There are cities in today's world which are renowned because of their strategic location, their great size, their climate and natural resources, or their industrial and manufacturing capability and capacity. Jerusalem has none of these advantages to commend it. Yet there is not a city on earth which is better known and more dearly loved by so many people of diverse nationalities and beliefs. And certainly there is no city which is of greater importance to world peace.

One hardly need argue that the peace of the world depends upon the peace of Jerusalem. That awesome fact is recognized by the United Nations today, for every effort is being made by its members to find some way of achieving a just and lasting peace between Arabs and Jews in Palestine-and significant progress has seemingly been made. As of this date, however, the question of Jerusalem still hangs in the balance and will be the deciding factor. Jerusalem is, in fact, unique among earth's cities both as to its history and its present and future impact upon the rest of the world.

Unique? Yes, unquestionably that timeworn city stands all by itself, in a category of its own. In contrast to any other place on earth, Jerusalem alone is singled out and its remarkable role in world destiny (quite evident today) is clearly expressed throughout the Bible in both its historical accounts and in its prophetic declarations. The biblical quotations at the beginning of this chapter are only a few among the 811 times Jerusalem is mentioned in Scripture.

These myriad references offer an apparently preposterous explanation for Jerusalem's astonishing position on today's world stage, a position which could never be true of any other city and which even most of Jerusalem's present inhabitants do not believe belongs to her. How could what ought to be just one more seemingly ordinary (if not even obscure) Middle East city reach such a position? If words have any meaning, the Bible's prophets declare unequivocally and with one resounding voice, century after century, that Jerusalem is "the City of our God," chosen by Him to play a special role in human destiny. We challenge the reader to find any other justification for Jerusalem's uniqueness.

Such an assertion is usually summarily rejected today, and for varied reasons. There are those who disclaim any belief in God and who deride the Bible as a collection of myths. How ironic that a high percentage of the inhabitants of what the Bible designates as "the City of our God" claim to be atheists! As such, however, they can neither deny Jerusalem's extraordinary role in world affairs nor can they offer a theory to explain it.

Other people, while claiming some religious interest and tolerance, are nevertheless wary of taking the Bible "too literally." And even the literalists sometimes disagree among themselves as to what the Bible's prophetic passages actually mean. To add to the confusion, increasing numbers of evangelicals are embracing Catholicism's long-held view that the church has replaced the Jews as God's people. The State of Israel is therefore seen by many as the illegitimate offspring of a misguided and obnoxiously zealous Zionism that got lucky at just the right time in history.

Most of today's Jews consider Israel's existence to be the result of fortuitous chance combined with blood, sweat, and tears rather than the fulfillment of prophecy (which scarcely anyone believes anymore). That could explain the strange statistic of more Jews moving out of Jerusalem than are moving in – a deficit of 6149 in 1993.¹ For the Arabs, of course, the suggestion that God promised Palestine to the Jews and is now fulfilling that promise is outrageous. For fundamentalist Muslims it is blasphemy. Though the words Palestine and Canaan do not even appear in the Koran, Islam teaches that this land belongs not to the Jews but to the Arabs. Therefore Israel's very existence and, above all, its control of Jerusalem are intolerable insults to Islam. Only by driving the Jews from Palestine can Arab honor be restored.

However, in spite of herculean Arab military efforts, employing overwhelming numerical superiority of manpower and machines and with the backing of the Soviet Union, tiny Israel has not only survived but has actually grown steadily stronger. The superiority of the Israeli fighting machine is a shocking but well-established fact that has made it necessary for the Arabs to come to the bargaining table at last. And no matter what objection the skeptics may make, the fact that (precisely as the Bible foretold) the peace of the entire world is tied to Jerusalem's future cannot be denied. Nor is there either a reasonable explanation or a logical refutation of this truly inconceivable state of affairs.

Some skeptics have proposed as a purely rational justification the irresistible spiritual appeal this "Holy City" holds for half of the world's population. It is held in reverence by about 1 billion Muslims, 1 billion Roman Catholics, 400 million Orthodox adherents, and 400 million Protestants. Yet that fact in itself only raises more questions and deepens the mystery of Jerusalem's astonishing character.

