Many, many moons ago, God spoke to Abraham; told him to leave the land of his birth and move to another place. By and by, the Lord directed Abraham to that special place.
After that, a lot happened. We’ve learned a lot about it from our ancient books, most notably the Genesis, which Moses wrote many years later.
Moses wrote for prosperity an account of how Abraham’s descendants, generally known as Jews, followed Abraham’s great grandson Abraham to Egypt, where the Jewish people became enslaved and labored for about 400 years.
God raised up Moses to lead the Jews out of Egypt, and ultimately into a land of their own, a land generally known now as Israel.
Before they were able to get established in that Promised Land, they wandered in the desert for forty years.
While there, put together a tabernacle, wherein they would worship God, known to them as YWHW (pardon my English)
The tabernacle looked something like this:
They later built a temple, but invaders from the east tore it down.
After many years, Nehemiah, Ezra, et al were able to get back to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple.
Many years later, a Jewish Roman governor, Herod, saw to it that another Temple was built.
Years later, the Romans destroyed that temple after a Jewish rebellion. Jesus had warned the people that something like that would happen.
After a few more centuries had passed, Mohammed established the Islamic faith as a way for Moslems to pray to Allah.
For what it’s worth, I’ve always thought that “Allah” sounds mysteriously like “Elohim,” but that’s neither here nor there.
It seems to me they are praying to the same Deity, but only God knows what’s really going on behind all of that human religion.
Many years after that, a Moslem conqueror supervised the erection of the shrine, now known as the Dome of the Rock.
Tradition has it that the Dome signifies the spot where Abraham had almost sacrificed Isaac. But God sent an animal to be sacrificed instead of Isaac.
Islamic tradition holds that Mohammed was taken on a night journey to that sacred spot, where he was enabled to climb a rope or a ladder or something like that, up to the heavenly realm, to receive revelation. On his way back down, Mohammed met Moses, as the Muslims believe. I suppose we'll get more info about all that when we get to heaven.
Nowadays, you can visit the site:
In this picture I took, an edge of the Dome can be seen. To the right we see a large open area that would probably be of sufficient size for the Jews to build a new temple. And they all lived happily ever after. haha. Just sayin’.
Anyway, I wrote a song about it all. In 1980, I was able, with a little help from me friends, to record the song. If you care to, listen to it here:
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