Throughout the Old City police had set up roadblocks and checkpoints barring all private vehicles from entering the area, while a strict security cordon of hundreds of police officers lined the Western Wall Plaza.

In defiance of police, hundreds of Palestinian youths, together with West Bank Hamas leader, Sheikh Hassan Youssef, managed to enter the Temple Mount compound.

In a live broadcast from the Temple Mount on the Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera, Youssef called on Palestinians and Muslims from all over the world to come and 'save Al-Aqsa and Jerusalem from the Jews'.

Palestinians officials had denounced the rally as a 'provocation', and had warned that such a visit could lead to a renewal of violence nationwide.

The three major Palestinian terror organizations, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, announced separately that they would resume terror attacks if the event goes ahead as planned.

In addition, one of the Sunni Muslim world's most respected clerics predicted on Saturday that the Middle East would explode if Jews visit the al-Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem, Israel Radio reported.

The Palestinians claim that Israel has no historical claim to what they call the "noble sanctuary" where Islamic tradition (and NOT the Koran) says Mohammed rode a winged steed into heaven in an Islamic version of the Ascension.

It is a measure of the power of propaganda that the Muslim claim to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount is repeated 'round the world, despite the indisputable evidence of prior Jewish claim set forth by Scripture.

It is an affront to history to deny Jerusalem's foundation by King David, or the prior existence of both a First and Second Temple.

The Arab propagandists spin their web of lies within the shadow of the 'Wailing Wall' -- a three thousand year old section of the retaining wall built around the Temple by David's son, Solomon. They just pretend it isn't there, and the world pretends with them.

Israel was reborn the year the United Nations issued its Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since that time, more than 400 UN Resolutions have been passed by the UN General Assembly condemning Israel over its claim to either Jerusalem or portions of Holy Land.

During the same period, the UN not only has failed to pass a single resolution condemning Arab terrorism, it still hasn't come up with a definition of what 'terrorism' is.

There is no way to apply logic or conventional wisdom in such a way as to make any of it fit -- yet that is Israel's situation report five years into the 21st century. Israel is a tiny democratic country surrounded by a sea of repressive Arab dictatorships.

Yet to the democratic West -- together with the allegedly democratic United Nations -- it is Israel that is the problem. A recent poll taken across Europe found the United States and Israeli in a virtual tie for which nation presents the greatest threat to world peace.

(It is worth noting that there has never been a case in world history in which two democratic nations ever went to war with one another -- democracies are notoriously peace-loving until their freedom is threatened).

The Arab claim to Jerusalem is arguably the greatest -- and most easily proved -- fraud in history. The Koran, not compiled until almost six hundred years after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, does not make a single reference to Jerusalem throughout its entire text .

Twelve hundred years before Mohammed dictated the first words of the Koran, the Psalmist, under the inspiration of God, wrote from captivity in Babylon;

"If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her skill! If I do not remember you, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth - if I do not exalt Jerusalem above my chief joy." (Psalms 137:1-6)

Since Israel recaptured the Temple Mount from Jordan in the 1967 War, religious Jews have dreamed of rebuilding the Third Temple on the spot now occupied by the al-Aqsa Mosque. On June 7, 1967, Israeli Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren declared,

"We have taken the city of God. We are entering the Messianic era for the Jewish people, and I promise to the Christian world that what we are responsible for we will take care of."

Despite the claims and counter-claims -- and in the face of global opposition -- Israel is already preparing for the day that the Temple will be rebuilt and Temple worship restored.

A rabbinical school (or yeshiva) for the training of the priests for this temple is presently in existence in the Old City. To ensure ritual purity, its students live on elevated platforms and are not permitted to touch Israeli soil until the Temple area can be ritually cleansed.

Sacred vessels and priestly garments have been prepared. Cedar from Lebanon captured in the north during the war there in 1982 has been placed in storage for the next temple, and so on.

Thus there has been considerable preparation for the Third Temple by the religious Jews of modern Jerusalem. Both the Ashkenazi and Sephardic Chief Rabbis of Jerusalem agree that such a temple will be built as soon as circumstances permit.

But the worship and sacrifice MUST be performed on a ritually cleansed Temple Mount. According to the Temple Mount Institute's website, they know where to locate the Ark of the Covenant, in a secret chamber buried deep inside the Temple Mount.

The Prophet Daniel said that halfway through the seven year Tribulation, the antichrist will break his covenant with Israel and will 'cause the sacrifice and oblation' to cease, indicating a restoration of Temple worship, including ritual animal sacrifice.

To be legitimate under Jewish Law, animal sacrifice can only be performed by ritually pure members of the cohanin and only on the site of a ritually pure Holy of Holies.

In his 2nd letter to the Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul linked the existence of a restored Temple and the recovery of the Ark of the Covenant to the antichrist and the Tribulation. Paul gives the Third Temple the seal of authenticity.

"Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God." (2nd Thessalonians 2:4)

Note that Paul doesn't call it the 'Temple of Antichrist' -- Paul says it is the temple "of God". This is further proof that the Church Age has concluded and that God's attention is turned to the national redemption of Israel.

No Jewish Temple could be legitimately termed a 'Temple of God' during the Age of Grace.

Note also that it would not be necessary for the entire Temple to be rebuilt before the restoration of the Jewish system of Temple worship and animal sacrifice. (David's first temple was a tent to house the Ark of the Covenant).

Today the fragile peace that prevails on the Temple Mount grows more and more tenuous to this hour. Certain groups are clearly preparing to build a Third Temple. The Government of Israel is determined to keep things as they are.

The prophet Zechariah wrote that in the last days, God will "make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem."

"And in that day, will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it." (Zechariah 12:2-3)

The eyes of the world are upon Jerusalem, City of Peace, today as never before. This is a city that has been besieged about forty different times and destroyed (at least partially) on thirty-two different occasions.

The rulership of Jerusalem has changed hands some twenty-six times. Since 1948 Jerusalem has experienced four wars.

By all historical standards, the city of Jerusalem should have ceased to exist centuries ago. It has no natural wealth, no oil reserves and no particular strategic military value.

The ancient trade route known as the 'Kings Highway' ran north and south along the plateau of Jordan -- bypassing Jerusalem.

During its centuries of Muslim rule, Jerusalem was a dusty backwater so unimportant that it never even achieved the status of a regional or provincial capital, let alone being the capital city of a mythical 'Palestinian' people.

Despite 2000 years of mediocrity, Jerusalem is today is the focal point of never-ending debate among the great superpowers.

In this generation, for the first time in two thousand years, the implements of Temple worship have been reconstructed.

A pure red heifer, whose ashes are needed to purify the Temple site before worship can be restored, has been ritually certified by Israeli rabbis as the first acceptable red heifer 'without spot or blemish' in two millennia.

A ritually-undefiled Jewish priesthood is already in existence. Israel's greatest rabbinical sages are convinced that the Jewish messiah will make his appearance in this generation.

"For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only He who now letteth will let, until He be taken out of the way."

"And THEN shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the Spirit of His Mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming." (2nd Thessalonians 2:6-7)

And before THAT takes place, the Apostle Paul reveals;

"For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:"

"Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord."

"Wherefore comfort one another with these words." (1 Thessalonians 4:15-18)