For example, Jerusalem is not mentioned even once in the Koran —a rather glaring omission if it is truly as sacred to Islam as today's Muslims believe. There was even an abortive attempt in the early days of Islam (for commercial reasons) to make it the center of Muslim worship, but that ploy was quickly rejected by the Muslim world. Historian Will Durant writes:

In 684, when the rebel Abdullah ibn Zobei held Mecca and received the revenues of its pilgrims, Abd-al-Malik, anxious to attract some of this sacred revenue, decreed that thereafter this rock [where Abraham had offered Isaac and the temple had stood in Jerusalem] should replace the Kaaba [in Mecca] as the object of pious pilgrimage. Over that historic stone his artisans [in 691] raised in Syrian-Byzantine style the famous "Dome of the Rock," which soon ranked as the third of the "four wonders of the Moslem world...

Abd-al-Malik's plan to make this monument replace the Kaaba failed; had it succeeded, Jerusalem would have been the center of all the three faiths that competed for the soul of medieval man. But, Jerusalem was not even the capital of the province of Palestine [under the Arabs]² ...

During the centuries when Jerusalem was under complete Arab control, no Arab ruler or Islamic leader ever made it the object of a religious pilgrimage — again a strange indifference toward a city which is now considered to be the third-holiest religious site in Islam after Mecca and Medina. We are confronted by an obvious question: How and why did the status of Jerusalem change so dramatically in modern times? The fact that the huge, flat stone within the Dome had been the site both of Abraham's offering of Isaac and of the Temple was not enough to stir the Muslim soul. It had to become the scene of a myth associated with Mohammed in order to arouse such sentiment.

The importance of Jerusalem popularly accepted by today's Muslims derives from the belief that within the Dome of the Rock lies the sacred site from which Mohammed allegedly ascended to heaven. That tradition, however, though now firmly established in the Muslim mind, is of very recent origin. It is, in fact, a fabrication invented by Yasser Arafat's uncle, Haj Amin el-Husseini, past Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He promoted this myth in the 1920s and 1930s in order to arouse Arab sentiment against the growing Jewish presence in Jerusalem and to justify the location of the Dome of the Rock on the Temple site.

That such an idea was not the actual reason for the construction of this monument to Islam by Abd-al-Malik in 691 is evident from the fact that the one verse in the Koran (Surah 17:1) which, it is now claimed, alludes to this alleged event is not to be found among the verses from the Koran which are inscribed inside the Dome. The absence of that key Koranic passage speaks volumes. Obviously the interpretation now given to that verse was unknown in earlier times, and with good reason. The fact is that any normal reading of the verse, assigning normal meaning to the words, fails to suggest the tradition of Mohammed visiting that site and launching from there into heaven. The Koran doesn't say that at all, but its meager statement has been stretched into a now-accepted Islamic tradition. Here is the verse:

Glorified be He who carried His servant by night from the Inviolable Place of Worship to the Far Distant Place [al-Aqsa] of Worship the neighbourhood whereof We have blessed, that We might show him of Our tokens! Lo! He, and only He, is the Hearer, the Seer.

The accompanying commentary states that the "Inviolable Place of Worship" is Mecca and that the "Far Distant Place of Worship" is Jerusalem. The first is, of course, true because Mecca had held that position from the beginning. The latter, however, has no substantiation because Jerusalem had never been the scene of Islamic worship to that time, nor would it be for centuries thereafter. As we have already noted, Jerusalem is not even mentioned by name in the Koran, either in this verse or anywhere else. So how could it be a place of worship for the Muslim who was never directed to it?

Quite obviously, the magnificent Dome of the Rock was erected on that particular spot not only in an attempt by Abd-al-Malik to gain potentially vast revenues from pilgrims, but also to prevent the Jews from ever rebuilding the Temple. No doubt it was thought that without that sacred structure the Jews would have no reason for regathering in Jerusalem. Thereby the stage was set more than a millennium ago for a future conflict which today threatens us all with a Third World War-a war over Jerusalem from which earth might very well never recover. We will have much more to say on that subject in subsequent chapters.

