Original subtitles

The Temple Mount is an important religious site for Judaism, Islam, and

Christianity. At the center of the site lies the Dome of the Rock.

Adjacent to it is the Al -Aqsa Mosque, which has a massive prayer hall with

enough space to accommodate about 5 ,000 worshippers.

On the western side of the Temple Mount is the Western Wall, also known as the

Wailing Wall.

While Jews refer to it as the Temple Mount, Muslims refer to it as the Haram

-Sharif, or Al -Aqsa Mosque compound, or simply Al -Aqsa.

Judaism teaches that the Temple Mount is where the world began.

It teaches that this is where God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.

It teaches that this is where Solomon and Herod's temple stood.

It also teaches that this is where the third temple will someday be built.

This site is held as the holiest site in Judaism, more holy than the Western

Wailing Wall.

Muslims believe that the Dome of the Rock lies where the Prophet Muhammad

ascended to heaven on his horse, Barak.

This makes it the third holiest site in Islam, after Mecca and Medina.

Christians considered the Temple Mount to be an important site due to its

significance in the Old Testament and because Jesus would have spent time

Additionally, Christians believe that the Temple Mount plays a crucial role in

Bible prophecy.

According to 2 Thessalonians 2, it is prophesied that during the end times,

Antichrist will enter the temple and declare himself God.

As a result, many people believe that a third temple must be built for these

events to occur.

However, the question remains, where will this third temple be built?

Bob Kernuke is a former FBI -trained police investigator and served as a SWAT

team member.

He is now a biblical investigator, international explorer, and best

author with a compilation of 12 books.

He has participated in over 70 international expeditions, searching the

over for lost locations described in the Bible. These journeys include searching

for the real Mount Sinai in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, exploring in Turkey along

with Apollo 15 astronaut Jim Irwin for the remains of Noah's Ark. He has

the Ark of the Covenant from Israel to Egypt and across the Ethiopian

Off the coast of Malta, his research team found the probable four anchors

Paul's shipwreck as described in Act 27.

His latest extensive research efforts have been in Israel.

in search of the true temple site of Herod, along with the actual location of

Golgotha.

This documentary will explore the Bible, history and archaeology,

and uncover incredible discoveries in Jerusalem that change everything we know

about the true location of the temple.

Around 3 ,500 years ago, God freed the nation of Israel from their bondage in

Egypt. The Israelites had been captives for centuries and were eagerly waiting

for a deliverer to come and bring them back to the land that God had promised

their father Abraham 400 years earlier.

God raised up a man named Moses to lead his people out of Egypt, but because of

their unbelief, They were made to wander in the wilderness for forty years.

During this time, God gave the nation of Israel a holy law that included precise

instructions for a tabernacle that they were to make exactly as instructed.

God told the Israelites, Make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them.

This tabernacle had no permanent home.

until King Solomon fulfilled David's desire to build a permanent house for

Lord during his reign in 957 B .C.

This magnificent building, known as Solomon's Temple, stood for nearly 400

years. However, God's judgment came upon Jerusalem by the hand of the Chaldeans,

because Israel had broken their covenant with God.

After 70 years of captivity, God put it in the heart of Cyrus, the king of

Persia, to allow Israel to return to their land and rebuild their temple.

God restored Israel to their land and instructed them to rebuild their temple

and wait for the coming Messiah to bring a new covenant to the house of Israel.

The second temple was constructed by Zerubbabel, although it was considered

inferior to its predecessor.

the second temple remained standing for several centuries.

Herod the Great, who ruled from 37 B .C. to 4 B .C., was well known for his

building skills.

He undertook a renovation project to restore the temple to its former glory,

which was completed shortly before the birth of Jesus Christ.

Jesus introduced the new covenant to the house of Israel.

Unfortunately,

The Jews did not accept Jesus as their Messiah.

As a consequence of their rejection, Jesus declared judgment on Jerusalem and

predicted the destruction of the temple.

He further prophesied that not a single stone of the temple would be left upon

another.

In 70 AD, the temple was destroyed exactly as Jesus had prophesied.

This event led to the scattering of the Jews throughout the world.

which is known as the Diaspora.

Since then, Jerusalem has been the most disputed piece of land on earth, with

its ownership being fought over for nearly 2 ,000 years, enduring numerous

battles and bloodshed.

Throughout history, various groups of people have occupied and conquered the

city, and the exact location of the temple has been completely lost.

For more than a millennium, The Temple Mount has been considered as the

traditional site of Solomon and Herod's Temple.

While various theories have been proposed to pinpoint its exact location,

people agree that it is indeed situated there.

But is this belief rooted in historical fact, or is it merely tradition?

Bob Cornuke has devoted many years searching for the lost temples of

Herod. He believes that the Bible, history, and archaeology all indicate a

different location in Jerusalem than what is traditionally believed.

His quest for the true location was inspired by his reading of Matthew 24,

Jesus prophesied the destruction of the second temple.

The Bible does talk about the destruction of the temple clearly in

And 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 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.

The Bible prophesies quite a bit about the destruction of Jerusalem. It was

prophesied in the Old Testament, in the book of Micah. It talked about Jerusalem

being like a plowed field.

Jesus himself prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem in Matthew 24 in the

famous Olivet Discourse where he said there would not be one stone left upon

another. The Bible prophecy is very clear that Jerusalem would be destroyed,

that is exactly what happened.

Total and complete eradication.

Like you take a tree and lift it up in the forest, roots and all, and cart it

off and throw it away somewhere.

It's totally going to be gone.

And so Jesus says those stones will be totally destroyed down to the last one.

Not one stone will last. Well, today we have thousands of stones up there, some

of them as big as a truck cab. And the Jews around Jerusalem today say, Jesus

wrong because we still have those stones up there. They know scripture.

They know what Jesus said, and they're saying, hey, Jesus said every stone

should be thrown down. We should pay attention with what Jesus said, because

every stone was thrown down.

If Jesus said that every stone of the temple was thrown down, how could the

stones from the western wall be from Herod's temple?

Either Jesus was wrong, or perhaps those stones were not part of the temple at

all.

Historian Flavius Josephus.

is the only witness that we have a record of who lived during the

the temple.

And he wrote that the temple was completely destroyed after 70 AD.

He said that if he had not personally been in Jerusalem during the war and

witnessed the demolition by Titus of the temple that took place there, he

wouldn't have believed it ever existed.

Josephus was a Jewish general that became

A Roman historian, he must have been a smart guy, he must have been known for

his writing, because then he was asked by the Romans to write the history of

area.

Famed Jewish historian Flavius Josephus was born in Jerusalem in 37 AD,

not long after Christ's crucifixion. The son of a priest, he became a Pharisee,

a military commander in the Jewish resistance, and an eyewitness to

destruction. In 70 AD, Josephus' works provide valuable details that do not

survive in other records.

For instance, most of our knowledge of Herod's temple, which Christ often

visited, comes from Josephus.

When he started writing history, he made sure that everything he talked about

geographically was precise.

And so we can be reasonably certain that he had a clear sense of the appearance

of the place, the general dimensions of the place, the types of ceremonies and

other functions that took place at the Temple Mount.

He was given King Herod's court records to use as a resource for his writings.

And they gave him carte blanche. Oh yeah, anything Josephus wants, they just

wrote up the permission slip and anything he wanted he got.

While every historian is fallible and must be read with care, historians can

very helpful, especially when they report first -hand knowledge.

Caesar gave orders that they should now demolish the entire city and temple.

It was so thoroughly laid, even with the ground, by those that dug it up to the

foundation.

But there was left nothing to make those that came thither believe Jerusalem had

ever been inhabited.

When you look at the historical evidence, the destruction of Jerusalem

exactly like Jesus said it would happen. There was not one stone left upon

another. When the Romans burned down the temple, they wanted to get all that

gold and everything that melted down to those rocks, and so they stripped

everything down to the foundations.

It was just like Jesus said, there wasn't one stone left upon another.

During the Roman -Jewish War of 66 to 70 AD, the temple was demolished down to

the bedrock, likely due to the immense value of the gold that adorned its

Flavius Josephus wrote, The entire face was covered with gold.

And when the fire caught, the gold would melt, and it would seep in between the

rocks. The whole floor of all of the temple area where the sacrifices were

flaps in it so that the blood from the animals could flow down and then be

flushed away.

Well, the gold melted and went in there also.

Many Jews hid gold and silver within the walls of various structures, thus

raising the city with fire.

The Roman army literally ripped every building apart, stone by stone, to

the massive treasures of gold and silver that melted into the cracks and

crevices of various bricks.

Josephus describes how Titus removed a phenomenal amount of gold and silver and

plentifully distributed among them.

We can conclude from Josephus' writings that this is why the temple was so

thoroughly demolished. The Romans wanted the gold. Why else would they have torn

down every stone, as the Bible describes?

