(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Hey everybody, it's Pastor Shelley for a special episode of The Baptist Bias, and I'm really excited to talk about the Wailing Wall, and we're going to have some people joining us in here for live discussion as well. If you have a question, you can always drop it into the chat, and we'll put it in there. And so, very excited to do a live stream, talk about the Wailing Wall, and just hopefully you like the new setup and everything like that. But we'll go ahead and get started, and this is kind of just free-fall, just kind of going to go through it a little bit, but the Wailing Wall is something that I personally didn't really know much about, and I've kind of just looked into it a little bit. We can look at some of the geography, Google Maps, and things like that as well. But one of the questions I ask, especially when we think about Scripture being fulfilled is, was the Wailing Wall part of the temple? And I think I asked that question because, of course, in the Bible, in Matthew chapter 24, the Bible says there should not be one stone left upon another. We know that Jesus Christ was giving a prophecy about, specifically, the buildings of the temple, and I want to see if I can, maybe I can bring this up on the screen just for a second, and we'll make this a little bit bigger, but in Matthew 24, the Bible says in verse 1, Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and his disciples came to him for to show him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said unto them, See not all these things verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down. And so the Bible makes it clear, and Jesus made it clear that these things would be thrown down. So I just kind of asked ChatGPT just to get some basic information, but I asked them, was the Wailing Wall part of the temple? And then it says, yes, the Western Wall, often called the Wailing Wall, was a part of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, specifically. It is a remnant of the retaining wall that supported the expanded Temple Mount platform built by Herod the Great in the first century BCE. The Western Wall itself was not part of the temple building, but rather one of the outer walls that surrounded the temple complex. The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE or AD, but this section of the wall survived and remains one of the holiest sites in Judaism today. Please consider it sacred because it is the closest accessible place to where the Holy of Holies, the most sacred part of the temple, once stood. So ChatGPT is telling us that the Western Wailing Wall is part of a retaining wall of the Temple Mount platform, but it was not a part of the buildings whatsoever. Additionally, I asked, is the Wailing Wall part of Solomon's Temple? And if you understand the timeline, this would be kind of a silly question, just simply because of the fact that the Wailing Wall was a part of an expansion way later with the Second Temple. So the First Temple of Solomon's, it would not have even existed at that time. So it says, no, the Wailing Wall, also known as the Western Wall, is not part of Solomon's Temple, is actually a remnant of the retaining wall that supported the platform in which Herod's Temple, the Second Temple, stood. Key point, Solomon's Temple, First Temple, built in the 10th century BCE by King Solomon. It was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. No visible remains of this temple exist today. Second Temple rebuilt after the Babylonian exile and later expanded by King Herod around 19 BCE. And then Western Wall, part of the retaining wall of the expanded Temple Mount during Herod's renovation, not the temple structure itself. And so let's go ahead and just get a little information about this. If you go to Jerusalem, this Temple Mount exists today. This is kind of a modern picture of what the Temple Mount looks like today. And you'll kind of notice that the Western Wailing Wall is right here, kind of trying to highlight it on my screen for you. It's down here in the bottom, you can kind of see. And we have the entire Temple Mount platform highlighted in this yellow. The Dome of the Rock is situated where it is believed that the temple was. And then you have just other shrubs and vegetation out here. You have some Muslim buildings that are also built up on top of this. Now if this was the original Temple Mount location where the Dome of the Rock is, essentially they're just saying when Jews want to get as close to that spot as possible, this is kind of the closest spot that they have accessibility to. Because of jurisdiction, because of the fact that there's still a controversy who over owns parts of this land and this structure. And so Muslims get to go to some parts, Jews get to go to other parts. And so the Jews basically have this section is kind of the closest section that they can get to this spot. So that's what it was bringing up. So this is what's known as that famous Western Wailing Wall, part of this Temple Mount structure. If we kind of look at some diagrams of what the temple would have looked like, I think it kind of helps give us an idea of what, I'm just seeing, I guess