Love Truth Blog

December 8 to December 16, according to Jewish reckoning, marks to eight day timeframe of Hanukkah for the year 2012, which is also called the Feast of Dedication. It is a festival of lights for each day a candle is lit upon a menorah the cleansing of the temple after it had been defiled by Antiochus IV “Epiphanes” in the second century BC. According to Jewish tradition, while the temple was being restored, only a single day’s worth of sacred oil was found to keep the menorah burning, and none would be available for another eight days, but miraculously the sacred oil kept the flames burning for eight days. Hanukkah is above all things a time of remembering Yahweh’s faithfulness to His people. How did all of this come about? Solomon built the first temple to the Lord (1 Kings 6:1-38; 7:13-9:9, the glory of the Lord filled the place (2 Chron. 7:1-3), but in time the people sinned, the glory of the Lord departed (Ezek. 10:1-22), and in 586 BC Solomon’s temple was des...

“And I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them. And I will take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My ordinances and do them. Then they will be My people, and I shall be their God (Ezek. 11:19-20). Ezekiel spoke these words from a Babylonian refugee camp far away from his homeland. Late sixth-century B.C. prophet anticipated a time when the Yahweh would bring back the exiles to the land of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The people had broken their covenant with Yahweh. They had compromised their worship, and defiled their holy temple. The temple that David had conceived and Solomon built. The very temple the very Glory of the Lord had indwelt. When Solomon brought the Ark of the Covenant into the temple, the glory of the Lord filled the place, like a thick cloud, and the priests were unable to stand ministering (1 Kings 8). It was the very same temple that Ezekiel sees in a vision, and in...

Browsing the news online, I came across Time magazine Matti Friedman piece entitled Clashes Erupt at Sacred Jerusalem Site. It concerned a clash between Muslim worshippers and Israeli riot police, which ended in some injuries, particularly a Palestinian woman who suffered a head injury from a rubber bullet. This all happened near the Western wall, perhaps a artifact from the Jerusalem before it was destroyed by Rome in AD70, near the what Jews call the Temple Mount and Muslims call the Nobel Sanctuary. The trouble centers on social, political, and theological differences between Muslims and Jews in the region, but the catalyst is an Israeli decision to include two West Bank shrines on a list of national heritage sites— the site that Jews call the Cave of the Patriarchs and Muslims call the Ibrahimi mosque, and the other site is Rachel's Tomb, adjacent to the city of Bethlehem. Of course this is just one more squabble in a whole series of squabbles that erupted beginning with Isr...