That Jerusalem is unique is further attested to by the fact that most of the nations of today's world want it to be under international control. The Vatican even demanded the internationalization of Jerusalem during the U.N. debate in 1947 concerning the partitioning of Palestine. No such desire is expressed or makes sense for other cities, so why should it be imposed upon Jerusalem? It is unreasonable and unprecedented. Nevertheless, to this end the nations of the world have agreed among themselves that Jerusalem cannot be the capital of Israel, even though Israel so designated it and located its Knesset there in 1980. Did the outside world ever before dictate to a nation where it could or could not establish its capital? Then why to Israel? Surely secular governments don't believe what the Bible says about Jerusalem, so why do they consider this small, isolated Middle East city to be so special?

For a comparison, consider the case of East Germany. When that defeated country, in defiance of the Potsdam agreement, designated East Berlin as its capital, the nations of the world acquiesced immediately without a murmur of protest. Not so with Jerusalem. There is no international agreement giving other nations any control over Jerusalem. Yet it is treated as though it belongs not to Israel but to the rest of the world.

In fact, the world's major powers, in what is apparently an unwritten agreement among them, have determined that one day Jerusalem will be a world center for "peace" under international control. It is no coincidence that the Vatican has played a major role in that program and has recently worked its way into Israel's good graces in order to pursue this odd purpose. That Jerusalem holds the key to world peace is too obvious to argue. Yet the fact that Jerusalem, of all the world's cities, should play such a role makes no sense at all unless one accepts what the Bible says about it.

Like other nations, the United States, though it has been a supporter of Israel, has nevertheless placed its embassy not in Jerusalem but in Tel Aviv, contrary to Israel's wishes. Even the world's media go along with this open denial of Israel's right to direct its own affairs. For example, in high-handed fashion and in defiance of logic, the BBC and other European radio and television networks habitually refer to Tel Aviv as Israel's capital, an inexplicable twisting of the facts which persists like some giant conspiracy worldwide. On a recent German quiz show, to the question of the location of Israel's capital, Tel Aviv was judged the correct answer. How frustrating to Israel that the capital city it has chosen is not acknowledged as such by the rest of the world!

One can only ask again, "Why this unprecedented treatment of Jerusalem?" What makes it so special? Why does it hold such importance for all nations? The Bible alone offers a reasonable explanation. If the biblical answer to that question is rejected, then no other rationale can be found. Its religious significance, as we have seen, fails to fully explain Jerusalem's uniqueness, a uniqueness which holds an altogether irrational significance for the world's secular powers. Why should a world that doesn't believe the Bible's promises concerning Jerusalem nevertheless treat this city as though what the Bible said about it were true?

Surprisingly, Israel's leaders have been involved in considerable behind-the-scenes intrigue to bring about international control—negotiations which are tantamount to a betrayal of their country. According to the intelligence newsletter Inside Israel, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres sent a letter to Yasser Arafat in October 1993 "committing Israel to respect PLO governing institutions in Jerusalem." After Peres had denied that letter's existence, it was finally admitted that such a letter had been sent. That reluctant confession was followed by a most disturbing further revelation. Mark Halter, a close friend of Peres, "told the Israeli weekly Shishi that in May [1994] he delivered a letter from Peres to the Pope which outlined the Foreign Minister's plans for Jerusalem. According to Halter, 'Peres offered to hand over sovereignty of Jerusalem's Old City to the Vatican.'"

According to the secret (and to most Israelis, unthinkable) plan, the city would have both an Israeli and a Palestinian mayor, both of whom would be under the authority of the Vatican. The Vatican has made it clear that it considers the religious sites in Jerusalem too precious to be under the control of local authorities. It wants to shoulder that responsibility itself, and apparently Peres is willing to have it so. In apparent agreement with the Vatican, the "heads of the Christian community" in Jerusalem handed the Israeli government at the end of 1994 an unpublished document which also called for the internationalization of Jerusalem.³ In an apparent attempt to assure all sides that he would deal with an even hand, Pope John Paul II declared in an exclusive interview for Parade magazine early in 1994:

We trust that, with the approach of the year 2000, Jerusalem will become the city of peace for the entire world and that all the people will be able to meet there, in particular the believers in the religions that find their birthright in the faith of Abraham [obviously including the Muslims].⁴