we have a few people in here. If you have a question, you can put it in the chat and I'll try to get to that if you have any live chat questions that you want to ask me. But we have this diagram and I kind of want to walk through this a little bit. But in this diagram, and this is just kind of a illustration, this is someone who illustrated what they believe this would have looked like. A here is what's known as the Antonia fortress. B is known as the colonnades. C is the inner precincts. D is the stone balustrade. It says E is the court of the Gentiles, this kind of outward area, then you have a viaduct here with F, G are some steps meeting into this meeting hall, a meeting hall right here. And so if you were to try to understand where the wailing wall would be on this diagram, it would be approximately right down here. This would be that western wailing wall. And this specifically, this would be the temple, and then this is like the temple complex. So when Jesus Christ is saying that the buildings of the temple are going to be thrown down and not one stone is left upon another, it seems very obvious that what Jesus Christ was referring to is what was built on top of this temple mount platform and not necessarily this retaining wall area. And of course it makes sense because first of all they have to be thrown down, that's what the text says, and you have to ask the question, thrown down from what? So again, if we look at the text, it says, and Jesus said unto them, see ye not all these things verily I say unto you there shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down. So they were thrown down. Whenever they were looking at it, he said they were showing them the buildings of the temple. And so this actually fits that the western wailing wall would still potentially exist because this is the buildings of the temple. And you know, you could argue this too, but these things were thrown down off of the temple mount, not the retaining wall over here. Now here's another picture and again this kind of gives you another like more zoomed out view of this particular structure. It says, you know, kind of the same things. Number 10 is the Antonia Fortress. Number one is the temple. Number two is that temple complex, you can kind of see the labeling over here. Three again is the courtyard of the Gentiles. Four is the colonnades again. Five is that viaduct. You have the six, the steps leading into the meeting hall, you have the meeting hall. You have viaduct over the Kidron Valley over here in the Mount of Olives. So again, that western wailing wall would have been about right here. And you have these buildings of the temple up here. So these are two different things completely when we talk about fulfilling scripture. Now to kind of give an idea of what this actually looks like, there's a great video by Todd Fink, Holy Land site, where he talks about the temple mount and everything, but he has actually shown a lot of the archaeological evidence for that first temple, then the Hasmonean expansion and then the quote Herodian expansion. Now this yellow box here that you can kind of see outlined, that is like the first temple mount. So this would be like Solomon's temple. And arguably the one that Nehemiah and them rebuilt on. You kind of have this retaining wall. The Hasmonean is talking about the period of the Maccabees, so it's about 100 or so years prior to Christ's coming. It's several hundred years after they had rebuilt the second temple. And then the Herodian expansion is again, this is Herod. It's estimated to be maybe sometime around 19 BCE, I think is what Chad GPT had suggested to us. Again, if you understand kind of where we're at, this right here would be that Western wailing wall portion again, which is a quote retaining wall. The whole point of a retaining wall is to create a level surface. So they would build essentially a box and then they would fill in the rest with dirt so that it would be a flat level surface to then build on top of. And again, you have this expansion and another expansion so you could build more and more on it. But you need these retaining walls to keep the dirt in these sections. Here's kind of another diagram. So again, the Western wailing wall would be somewhere, and forgive me if my drawing's not perfect here, but somewhere in this area down here, you notice that the original temple platform would have been kind of this box right here, which is a perfect square. And then you have the Hasmonean expansion right here. You have the Herodian expansion, which kind of goes in a bigger outline over here. Now the Eastern wall never had an expansion because it's just so close to the cliff of the Kidron Valley. And so there's not really anywhere for it to go. So that never really expanded, it's just they kind of expanded in the other directions around here. This peak right here is kind of the high point of Mount Moriah. And the Bible tells us that the temple was built on Mount Moriah. And so they kind of needed to build this retaining wall and fill in dirt all around it to meet this or match the height of this mountain peak so they could have a flat surface again to build upon. And again, if you have any questions or