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Now imagine yourself coming back again. Just hold your arms close to your body and fall. When you feel close enough, spread your arms to slow your descent. As you get closer you can see that Mt. Moriah is much different than it was during Abraham's time. It is now A.D. 638. The whole Temple site is ruined. The platform marking the outer courts that King Herod improved is still intact, but not one building is standing.
As you draw closer you can see, and smell, that the platform is being used as a refuse dump. Where the Temple once stood now stands a deep layer of human excrement. It was piled there by the Byzantine Christians in a misguided attempt to humiliate the Jews. Just outside the city, you can see a caravan approaching. When it gets close, two men with one camel break off and approach the wall. One man is Omar, Caliph and successor to Mohammed. Only twenty-eight years before this occasion, Mohammed led the Arabs from paganism into faith in the Most High God, the God who spoke directly to their common father Abraham. Mohammed told his followers to accept circumcision, marking themselves as descendants of Abraham and, like Abraham, to be submissive to God's will.
Thus far, most Arabs had embraced pagan religions even though they were Abraham's descendants. Their neighbors to the east, the Persians, also worshiped pagan gods. The Persians had fought often with the Byzantines. Their success pushed Christian influence away from the Arabs, thus abandoning the Arabs to paganism. In A.D. 533, after many fruitless wars, proving that both empires were too strong to defeat the other, they signed an "Eternal Peace Treaty" (Cooke, p. 51). The two empires agreed to accept the status quo. This gave Persia a free hand to dominate all Arabs.
Thirty-seven years later Mohammed was born. Forty years later, in 610, Mohammed called the Arabs out of paganism. Thirty-four years after that, only about one hundred years since the eternal peace had been signed, Mohammed's followers launched a holy war against the Persian empire and conquered it. A few years later, the Moslems attacked the Byzantines and forced the surrender of Jerusalem. This day, the day we are looking down on Jerusalem, is 105 years after the eternal peace was signed. Omar ibn-Khattab, Caliph of all Islam, is approaching Jerusalem to accept the city's surrender from the Christian Bishop Sophronius. He is walking. The other man, a man who is subordinate to him, is riding the camel. Omar is doing this humble act in accord with Mohammed's teaching. He also wants to show his profound respect for the city where the Most High God spoke to Abraham. He wants to emulate the ancient prophets and patriarchs who were submissive to God's will.
When Omar reaches the bishop, he will accept the surrender. He will pledge not to mistreat the inhabitants. He will then ask to see the holy shrines made sacred by the God of Abraham. He especially wants to see the rock where Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac. In your imagination, watch the bishop's face as he realizes the rock his conqueror reveres so much lies buried under tons of human excrement. Imagine also Omar's shock and disbelief when he realizes what the Byzantines have been doing. He immediately gets on his knees. With his own hands, using his own cloak, he begins cleaning this holy place where Abraham expressed faith and where David and Solomon built the Temple (Klein, Temple Beyond Time, p. 135).
How inscrutable is God's Providence. How quickly and inexplicably prophecies come true. And how difficult it is for us to understand why God lets history unfold the way it does. And yet most of us, like the Byzantines of that age, so disgrace what God has already done that we are not entitled to understand why and how God brings prophecies to fruition. This day, the day we are watching, and every day afterward, all the tribes descendant from Abraham, be they Jew, Christian, or Moslem, will at least recognize the God Abraham worshiped.
Now back away. As you back away, catch a glimpse of the Moslems down through the succeeding years revering the rock upon which stood the altar: clearing it, washing it, anointing it every day with perfume. They will build a beautiful dome over it. They will care for it until such a time as the Most High in an unfathomable way shall decree what will happen next.
In the early days of Islam, the Moslems would lie prostrate facing Mt. Moriah during their prayers. Later, Mohammed had them face the Kaaba in Mecca instead. As you get farther and farther away try to imagine those first Moslems prostrate, all their heads pointed toward Mt. Moriah. Try to imagine what Abraham must think, if God will allow him to look, to see hundreds of millions of Moslems all over the world today prostrate in prayer. In addition, Abraham would see hundreds of millions of Christians, also claiming descent from him and following the teachings of Jesus. And he would see millions of Jews, who pray facing Mt. Moriah. All these people are his seed. They all worship the God he worshiped.
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