in a biblical and historical way in next month’s article titled: "Expansion and Portability of Zion"). So, a new area for the site of the Temple was selected by the Jews in the time of Benjamin of Tudela. Benjamin even pointed to a low balustrade that existed in his time near the western entrance to the octagonal edifice (this balustrade has since been destroyed) and he identified it with the "Western Wall" of the Holy of Holies that earlier Jews had mentioned in their former literature. He, of course, was wrong. The "Western Wall" that the Talmuds and the writers of the Midrashim referred to was that remnant wall that was at one time the Western Wall of the Holy of Holies from the ruins of a later Temple than that of Herod. This later Temple was twice attempted to be built (once was in the time of Constantine from 313 to 325 C.E. and again a short time later in the period of Julian the Apostate about 362 C.E.). The particular site where those two later Temples were attempted to be constructed was within the proper precincts of Herod’s former Temple. This later Temple was built over and near the Gihon Spring on the southeast ridge (1000 feet SOUTH of the Dome of the Rock).

But in the time of Benjamin of Tudela (1169 C.E.), some Jews decided to reposition the Temple from that southeastern section of Jerusalem up to the Dome of the Rock. They also invented a new "second" Western Wall as a part of the supposed Holy of Holies by identifying it with that ruined balustrade at the western entrance to the Dome of the Rock. During this time (in 1169 C.E. and for the next 380 years), the Jewish people paid NO ATTENTION whatever to the "Western Wall" of the Haram esh-Sharif which is now called their "Wailing Wall." Until the 16th century of our era, that western area produced NO INTEREST in the minds of the Jewish authorities or laity. Indeed, from the Crusades until the rise of the Ottoman Empire in 1517 C.E., the Jews customarily assembled in the very opposite direction — at the EASTERN side of the Haram on the Mount of Olives (or, at the EASTERN wall itself at what they called the Gate of Mercy if the Muslim authorities would allow them to get that close). They congregated in the eastern part from the Haram in order to face the Dome of the Rock in the west that they finally considered (erroneously) to be the former spot of their Temples. When Benjamin of Tudela visited the spot in the middle of the 12th century, he was able to stand at the eastern wall and pray toward the Dome of the Rock. However, a few years later, the Jewish traveler Petachia of Ratisbon mentioned the "Gate of Mercy" but said "no Jew is permitted to go there." Petachia said the Jews were then meeting on the Mount of Olives and "prayers were offered up there" (Elkan Adler, Jewish Travellers in the Middle Ages, p.90). This is further vindicated by Rabbi Jacob in 1238-44 C.E. who said "we ascend the Mount of Olives…until we reach a platform which is on the Mount of Olives, where the Red Heifer was slain, and we go uphill to the platform which faces the Temple gate. Thence we see the Temple Mount and all the buildings upon it, and we pray in the direction of the Temple" (ibid., p,117). Further on in his writing, Rabbi Jacob states: "Around the Foundation Stone, the Ishmaelite kings have built a very beautiful building for a house of prayer and erected on the top of a very fine cupola [Dome]. The building is the site of the Holy of Holies and the Sanctuary" (ibid. p.118). Though the Jewish records show that Jews before the Crusades believed the Temple Mount was over the Gihon Spring, now in the 13th century it was being reckoned (wrongly) to be at the Dome of the Rock.

Later, in the time of Isaac Chelo (1334 C.E.), he refers to the "Western Wall" that was mentioned by Benjamin of Tudela which he said stood before the Temple of Omar ibn al Khattah. The language of Chelo is confusing because he strangely called Omar’s "Temple" as being the "Gate of Mercy" and that the "Western Wall" was located before the Temple [which normally means east of the building]. But since Chelo is citing Benjamin (who placed the "Western Wall" just in front of the entrance to the Dome of the Rock), this is no doubt what Chelo also intended to convey. Yet Chelo mixed-up the chronology and said his "Western Wall" was discovered in the time of Omar (638 C.E.) when some Jews told him that there was some "heaped rubbish and filth over the spot, so that no one knew exactly where the ruins [of the former Temple] stood." But an old Jewish man finally showed Omar (back in 638 C.E.) "the ruins of the Temple under a mound of defilements" (ibid. p.131).

The records are chronologically confusing because the later Jewish travelers misidentified a "Western Wall" as being that of two different time periods. The first period was that when the Muslims first conquered Jerusalem in 638 C.E., and the second period was that which began with Benjamin of Tudela in 1169 C.E. (well over 400 years later). Indeed, as I have explained in my book, the first "Western Wall" was connected with the Holy of Holies of the Sanctuaries built in the time of Constantine and Julian, while the second "Western Wall" (over 400 years later) was thought to be at the west side of the Dome of the Rock. The Jews in the Crusade period finally accepted the Dome of the Rock as the general site of the Holy of Holies. There is yet, however, a further complication in rationally trying to identify the "Western Wall." This further confusion is the selection by the Jews of the present "Wailing Wall" as being the "Western Wall" mentioned by the early Talmudic Jews in their literature. The truth is, on the other hand, that later "Western Wall" had nothing to do with the Holy of Holies and everyone knew this. The "Wailing Wall" is actually the outer "Western Wall" of the Haram esh-Sharif which I have shown in my book to be the Western Wall of the former Fort Antonia and it has nothing to do with ANY of the former Temples of the Jews. This latter wall was finally selected by the Jews in about 1570 C.E. This is our modern "Wailing Wall." But in order to semi-justify their selection, present day Jews are prone to mix up the two earlier accounts and erroneously to confuse them with events surrounding their present "Wailing Wall" that is located north of Robinson’s arch.