We know gold and silver melt in fire, and the Jewish temple was burned to the

ground by the Romans.

Another historical account of the destruction of Jerusalem is written by

historian and Catholic bishop Eusebius of Caesarea.

As a friend of Constantine, he was granted access to the imperial archives

had the opportunity to study a wide range of documents.

His writings are fascinating, as they include extensive quotations from long

-lost sources, which cover one of the most critical periods in history that we

have little information on today.

The hill called Zion and Jerusalem

The building there, that is to say the temple, have been utterly removed or

shaken in fulfillment of the word.

When we read Eusebius, he talks about the stones of the very temple being

off and being used for public works. How sad that must have been for those in

Jerusalem to see the temple, the beloved temple, the holy temple, being

dismantled block by block.

down to the very foundations.

It was completely and totally eradicated.

The Romans took complete control of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and from that point

had total control until about 330 AD. The big question is, where

did the Roman soldiers live during this time?

History tells us they lived in the Roman fortress.

But the problem is, that no one has found one brick of this Roman fortress.

We're talking over 300 years and they haven't found one stone from the Roman

fort just because it's been sitting in front of their eyes all this time.

The Antonia Fortress was originally built by Herod the Great in Jerusalem

between 37 B .C. and 4 B .C. It served as a military barracks.

for the 10th Roman Legion, also known as Legio Expertensis.

The fortress was an impressive architectural feat, essentially a city

city. Its primary purpose was to safeguard the Second Temple and to serve

symbol of Roman power to anyone who dared to challenge the might of the

Empire. Additionally, it provided a place of refuge for Roman soldiers

times of unrest.

and was instrumental in maintaining peace and order during the Roman

of Jerusalem.

Although Herod rebuilt and likely expanded the Antonia Fortress, it had

previously existed as the Barras. This was a Greek word for tower that John

Hyrcanus built to replace the previous citadel or fortress that had defended

temple even before Nebuchadnezzar's destruction of Jerusalem.

Modern scholars tend to downplay the importance of the Antonia Fortress,

describing it as a relatively small annex located at the northwest corner of

Temple Mount complex.

But is this depiction accurate?

When you go to the Israel Museum, and they have the very good model of the

but one of the areas that is inaccurate.

is going to be that they have a small Antonio Fortress at the northwestern

corner of the Temple Mount.

The model that we have at the Israeli Museum today is almost laughable, and I

hate to be that harsh in that cutting, but it is flawed in so many

ways. Turisco, they're believing that what they're seeing is an accurate

depiction.

But if you look at it and study the Bible, it is wrong on a lot of levels.

They needed to put this Roman fort somewhere because no one's found one

it. So if this is the Temple Mount, they say that has to be the place of the

Roman fort. Even though there's no foundations there, an artist drew it in.

in every textbook you'll see in the world, just like this and that size.

And so he put the temple where he wanted the temple.

the Roman fortress where he wanted to put it. He put roads in where he thought

that they should go.

He just let his imagination go wild.

If you've never seen the Grand Canyon, I said, draw the Grand Canyon.

It's a deep hole in the ground, and it's kind of pretty. You'd have a million

different people drawing. You'd have a million different opinions.

He had one opinion, and that unfortunately became the opinion that

What they're seeing is somebody from the imagination of a man, which I think is

completely wrong. I think his understanding of what it was like back

completely in error.

The traditional view of Fort Antonio only takes up about three acres of real

estate. But how could the 10th Roman Legion live in such a small space?

For there always lay in this tower a Roman Legion.

There were 6 ,000...

Soldiers and a legion and 4 ,000 support personnel. What you're seeing marching

towards you is about, to the gap you're going to see in a moment, is about 600

guys. So 10 times what you see here is how many soldiers there were over there,

with an additional 4 ,000. Now, would they fit in that little area up there,

which is about the size of this church auditorium?

No, it's ridiculous.

And then we see Josephus saying also, now as to the Tower Antonio, it might

comprised of several cities.

What happened to the Roman fortress Antonia after the destruction of

Was it also destroyed along with the temple?

According to historical records, General Titus returned to Rome after the

fighting ended and left Legio X for Tensis stationed in Jerusalem.

Their role was to suppress any remaining resistance in Judea and maintain Roman

rule over the region.

The fate of the fortress was documented by Josephus in his book, War of the

Jews. He recorded the speech given by Eleazar Ben -Yair, the commander of the

besieged fortress at Masada.

Where is this city, Jerusalem, that was believed to have God himself inhabiting

therein? It is now demolished to the very foundations, and hath nothing but

monument of it preserved.

I mean the camp of those Romans that hath destroyed it, which still dwells

its ruins.

Let me distill it down. He's saying that the one thing that's still existing in

Jerusalem is the Roman fort, and everything else is torn down. There was

couple of little small walls. There was a couple of little small towers here and

there, but it looked like Hiroshima after the atomic bomb. It was level.

But yet this glorious fort is still there, according to Eliezer.

And think about it, the Romans had forts that were usually about 36, 37 acres.

They were very large, high -walled structures throughout the whole world.

Rome conquered somewhere, they established a well -fortified fort. But

that the Roman fortress was not destroyed. It still stands upon the

Jerusalem.

The Romans aren't going to destroy their own fort that they made, and they're

going to need it afterwards after rebellion is crushed.

So they didn't destroy their fort. Well, that's what we have today as far as the

Temple Mount. People say, oh, that big high -walled structure you've seen in

Jerusalem with the gold dome where they believe the temple is, that's the place

of the temple?

Absolutely not.

That was a Roman fortress.

When he entirely demolished the rest of the city,

What does a Roman fort look like? Well, we can go back in history and we can see

through drawings or through actual foundations.

And even today we have models of the Roman fortress. And they were the size

several cities.

Here's one drawing, and you can see it has granaries and hospitals. It had the

place for the officers' quarters. It had places for the soldiers' barracks. It

would have had possibly courthouses, libraries, places for the horses, the

military equipment, all that kind of storage that you would find in a huge

military presence, whether today or long ago with the Romans.

Here we have an aerial view of an ancient Roman fort, and you can see it's

rectangular in shape.

We see Roman forts and models. If you go today to Europe, you'll go to the

visitor centers of some of these ruins, and they build these models. And a lot

of these models are actually built after the ruins that were in these different

places throughout Europe and the Middle East.

And the interesting thing is they all seem to be very similar in that they're

rectangular in shape, which if you really look at the Temple Mount today,

rectangular in shape.

And it has the very size and complexion as what you see in these Roman forts

throughout the world.

To house that many people, you need a relatively large area.

And we found some previous settlements of

Roman legions that, just by coincidence, occupy

an area almost exactly the same size as a temple mount.

One of the artists and a pretty good historian himself superimposed

an encampment of a different Roman legion on top of the Temple Mount, and

fit almost exactly.

There's no way we can see what Jesus and his disciples were looking at in his

day. He said it's all going to be gone.

And some of the things that we're looking at over in the traditional

could have been seen in Jesus' day.

I don't know how these people go on their tours with their Christian tour

and they point to that wall and say, this is the wall of the temple when

says, every stone will be thrown down. You can't have that. You can't reconcile

that. I believe that Jesus was 100 % right in his prophecy and that every

was thrown down. As Josephus says in history, as Eliezer, as Josephus, they

say that it's complete and totally annihilated.

So we've got to go with what the evidence shows and what history says.

was 100 % right. And those stones up there were not thrown down because

the stones from the Roman fortress Antonia.

is one of the earliest recorded Christian witnesses to visit the Holy

He or she is, in fact, the only eyewitness from 70 AD to 370

AD to document the existence of Port Antonio in Jerusalem.

We have people from history, such as the Bordeaux Pilgrim. The Bordeaux Pilgrim

in 333 was right here.

The Bordeaux Pilgrim was a pilgrim that came to Jerusalem.

wrote and gave us a description as to where the Roman fortress existed.

In 333 A .D., the anonymous Christian pilgrim from Bordeaux described the only

structure of significance located east of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as

having walls, plural, where Pontius Pilate had his house. The praetorium is

where the Lord's case was heard before he suffered.

In the Roman world at the time, The word praetorium was another synonym for the

residence of the Roman general who had his abode in the center of a military

camp of the legions.

The notation is that from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, while the Bordeaux

pilgrim looked east, he or she saw the Roman fort.

And set in the periphery of the view was this massive fort due east of where the

Church of the Holy Sepulchre is located.

We're in a tower next to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Quite high, gives us

a great vantage point. But you can see, if you scan your eyes going to the east,

you see what the Bordeaux pilgrims saw.

And that is the area today which is called the Dome of the Rock.

