The Dome of the Rock, located on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, was constructed on the site of the Second Jewish Temple.
Sometime prior to 1994 (when the ANC government came into power in South Africa) I telephoned the bomb squad in Durban to find out how to write the chapter in Opus Dei in which the Dome of the Rock is destroyed.
“Ma’am, you’d better come down to the station!” was the reply.
I went with some trepidation and a young officer sat me down and began the interview by showing me lurid photographs of bomb blast victims. I assured him I was simply writing a book. He declined to give me details of the process needed to destroy the building in question, but provided me with enough information to write the chapter. I have never checked to see whether the method of razing the building might have changed over the past sixteen years or so, but the methodology hardly matters.
The police officer gave me this parting shot: “Ma’am, if that building ever goes down, we’ll be calling you in!”
I am writing this post in the belief that the razing of the Dome of the Rock must shortly take place. One does not have to be a prophet to foresee the inevitable. Jerusalem’s Temple will be rebuilt, and the Dome of the Rock occupies the Temple Mount. War is on the cards, but before sufficient anger can be generated to justify an attack, there has to be motivation. Destruction of an internationally esteemed building, perhaps among the most widely-recognised in the world, and most importantly, an Islamic shrine of prime significance, would form a trigger point second-to-none for war. It is guaranteed to arouse fury in the breasts of every Muslim.
A quote from Chapter 38 of Opus Dei:
“The order Israel had been waiting for was received from the United States on the eve of Purim. The night conditions were perfect as a host of bombers took to the skies like bats in the darkness. Surgical strikes, timed to the second, were made against Iran’s enrichment plants at Arak, Natanz, Bushier, Isfahan and other locations across Iran. The operation was a massive gamble. If they missed one plant; if their intelligence had misled them and the potential for one bomb remained, it was all over for Israel.
In the early hours of the following morning, a group of right-wing Israelis under the leadership of a man named Chaim Bar-Shemer prepared themselves for the final assault on the Dome of the Rock. Beneath the mosque, within the Temple Mount, there existed a honeycomb of cisterns and wells, Jerusalem’s ancient water system, which was linked to a cave known by Muslims as the Abyss of Chaos. The Bir el Arwah, or Well of Souls, separated the Dome of the Rock from the Abyss of Chaos to prevent the faithful, it was said, from setting their mouths to the cracks in the floor and chatting to the dead. Now an entrance was being created through this partition, large enough to allow the passage of the men and their equipment.
Only Chaim Bar-Shemer and one other entered the shrine itself, both men explosives experts and highly skilled in their field. They had calculated beforehand how many charges of plastique would be needed to raze the building completely. The PE4 was attached to timers; detonators had been wired in and checked. Working swiftly now, they taped the explosive to the load-bearing columns, using only limited light so as not to attract the guards outside. When the job was completed, just over forty-five minutes later, they returned quietly down the steps of the Well of Souls and slipped back through the opening in the floor. As they rejoined the three men in the Abyss of Chaos, Bar-Shemer remarked jokingly that it would soon be just that.
They made their way back through the tortuous underground route by flashlight, and in the mouth of the tunnel’s south entrance, still enshrouded in pre-dawn silence, Bar-Shemer checked his watch and nodded. Although they were well away from the Dome of the Rock when it imploded, they were shaken by the earth’s tremor through the walls of the tunnel. They stepped over the bodies of the two guards, which lay where they had been dragged back in the shadows earlier, and faded away into the darkness.
Does Opus Dei predict the events that follow?
Read OPUS DEI and find out for yourself.
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