When the Present "Wailing Wall" Was Selected by the Jewish Authorities

Let us look at the historical records to see what happened in about the year 1520 C.E. (and again in 1537 C.E.) that caused the Jewish people to abruptly accept the wrong spot. Strangely, they abandoned their customary practice of officially assembling at the EASTERN wall at the Gate of Mercy (or mainly on the Mount of Olives). The Jewish authorities decided to select the WESTERN WALL of the Haram esh-Sharif (just north of what became known as "Robinson’s Arch") as their official site for assembly. It was an error of the first magnitude to transfer their devotions to this Western Wall of the Haram. Israeli scholars today understand that the present "Western Wall" has nothing to do with the former "Western Wall of the Holy of Holies" that was thought to be previously located at first near the Gihon Spring and then later (1000 feet further north) at the west entrance to the Dome of the Rock. In his excellent book "The Western Wall," Meir Ben-Dov wants it to be clearly understood that the Western Wall of the Haram (the present Wailing Wall) is NOT the same as the "Western Wall" mentioned in early Jewish literature that once considered it to be a part of the Holy of Holies. Notice how Ben-Dov makes this abundantly clear:

"There is a tradition that the Temple’s Western Wall remained standing [after the Roman/Jewish War of 66 to 73 C.E.]." Meir Ben-Dov then continues: "This is not a reference to the western wall of the Temple Mount [the present Wailing Wall of the Haram, emphasis mine] — all of its walls [those of the Haram] have survived to this day. The western wall about which it was prophesied [by Jews in the Talmudic period] that it would never be destroyed, is the Western Wall of the actual sanctuary, and in the course of time, it [the Western Wall of Herod’s Temple] was razed to the ground completely" (The Western Wall, p.27).

The Western Wall that later Jews were prophesying would NOT be destroyed was the Western Wall of the Holy of Holies of the Temple that was attempted to be built in the time of Constantine and Julian (in the fourth century). As for the present Wailing Wall, it was finally selected by the Jewish authorities only about 350 years ago and that wall had nothing to do with the Holy of Holies. Indeed, no Jew in history before the sixteenth century thought that outer Western Wall of the Haram esh-Sharif was holy and important. Something happened, however, that made the Jewish authorities to accept the erroneous Wailing Wall site. What occurred that made the Jews eventually to pick this upstart "wall" that wasn’t even a part of the inner sanctuary (that the former "Western Walls" were a part of)? The fact is, something very mystical occurred in the history of Judaism in the early sixteenth century that caused the Jewish authorities and people to abandon the other two sites which they formerly accepted for the location of their Temples and they began to concentrate on their present "Wailing Wall" as the holiest spot in all Judaism. That story is an interesting one. I will now cite two Jewish sources that explain how the Jews finally accepted their new "Wailing Wall."

The Site of the "Wailing Wall" Was at First a Christian Holy Place

Let us understand the historical reasons why the Jews finally (and erroneously) accepted their present Wailing Wall as their holiest place in Judaism. The Jewish records of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries inform us that the place of the "Wailing Wall" was a spot situated at the base of the Western Wall of the Haram esh-Sharif where Christian women would assemble at various times in order to deposit their garbage (such as ordure, menstrual clothes and other junk). The first Jewish account of this practice refers to about the year 1520 C.E. It describes the place as having long been a dump of religious significance for Christian women. Before 1520 C.E., NO Jew or Muslim was at all interested in the place (it had no significance for them) because it was a Christian site that only Christians believed to be significant. It was a Christian "dump" of religious meaning to Christians alone. The pile of refuse at the spot was so huge (having accumulated for decades over the site by the deposits of the Christian women) that it finally became noticeable to the first Ottoman king who conquered Jerusalem (Selim – the father of Suleiman the Magnificent). Since the garbage dump was near a region where Selim had his palace, he inquired why the filthy area was there and who maintained it.

The historical account of what happened is first given in a Jewish historical work recorded in approximately 1730 C.E. (about 200 years after the event it claims to recount). The man who wrote it was Moses Hagiz, a then resident of Jerusalem. The full narrative is given in the excellent book mentioned above written by Meir Ben-Dov, Mordechai Naor and Zeev Aner for the Ministry of Defence Publishing House in 1983 titled: "The Western Wall (HaKotel)," pages 108-110. Let us notice carefully the gist of the story. In fact, there were actually two stories that became entwined together within the decades that follow the first account, but it is easy to gather the main points and to understand the central thread of their themes without any ambiguity. The first (and chronologically the earliest for the actors of the story) is that given by Moses Hagiz (mentioned above). He reports it was Selim (the father of Suleiman the Magnificent) who was the feature actor. The second story on the other hand describes a time about 20 years later, and it has Suleiman himself as the central actor. The Jewish writer Eliezer Nahman Poa wrote this second story of the account (sometime in the 17th century). It is the earlier of the two accounts from the point of view of relating the story to listeners and readers. Some features of the two stories remind us of allegorical personages mentioned in ancient accounts found in the Holy Scriptures. These stories no doubt evolved in order to make political points or to show lines of religious significance within the accounts. I will now copy in italics what the above book "The Western Wall" relates.

"One day he (the Sultan Selim) saw from his window, an old gentile woman, more than ninety years of age, bring a sack or box (basket) of garbage and drop it at a spot near his office. He became very angry...and sent one of his slaves to bring the woman and her sack. When she came he asked to which people she belonged and she told him that she was a Roman (Christian). He then asked her where she lived and she answered: ‘Not far from here, about two days’ walk’ [Bethlehem] and explained that that was why she was tired because, according to the custom the Roman leadership imposed, everyone who lived in Jerusalem had to deposit garbage at that spot [that became the Western Wall] at least once a day; those who lived in the environs of the city had to do it twice a week and those who lived at least three days away had to do it once every thirty days, because that place was the house of Israel’s God [the site of the Temple] and when they were not able to destroy it completely, they decreed, by a ban,….that the name of Israel should never again be mentioned concerning it.

"Therefore," (said the old Woman), "do not be angry that I came with a bag of garbage to your royal court. I meant no offence to you. The king, may he rest in paradise, listened to everything the woman had to say and then told his slaves to detain her until he had investigated the matter to see if she spoke the truth …. His slaves brought to him many others who brought (sacks of garbage) and he interrogated them and found that they told the same story as the woman….

"He (the Sultan) opened his store of silver and gold and took several bags of coins as well as a basket and a hoe which he slung over his back. He issued a proclamation: ‘All who love the King and want to give him satisfaction should watch and follow suit!.’ He then went to the garbage heap and scattered a bagful of coins so that the poor should dig for them, and, out of their love of money, clear the garbage away. He (the Sultan) stood over them and encouraged them…. Every day he scattered more coins…. For some thirty days, more than ten thousand people cleared away garbage until he revealed the Western Wall and the foundations as they can be seen today by everybody…." [End of first quote from the book by Meir Ben-Dov titled "The Western Wall."]