The portal program said, looking east, you see the Roman fort stretched out

before you. That's what we see right now today, is we see the Dome of the Rock,

which is not the place of the temple. It's the place of the Roman fort,

according to an eyewitness in the year 333 A .D.

Scholars ignore that, and I don't know why scholars ignore it other than it

doesn't fit with their paradigm. They probably wrote a book about the temple

being on the Temple Mount, and they don't want to accept this information.

That cannot be the place of the temple. The Bordeaux Pilgrim tells us that that

was a Roman fort due east of here.

So this is where we have to follow. We have to follow the clues like

through history that will lead us to the ultimate truth.

Another significant proof that the Temple Mount was once the Roman fortress

be found today only a few feet from the Western Wall.

If you take a guided tour underground, you will see the inscription FRET, F

-R -E -T, carved into the wall, which is short for FRETENSIS, which was the

10th Roman Legion.

What we have here...

It's an amazing inscription that says the 10th Roman Legion.

And this is solid, solid evidence, inscription evidence, which inscriptions

usually the silver bullet of archaeology. Very few inscriptions in

shows and says that this is the 10th Roman Legion. Well, it's very

because we find it to be located.

Here's the Western Wailing Wall here.

So what do we have?

60 feet away is where the inscription is that says the 10th Roman Legion,

which would have marked the entryway into their fort.

This inscription is strong evidence that it was, in fact, the Fortress Antonio

and not the temple. The temple correctly should be in the City of David where

the Bible and history says it should be.

One of the...

tenets of the military that were always taught is to control the high ground.

And so as you look at the geography of that area, it becomes

apparent that the high ground in that area in and around the

Jebusite city was Mount Moriah.

So from just a pure military perspective, I would want to put

my camp on the highest ground I could, which back then was Mount Moriah.

For if we go up to this Tower of Antonia, we gain the city, since we

be upon the top of the hill.

If we look at Josephus' writing, we get the significant clues as to where the

temple... is really located he talks about a bridge going 600 feet north from

the temple connecting to the fortress antonio so the romans could keep control

and watch on and have access to the temple area if there was some kind of

rebellion now as to the tower of antonia it was situated at the corner of two

cloisters of the court of the temple of that on the west and that on the north

Josephus' writings talk about the Roman fortress being a guard to the temple,

literally higher in elevation.

It was so large that, in fact, he says you could not see the temple if you

approached Jerusalem from the north.

The Tower of Antonia was the only place that hindered the sight of the temple on

the north.

There's another clue from the Bible that talks about the Roman...

fortress being in a higher elevation than the temple.

There is a story in the book of Acts that describes when the commander of the

Roman soldiers quickly deployed troops from the fort down to the temple to

rescue the apostle Paul from a riotous situation.

One interesting fact that we see in the Bible that tells us a little bit about

Fort Antonia and its location in relation to the temple can be found in

The Jews, which were of Asia, when they saw him in the temple, stirred up all

the people and laid hands on him, crying out, Men of Israel, help!

This is the man that teacheth all men everywhere against the people and the

and this place, and further brought Greeks also into the temple, and hath

polluted this holy place.

And all the city was moved, and the people ran together, and they took Paul

drew him out of the temple.

And as they went about to kill him, Tidings came unto the chief captain of

band, that all Jerusalem was in an uproar, who immediately took soldiers

centurions and ran down unto them.

That's the key word.

They took soldiers and centurions and ran down to them.

Right above us here is what I think is the Roman fort. The steps would have

right down to here.

So what we see going on here is the Apostle Paul, he gets arrested, they

down the steps to get him, they're taking him back up to the castle, and he

stops on the steps somewhere in that area, and he preaches to all those Jews

that were in an uproar because he was in the temple.

And as Paul was to be led into the castle, he said unto the chief captain,

speak unto thee?

So right here, as they're getting ready to go to the castle, and then in verse

40, And when he had given him license, Paul stood on the stairs and beckoned

with the hand unto the people.

So we see that after the Romans come down to the temple to arrest Paul,

taking him back up, and while he's on the stairs somewhere in this area, he

looks down over the temple area, and he preaches to the Jews.

There is a very interesting writing by Josephus in his book, The War of the

Jews, where he tells us exactly where the eastern cloister of the temple was

located. In describing these ancient walls of the city of David, he says they

went around to the Pool of Siloam.

Then it says the walls turned east, and then the walls

went coming up in a northerly direction.

And then it intersected with the Ofla.

And that is the place, he said, is where the eastern cloister of the temple is.

That's a mic drop moment when I found that in Josephus' writings. He gave me a

map leading me directly and exactly and precisely where the temple is.

Now that wall went southward, having its bending above the fountain Siloam.

But it also bends again towards the east at Solomon's Pool and reaches as far as

a certain place, which they call Ophla, where it was joined to the eastern

cloister of the temple.

And this is actually where history collides with his words.

And it paints a picture for me that tells me clearly, clearly, Josephus is

saying, where the Ophla is, is the Ophla of the ancient wall.

that that's where the eastern cloister of the temple was. He was an eyewitness

in the first century.

So here's an eyewitness, not some scholar in the 21st century, but an

in the first century saying the temple was right here, and there's no arguing

what he's saying. He's either lying or he's telling the truth, and this is the

place of the temple of Solomon and Herod.

Any police investigator?

with any modicum of talent, could have figured that one out a long time ago.

historians have ignored that. Scholars have ignored that.

Because it gives a different narrative. It says the temple is in the city of

David and not upon the Temple Mount. So it was ignored.

But I didn't ignore it. I followed it. And it led me right to where I believe

the temple should be.

So, if historical and biblical evidence places the Roman fort, On the Temple

Mount, why do most people today believe that this is where the Temple was

actually located?

After 70 AD, the Jews were banished from Jerusalem, and all remembrance of the

Temple was removed.

Over time, the people forgot, and the history was lost.

We don't have a definitive location of where the temple is. Even upon the

Mount, people are arguing where it was up there. We do not know where the

is. When people were debating where the temple was in the 4th century, we had

several places were being suggested as where the temple was.

They just looked up and saw this big, huge monument, and it was the Roman

Fortress Antonia, which was still existing.

And they said, that has to be the place of the temple.

And people have said this over and over.

and over and over throughout the years. Thus it becomes history, when it's

nothing more than speculation and tradition.

One important event that promoted the Temple Mount, being the location of the

Temple, was the invasion of Jerusalem by the Crusaders.

When the Crusaders came over here and breached the walls in July of 1099, at

behest of Urban II, the Pope, it was a holy war saying, if you go fight, you'll

have eternal life.

You don't have to go through purgatory.

So these farmers and knights and everybody amassed in this huge army,

here, overrun the walls, and killed everybody in sight, and they took back

was once the Roman fortress.

The Muslims had it. This was controlled by the Muslims.

And on the top of what we see is that big gold dome today. It was kind of a

pewter -colored den, and it had a crescent moon on the top of it, the

Islam. And the crusaders went up, tore that off, put a cross up there, wired it

up there and called it Temple of Domini, which means the house of the Lord.

That was the little match that lit the roaring forest of tradition on fire that

that is the temple. And from this point on, we have people telling about it

generation after generation after generation to the point that it's not

contested.

July 15, 1099.

Seventy years after the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem, a Jew from Spain,

Benjamin of Tudela, visited Jerusalem and wrote, The Western Wall is one of

walls of the Holy of Holies.

This emphatic statement seemed to seal the tradition, and from that point on,

it has been virtually unchallenged.

We have tradition saying that it's there.

and not fact.

The Bible, however, takes us in a different vector. The Bible pulses down

600 feet to Guillaume Springs, and that is in the city of David. That's the

place of the temple.

Years ago, I sat in the office of Herschel Shanks, who is the

editor of Bible Archaeology Review, the most prestigious

Bible archaeology magazine ever.

And he said to me, he said, Bob, 95 % of all places that we go to in

Jerusalem, archaeologically speaking, are wrong.

But we know one place for sure.

There's no doubt about it.

None at all.

And that's where the Temple of Solomon and Herod

One day, someone hands me a book.

A book by Ernest Martin.

And he said the temple is in the city of David.

He got his news from Benjamin or Ori Mazur, which were the grandfathers of

archaeology in Jerusalem.

And they told him, the temples are in the city of David.

We cannot write a book about it.

We cannot tell anybody in the press about it, but we are digging up the city

David, and we have evidence to show that the temple is in the city of David.

He said, why don't you tell people? He says, our lives will be ruined. Our

careers are over with. Our families will be attacked in Jerusalem going against

such a beloved. You understand that people in Israel are beloved of that

If we say anything, we'll be destroyed.

So I started on a journey of testing it through, not tradition, but through the

lens of biblical verses.

And I become almost obsessed with finding out the truth.