anything, feel free to throw them in our live chat and I'd love to answer some questions. We've got several people watching the show. I'll scroll down. Some people don't understand what a retaining wall is, I just kind of put this on the screen just to give you an idea of what a retaining wall is. In areas where you build a lot of houses even, you have a retaining wall so then you can fill in with dirt and grass and everything, and then you can have a flat surface for your house because maybe your house is built on an angled hill or it's just not a good surface. And so you have this particular structure here, this retaining wall, and someone could say like, this is my house. But when they say their house, they're not really meaning this is literally their house. This is just kind of the part of their property. And so obviously the house itself, the structure is built over here on top of. So it's possible, and it's plausible that when people would be up here somewhere that they would just refer to all of this loosely as the temple, but that's not necessarily always accurate as far as what the Bible is describing when it says the temple. I believe when it's talking about the temple it's talking about this, and it's talking about this temple complex, and it could be also in sometimes reference to someone walking into this area, but when we see Jesus bringing up this quote in Matthew 24 that the buildings of the temple, we're not going to be talking about this quote retaining wall that's down here. That would be obviously something that's separate, and it really isn't part of the temple. It's just a retaining wall to fill in dirt, and then you could build a temple on top of it. So just so that people kind of understand what these structures even are. Here's kind of like an idea of what a retaining wall does. You have the wall, then you fill in with dirt, gravel, whatever, so that you can then basically create a new structure on top of this. Here's kind of a bird's eye view of what this would look like, and again, this is essentially where the dome of the rock is, where this little T idea is, and you have this green square is that original Solomon's temple structure, and this kind of more odd-shaped red is really the Herodian, specifically, expansion. The purple's kind of that temple complex, and then you have the temple itself, and then this blue down here, this is that area where the Jews would come. This is that Wailing Wall place where you'd see all the presidents and all these people just kind of going up against the wall. That is this area over here, and again, it's kind of the closest place they have to get to this spot, just because it's under Muslim jurisdiction and they have control over it. Here's a couple other pictures. These are just artistic illustrations of what they think these things might have looked like. Again, here is that temple, temple complex. Here's the entire temple mount, and then down below, this would be that Wailing Wall down here. In this picture, you can't even see the Western Wailing Wall at all. This is the temple complex, this is the temple. The Wailing Wall would be somewhere way over here, and then down below, you couldn't even see it. Here's part of a retaining wall on the east side, but on the other side would be the Western Wailing Wall. Here, again, is that picture. Here's the Western Wailing Wall section down here somewhere. Again, this picture doesn't really show it. Here's kind of a picture from the south and kind of an idea of what the city would have looked like. Over there is going to be kind of where that Western Wailing Wall is again, and notice it's up against this cliff, this eastern side, and this is that Kidron Valley. This is really steep down Kidron Valley area, and again, it makes it for a pretty strategic building instruction from enemy invaders or attackers or different things like that. They have this geographical situation where it makes it very difficult to attack from that particular side, so it's kind of advantageous. Here's another map, and this kind of just shows some different pictures. Here's kind of that Antonio Fortress up here, kind of drew too big, just right there. Here's that temple, then you have the temple complex, then you have kind of that original temple mount. Then you have what we can see now with the Herodian expansion, and then the Western Wailing Wall would again just be somewhere right in here. What's kind of interesting is the Pool of Siloam, they ended up finding this little pathway where people could walk all the way up here and then kind of come in the temple, so they would kind of wash themselves and then they could walk all the way up and come up to this temple mount. You have again the Gihon Valley, and then over on this side you have the Mount of Olives. The Bible, it tells us that the temple was against the Mount of Olives. I'm going to see if I can pull that verse up. Yeah, so, and let's zoom out, okay there we go. Mark 13, 3, and as he sat upon the Mount of Olives over against the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately. So the Bible tells us that the temple is over against the Mount of Olives, which we can see that Mount of Olives is right