The above represents the first story. It gives the essence of the account that brings the Wailing Wall into focus and it states that the narrative was chronologically based in the time of Selim (about 1520 C.E.). I now continue with the further quote from the book "The Western Wall" about the second account.

"The hero of the second, parallel story about the discovery of the Wall is the sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, the son of the Selim, referred to above. The author (or source) of this story is Eliezer Nahman Poa (17th century) and he attaches the story to the verse, ‘He raises up the needy from the earth; He lifts up the poor from the garbage heap’ (Psalm 113:7). Poa brings the story from an oral tradition and introduces it with the words, "And this was told to me:"

"In the days of the king Sultan Suleiman, nobody knew the location of the Temple [emphasis mine], so he ordered a search of Jerusalem to find it.

"One day, the man in charge of the search who had already given up hope [of discovering the true site of the Temple], saw a woman coming and on her head was a basket full of garbage and filth.

"What is that on your head?" he asked.

"Garbage," she said.

"Where are you taking it?"

"To such-and-such a place."

"Where are you from?"

"From Bethlehem."

"And between Bethlehem and this place are there no garbage dumps?"

"We have a tradition that anyone who brings garbage and dumps it here is performing a meritorious deed.

"This must be it said the man [it must be the place of the Temple], and [the captain] ordered many men to clear out the garbage from that spot. The garbage which, because of the great time that had passed, had turned into earth at the bottom. And so he uncovered the holy place. He went and told the king who rejoiced greatly and ordered them to clear and sweep (the place) and wash the Wall with rose-water." [End of the second account recorded in the book "The Western Wall."]

[Then, Meir Ben-Dov continues with his commentary on the two accounts.] "We may assume that the tradition which ascribes the discovery to Suleiman is the more reliable of the two, not only because its source, Eliezer Nahman Poa, lived closer chronologically to the event or because its strands are more true to folk-tradition, but also because Suleiman was famous for his preoccupation with excavation and building. It was he who, in 1538 completed the walls of Jerusalem which are still standing. It would appear that theory line [the first account] was transferred (by Moses Hagiz?) to the beginning of the Turkish occupation and to the earlier sultan in order to give it more importance. Thus the Selim version was created later. The logic of such a transfer would be: If the new rulers decided to "search Jerusalem" for the unknown Temple site [emphasis mine, note that NO ONE at this time KNEW the whereabouts of the former Temples], why would Selim not do it [cleanse the site at the Wailing Wall] immediately on their arrival?

Meir Ben-Dov continues: "The stories cited above serve as examples of the general historical legends connected with the Wall in the past. Another type of legend is connected with the sanctity of the Wall in the present, a sanctity which is both general and particular. The general sanctity finds expression in the tales about miraculous cures effected by the Wall, in stories about its desecration being punished, and similar motives, which are common in folk literature in connection with other holy places and saints. When they happen at the Wall, however, the miracles that happen are more intense." [End of commentary cited in the book "The Western Wall."]

A Significant Observation in Regard to these Jewish Accounts on Why the Wailing Wall was Selected?

It is important to recognize that these records show that at the beginning of the sixteenth century (a mere 380 years ago) NO JEWISH PEOPLE were going to the Western Wall of the Haram esh-Sharif and calling it the Western Wall of the Temple. Indeed, the Jewish historical narrative we have been reading states that in the days of Suleiman (1538 C.E.) "nobody knew the location of the Temple, so he ordered a search of Jerusalem to find it." And why was the first account dated to the rule of Selim (the first Turkish ruler to conquer Jerusalem)? It was to justify the fact that NO ONE knew precisely in the early sixteenth century WHERE the actual Temples were located. True, all at this late date thought that the site of the former Temple was SOMEWHERE within the area of the Haram esh-Sharif. But exactly where? No one knew. Isn’t it interesting that even the scholars today are in the same plight of understanding? They are also as ignorant as the historians and theologians were at the time of the beginning of the Ottoman Empire.

Further Evidence the Jewish Authorities DID NOT Accept the Wailing Wall Until AFTER 1520 C.E.

The Jewish authorities in Jerusalem did not at first accept the site of the Christian dump as having any Jewish significance. It was only after the Muslims decided to clean up the area that some Jews became interested in the place of the later Wailing Wall. But soon after the Ottoman invasion of Jerusalem, certain miraculous events occurred that gave confidence to the people of Jerusalem that the Dome of the Rock was located near the former Holy of Holies of the Temple. Let us notice what happened.

In the year 1517 C.E. (when the Ottoman Turks first entered Jerusalem under Selim), it was then believed that the area of the Dome of the Rock had the best credentials for being the place of the Holy of Holies. Zev Vilnay in his "Legends of Jerusalem," relates: "It is said that during the Feast of Tabernacles in 1519 it [the crescent on top the Dome of the Rock] turned eastward [its horns turned to the east]. The Arabs believed this to be a portentous omen. They attempted to turn it [to face] southward, in the direction of Mecca, the holy city of the Muslims in Arabia [the crescent’s normal position was toward the south with its horns pointing westward]" (page 30). The Muslims interpreted this eastward positioning of the crescent to signal the coming of the Messiah (Jesus had taught that he would come back to earth from the east and to the Mount of Olives). After the restoration of the crescent on the Dome, another similar event occurred three years later in 1522. Again Vilnay states: "Rabbi Moses Bassola, who visited the Holy Land in 1522, in the time of the Turks, reported that the ‘rumor concerning the crescent is, that an overturned crescent [was] facing south [it was bent toward the south], protrudes from a big column of metal at the head of a dome [the Dome of the Rock] which the Arabs have in the Temple" (page 30). These supernatural events seemed to substantiate the thought that the Dome was indeed the site of the Temple. There were even more miraculous occurrences concerning the crescent atop the Dome of the Rock.

