Description
THIS IS A DIGITAL (PDF) FILE – paperback edition available here
Contents
Introduction: When Hope Becomes Reality … page 1
Copy of Chapter One from the book Daniel Unsealed … page 3
Liberation of the Temple Mount and Western Wall … page 19
Excerpt – Introduction: When Hope Become Reality
For two-thousand years, from the time that the Romans expelled the Jewish people from their homeland in the Land of Israel, Jews around the world have been closing their annual Passover observance by shouting “Next year in Jerusalem!” In that phrase, the yearning of the Jewish people for return to the land of their forefathers, and for the advent of the age of the Messiah, is expressed around Seder tables year after year.
The first part of that hope was realized with the partition of Palestine by the United Nations in 1947, followed by the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. Then, on June 7, 1967, the third day of the Six-Day War, Israeli troops liberated Old City Jerusalem and its sacred Temple Mount from foreign control, an event that brought the longed for Jewish holy sites under sovereign control of an independent Jewish people living in Eretz Israel. The dawning of the age of Messiah suddenly started to seem like an imminent possibility.
The capture of Jerusalem by Israel was considered a “miracle” by both Jews and non-Jews back in 1967. The tiny nation of Israel had overcome impossible odds to defeat the armies of five large Arab nations arrayed against it, nations whose Islamic leaders had sworn to push the Jewish people into the sea. With the suddenness of the liberation event and by the scope of the overwhelming victory by Israel over its enemies, many people were convinced that the coming of the age of the Messiah was truly at hand.
Israel celebrated its victory with singing and dancing, and much of the world rejoiced with them for a season. Since that day fifty-plus years ago, however, the world, including much of world Jewry, has forgotten the euphoria and sense of optimism that surrounded the liberation of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, and, for many Israelis, Messianic hopes have been dimmed by the reality of coping with daily life in a troubled Middle East.
Even more disheartening is the lack of understanding among both Jews and non-Jews about the transcendent importance of what happened in 1967. The liberation of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount was the fulfillment of an ancient biblical prophecy recorded more than 2,500 years ago in the Book of Daniel 8:13-14. The prophecy clearly predicted both the liberation event and the time that the liberation event would take place. The interpretation of that amazing Hebrew prophecy is explained in detail in the Chapter One excerpt reprinted from Daniel Unsealed that follows.
—Dan Bruce, Author
