Pat Robertson fails to warn Christian pilgrims not to pray where Jesus prayed - upon the Temple Mount

“Walk where Jesus walked, pray where Jesus prayed, stand where He stood. There is no other place like it on earth,” said Pat Robertson, American televangelist and former presidential candidate as part of a new advertising campaign paid for by Israel to promote tourism in the country.” (The Jerusalem Post, 9/28/06)

I encourage every Christian to visit the Holy Land of Israel and urge every Jew to follow Judaism to the Jewish homeland. After all, the Prophets announce Jerusalem is destined to host the long-awaited "House of Prayer for all peoples." Bible believers trust the Third Temple is coming soon!

I encourage Israel to live up to the 1967 Law for the Protection of the Holy Places that guarantees FREEDOM OF ACCESS to religious sites for pilgrims - an access denied Christians and faithful Jews today! How can Christians pray where Jesus and his disciples, later apostles, both taught and prayed when the Israeli authorities aid and abet a Nazi-Muslim occupation of the Temple Mount that illegally forbids it? And why accuse those of us who highlight the plight of the Temple Mount, exposing this hypocrisy, of harboring dangerous ideas?

Jerusalem's abomination of desolation - a Temple Mount without a temple - and its deplorable status quo of religious discrimination by Muslim guards against Christians and Jews, against both the laws of God and men, must end! Israel must stop rewarding terrorism, shamefully cowering before Muslim threats of violence and REMOVE THE THREAT. It's past time the Israeli authorities practice what they preach: "freedom of access."

David Ben-Ariel is a Christian-Zionist writer and author of Beyond Babylon: Europe's Rise and Fall. With a focus on the Middle East and Jerusalem, his analytical articles help others improve their understanding of that troubled region. Check out the Beyond Babylon blog.