Vilnay reports another occurrence that happened a year later (in 1523) when a false prophet of the Jews named David ha-Reubeni came to Jerusalem claiming to be the Messiah. Vilnay continues: "David ha-Reubeni, a false Messiah of Israel, went to Jerusalem from Arabia. He was on his way to Rome to petition the Pope for help in his endeavor to restore the Jewish people to their land. In 1523, he entered the Dome of the Rock [this was normally forbidden to any Jew, but the so-called supernal events happening at this time, notably with the mysterious twisting of the crescent atop the Dome of the Rock, caused even the Muslim Arabs to admit David ha-Reubeni into the inner sanctuary of the Dome of the Rock]." Vilnay continues with the story: "Now on the top of the dome there is a crescent which faces westward [it horns pointed westward]. On the first day of the Feast of Pentecost, this crescent was seen to face the east [it had twisted a hundred and eighty degrees with its horns now pointing eastward], and when the Arabs saw this, they shouted in great alarm. I asked them, ‘Why do you shout?’ They answered, ‘Because of our sins this crescent has turned toward the east, which is an evil omen to the Arabs’ A workman climbed to the Dome and returned the crescent to its former position, but on the next day it was facing the east. And the Arabs continued to shout and to weep as they vainly tried to turn the crescent." These supposed supernatural signs caused David ha-Reubeni to further proclaim his Messiahship. He teamed up with another Jew named Solomon Molcho in Rome and many Christians believed that some type of Jewish Messiah was indeed in their midst. The two men, however, were judged for practicing witchcraft and both died ignominiously.

The prime reason I give these historical accounts at this juncture is because at the beginning of the Ottoman rule, it was common knowledge both by Muslims and Jews that the former Temple was then recognized as being near or at the site of the Dome of the Rock. There is not one mention of the importance of the "Wailing Wall" that was located at the Western Wall of the Haram esh-Sharif in these early records. However, this was soon to change. A most eminent individual arrived on the historical scene who was to drastically alter the beliefs of the Jews — almost to a man, woman and child. This was Rabbi Isaac Luria. With the advent of Rabbi Isaac Luria around 1570 C.E., the "Wailing Wall" became a prominent holy fixture among Jews. This was because of the influence of Rabbi Luria. He was a most powerful mystic and religious leader among the Jews. The historical records reveal that it was Rabbi Luria who selected the former Christian holy site at what became the Wailing Wall. What this all shows is that not only Jews by this time did not know the precise area of the Temple site, but they and the Muslim Turks were now relying on a Christian traditional site to locate it for them. And what tradition did they select? It was a very negative and hostile Christian tradition that was designed to antagonize the beliefs of Jews and Muslims. Still, the Jews and Muslims reasoned that IF the Christians had for a long time cast garbage at the site where the Wailing Wall was finally selected (and the heap of rubbish had grown so high that the bottom of the pile had turned back into soil), then surely THE CHRISTIANS MUST BE RIGHT. This was Jewish and Muslim reasoning at the time. After all, the Jews and Muslim authorities readily admitted that no one of them knew the precise spot where the Holy of Holies had once been located. The actions of the Christians regarding the place of their "religious dump" impressed the Jews and Muslims. There seemed to be historical precedents for this belief.

Recall that there was also an early Jewish account that when Omar the Second Caliph back in 638 C.E. was seeking the spot of the Jewish Temple that an old Jewish man showed the Sultan where the Holy of Holies had been. It was also a rubbish dump (but mentioned in the records some 900 years before the time of the Ottoman Turks). It was this earlier story that had long circulated in the Middle East that no doubt led Selim (or Suleiman and later the Jewish authorities) to think that this new rubbish dump that the Christians had maintained was in some way connected with the original Temple site. What is astonishing is the fact that the stories relate that it was the Christians who had initiated the dump and had perpetuated its use from olden days. Jews and Muslims in the preceding 350 years had paid no attention to the site whatever! It was other areas that Jews and Muslims were interested in. It must be remembered that Omar was shown in his day the Temple site over and near the Gihon Spring, while the accounts of the Christian women some 900 years later in the sixteenth century had repositioned the Temple site to an area somewhere near their rubbish dump that was adjacent to the Western Wall of the Haram. So, first the Muslims and then the Jewish authorities in the middle and late sixteenth century began to think that perhaps the Christian identification at what became the Wailing Wall was indeed the correct site.

What an anachronism! Here we have the Muslim authorities in the time of Suleiman the Magnificent relying on a Christian site that was established as a place of hate and revulsion to locate the Jewish "House of God." Indeed, this garbage dump (according to the story) became a Muslim prime proof of where the once glorious Temples were located. This must be the case because the accounts show that neither Selim nor Suleiman before their selection of the dump area (with all their historians and professional men) were able to discover the true site of the Temple. The Ottoman Turks were oblivious of the real site. True, tradition placed the Temple somewhere within the Haram esh-Sharif, but just where within that enclosure was the correct spot? What is interesting is the fact that there is still not a scholar today (whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian) who can inform any person dogmatically where the Holy of Holies was even at this start of the twenty-first century. All scholars and religious authorities are still in the dark regarding what they consider to be the exact spot for the Temple within the area of the Haram. The fact is, however, they are all looking in the wrong place. The Haram esh-Sharif (as I have adequately proved) is the military camp of Fort Antonia. The actual Temples of God were located 1000 feet further SOUTH from the Dome of the Rock and 600 feet SOUTH of the southern wall of the Haram esh-Sharif.

Why Did the Jewish Authorities Finally Select the "Wailing Wall" as a Wall of Herod’s Temple?