Could all these people for all these years be wrong? Could the temple be in

city of David? And I believe, and I'm going to make a proclamation right here

from this stage,

Mistake in archaeological history has been made by saying that the temple is

on the Temple Mount.

Being a former police investigator, I used to put my heart and soul into every

investigation. I wanted to find the truth. I did not want to put the wrong

in jail.

God forbid.

So when I started doing research on the temple and where the temple is located,

I realized this is God's lost city.

People have been trying to figure out this thing for a long time.

And so I decided to look at it in a different lens. I started pulling pieces

together out of history, out of the Bible, out of eyewitnesses such as

And I was alarmed to find that everything...

was like a riptide pulling me down southward to the city of David.

The city of David is a 12 -acre plot of land south of the Temple Mount.

3 ,000 years ago, the city of David had an estimated population of only around 2

,000 people.

To understand the history of the city of David, we must go back to 1003 B .C.,

when King David arrived in Jerusalem and found a city called Jebus, which the

Jebusites inhabited.

We have to go back to 2 Samuel, way, way, way back in time. In 2 Samuel 5 -7

says, Nevertheless, David took the stronghold of Zion.

The same is the city of David.

I want to paint a picture. Right where I'm standing right now, there was deep

walls. And these deep walls we can see today, and you'll see those today, these

deep walls go down from a deep height, going down into the Kidron Valley.

These stones here are stones that go up.

They actually are these support walls or these ramparts or defensive walls for

the city of David.

They originally belonged to the Jebusites.

Now, the Jebusites lived in this area. You see this area?

Here's about 12 acres. It's really not too impressive.

That was very small, and all around it, there was sort of barren wasteland.

At the time, the Jebusites had control over this area, but it had water. This

underground, it's hard to describe, but it's under the stone, subterranean water

source. It's a siphon spring that comes out, and then it's channeled out through

the stone. This water just keeps gurgling up from within it, and this is

David wanted.

the Jebusites stood on these ramparts and looked down at David, who was

up, probably thinking, how am I going to conquer this place that's so well

defended? And David was down with his men, and even the Jebusites mockingly

laughed down and said, hey, even the blind and lame could defend this place.

Ha, ha, ha, you can't take us.

But David, not too long after that, maybe even hours after that, went into a

water shaft, came up and...

took the city of David. Now, what does the Bible say about it? When David took

the city of David, it was called the stronghold of Zion.

Zion's the key word. Z -I -O -N. Zion is the key word that's a common

denominator in solving this problem.

So Zion, it says here, is the city of David.

2 Samuel chapter 5 -7 equates the name the stronghold of Zion to the city of

David. Those names are interchangeable.

They are the same place.

Another proof of this can be found in 1 Kings 8, 1, where the Bible tells us

again that the city of David is Zion.

Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel in Jerusalem, that they might

up the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of the city of David, which is Zion.

So now that we know that Zion is the city of David, what does the Bible say

about Zion?

So shall ye know that I am the Lord your God dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain.

My holy mountain. My holy mountain is the temple.

Zion is in the city of David.

For the Lord hath chosen Zion.

He hath desired it for his habitation.

This is where the temple is, Zion, where the temple place is.

Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.

Come ye and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord.

to the house of the God Jacob.

For out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

Send thee help from the sanctuary and strengthen thee out of Zion.

Praise waiteth for thee, O God in Zion.

We shall be satisfied with the goodness of thy house, even of thy holy temple.

The Lord of hosts shall reign in Mount Zion.

The Lord dwelleth in Zion.

Eusebius, the church father, said from the 4th century, the hill called Zion

Jerusalem, the building there, that is to say the temple, the Holy of Holies,

in Zion.

Zion is really the common denominator that we should follow.

But historians and scholars today define Zion as being more of a widely used

area. In fact, the identity of Israel is Zion.

At the time when the Bible was written, Zion was the city of David.

And Zion, the Bible tells us, is the place of the temple without question.

So David dwelt in the fort and called it the city of David.

When David took over the Jebusite fortress, God came to him and said,

David, buy the threshing floor.

In other words, throughout history, I want no discussion that who owns this

land. It's going to be bought by you and it's going to be a holy precinct. And

I'm going to build my temple there. And where was the threshing floor?

Inside the city of David, the Jebusite fortress.

And Gad came that day to David and said unto him, Go up, rear an altar unto the

Lord in the threshing floor of Arana, the Jebusite.

And so the threshing floor is a very, very important place to have in any

It's supposed to be the most important place.

We see these photos here of threshing floors around the world. And what's

amazing to me, let's go back to that prior one. You see the hill behind it?

You see this threshing floor with the hill behind it? You see this threshing

floor with the hill behind it?

We have the threshing floors positioned in very strategic places that have just

enough wind, the right amount of wind to blow away the wheat from the chaff.

Usually they're not on top of a mountain because they had enough bone -jarring

labor in those days to go up and add to their workload by going to the top of a

mountain. So it was a place that was easier to get to and had the ample

of wind.

And so that's where the threshing floor, in fact, some threshing floors even

were in buildings that we find throughout the ancient world.

After purchasing the land, Solomon began building the house of the Lord.

in the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.

You know, the Bible, surprising to a lot of people, tells us exactly where the

temple should be.

In 2 Chronicles 3 .1, it says it needs to be where the threshing floor of Ornan

the Jebusite is.

Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem in Mount Moriah,

where the Lord appeared unto David his father, in the place that David had

prepared in the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.

So when you put all those together, we can see Zion, Mount Moriah, the city of

David, they're all one place.

The city of David at the time was the Jebusite fortress conquered by David.

And it was there on the threshing floor in that area in the city of David that

the temple was built according to the Bible.

So if the Bible clearly states... that Solomon's temple was constructed within

the limits of the Jebusite fortress, specifically in the threshing floor of

Ornan the Jebusite, how can there be any dispute about the fact that Solomon's

temple was built in the city of David?

How did it become a city lost?

The city of David was forgotten for so many years because the temple was

completely destroyed.

Because it was abandoned.

The Jews were outcasts. They were quarantined from Jerusalem.

Life went on hundreds and hundreds of years in between of people being

completely gone. Generations never even seeing where the temple or told where

the temple is.

And it just got forgotten. It got lost.

You know that we lost where Jamestown was. The first settlement in America got

lost. We didn't know where it was until a few years ago when the archaeologists

found it.

Just as with Jamestown, as time passed, no one knew where the city of David was.

And since the stronghold of Zion was in the city of David, Zion had also

vanished. So historians erroneously moved Zion to another spot in Jerusalem

without any substantiated reason.

When you go to the holy city today, road signs will point to the upper city, and

the signs read, Zion.

with an arrow pointing away from Zion's actual original location in the city of

David.

The city of David was so completely forgotten that during the Byzantine

even Jerusalem's biblical name Zion shifted to the southern portion of the

Western Hill, which is called Mount Zion to this day.

People often wonder...

how we could get something as significant as the temple of God, how we

its location wrong.

But it's important to note that it wasn't until about 100 years ago or so

they actually discovered the true location of Mount Zion.

So if we could get the most important mountain in the Bible wrong all these

years, could it be that we would get the location of the temple wrong as well?

For almost 2 ,000 years, Zion and the city of David have been buried and

forgotten. The southern part was made into a quarry by Hadrian, who wanted the

city so mangled that it would be forever dismissed from memory.

In the days of King Ahaz, the prophet Micah foretold of this destruction in

about 730 BC.

This prophecy specifically said that Zion would be plowed like a field.

and that it would be completely lost.

Micah's prophecy was certainly not popular with the political leaders and

priests of his day. However, the specifics of this prophecy are truly

incredible, because his words were completely fulfilled almost 800 years

Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall

become heaps.

The mountain of the house is the high places of the forest.

This is a very clear prophecy, that it was going to be plowed like a field, and

that is exactly what history records happening.

We see in the book of Micah that a time was going to come where Jerusalem was

going to look as though nothing had been there. It would be heaps and a forest.

Some say that was in 70 A .D. Others think it may have been in 132 A .D.

when there was another famous revolt known as the Bar Kokhba revolt.

And what's interesting about that, the Romans were so tired of all these

rebellions by the Jews who kept wanting to rebuild that temple, he decided we

need to eliminate the memory of Jerusalem from there. And so they

and plowed Mount Zion.

I mean, it was down to the dirt.

He ended up building a temple to Jupiter in that spot where the temple once

stood. This was his way of trying to remove the remembrance so the Jews

keep trying to take that spot.

and build a temple there, and then eventually what he did is they changed

name of that land to Palestine.

If you look at these walls, it's obvious it's never happened here. These walls,

they go back, some of them, to before the time of Christ. They're still

one upon another, so there's no way this area ever could have been plowed, could

have become a forest.

There's absolutely no evidence of that anywhere in this Temple Mount area.

