{"id":23932,"date":"2014-05-17T07:00:28","date_gmt":"2014-05-17T14:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=23932"},"modified":"2023-11-02T11:56:00","modified_gmt":"2023-11-02T16:56:00","slug":"the-wailing-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2014\/05\/17\/the-wailing-wall\/","title":{"rendered":"Does the wailing wall prove Jesus wrong?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I’d like to address an objection to Christianity which you hear every now and again:<\/p>\n

“Jesus\u00a0prophesied\u00a0that the Jerusalem Temple would be completely destroyed. However, the “Wailing Wall” is still standing, proving him\u00a0wrong. Jesus\u00a0is therefore a failed prophet and therefore can’t be God”<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Wailing

Jews praying in front of The Wailing Wall, Jerusalem<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Background<\/h2>\n

This objection is based upon an\u00a0episode in\u00a0Matthew’s Gospel. \u00a0Jesus and His disciples had been visiting Jerusalem and the\u00a0disciples were\u00a0marveling at the beautiful\u00a0Temple found there. In response to this, Jesus predicts the\u00a0destruction of the Temple, saying\u00a0that “One stone shall not remain upon another”<\/span><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Later on the Mount of Olives, the Lord gives more detail concerning this prophecy, saying that the destruction\u00a0will take place\u00a0“within this generation”<\/em><\/span>, Biblical code meaning within\u00a0forty years. Jesus said these words in around AD 33 and, about forty years later the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed. His prophecy came true – a rather impressive feat!<\/p>\n

The Problem & Answer<\/h2>\n

So, what’s the problem? Well, someone might point to “The Wailing Wall”<\/em> in Jerusalem as evidence that one stone does, in fact,\u00a0upon another<\/strong>. It is therefore argued that Jesus’ prophecy was wrong, thus discrediting not only His claim to divinity, but also His prophethood.<\/p>\n

In answer to this, we must first point out that Jesus predicted the Temple’s destruction and He was spot on. To complain about the presence of the Wailing Wall is to demand a rather pedantic, literalistic fulfillment of that prophesy. That’s seems rather unreasonable to me.<\/p>\n

However, we must also ask: what actually is the Wailing Wall<\/em>?\u00a0What is it? They’re not stones from the actual Temple itself. The Wailing Wall is the retaining wall which was built by King Herod the Great. I’ve been told that if you visit Jerusalem this is obvious, since the Dome of the Rock<\/a> is found far above the wailing wall. Therefore, even if we were to demand an absolute, to the letter, literalistic fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy, we should still be satisfied. After all, if I were to predict that my house would be destroyed, not one stone left upon another, and you found the foundation remained, would you really call me a false prophet?<\/p>\n

On a related note, did you know that there were later attempts to rebuild the Temple by Julian the Apostate? Find out what happened by clicking here<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I’d like to address an objection to Christianity which you hear every now and again: “Jesus\u00a0prophesied\u00a0that the Jerusalem Temple would be completely destroyed. However, the “Wailing Wall” is still standing, proving him\u00a0wrong. Jesus\u00a0is therefore a failed prophet and therefore can’t be God”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,17],"tags":[2969,728,904,2596],"class_list":["post-23932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologetics","category-faith","tag-featured","tag-jerusalem","tag-temple","tag-wailing-wall"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23932"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87569,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23932\/revisions\/87569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}