The historical records show that the Jewish authorities DID NOT at first follow the Muslims in this identification of this Christian garbage dump as being near the Temple (or that it pointed toward it). The Jews had to rely on other factors to accept the area of the dump. True, it is clear that the Jewish authorities finally relented and began to pay attention to the "Wailing Wall." This happened because of the experiences and teachings of a most respected Rabbi that finally accepted the spot as holy. That Rabbi was Isaac Luria (referred to as Ha-Ari, "the Lion"), the creator of what became known as the Lurianic Kabbalah. Indeed, the Jews from the time of Benjamin of Tudela (1069 C.E.) until the rise of the Ottoman Empire (1517 C.E.) showed not the slightest attention to this formerly Christian part of the Western Wall as a place holy and sanctified to them. It was a Christian holy spot for many years. Then it was cleaned up by the Muslims to become a holy site to them. And eventually, the Jewish authorities felt it was also proper for them to recognize it – but they were the last to do so in Jerusalem. It was when Rabbi Isaac Luria told them that the Shekinah was then located at that former Christian dump, that the Jews began to assemble (and later to flock) to the region and pushing out the Muslims who had at first cleaned up the place from its Christian defilement. Up to the time of Rabbi Isaac Luria (who was born in Jerusalem 1534 and died 1572 C.E.), the Jewish custom (for almost the previous 400 years) was to assemble at the Eastern Wall at the Gate of Mercy (or, on the Mount of Olives) and pray westward toward the Dome of the Rock. They adored a balustrade they thought was the Western Wall of the Holy of Holies. But Rabbi Luria changed this. I will now show what prompted this action of acceptance. What the Jewish authorities did was to heed the words of Luria and from then on they began to assemble (as they do now) at their new "Western Wall."

The Importance of Rabbi Isaac Luria

In the middle of the sixteenth century, practically the whole of the Jewish people went over to a belief in the philosophies of a man named Rabbi Isaac Luria. He was the person who established what is called Lurianic Kabbala (a form of mystic Gnosticism) that led people into doctrines that were as foreign to Moses, Isaiah and Ezra as anyone could get (and this also includes the teachings of those Jews who wrote the Talmuds and other writings up the about the thirteenth century). Among other false doctrines (that are counter to the simple teachings of the Holy Scriptures), Luria taught the Gentile doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul and even more Gentile in origin, the doctrine of the Transmigration of Souls (very similar as the Hindus do today). Both these doctrines are diametrically contrary to the basic teachings of the Old Testament (the Tanak) and also of the New Testament. [I have written numerous research papers showing this which can be read and downloaded on our ASK Web Page.] Rabbi Luria promoted as a prime doctrine that it was normal for the people who lived in one generation to appear after their deaths as other persons in the next generation (and his teaching did not require a resurrection from the dead, as Scripture demands). In other words, Luria believed and taught Reincarnation (Metempsychosis). And the whole of the Jewish nation at the time went over to believing his strange and anti-biblical teachings (while they continued to keep the Sabbath, food laws and other external rituals that identified the people as still being Jews). Note what the Encyclopedia of Religion has to relate about the influence of Luria.

"LURIA, ISAAC (1534-1572), known also by the acronym [A’RiY, that is, Ha-Ari (ha-Elohi Rabbi Yitshaq, "the godly Rabbi Isaac"); Jewish mystic. Isaac Luria was the preeminent Kabbalist of Safed, a small town in the Galilee where a remarkable renaissance of Jewish mystical life took place in the sixteenth century. Not only did Luria's original mythological system and innovative ritual practices achieve great popularity in Safed itself; they also exerted profound influence upon virtually all subsequent Jewish mystical creativity. By the middle of the seventeenth century, Lurianic theology and ritual practices had permeated much of the Jewish world. It has been observed that Lurianism was the last premodern theological system to enjoy such widespread acceptance within Judaism" (Vol.9, pp.54,55). Luria even adopted some theological teachings similar to Christian belief in the Trinity (that God is found to be One God manifested in Three Persons). Luria went even further. He used the same principle of interpretation of the early Christians, but he devised "ten different manifestations of God" (that he called Sefirot) that were supposed to represent "one" God. Luria’s top and foremost manifestation of his plural "Godhead" was a "Non-being" never known by Moses or the Prophets, or those Sages of the Talmuds. He called his final manifestation of the Deity as Ein Sof which means in Hebrew "No End" (or, simply, "the End is Nothing" or "Nothing is the End") which is another way of saying in a philosophical sense "there is NO definable God" (or, all that there is in the Universe is NOTHING – or that God is a "God" who is in exile or in hiding). This was another way of teaching there is "no God" in the final analysis of things. In a word, it is a teaching advocating atheism. Luria also followed in the footsteps of Maimonides even further in his acceptance of the principles of Aristotle.

For a century and a half, Luria had a profound influence on all sections of Jewish religious belief and society. Continuing with the comments in the Encyclopedia of Religion, we read: "It appears that Luria possessed the traits of a genuinely inspired and charismatic individual. He became known in Safed as an extraordinarily saintly person who had been privileged to experience personal revelations of Kabbalistic knowledge from the Holy Spirit, the prophet Elijah, and departed rabbis. He was regarded as having knowledge of such esoteric arts as metoposcopy and physiognomy and the ability to understand the language of animals. He was able to diagnose the spiritual condition of his disciples and others and provided them with specific acts of atonement for restoring their souls to a state of purity. To his formal disciples, who numbered about thirty-five, Luria imparted esoteric wisdom, vouchsafing to each one mystical knowledge pertinent to his particular soul, such as its ancestry and the transmigrations through which it had gone. He also gave his disciples detailed instructions on the meditative techniques by which they could raise their souls up to the divine realm, commune with the souls of departed rabbis, and achieve revelatory experiences of their own" (Vol.9, p.55).

Rabbi Luria was born in Jerusalem in A.D. 1534. In Jewish opinion, he was a most important child in a prophetic point of view. It was believed that Elijah the prophet appeared to the father of Rabbi Luria and told him "to keep this child well, for a great light shall shine forth from him to Israel and to the whole world" (Vilnay, Legends of Jerusalem, p.199). Through much meditation (that he learned in Egypt), he finally moved to Safed in Galilee and won over most of the Jewish Kabbalists who lived there. He was capable of pointing out at a distance the unmarked and unknown graves of past Rabbis and holy men and to precisely identify them. There was no way of proving Luria wrong in most instances because many of the graves he discovered had no markings on them, and people had to assume that Luria (because of his saintliness) had to be right in his identifications.