Nobody's plowing up there, but it fulfilled the prophecy here in the city

David. Plowed like a field. They took it down to the very foundations, to the

very soil. It said it would become heat. So there's no doubt in 2 ,000 years a

landscape can change a lot, but when a purposeful effort was taken to change

layout, to hide what was there, there's no reason to doubt that the landscape

looked quite a bit different than it does today.

Look at this oval here that you see. That oval, that is where the city of

is. Up above is where the yellow out there, that is where the Temple Mount

Do you see the fields that are being plowed there?

You see those terraces?

You can see almost the farmers out there plowing that.

There's no plowed fields up above, up on the Temple Mount. But here in the city

of David, we have the fulfillment of Micah's prophecy.

This photo here is the most intriguing of the photos to me, and I'll tell you

why. This is speaking to us from history that we don't have today when we look

at Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the jumble of buildings in a lot of respects.

But through the lens of this photographer, he's opened up a world

speaks volumes of Bible history.

This fulfills the prophet's view of where the temple would be.

This does not.

The search for the true location of the biblical city of David was one of the

stated objectives of the Palestinian Exploration Fund since its establishment

1865.

Archaeological exploration for the city of David began in 1867 by Master

Freemason Charles Warren, whom the Palestinian Exploration Fund sent to

for the Ark of the Covenant.

During his exploration, he made some remarkable discoveries, such as ancient

fortifications and a vertical shaft that he believed Joab used to take over the

Jebusite fortress.

Today it's known as Warren's Shaft, descending from the slanted tunnel.

to an apparent water source dating to the time of David.

In 1880, an inscription was found by some boys that changed history forever.

It would be one of the most important finds ever made in Israel and

mark where the ancient city of David was located.

The Siloam inscription was discovered by...

One or two boys, Jewish boys, who went to take a swim at the Pool of

Siloam at the southern end of the city of David.

It was fed by water coming out from the rocks, from an opening in the rock, and

they were curious, and they went in.

Pretty brave little lads, because they had to go quite a bit in, in this dark

maw of a cave filled with water, running water.

And after six or seven meters, that is 18, 20 feet, one of them

saw on the wall an inscription, something inscribed.

He didn't know what it is or to decipher it.

And they went to the teacher, a German working as a missionary in Jerusalem by

the name Konrad Schick.

One of my pupils, when climbing down the southern side of it, stumbled over the

broken bits of rock.

and fell into the water.

On rising to the surface, he discovered some marks like letters on the wall of

rock. I set off with the necessary things to examine his discovery.

The inscription talks about this is the place the Hezekiah's men met while they

were building the tunnels. They came from two different directions, and they

connected right at this spot. It was a memorial stone showing where they came

and met, creating this long tunnel.

It actually commemorates The moment of encounter of two groups

of rock cutters who cut a tunnel from both sides.

So it commemorates the moment, the last three cubits to be cut, which is about a

meter and a half, five feet.

And then the final blow of the act, they saw the water coming and it flowed from

the source to the pool.

And this was such an exciting moment that it had to be documented.

And this tunnel worked until today. You were in the water, were you?

So 2 ,700 years, maybe a little more, of a project which still

works. And when Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib was come and that he was

to fight against Jerusalem, he took counsel with his princes and his mighty

to stop the waters of the fountains which were without the city. And they

help him.

So there was gathered much people together who stopped all the fountains

brook that ran through the midst of the land, saying, Why should the kings of

Assyria come and find much water?

Hezekiah also stopped the upper watercourse of Gion and brought it

to the west side of the city of David.

And the rest of the acts of Hezekiah and all his might and how he made a pool

and a conduit and brought water into the city.

Are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah?

And sure enough, right down there is where they found what's known as

Tunnels, right there in the city of David. It was that discovery that

that this area was the city of David.

And by law, in the 1880s, everybody should have said, here's where the

is. We found Hezekiah's Tunnel. We found the Gion Springs.

But they didn't. They didn't do a thing.

Why? Because tradition was poured over it, and they don't want to change.

Tradition is such a strong thing. Tradition is mentioned 14 times in the

and it's all negative.

It's all negative. We shouldn't follow traditions. We should follow the Word of

God.

The discovery of the Siloam inscription in Hezekiah's tunnel was a significant

event because it confirmed the biblical narrative and provided the exact

location of the city of David.

Israeli archaeologists Rani Reich and Eli Shukran excavated in the city of

from 1995 to 2012.

Their work led to some of the most significant archaeological discoveries

made in Jerusalem.

Their excavations revealed that the entrance to the Gihon Spring was heavily

fortified with a massive tower.

They also uncovered the remains of the Pool of Siloam.

made a very unusual discovery.

He found an ancient structure only a few feet from the Gihon Spring, which is

perhaps the greatest discovery ever found in Israel.

Here's my good friend Eli Shukaron, who was the director of archaeology in the

city of David for many, many years.

He spent a large portion of his life in the dark here, digging away day by day,

coming to work in the morning, digging all day, taking out tons and tons of

debris.

When I first met Elias Shukran, I said, hey, I think there should be something

underground here.

I think this is the place where Solomon's temple was. Of course, he

that was true.

He said, well, now that you've said it, there's something that's amazing that I

want to show you.

And he took me down this little weedy path here and opened up this door.

The hinges just...

squeak with rusty protest and went inside and it was dark with cobwebs and

sandbags and it was an archaeological site that was live.

This ancient structure is known by a few informal names, such as the Matzivah

Temple, Temple Zero, or Melchizedek's Temple.

It is believed to date back to the time of Abraham.

even before the City of David was constructed.

Although rarely mentioned and closed off to the public,

the site has significant implications when considering all the facts.

In 1909, Montague Parker discovered the northernmost room, but he never

uncovered the rest of the site.

Shukron continued excavations to the south and found additional rooms all

quarried in the bedrock.

This area was excavated in 2010.

And we came and every two meters, every six feet, we did excavation. We did all

the construction.

So we moved part by part by part by part.

And what we found? We found a very, very important area.

The site is oriented towards the east, which is a common characteristic of

Judean temples, and faces the same direction.

in which the tabernacle and the first temple faced.

It features a staircase that leads to a flat surface carved into the bedrock.

Several small rooms are aligned next to one another on the surface.

These rooms were designated for animal sacrifice, grain and olive pressing, an

altar, and a stone monument known as a matzivah.

It took them 20 years, I think, of just...

every day like a mole going down on the ground and working down there, countless

untold hours of misery, taking all that dirt out. But what he's uncovered is an

amazing find. He's truly a great guy and a good friend of mine. Do we agree on

all this?

No. We are in the city of David now, above the Gihon Spring. We are in the

temple that was found in 2010.

And this is a very, very important temple because it's the beginning of

worshipping God in Jerusalem, in the city of David, here where we are. Go

to the time of Melchizedek before 3 ,700, 3 ,800 years ago.

It is truly remarkable to discover a site that has been so well preserved.

According to Eli Shukran, the altar and everything else was excavated exactly as

we see it today.

You can see.

The line of the stone, this is the wall. But all that you have inside of the

wall, between the rock and the wall, you can see all the stone.

Covering all the air, it was covering like that. Someone buried this place.

When the site was buried, artifacts were left behind, indicating when it was in

use and when it was covered up.

What's happening in that cave, we found a lot of ceramic, a lot of pottery.

Why? Because before the...

covered before they bury it, they clean all that room, and they put everything

inside. And what we found, we found here pottery go back to the Middle Bronze

period. And the layer, the pottery, after before two years ago, they did

carbon -14 baking.

And then they found that the layer that I say that this will go back to the

middle bronze period is also the proven by carbon -14 dating.

So take the carbon -14 dating, take the pottery all together, take the finding

that we found in here, and then we understand that we are in a very

place. And all that go back to the Bible and what the Bible tell us. And then we

start to understand that the Bible talk about what we have here.

We have the pillar, the house of God.

And what is the pillar?

If you're reading Genesis 28, verse 22, the pillar, the house of God.

And this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God's house.

So that stone that someone set up as a pillar and a stone around it, this is

what the Bible said, the house of God. So this is the most important place in

this temple.

Eli Shukrin says that this pillar is just like the one that is described in

Genesis 28, when Jacob had a dream of a ladder reaching up to heaven in Bethel.

And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this

place, and I knew it not.

And he was afraid and said, How dreadful is this place!

This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for

his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it.

Eli Shukran believes that Melchizedek set this stone up in Jerusalem, just

Jacob did in Bethel.

So what is the ask of God? What are you doing to the ask of God? You are

anointed with olive oil. Why are you producing that olive oil? Here in the

place.