here. This would have been the pathway or the journey that the Lord Jesus Christ used to come into the temple, and so it's kind of interesting when you see this, you can see like, oh there's that Kidron Valley, you can see it's a very low spot, and then the temple mount was set up here really high on Mount Moriah, and then again over here would be that western wailing wall. I'm going to keep going with some of these pictures. Here's another, this is a really good one too. Here's again the east, this is the east side, and you can see it goes down the Kidron Valley here. Here is that original 500 cubit original Solomon temple platform, as well as here's the Hasmonean expansion, and then you have the larger temple mount expansion, and then the western wailing wall again is right there. So it's part of the Herodian expansion, and so we'll keep going. Here's Herod's temple, this is just kind of an idea again, the western wailing wall will be down here back down below, that's the wrong spot, it'd be down below here, but you have the temple, the temple complex. Here's again the temple and the temple complex which have been built on top of the temple mount. Here's another great picture, so again this is kind of a current idea, so you have this dome of the rock that's up here, then you have down below this western wailing wall, again that's the spot where Jews come and they kind of do their thing up against that wall, and that's just because they don't have access to come into this spot right now. You'll notice a lot of vegetation, notice all the vegetation, the trees and everything, because this is just a retaining wall, and then this is filled in with dirt, so then because this is filled in with dirt and topsoil and everything like that, then you can of course put gardens and grass and trees and all this kind of different stuff in all these different areas, because again this is not like just a building, this is a retaining wall, and then it's filled in with dirt. So whenever Jesus is talking about the temple and the temple buildings, this was the buildings that were built on here that were then thrown off of the temple mount structure. I want to show a video, I think I have a video pulled up, yeah. Now what's interesting is when they were coming to this portion of the western wall and near that area, they actually found a ton of stones, and I want to play some of this video and listen to a guy named Joel Kramer, he's someone that has been studying this, an archaeologist in Israel and Jerusalem, and let's hear what he has to say. Okay, I'm going to stop, if you notice, they have like all of these giant rocks here, not all of them are still there, they've actually excavated a large portion of these and removed tons of these and got them out of the way, but there's all these giant stones that were thrown down off of the temple mount, and if I kind of go back, I believe they're just somewhere in this area is where they're looking, you know, they're noticing, not the actual western wall, but I think it's like, it's over in this area, but they have all these stones that you can see, I think just on the other side of this is where that western wailing wall is, and so you've got to see these rocks, no it was an intentional destruction, it was, you can just destroy something, or you can destroy something, well they don't let you get over to the rocks anymore, but let me get out my book and just read that scripture one more time, yeah let's go back to this sign for a second, notice again, collapsed on paved stone, or I'm sorry, collapsed on the paved street are stones of the western wall of the temple mount enclosure, they were hurled down by the soldiers of roman legion after the destruction of the temple on the ninth day of the month of ov 70 ce, so again they say western wall, but like they're just talking about, again, if we go back, we're just talking about this entire wall is considered the western wall, we typically notice this is the wailing wall, or the western wailing wall, because of this section, but they're just saying the stones were thrown off of this wailing wall, and notice they're saying specifically in 70 ce, so just kind of interesting they have those stones there, well they don't let you get over to the rocks anymore, but let me get out my book and just read that scripture one more time. There's this teaching going around america, and Bob Cornuke is a name that comes up often, but there's many others that are also teaching this, and it's the teaching that the temple was not on the temple mount, it was somewhere else, either the city of David, or the western hill, how many have heard that teaching, just out of curiosity, I'm trying to figure out. So now this is what they tell you, in that teaching this is what they tell you, they say Jesus said, and we're about to read the scripture, but Jesus said that there is not one stone on top of another, and then they say to everybody, look, do you see there's one stone on top of another, just can't be, if this is where the temple was, then Jesus is a false prophet. So now let's read the actual scripture, it's Matthew 24 1-2, I'm reading out of my book here, it says this, rewind your mind, timeline-wise, to