"Visiting holy graves was considered particularly desirable by the Kabbalists of Safed. Isaac Luria, the foremost exponent of that school, is credited with having ‘revealed’ hitherto unknown graves" (Encyclopaedia Judaica, article "Luria"). Continuing the quote: "The custom of visiting graves itself seems to be of old Arabic origin. Nearly all the Jewish travelers who visited Erez Israel mentioned graves in their accounts and, indeed, many travel books outlining itineraries and listing the graves enjoyed wide circulation. A pilgrimage to a holy grave was considered to have therapeutic value and many customs developed for such visits. Candles were lit at the grave; often the supplicants made ceremonial processions around it and prostrated themselves on it. There was—and still is—a widespread custom of placing a small stone or pebble on the grave and some pilgrims take a stone from it when they leave. It is also common practice to leave a written petition at the grave. As early as the beginning of the tenth century the Karaite scholar Sahl b. Mazli'ah complained: ‘How can I remain silent when some Jews are behaving like idolaters? They sit at the graves, sometimes sleeping there at night, and appeal to the dead: 'Oh! Rabbi Yose ha-Gelili! Heal me! Grant me children!' They kindle lights there and offer incense...’ (Pinsker, Likkutei Kadmoniyyot, Nispahim, II p. 32)" (Encyclopaedia Judaica, article "Jewish Holy Places"). True enough, this practice is outright paganism in its origin.

The Karaite Jewish scholar mentioned in the last quote was absolutely correct. People who do such things are practicing heathen and idolatrous customs and it is utterly condemned in the Holy Scriptures (Isaiah 8:19,20). In the majority of cases, these grave sites that the people began to visit in pilgrimages in the land of Israel in the time of Rabbi Isaac Luria were identified "miraculously." There were very few graves that had gravestones with inscriptions that identified the person who was buried at the spot. This is where Rabbi Isaac Luria became so famous and recognized as being saintly. He was considered to possess the spirit of Elijah and the spirits and souls of other important men of the past. The new Encyclopedia of Judaism (edited by Jacob Neusner, Avery-Pick and Green) has this to say about these "miraculously" identified graves (most of which were unmarked and no one could prove one way or another whether Luria was correct in his selections). The Encyclopedia relates:

"During the sixteenth century, many graves of Mishnaic and Talmudic rabbis were miraculously [emphasis mine] identified in Palestine and became loci of individual and organized pilgrimage. With the spread of Luranic Kabbalah and the collections of the miraculous deeds of Luria himself [emphasis mine], entitled ‘The Praises of the Ari,’, local pilgrimage sites began to appear among many Jewish communities throughout the entire Muslim world, especially in North Africa. There [in North Africa], [the native] Berber popular religion, with graves of holy men, sacred trees, groves, brooks, pools, rocks, and grottos, had been thoroughly syncretized with local Islam…." [Continuing the quote:] "By the twentieth century, in Morocco alone there were no fewer than 652 shrines to Jewish saints…. This is due to the common influence of the Lurianic Kabbalah in both its intellectual and popular manifestations… Even those Middle Eastern and North African rabbis who objected to the more exuberant and syncretistic practices of popular saint veneration tended to take a generally permissive attitude, due in part to the ubiquity of saint veneration and in part to a desire to keep pilgrimages and other practices associated with such venerations as much as possible within Halakhic [oral law] bounds. Thus, for example, while the great Iraqi legal decisor :Yosef Hayyim (1833 or 1835-1909) ruled that the Jews of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan ought to abandon their custom of sacrificing cattle on the graves of tzaddiqim in times of drought [the tzaddiqim were dead ‘righteous men’ of the past], he did not forbid prayer at those places. This tolerant attitude continues throughout much of the Sephardic world and in the state of Israel today, where saint veneration has undergone a major revival and is stronger than ever before" (Encyclopedia of Judaism, pp.679,680)."

Yes, there is widespread acceptance of these saint venerations even in modern Israel. It was Rabbi Isaac Luria who commenced in earnest (and popularized) these pilgrimages to the graves of dead men who were thought to be righteous and still alive (often hovering around their graves). These dead men (who were still thought to be alive) were thought to have the powers of blessing and healing — and they could still work miracles for those who relied on them for spiritual help. Indeed [continuing with the Encyclopedia of Judaism]: "In the 1960’s, synagogues named after tzaddiqim began to proliferate, and some became the sites of major annual hillulot [pilgrimage]. Around the same time, pilgrimages to graves of holy men buried in Israel began to attract increasing numbers of people….. The hillulot of Simeon b. Yohai [the reputed originator of the Zohar which taught the Kabbalah] on Lag B’Omer at Meron in the Galilee has become the most important pilgrimage among Sephardim in Israel, attracting more than 100,000…. A great many new pilgrimage sites have emerged in Israel in recent decades, and newly recognized individuals are continually being added to the pantheon of tzaddiqim" (The Encyclopedia of Judaism, pp.688,699).

These actions are pure and simple paganism in action (utterly condemned in the Torah and Tanak – the Holy Scriptures). The prime originator of these pilgrimages to the graves of ‘righteous men’ is the same man who first selected the Wailing Wall as a divine spot for the Jews to assemble. This was Rabbi Isaac Luria. He was one of the most powerful men in sixteenth century Judaism (with outstanding influence throughout all of Judaism). His credentials center around the fact that he could identify the persons in unmarked graves through visions, dreams and supernatural revelations, not through the application of sound historical and geographical methods. Indeed, Luria’s prestige is still extremely high among many religious Jews. Those who accept him and his teachings are those Jews who have the religious mentality that governed the Jewish masses in the sixteenth century. Christians and Muslims have their share of such people as well. It is by such visionary and miraculously claimed identifications that so many places of pilgrimage have been selected to adore and at which the Jewish people should assemble and pray. But are these places genuine? The real truth is, there has been much error that has infiltrated into the bosom of the three Abrahamic faiths. The Christians and Muslims of the past have done the same thing on a large scale. The ubiquity of the practice (and its popularity even today) shows just how pervasive and insidious are such customs. If people believe them (as do thousands upon thousands of folk), they do immeasurable harm to the real facts of history and they perpetuate "Dark Age" religious and societal practices that have no basis of fact in demonstrating historical or geographical truths. Time is long overdue for a rectification of these absurd and ridiculous teachings and false identifications.