And you can see that the olive press, well, you take the olive, you're

the olive, you put the olive in the sack, and then you put the sack on the

of the pit, and then you get the branch of the wood inside to the hole, and then

with the weight, and then you're pressing, then what we call a cold

then you have around between 10 to 20 % olive oil, and jumping to the top, you

collect it. Olive oil, you must use it immediately.

You cannot wait with olive oil.

Olive oil played a significant role in the tabernacle and the temple. It was

considered sacred and used as holy anointing oil to sanctify priests, the

tabernacle, and its holy furnishings.

Additionally, fresh olive oil was used for lighting lamps inside the temple,

symbolizing God's presence that would light up the world.

It only makes sense that this temple would indeed have an olive press.

Next to the olive press, Shukran discovered a storage room with many

jars.

This is a stowed jar room.

I found there a lot of jars broken on the floor.

And this room was covered with a plaster.

Let's go to the other plaster here.

Yeah. This is a plaster.

So we're talking about room, that we have a jar in that room, and for...

What purpose do we have that jar with olive oil?

Before you sacrifice the animal, you need to skin the animal.

How do you skin the animal?

By hanging the animal.

For hanging the animal, what we need to build?

Tripods. On that tripod, they hang the animal, skin the animal, prepare the

animal before they put them on the altar.

But this is the place where they hang the animal.

Here we can see a hole.

When they tie the baby goats, baby sheep, before they put them on the

and this is where they tie them, baby goats, baby sheep here, you'll see the

hole here in this corner.

And here we can see a place where you're collecting the blood.

And here we can see the cave that we already talked about.

The hole for the animal.

And then you can see some hole there, this is for the grain of the seed of the

wheat, to make a bread.

Bread is another essential requirement for the tabernacle and the temple.

It was to be present continually.

What we have in this room, we have a platform.

On that platform they build an altar made by stone and cut in stone.

And here we can see the channel. This channel collects all the blood that came

from the altar and then you collect it here.

Okay, by some bowl or something that you're collecting that kind of blood

came from the altar.

And it's fantastic.

You hang the animal, you skin the animal, you sacrifice the animal here,

collecting the blood here, where you are very close to the spring, to the water.

This is just fantastic. And where you are? In the city of David.

I don't think it's a coincidence that they found evidence of a temple and

they did sacrifices, sure enough, right here in the city of David.

And it's fantastic.

This fantastic finding, because it takes us to the beginning of worshiping God.

This is why Eli calls this Temple Zero.

Because the first temple that we know about is Solomon's temple.

The second temple we know about is really, well, Zerubbabel, but perfected

Herod. So maybe this was the temple before. In fact, where was

Solomon coronated king?

So Zadok the priest brought him to Gihon.

and took an horn of oil out of the tabernacle and anointed Solomon.

Is it possible that the temple that he discovered is where Solomon was

coronated? It's right there at Gion.

And they blew the trumpet, and all the people said, God save King Solomon.

Nearly a thousand years before Solomon was anointed king, in Genesis 14, there

is a passage that talks about a mysterious figure named Melchizedek.

According to the Bible, Melchizedek was the priest of the Most High God and the

King of Salem, which later became Jebus, and now known as Jerusalem.

And the king of Sodom went out to meet him after his return from the slaughter

of Keterlaomer, and the kings that were with him at the valley of Sheve, which

is the Kingsdale.

And Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine, and he was the

priest of the Most High God. And he blessed him and said, Blessed be Abram

the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth.

And blessed be the Most High God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy

hand. And he gave them tithes of all.

According to the Bible, Melchizedek blessed Abraham and God for the victory

Kedorlaomer. In return, Abraham gave him a tithe of all the spoils he had

received from the battle.

This event took place in the Valley of Sheveh.

which is also known as the Kingsdale or Kings Valley.

Scholars have suggested that this location is believed to be the Kidron

which runs adjacent to the mysterious Temple Zero.

The only other mention of the Kingsdale is in 2 Samuel 18, where Absalom erected

a pillar.

Absalom reared up for himself a pillar, which is in the Kingsdale.

and he called the pillar after his own name, Absalom's Place.

Today in the Kidron Valley, next to Temple Zero, stands a pillar known as

Absalom's Pillar.

According to Josephus, Benjamin of Tudela, and other historians, this

built as a monument to Absalom.

However, recent studies date the structure to the 1st century AD.

Regardless, this monument, is traditionally associated with Absalom,

location in the king's valley.

There is also a possibility that the present pillar is a reconstruction of a

previously damaged one.

Either way, the reference to Melchizedek's meeting Abraham in the

Genesis 14 raises the question of whether Temple Zero was the temple where

Melchizedek was the priest.

Melchizedek is undoubtedly one of the most enigmatic characters in Scripture.

Mentioned in only three books of the Bible, little is known about him, except

that he was a priest and king, a unique combination shared only by Jesus.

His name means King of Righteousness, and according to Hebrews 7 .3, he had no

parents or bloodline.

Without father, without mother, without descent.

having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like unto the Son of

God, abideth a priest continually.

From these passages, many propose that Melchizedek was a pre -incarnate

appearance of Jesus Christ.

Notice how in Genesis 14, we see Melchizedek offering Abraham bread and

after his victory, which is a perfect representation of communion.

The bread symbolizes the body of Christ, while the wine represents his blood.

Others argue that Melchizedek was a man, simply a type of Christ.

Regardless, this fascinating event between Melchizedek and Abraham took

Salem, in the Valley of Sheveh, feet away from a temple that was discovered

2010 by Eli Shukran.

In Salem also is his tabernacle.

and his dwelling place in Zion.

Water is the most essential part of any civilization.

People have to have water, so they'll build where the water is located.

And the only water in Jerusalem is in the city of David at the Gihon Spring.

And this is where Jerusalem began.

Jerusalem was born on that hill, was founded and later made

into the temple city and the capital of the house of David.

We are in the city of David. This is the beginning of Jerusalem, started here

where we are.

And we're talking about the beginning of Jerusalem by the finding here.

Everything started here around the Gihon Spring. The people came here because of

water. People came here because this place where we are standing now.

Were it not there, let's say, if that spring would have emanated in another

place in modern Jerusalem, I can imagine that the entire story would have

started there.

Water is...

And it dictates the place where people started their villages, which turned

later into cities, etc.

When attempting to determine the location of the tabernacle, the Gihon

plays an important role.

In 1 Kings 1, Solomon was brought to the Gihon Spring, to the very spot where

the priest entered the tabernacle.

It is also where the Ark of the Covenant was held.

So Zadok the priest went down and caused Solomon to ride upon King David's mule

and brought him to Gion.

And Zadok the priest took an horn of oil out of the tabernacle and anointed

Solomon. People read that. I go, did you hear what that just said? The

tabernacle is in the city of David. He took a horn of oil from the tabernacle

and anointed Solomon.

The only place that could be is in the city of David.

It's my conjecture.

And only my conjecture. But it makes, I think, logical sense that if David

brought the ark to the area of the Gion Springs, and he had the ark there and

the tabernacle there, that this is the holy precinct in which...

the future temples would be built, laminated on top of one another because

a holy place. It's a holy pin in the ground, the surveyor's pin in the ground

thing. This is the place where I want the temple. I wanted it when it was in a

tent with David. I want it when it comes to Solomon. I want it when it comes to

Zerubbabel. I want it when it comes to Herod.

It is generally accepted that all temples were constructed in the same

location as one another.

And it makes sense.

that they were built in the only spot where Jerusalem gets its water.

Jerusalem in ancient times got its water from two places. One was the Gihon

Springs.

The Gihon Spring is the Karstic Spring.

That means that it is not fed by a local water -saturated

stone layer.

but by the underground crevice of fracture which reaches its place from an

unknown direction, probably several kilometers north of the city.

The other place they got their water were two aqueducts were brought from

Bethlehem into these aqueducts, which fed the water to the Romans. The Romans

couldn't put so much as a tow into the Gion Springs, which is where, because it

was holy water.

So what'd they do? They brought in water from South Bethlehem. They piped it in

through, and you can still see these.

rotted out pipes where the water came and that fed the Romans. And so scholars

will say to me, Bob, there's 10 ,000, 20 ,000 acre cisterns underneath the

Temple Mount. They had plenty of water to wash themselves for the priestly

duties in the temple. No, you had to have running water. It could be stagnant

water with moths and bugs and debris in it and waste and whatnot. It had to have

been running water.

Running water is vital to understanding the true location of Solomon and Herod's

temple. The area near the Dome of the Rock has a concentration of 36 or 37

cisterns, but it has no running water.

It needed so many cisterns because it was a Roman fortress.

Having water is a basic necessity in a Roman fortress.

Every fortress needs and stores water for everyday use or in case of a siege.

Soldiers need water for many reasons, especially when occupying a territory.