the time of Jesus, where the temple building is up there, the royal stoa is above us, which we'll see in the model later on, and so they're up on the temple mount, and it says this, Jesus left the temple, and was walking away, so he's walking away from the temple, when his disciples came up to him, to call his attention to what, it's buildings, what specifically are they drawing the attention to, the magnificent buildings, that are up on top of the temple mount, do you see all these things, he asked, truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another, every one will be thrown down, so he's talking specifically, and it says, the buildings is what he's talking about, not one stone will be left on another, they all will be thrown down, how would they be thrown down off of what, off of the temple mount, which is the holes in the wall, in the streets that you just passed, okay, so this is, yeah, so I just wanted to show this a little bit, because again, we're not over there, we can't see that, I'm wondering, let's see if we can just pull it up on Google Maps, and just kind of look at this real quick, someone asked in the chat, what is the steel man argument, or, so again, here, if you kind of zoom in, see all these rocks down here, in this spot right here, this is exactly where this video is being filmed, somewhere right here, and again, this area is that western wailing wall, so we could drop a guy down here, and look, yeah, so here's that iconic picture of just what you would see and assume, like here's the western wailing wall, here's that scaffolding, and then on the other side of this scaffolding, you have this section right here, and I don't know, let's see if we can drop down into there or not, I don't know, I haven't tried this, yeah, yeah, yeah, so that's exactly where we were in that particular video, we see all these stones, and the whole ground is just like, destroyed and mangled and everything like that, they had excavated a large portion of all of these stones at one point, so we're just kind of getting an idea, you know, from my understanding, the absolute best argument over the idea that the temple wasn't really on the Temple Mount is simply just saying one stone should not be left upon another, but I mean, really, if you look at the evidence here, this is not part of the temple, it's never been part of the temple, it was an expansion around the temple complex, and when Jesus talks in Matthew 24, he specifically brings up the idea that there should not be one stone left upon another, that should not be thrown down, when he's talking about the buildings of the temple, so again, you have him talking about here, the buildings of the temple, and then they're thrown down, you have to ask this question, what were they thrown down from? And another thing you gotta think about is like, where did the stones go? Stones would just magically disappear, or something like that, so it makes sense that we could still find a bunch of stones and rocks down here, if there was just tons and tons of debris and everything falling down, whereas people who suggest another theory don't seem to have a pile of rocks or a pile of buildings that, you know, we really can look at and observe and say this is where that was located. There is other arguments for, you know, saying that they think that the temple was not on the Temple Mount, and I do want to address that, and I will address a lot of those things, we're gonna probably have another live stream, I'm gonna have a couple more live streams where I talk about these things, but I just wanted to do one specific video about the Western Wailing Wall, and just kind of identifying what that is. It's definitely not part of the temple, when Jews go there, you know, and they're worshiping, they're just trying to get as close to this spot as possible, I don't think that any of them really truly believe that Western Wall was part of the temple or the temple complex, but obviously you could argue at the time of Christ that retaining wall was there and people were walking around in this area and they loosely referred to that as the temple, so I understand that point, but it's definitely not a part of the temple, it's definitely not part of the temple buildings, you know, sometimes words can be used in different ways, like the word Christian can have multiple contexts, the word wine can have multiple contexts, Israel can have multiple contexts, Zion can have multiple contexts, and so we want to make sure that when we're describing these things that we're being specific as to what we're kind of describing, what we're talking about. If anybody has another quick question, throw it in the chat and I'll address it, but otherwise I think this is a pretty straightforward video, I just wanted to give you an idea of, again, what the Western Wailing Wall is, what it is not, and how I believe Matthew 24 is fulfilled by Jesus Christ, and yet you can still have this quote expansion there. I think that some people maybe get confused about what a retaining wall is, again, here would be where that's at, it wasn't a part of the temple, here's where that Western Wailing Wall was at, again, you have it down here, again, not part