Further confidential disclosures reveal that Jerusalem is to become the "second Vatican of the world," with all three major religions functioning there, as the Pope hinted, under the authority of Rome. A Palestinian state will emerge in confederation with Jordan, with its religious capital being Jerusalem but its administrative capital situated elsewhere, possibly Nablus. Israel's Foreign Ministry justifies this apparent betrayal by promising that Israel's new ties to the Catholic world will lead to trade, tourism, and prosperity and that Catholic governance of Jerusalem will provide a firm hand for quick settlement of future disputes between Jews and Arabs. An announcement coming out of Jordan in late 1994 seemed to confirm the above:

Jordan last week renounced its religious links to Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, but retained its religious claims to Jerusalem. . . . Relations between Jordan and the Palestine National Authority (PA) grew strained after the July 25 signing of a Jordanian-Israeli declaration, in which Israel acknowledged a special Jordanian role in Jerusalem's Moslem sites....

In Jericho, the PA'S Islamic affairs minister welcomed Jordan's decision to sever its religious ties with the territories.⁵

At the subsequent Washington Summit, Jordan's King Hussein, hoping to bolster his claim to Jordanian control over Jerusalem's holy sites, declared that "only God has the right to decide who will own the Temple Mount and Jerusalem." As one Jewish commentator noted, however, "He is, of course, correct. But the question then becomes, whose God? For... Hussein's Allah does not mention Jerusalem once in the Koran, while the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament together refer to the city over 800 times. The God of Israel has already exercised His right to decide. And He has given Jerusa-lem to the Jews as their inheritance in perpetuity... [a fact which] challenges the insidious 'interfaith' theology equating God with the Allah of Islam."⁶

The same writer, in reviewing a recent book by Eliyahu Tal titled Whose Jerusalem? accuses the "would-be redividers" of Jerusalem of being "intent on tearing the very heart out of the Jewish soul." His review presents the essence of a powerful book:

Tal tells it like it is. And for those who still choose historical legitimacy over the Islamic-inspired, oil-weighted claims of Iranian Shi'ites, Palestinian Arabs, Hashemites, Moroccans and Saudi Arabians, the data amassed in Whose Jerusalem? provide a solid platform from which to fend off the multiplying calls for the redivision of Jerusalem, or its otherwise demise as the exclusive capital of the Jewish state....

Only the Jews have for centuries lived and died in the hope of being physically restored to this city. It is only when a Jewish king reigned here that the Shechina (glory of God) shone visibly in Jerusalem, and it is only to Jews that the city itself has thus been holy all these years.⁷

Jerusalem seems to have a unique importance, too, in God's timetable of last days events. Jesus declared, "Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles [non-Jewish nations] until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled" (Luke 21:24). Could it be that the taking of Jerusalem by the Jews in 1967 marked the end of the Gentile era and brought Israel to center stage in God's program? If so, Jerusalem must remain in Jewish hands until Armageddon. This does not mean, however, that the battle for the control of Jerusalem is over. In fact, it will no doubt intensify as the time for the revelation of the Antichrist draws near.

That battle is certainly heating up already. Early in 1994, in a speech in a Johannesburg mosque, Yasser Arafat called for continuing jihad (holy war) by the Arabs to retake Jerusalem. When the contents of his speech, obviously intended for Arab ears only, became public knowledge, it created an understandable stir in Israeli quarters. Arafat tried to explain away his statement by saying that jihad also means a peaceful struggle.

There is, however, no such concept in the Koran; and "peaceful struggle" was certainly neither taught nor practiced by Mohammed. In fact, another remark in that speech by Arafat leaves no doubt as to Arafat's meaning: "This agreement [between the PLO and Israel], I am not considering it more than the agreement which had been signed between our Prophet Mohammed and Quraish." That reference was ominous.

The Quraish, Mohammed's own tribe, controlled Mecca but was not strong enough to withstand Mohammed's growing military power. Its people therefore signed a peace agreement with Mohammed, which, on a pretext, the Prophet broke two years later, killing the Quraish leaders and conquering Mecca. Thus Arafat was saying that the PLO'S agreement with Israel is only a step in the avowed conquest of Israel and is as easily and with as good conscience broken, inasmuch as Mohammed himself set the example of such justifiable treachery. Israeli analyst Moshe Zak wrote:

It was not lies or stupidity that characterized Arafat's Johannesburg remarks, but stupendous candor. His forth-right, unambiguous remarks were reminiscent of Mein Kampf, in which the author [Hitler] was blunt about his plans' so much so that his adversaries didn't take him seriously. We all know now that by the time Hitler's Satanic program became a reality, it was too late to stop him.