So the Romans built an aqueduct from Bethlehem to the Temple Mount because

couldn't use the Temple's holy water, which was only 600 feet away in the

Spring. You had to build the Temple in a place where it received the fresh

water. The only place that could be is in the City of David over the Gihon

Spring.

In 2014, David Amet and Shimon Gibson published an article about ancient

aqueducts bringing water to Jerusalem.

They found no evidence of any aqueducts built between Bethlehem and Jerusalem

before 140 BC.

So, if there is no evidence of any aqueduct on the Temple Mount during the

Temple period, where did they get their water for Solomon's Temple?

For the priests to wash themselves before their priestly duties within the

temple, it had to have been living water, running water, spring water.

Thus, the Gion Springs would be considered to be holy water.

Before the priests would go into the temple, whether it be Solomon's temple

Herod's temple, they needed to be bathed in spring water. The only spring water

in all Jerusalem is right here in the Gion Springs.

There's absolutely no spring water on the Temple Mount. There's no way that

would have washed themselves in the Gion Springs and then walked a quarter of a

mile to a half of a mile to the Temple Mount before they were allowed to go

the temple precinct, considered to be purified.

Not only was water needed to wash the priests and their priestly duties, but

read in Scripture sometimes they have over 100 ,000 animals being killed at a

time.

We read in 1 Kings 8 that when Solomon dedicated the temple, he sacrificed 22

,000 cattle and 120 ,000 sheep.

And they get rid of the blood. You know, that amount of blood in there.

would putrefy and cause disease like we can't even imagine.

You needed a means of getting rid of the blood, and that would have been done by

the living water that we have in Hezekiah's tunnel today. The Gion

have washed that away. Up on the Temple Mount, slaughtering that amount of

animals, no way they could have washed away the blood.

That's the key.

That's the silver nail in all this, is that they needed to have running, living

water. And you don't have that on the Temple Mount, but you have that in the

city of David, which is a requirement for temple worship and for the priests

wash themselves.

If we go back to the time of David, we're talking 3 ,000 years ago, you need

have water for the place of the temple. The Bible talks about water.

at the temple it talks about it in hecateus talks about an ancient

tacitus the dead sea scrolls many sources talk about water coming up and

up from within the temple it is a unique type of spring under pressure an

analogy is that it is like old faithful at yellowstone park without the heat

it fills up then there's enough pressure to push the water up up to the top of

the temple, and I have ten historical non -biblical sources that say there was

flowing spring inside the temple.

When we look at the account of Aristeas, a Jew from Egypt who visited Jerusalem

about 50 years after Alexander the Great, he gave a detailed description of

temple, and we should be aware of what he stated as an observer.

There is an inexhaustible supply of water because an abundant natural spring

gushes up from within the temple.

A natural spring gushing up? You'll see that spring.

Let's go down and take the camera and we'll go down and see it. The water is

still running today.

The Roman historian Tacitus, roughly 400 years after Aristius, recorded that the

temple had a natural spring of water that welled from its interior.

It contained an inexhaustible spring.

Tacitus says there was water inside the temple in a fountain.

So all these things put together really help contribute to the location of the

temple. Jewish scholars have long believed in the existence of a fountain

the temple. The Jewish Encyclopedia acknowledges this by stating that

phenomenon was the water supply, a spring rising below the Holy of Holies.

It became an overflowing brook. The Babylonian Talmud, compiled around 300

from earlier accounts, describes water flowing from beneath the temple.

R. Phineas said,

The spring that issues from the Holy of Holies.

R. Eleazar B. Jacob said, Hence go forth the waters which will bubble forth

from under the threshold of the sanctuary.

A fascinating description of a natural spring situated within the temple was

found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in Qumran.

This text, called the Temple Scroll, offers valuable insights into the temple

and was written before its destruction in 70 AD.

The papyrus reads, You shall make a channel all around the laver within the

building. The channel runs from the building of the laver to a shaft, goes

and disappears in the middle of the earth, so that the water flows and runs

through it, and is lost in the middle of the earth, and no one should touch it,

because it is mixed with the blood of the Holocaust.

Zeb Vilney is a famous Israeli geographer, author, and lecturer, who

book Legends of Jerusalem.

In this book, He cited a story from Hebrew writings, saying, At that time a

great stream shall flow forth from the holy temple, and its name is Gihon.

Scripture makes numerous references that the temple in Jerusalem was a physical

representation on earth of God's official residence in heaven. We read in

Bible that God has spring waters in his heavenly residence.

For example, in Revelation we read,

And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, and he showed me a pure river

water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and

Lamb.

And let him that heareth say, Come.

And let him that is athirst, Come.

And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.

The symbolism on earth of the heavenly house of God.

would not be complete without spring waters being within the earthly temple.

The description of the river in God's house in heaven and the expectation that

similar water feature must exist in the earthly temple provides clear evidence

that God intended for the temple to be built with access to spring water.

Of the temple in Jerusalem, the psalmist states,

All my springs are in thee.

They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house, and thou shalt

make them drink of the river of thy pleasures, for with thee is the fountain

life. Even as far back as Moses and the time of the tabernacle in the

wilderness, spring water was essential in the purification ceremony for

Going as far back as Moses.

At Mount Sinai, when they had the Ark of the Covenant and the tabernacle there,

they needed water. What did they do? They didn't use any well water. They

running water from a rock. Moses struck the water and water gushed out.

Even we know of the water source traveling with them in the wilderness.

And so there's always been a requirement for them to have running water for them

to wash themselves for the priest.

It's got to be running water, and that's what you have in the Gilead Springs and

not on the Temple Mount.

Everywhere the tabernacle stopped, there was water.

The water was not only for the people to drink, but also for the purification of

the priests.

When we look at the future temple in Ezekiel 47, it talks about water coming

forth from the holy place and flowing out the right side of the altar.

and into the Dead Sea to make those waters clean and fresh.

Afterward he brought me again unto the door of the house, and behold, waters

issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward, and the waters came

down from under from the right side of the house, at the south side of the

altar. Then he said unto me, These waters issue out toward the east

go down into the desert, and go into the sea, which being brought forth into the

sea. The waters shall be healed.

A fountain shall come forth out of the house of the Lord.

In that day there shall be a fountain open to the house of David and to the

inhabitants of Jerusalem.

Living water shall go out from Jerusalem, half of them toward the

half of them toward the hinder sea.

These passages demonstrate for us how spring waters were connected to God's

dwelling places.

both the tabernacle and later the temples.

You have to have running water, and it has to come up within the temple. There

is no water up on the Temple Mount, the traditional Temple Mount.

It's dry, parched, piece of stone up there.

And if that's the case, why in the world are people looking up on the Temple

Mount for the place of the temple? You needed to have water. That's imperative.

It's compulsory that we have water in the temple, and there is no water up on

the Temple Mount.

None.

Well, when Paul was speaking to the Bereans, he called them noble.

And he said, hey, don't believe what I say. I'm asking you as the audience

today, don't believe anything I say, but check it against Scripture.

Then believe what I say.

Scripture will tell you if what I'm saying is right or it's wrong. In Isaiah

.20, it says people will see what right is wrong and wrong is right, that light

is dark and dark is light. They'll see that sweet is sour and sour is sweet.

They won't see the truth.

We should be like the Bereans, noble in our pursuit of truth. And the only way

to find out what truth is, is use the final mediator in all this, which is the

Word of God.

Walk about Zion, and go round about her.

Tell the towers thereof.

Mark ye well her bulwarks.

Consider her palaces, that ye may tell it to the generation following.

Psalm 48 gives us a really strong pronouncement by God, and it's a really

admonition. We should teach following generations.

where the temple was, where Zion was, where the bulwarks are, where the

are, where the boundaries are. The Bible is very, very strong about telling, and

people haven't done that.

They haven't studied where these things were. When I read this verse, it really

propelled me on this search to try and find the true location of the temple, to

find the boundary markers.

But a lot of people are going to have a hard time accepting it because tradition

is like cement being poured over them. And in time, it's just calcified and

hardened. And nothing will crack that. Even the word of God won't even crack it

for them.

Even all this evidence won't crack it for them.

But I believe we need to follow where the Bible says because the Bible is

prophetically, contextually, and historically accurate.

The Bible is God's revelation of himself to man.

The Bible is the supreme standard by which we should live, and the supreme

standard, if you want to use it, to find things lost in Bible history.

And that's what I do. I use the Bible for the supreme standard in my life and

my research for lost locations.

While the thought of rebuilding a temple is exciting for a lot of people, in

reality, it's something that we as Christians should be against.

We know from the Bible that when Jesus died on the cross and he said, It is

finished, the veil of the temple...

was rent and twain.

Jesus was done with the things of the temple. They are no longer needed. They

were never able to cleanse sins with the sacrifice of animals, according to the

book of Hebrews.