of the temple or the temple complex, but rather down here is just a retaining wall to be able to fill in the dirt so that you could have a place to build the temple. Which makes total sense, I mean, you have to understand that if you were going to build something like a house, you can't build it just on top of a mountain, your architecture would be in vain. You need a flat, level surface in order to build something on, so they have to first put this platform together so that you can then build the temples on it. It makes total sense that this structure would last for the centuries and that we would have it still today, and it hasn't been lost, it's just obviously been new construction was built upon it, but we'll talk about that in a later video. Someone asked, where's Ben? I don't know, I don't know where is Ben. This is actually just a stream I'm doing from home, and so I figured I would do some educational videos, a little different style, and of course we'll have our show in the podcast studio and everything like that too, but this is just kind of a special episode to talk about the Wailing Wall. I'm really looking forward to some of our other live streams, we'll have Ben in there, and we'll have some other guests and everything like that, but make sure to put in your comments, comments in the chat later, or just a comment down below, and we'll also, I'll try to answer them later. So if you didn't think of your question or you watched this stream later, just put your comments in the chat down below or in the comments and I'll try to go ahead and answer them. WRLAX says, it makes total sense also to destroy the temple, but not the retaining wall so you could retain the site for future development. Well, I don't think people understand how a retaining wall works, because let's say I just ripped up this wall. All that would do is just make all of this ground unstable. It would make the dirt not have anything to hold it in, so the dirt could slowly erode over time and dissipate and then it would essentially just become kind of like useless or wouldn't really benefit anything. So you're not going to really want to get rid of a retaining wall that's filled in with dirt and in order to get rid of all of this, I mean, you would have to have a major, major project of getting rid of all this dirt and landscaping to try and go back down to whatever in theory that mountain looked like. It really is kind of absurd if you think about it, but it's clear that they had the temple mount structure and they had the platform. The platform is not the temple, it's what the temple is built on and the Bible is very clear that the temple was built on Mount Moriah. I'm going to pull up this verse, zoom out just a hair for you. So the Bible says in 2 Chronicles 3, verse 1, then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem in Mount Moriah where the Lord appeared and David his father in the place that David had prepared in the threshing floor of Ornon, the Jebusite. Additionally, that's the place approximately, maybe even exactly, where Abraham took Isaac to offer him upon the altar. So pretty significant spiritual place. When it comes to the temple, it's meaningless for us Christians today. The temple that was really important was the temple of Jesus Christ's body that was sacrificed for us and did not stay dead but rose again. And salvation is by simply believing in Him. We don't need that temple. In fact I believe the next temple that's going to be built there is the Antichrist temple. And so definitely, definitely not something I'm in support of. Somebody else asked, where did they get the idea of wailing at a wall? I think the wailing is just they're lamenting the fact that their temple was destroyed and so they're sad and they're upset that they can't worship in the temple right now, that they just have this retaining wall that's the closest spot they can get to and that the Muslims have control of it. So I think it's just called the wailing wall because you just see a lot of people crying and wailing at that wall and so that's where I kind of get the nickname, the wailing wall. But great question Enlightened91, I think I can, no it's not working, let me see, yeah there we go. So someone was asking, where's Ben? But thanks again guys for tuning in, this is a special episode of The Baptist Bias where we talked about the Western Wailing Wall and I hope that if you're interested in this subject you stick with us because we're going to have a couple more live streams about this topic. But I'm looking forward to having another season 3 in the fall and really appreciate our support and our fans. Enlightened91 says, I think Project Stargate will have something to do with the Mark of the Beast. You might be right, I don't know. Someone is asking us to do a show about that and I don't even know, I don't know anything about it yet. I need to probably research that more before I talk about Stargate. But thanks guys for tuning in. God bless, don't get stuck on, don't go to the wall and wail, you know, just recognize that Jesus Christ is our Savior. We don't need the Western Wailing Wall but I do want people to be educated on what it is. So God bless, have a great day.