Covenant Relationships & the Bible as Literature

[veteran]

It was the temple and its buildings that Jesus said not one stone would be left standing upon another that would not be thrown down. The stones you refer to that form the western wailing wall were not part of the temple or its buildings, those stones formed the retaining wall that shored up and supported the mount. The temple and its buildings and courts and gates were all built on top of the mount. Here’s a photo of the western wall as it is today. The lower 5 courses of stonework are what remains of the Herodian ashlars that formed the retaining or support wall for the mount. The next 4 courses date to the later Roman/Byzantine period and the upper rows of smaller stones were added during the Moslem conquest. The ground level on top of the mount on which the temple had been built and where the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque stand today is on the level where the Moslem era stonework begins.

My Lord Jesus didn't shore up anything when He told His disciples not one stone would be standing there in that area at His second coming. The fact that the city was destroyed by the Romans too, while those stones were missed, is yet another very strong clue that He was NOT speaking of 70 A.D. Moreover, one cannot just omit... all the other information Jesus gave about the very end of this world that MUST go with those Matthew 24 chapter events. Otherwise, it is to take those things out of their context within that chapter too, and we know that doesn't work.

A closer study in the OT prophets supports this also that literally... not even ONE stone will be standing on top of another in that area when Christ returns to this earth. It's the same idea of the elements being burned up by God's consuming fire that Apostle Peter mentioned in 2 Pet.3:10.