And Jesus Christ came and replaced all those things when he died on the cross.

And so the truth is, in the book of Acts, what we see...

Are the Jews rejecting Jesus Christ? They're rebelling against the law of

based on the preaching we see of Paul and of Stephen and of Peter. They were

calling on the Jews to accept Jesus Christ and follow that prophet that the

said he would raise up like unto Moses.

And when they rejected Jesus Christ and remained...

attached to the temple.

That was rebellion against God. And they were warned about these things in the

book of Hebrews and in the preaching that we see in the book of Acts. And as

result of their rebellion, eventually God gave them 40 years, but eventually

brought judgment on Jerusalem and he had the temple destroyed because he didn't

want them going back to those things. He wanted them coming to Jesus Christ.

But Christ being come and high priest of good things to come.

by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is

not of this building, neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his

blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal

for us.

For if the blood of bulls and of goats and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling

unclean sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood

of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to

purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

Animal sacrifices were once deemed necessary until the perfect and final

sacrifice was made.

This sacrifice was made by Jesus Christ, who offered himself a ransom for all.

He was the ultimate sacrifice.

He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The

chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed.

When Jesus died in our place, he bare our sins in his own body on the tree.

His blood purifies and cleanses us from all of our sins.

We are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for

The things of the temple were meant to be temporary. They were intended to

remind Israel of their sinful condition and their need for a cleansing Savior.

These practices were designed to lead them towards Jesus Christ and help them

recognize him as the Messiah, who would be the final sacrifice for their sins.

For the law, having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image

the things, can never with those sacrifices, which they offered year by

continually, make the comers thereunto perfect.

For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away

sins.

This is the essence of the entire new covenant, as the law could never save us

on its own.

The sacrifice of Jesus Christ marked the end of all sacrifices.

Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God. His sacrifice on the cross was the final and

perfect sacrifice that all sacrifices of the Bible pointed to and represented.

It is through his death, burial, and resurrection that we can have eternal

if we believe in him.

This is why the temple was completely destroyed in 70 AD.

There is no more need for the sacrificial system or the temple.

We, as believers, are now considered the temple of God.

The subject of the temple location is something that's a fascinating subject

many reasons, but I think one of the reasons Christians are interested in

is because we believe, according to Bible prophecy, that another temple is

to be built someday.

Let no man deceive you by any means, for that day shall not come, except there

come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of

perdition.

And while a lot of people get excited about the thought of the rebuilding of a

temple, the truth is, it's actually a bad thing, because according to Bible

prophecy, it's going to be the Antichrist, or the beast.

That causes the temple to be rebuilt. And I believe when he does this, this

be a rebellion against God. God took those things away. And for 2000 years in

rebellion, they've been trying to bring them back. And God doesn't want them

brought back. But we believe one day the world will unite in their rebellion

with the Jews against Jesus Christ.

And we'll rebuild a temple that will not be a holy temple. It will not be.

The temple of God, it will be the temple of the beast.

And when that happens, we believe it's during that time of great tribulation

that God is going to pour his wrath out on this earth. It will be a united

rejection and rebellion against Jesus Christ.

Will people ever accept the fact that the city of David is the place of the

temple? A lot of people won't, no matter what you say.

But a lot of the young people I'm talking to in Jerusalem are saying,

cool. I show them the evidence. They go, yes. A lot of tour guides come up to me

and say, I can't say this to my groups. But you're right. The temple has to be

in the city of David.

I have scholars from universities coming up to me and saying, and I'm having

even contrarians come up to me and say, well, you make a good case there. You

have to have running water.

So what's going to happen in the future is going to be very exciting because

once the Jews figure out.

the correct location of the temple is in the city of David, and they own that

land, they could build a temple.

The future holds the mystery of where the third temple will be built, whether

will be on its traditional site or in the city of David.

But with the passage of time, the answer will surely be unveiled as the end of

the world draws nearer.

If we're correct on this, it has huge implications prophetically.

to when the Antichrist is going to return, when the temple is going to be

rebuilt. To me, it's fascinating.

To me, I'm seeing the Bible come to life in ways I've never dreamt possible.

And when I have done research on where the temple is located in every page I've

turned, it points like a flaming arrow to the city of David.

It gets me pretty excited. Why is God allowing this to come to the forefront

now? Why didn't it become real popular 100 years ago? Because the evidence has

been there.

I can only conject that right now we are in very interesting times and that the

Bible is literally coming to life right before our eyes.

Hi, I'm Pastor Tommy McMurtry from Liberty Baptist Church in Rock Falls,

Illinois, and I'm privileged to be standing here today on the Mount of

the city of Jerusalem.

This is an amazing city with a lot of great history, but the most important

event in all of history that I want to talk about happened here 2 ,000 years

where Jesus Christ came and he made a way to heaven for fallen man.

And I want to tell you right now how you can know 100 % for sure that you're on

your way to heaven when you die.

Now, the Bible does tell us that some bad news, and that is in Romans 3, 23,

all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. It also says in Romans

chapter 3, as it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one.

holy law and God being the holy God that he is, he demands payment for sin. And

there is a penalty for sin. The Bible tells us in Romans 6, 23, it says for

wages of sin is death.

That is a just payment.

And that is what we owe. And when the Bible talks about death, it's not just

talking about a physical death. It's talking about a spiritual death. The

says in Revelation and death and hell.

were cast into the lake of fire, which is the second death.

And you and I, we deserve to die and go to hell because of our sins.

But thankfully, the Bible also tells us in John 3 .16, it says, For God so loved

the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him

should not perish, but have everlasting life.

God sent his perfect righteous son, Jesus, who lived a completely sinless

because he was born of a virgin. He was the son of God.

And Jesus Christ died on the cross. Now, why did he die on the cross? Because

the wages of sin is death. And that payment had to be made by a righteous

It couldn't be made by us. And if we die, we'd stay dead for all eternity.

the Bible tells us that three days later, Jesus.

rose again from the dead.

Now, while he came and he paid that great price, what does he ask of us?

Well, as I said in Romans 6 .23, it says, For the wages of sin is death, but

gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

God sent Jesus as a gift to mankind.

And salvation, it's not something that we can earn through any good works. It's

not something we can earn through any religious rituals.

The Bible teaches that the way to salvation is through faith.

The Bible says without faith, it's impossible to please Him. We can't

with our works, but we can please Him with our faith.

And the Word of God tells us that God sent Jesus to pay for the sins of

And He did it. And He died, He was buried, He rose again. And the Bible

that if we will believe on Him, He will give us salvation.

We will be imputed.

the righteousness of Christ or credited with Christ's righteousness instead of

our own.

That's good news, ladies and gentlemen. In fact, that's our only hope if

salvation is free. We can't earn it. And our only hope is if salvation is

eternal. And the Bible teaches us that salvation is eternal.

The area behind me, it's known as the Temple Mount area. And somewhere in this

area, there used to be a temple where they offered sacrifices for sins. But

Bible teaches that the blood of bulls and goats couldn't take away sins. But

Jesus Christ, being a better high priest and a better sacrifice, he came and he

made a one -time payment for sins. And the Bible tells us in the book of

that he is able to save them to the uttermost that come to him. He saves us

he saves us.

forever. Once you're saved, you can never lose your salvation because our

salvation, it's not about what we do. It's about what Jesus Christ already

And so in order to receive it, all you must do is believe and then you can call

on him and ask him for that free gift of salvation.

The Bible tells us in Romans 10, 13, for whosoever shall call upon the name of

the Lord shall be saved.

It's that simple.

Now the question is, do you believe it or do you not believe it? And if you do

believe it, just in the best way you know how, just acknowledge that you're a

sinful person to God.

Ask him to forgive you and give you salvation.

And I promise you he'll do that.

Romans 10, 9 says that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus

shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou

be saved.

For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth

confession is made known unto salvation.

So I hope you'll do that right now. I hope you'll put your faith and trust

completely in him. Don't trust in your works.

Don't trust in anything you do. Trust in what Jesus Christ did for you here 2

,000 years ago. He died on the cross and paid for your sins. He loves you and he

wants to give you eternal life completely free and he'll never take it

Thank God for that precious gift. And thank you so much for watching. I hope

this was a help to you.

If you believe that message you just heard, you can call on the Lord right

to receive the gift of eternal life.

Right now, if you'll pray, believing in your heart, you will be saved.

Just pray, Dear Lord Jesus, I know I am a sinner and I deserve to pay the

penalty for my own sins, but I don't want to go to hell when I die.

I want to be with you in heaven.

I believe you died on the cross and rose again for me.

Please forgive my sins and come into my heart. I accept your gift of salvation.

I believe in you and trust in you alone as my Savior to take me to heaven when I

die. Thank you, God, for your love.

Amen.