Arafat did not commit any slip of the tongue in Johannesburg: he used his call for a jihad and cited Mohammed's agreement with the Quraish tribe to test his thesis that Israel would swallow that, too.

The PLO leader was sure that Israeli protests would strengthen his position among his own people—for he must never appear to be cooperating with Israel against Hamas and Islamic Jihad [two leading terrorist groups]. His rhetoric about a holy war to liberate Jerusalem was designed to remove all suspicion of such cooperation....

Whatever the interpretations of Arafat's statements, one thing is clear: the Palestinian masses understand his message about a holy war to liberate Jerusalem.⁸

Make no mistake: The world will have war or peace depending upon what happens in "the city of our God." In fact, we know what will happen there because the Bible has foretold it in great detail. We will refer to those prophecies in the following pages.

Is it mere coincidence that Jerusalem, the present key to world peace, was originally called Salem, which means "peace"? It was ruled in those early days by one of the most enigmatic figures in history: Melchisedec, King of Salem. He suddenly appears out of nowhere on the pages of Scripture, then vanishes. This was pagan territory, yet Melchisedec was "the [not a] priest of the most high God" (Genesis 14:18; cf. Hebrews 7:1). Abraham, known as "the friend of God," looked up to Melchisedec as one greater than himself, honored him with a tithe, and accepted his blessing (Genesis 14:19,20; Hebrews 7:1,2).

Speaking to God, Solomon called Jerusalem "the city which thou hast chosen…" (1 Kings 8:44). Jerusalem, with its prophetic destiny about to reach full flower, presents a clear message to the world: Mankind is not the product of chance and blind evolutionary forces. Nothing in the universe, neither energy itself nor the myriad forms in which it is manifested, can be explained by chance. Quite clearly the laws of physics and chemistry did not initiate their orderly control over matter but were ordained by a law Giver; and just as obviously, the atom and living cell, with their incomprehensible organization and function, could only have been designed and brought into existence by an infinite Creator. In agreement with the universe surrounding it, Jerusalem declares to the world that mankind has a special place in God's creation and that a glorious destiny awaits those who will acknowledge and obey the God of Israel who chose Jerusalem as His city.

Whether one likes the implications or not, the fact remains that the rationally inexplicable role being played by Jerusalem was prophesied in the Bible thousands of years ago. And whether one likes the further implication or not, it remains also that these biblical prophecies offer the only rational explanation for Jerusalem's unique place on today's world scene.

The facts stand on their own and cannot be refuted even though many Israelis and Zionists reject their miraculous flavor. In subsequent chapters we will document these prophecies and their remarkable fulfillment.

Without the Bible one cannot possibly make any sense of human history. We are faced with only two choices: Either mankind is merely an accident which happened on one of billions of planets (and if here, perhaps on others scattered throughout the cosmos), or we were created by God for His own purposes. It is the God of the Bible who alone gives purpose and meaning to His creation, and He has decreed that Israel will play a key role in His plan.

Jerusalem! It is like no other city on earth. It stands at the center of history and at the very heart of God's purposes for this planet and all of its inhabitants. This is the "City of God," where God chose to place His name and for which He will have the last word. Like it or not, the whole world finds itself caught in the grip of that choice.

1. Jerusalem, City of Our God
2. Land of Promise
3. The City of David
4. The Holy Land
5. Conflict and Bitterness
6. Prophecy Becomes History
7. The Struggle to Survive
8. A Chosen People?
9. The Mystery of Anti-Semitism
10. The Final Solution
11. Islam and Terrorism
12. The Bible or the Koran?
13. Allah or Yahweh?
14. Altars, Temples, and a Cross
15. Peace, Peace
16. A Cup of Trembling
17. Christians For and Against Israel
18. Antichrist an the Temple Rebuilt
19. Where are the Aliens?
20. Double Cross and Armageddon
21. All Israel Shall Be Saved
22. The New Jerusalem

¹The Jerusalem Post International Edition, Week ending February 4, 1995, p. 5.
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