Notice Some False Geographical Identifications Made by Rabbi Isaac Luria

This Rabbi should not be looked on as a simple deceived "religious man." This is because of the supreme influence that the man and his teachings have had (and still have) on modern day Judaism. Let us look at a few points. There was also a side to Rabbi Luria that many people have decided to ignore. But we need to be aware of it. The fact is, Luria also made some outstanding mistakes in his selection of former sites mentioned in the Holy Scriptures. We are told in Vilnay’s The Legends of Jerusalem that Rabbi Luria supposedly knew in his day in a supernatural way where Jeremiah was placed in the Court of the Guard mentioned in Jeremiah 32:2. Notice what Vilnay records:

"It is told of Ha-Ari the holy, head of the Safed Kabbalists in the sixteenth century, that he discovered the Court of the Guard and its pit into which Jeremiah was cast. [Ha-Ari then envisioned:] ‘And the mouth of the pit is narrow and its bottom large and round, about two ells in diameter. And there are places cut out of the mountain rock which were used as jails by the kings of Judah. And it is told that Jeremiah the prophet is buried in the Court of the Guard" (pp.242–3).

The only trouble was, Rabbi Luria (that is, Ha-Ari) picked the spot now called "Jeremiah’s Grotto" in back of the East Jerusalem bus station. Luria selected the wrong place — a place that the Holy Scriptures would in no way allow. Luria was about 3000 feet north of the true site that was near the Gihon Spring. It is clear in the biblical text that the prison in the House of the King of Judah was located just south of the Temple.

Another geographical and historical error attributed to Rabbi Luria (Ha-Ari) was his selection of the person who supposedly "blocked up" the Gihon Spring in earlier days (which had in the previous century been re-discovered in Jerusalem). According to Jewish historical sources, the Gihon Spring was again revealed and restored to the knowledge of the Jewish people by the disciple of Isaac Luria named Rabbi Haim Vital. This great mystical leader of the Jews brought all Judaism within the embrace of the Lurianic Kabbalistic teachings in the sixteenth century. I shall give the Jewish rendition of how the Gihon Spring was again restored to the knowledge of the Jews, as shown in Zev Vilnay’s Legends of Jerusalem, pp.276,277. Remember that Jews of this time were prone to accept the teachings of some of the mystics as divine revelations direct from God.

"In the sixteenth century, Jerusalem was ruled by a tyrannical Turkish governor called Abu-Seifen — Father of Two Swords. Knowing that a king of Judah had sealed up the Fountain of Gihon, he asked whether there was one who could open it. His friends advised him: ‘There is a wise Jew in this city, a man of God, and his name is Rabbi Haim Vital. He will surely know how to open it.’ The governor sent for him on Friday, the Muslim day of rest, and said: ‘I command you to open the fountain, which was sealed by your king, during the time that I am at prayer in the mosque. If you obey not, your blood be on your head.’ Then a miracle occurred, and there appeared to Rabbi Vital in a vision his teacher, Ha-Ari the holy [that is, Rabbi Luria], head of the mystics [who had been dead several years]. He said: ‘The soul of King Sennacherib, the enemy of King Hezekiah, has been transmitted into the body of this governor, and in your body there is a spark of the soul of King Hezekiah, peace be upon him! [The Lurianic Kabbalistic teaching of the Ha-Ari (Isaac Luria) believed in the Transmigration of Souls — an Indian or Gentile doctrine never believed by mainline Jews before the revelation of the Kabbalah in the thirteenth century. This vision of Isaac Luria to Haim Vital continued by saying:] ‘And now is the time to open the Fountain of Gihon, for it was without the consent of the sages that Hezekiah sealed its waters.’ ‘And now,’ continued the vision of Rabbi Luria, ‘if you are able to open the sealed Gihon, you will bring great blessing upon the people!’ Rabbi Vital answered: ‘I shall open the fountain.’"

This account vindicates the belief that Rabbi Vital accepted the instruction of "Rabbi Luria" that it was indeed King Hezekiah who "blocked up" the waters of the Gihon Spring [this belief, however, was the first historical falsehood]. As it has been shown in my book "The Temples that Jerusalem Forgot," we have records from the Crusade period that it was actually Saladin, the Kurdish Muslim ruler about 400 years before who "blocked up" the Gihon (Francesco Gabrieli, Arab Historians of the Crusades, p.93). But the Jewish people in the sixteenth century believed that Rabbi Luria was (through the teaching of the Transmigration of Souls) a re-manifestation on earth of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Elijah and the Messiah all combined in the person of Rabbi Luria.

With such credentials, Jews thought Rabbi Luria must have known the true sites in Jerusalem and the long-lost unmarked graves of many early Rabbis who lived in Galilee. They also believed he must have known it was Hezekiah who "blocked up" the Gihon, rather than Saladin as the historical records revealed. Saladin was the right person, NOT Hezekiah as Luria stated in his visionary explanation. Some of Luria’s identifications were gigantic errors.

But why blame the Jewish people for believing such "miraculous" identifications when we equally have a similar amount of erroneous sites promulgated by our early Christian and Muslim authorities and still maintained by their modern representatives. There needs to be a thorough housecleaning of all of these nonsensical and paganized forms of idolatry that now permeate the religious beliefs, customs and traditions of the Jews, of the Christians and of the Muslims. God help us and save us from our stupidities.

How the Wailing Wall Was Selected as a Jewish Holy Site

The ordinary Jewish people in the sixteenth century had no idea how anti-biblical Luria’s teachings were or how wrong his geographical identifications were. They accepted his teachings altogether because he was to them a holy man of the first rank. And in his endeavor to select former unmarked graves of early Rabbis of the past, and also to show holy places long forgotten by the Jews, he had a hand in determining the Wailing Wall (that was at first a Christian/Muslim holy site) as being a holy place for the Jews. Indeed, in my research it appears that Luria was the first person in Jewish history (450 years ago) to point out the present "Western Wall" (the "Wailing Wall") as the place to assemble for the Jewish people and where they ought to worship God. No Jewish person had ever gone to the "Wailing Wall" (as we call it today) until Luria told one Rabbi Abraham Halevy that he was worthy to see the Shekinah (the Divine Presence). Vilnay spoke about Luria (Ha-Ari) and what he said to Rabbi Abraham Halevy. Notice the comment by Vilnay.

"Once the holy Ha-Ari said to Rabbi Abraham: ‘Know that your days are numbered and that you will soon die if you will not do as I tell you: but if you do, you will yet live another twenty-two years. This is what I bid you do: Go to Jerusalem and pour out your prayers before the Wailing Wall and you will prove yourself worthy by seeing the divine Presence there.’ Rabbi Abraham went home, shut himself in his house for three days and three nights, clothed himself in sackcloth and ashes, and fasted the whole time. Then he went forth to Jerusalem; he stood before the Wailing Wall in prayer, deep meditation, and weeping. The image of a woman, clad in black, appeared to him on the face of the wall. Immediately he fell upon the ground in great fear. Tearing his hair, he cried in a loud voice: ‘Woe is me, what have I seen?’ Finally he fell in a deep slumber and in a dream the divine Presence appeared to him, clad in fine raiment, and said to him: ‘Console thyself, My son Abraham; there is yet hope for thee, and the children of Israel will return to their inheritance, and I will have mercy on them.’ He arose and returned to Safed, and when Ha-Ari the Holy saw him, he said to him at once: ‘Now I know that you have seen the Divine Presence and you can rest assured that you will live another twenty-two years" (Legends of Jerusalem, pp.165,166). As a result, Rabbi Abraham Halevy who witnessed these things at the "Wailing Wall" lived exactly 22 more years. The people considered this an astonishing confirmation of Rabbi Luria’s divine powers and the truthfulness of his revelations for identifying geographical sites of former holy sites. From that time forward, Jews in Jerusalem began to flock to that former Christian holy spot (which the Muslims had cleaned up after they inherited it from the Christians), and the Jewish authorities soon turned it into what is now called the "Wailing Wall."

The fact is, the geography of the "Wailing Wall" fits the erroneous theological teachings of Luria to a tee. Beyond that wall (eastward) was "nothing" (no buildings or shrines) and it provided support to his Kabbalistic teaching of the Ein Sof as being in Exile and in a state of "Nothingness," and that God’s "end" would terminate in "nothing." In other words, Luria’s God for the Jewish people was a "Nothingness" (a truly exiled and unknowable "God"). It is no wonder that Luria's "God" could not be seen. To Luria and those who followed him for the next 200 years, there was "NO discernable God" in the final degree of his non-thesitic understanding of the divine epiphany. Plainly, if a person reasoned the Lurianic philosophical beliefs to a proper conclusion, the person encounters "NO God." He finds only "empty space." The "empty space" east of the Western Wall was ideal in Luria’s mind to emphasize the "Ein Sof" (Nothingness) of the Deity. And the Deity was not in His Temple, but in exile (like the Children of Israel). And to further demonstrate this, the account shows the Shekinah first decorated as an old woman in black mourning clothes as a sign of its exile from its "home," and then when Rabbi Halevy was blessed with longer life the Shekinah appeared in resplendent glory. To Luria, it was this Wailing Wall that best represented the spot to show the exilic condition of the Shekinah (and even Luria’s tenth display of his divine epiphany called the Sefirot — the Ein Sof as also being in exile). From then on, Jews began to assemble at this part of the Haram esh-Sharif. In time, it became their most holy place in Jerusalem. It had nothing to do with the Western Wall of the Holy of Holies that earlier Jewish authorities had spoken about. As far as I can find, before the time of Luria no Jewish person ever went to the present "Wailing Wall" to pray. But Luria directed the Jewish people to the Western Wall. In doing so, he sent them to the wrong place. But Jewish people at the time were so impressed with Luria, that they gave him a status that equaled that of Moses (or even greater). The Jewish authorities at his time absorbed his beliefs almost hook, line and sinker.

The Perpetuation of the False (and Anti-biblical) Teachings of the Kabbalah

Luria also established his own unique version of the Kabbalah. The teachings of this form of worship are almost thoroughly in the mystical vein. Through his teaching of Transmigration of Souls, he stated to his disciples that he had inherited the "soul" of Adam, along with some other "souls" (who came into Luria’s body to inhabit it by reincarnation). Several "souls" entered Luria’s body: those of Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah and he even had the "soul" of the Messiah.

Luria won over most of the influential Rabbis at the time with his teachings, and for the next 200 years (until the Jewish enlightenment of the 1700’s). Lurianic Kabbalah reigned supreme in most Jewish circles (see the Encyclopaedia Judaica article "Judaism"). Of course, most Jews do not believe in many of the weird teachings of Rabbi Luria today. Many Jewish scholars and intellectuals have now learned to place such beliefs into a category of "dark age mentality" that most religious groups have gone through at one time or another. This is true enough, but it is the philosophy behind the concepts of Rabbi Luria that often continue to be believed by many religious Jews. There is still among religious Jews (and many Christian and Muslims) believers in what must be called "Dark Age doctrines of a Middle Age mentality."

At any rate, I have shown with an abundance of historical and biblical evidences that the original Temples of God were positioned over and around the Gihon Spring in the southeastern part of Jerusalem. The evidence is so strong that one wonders how such an obvious fact could be so hidden from the attention of the world for so long? Perhaps we all ought to read the whole of Isaiah 29 once again. The answer why the site of the Temples has been hidden is no doubt found in that chapter 29 of Isaiah.

In conclusion, the acceptance of the present "Wailing Wall" by the Jewish authorities as a wall of Herod’s Temple was inspired by false visions and dreams and so-called miraculous events that turned a former Christian holy site into the prime Jewish spot for divine veneration. That spot was NOT discovered by using historical and biblical facts. The present "Wailing Wall" is a modern invention (devised about 350 years ago) and Jewish scholars know this to be a certain fact. That "Wailing Wall" is actually the Western Wall of Fort Antonia. The true Temple was located over the Gihon Spring on the southeast ridge of Jerusalem. There can be no doubt of this fact. It is time for all people to abandon these false religious sites.

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