Dennis, you can tell by my logo that I am not allowed to comment here on matters of theology. John 4:22, which I thoroughly believe, would be considered as heresy if anyone here said it without the scriptural reference; and indeed, I am unashamed to call myself a heretic for this reason.
When talking about the Third Temple, you are touching upon an issue that is COMPLETELY Jewish, and that impacts the Jewish people before it impacts anyone else. That is why I say it is their business, not ours. When the nations of the world (the goiim) DO take it upon themselves to decide what goes on in Yerushalaim (Jerusalem), as they do almost continually in the UN, they are acting out the very Zechariah 14 scenario alluded to above:
I was born in 1948, the same time that the modern State of Israel was coming into being. That was also the year the Cold War began, so I (and Israel) grew up in an environment wherein international politics was dominated by a high-stakes poker-like confrontation between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Everything that happened in the world in those days, including happenings in the Middle East, was viewed through a Cold War perspective; and the notion that Americans would one day stand shoulder-to-shoulder with China, Japan and all the great nations of the world against a nation so tiny that its name doesn't even fit inside the country on maps, seemed like utter fantasy; yet here we are today, 64 years later, with committees of the UN continually drafting resolutions against Israel, almost to the exclusion of all other business.
That is why I say that it is the Jews' business and nobody else's; and the Jews are right to take offense, when so-called Christians take up the torch of their cause in a way that they themselves do not want to do.
Christendom had its chance to rearrange things in Jerusalem, in 1099 during the First Crusade. That was a momentous time, when Pope Urban united the kings and nobility of Europe to set aside their eternal warring with one another, come to the aid of their Eastern Orthodox brethren against attack by the Turks, and free the Holy Land so that Christians of every kind (well, ALMOST every -- heretics like me were excluded then, as they are in CF theological discussions). Jews, of course, were slaughtered then in the onslaught, along with the Muslims that they had sided with; so Jews to this day do not look fondly at those times.
Nevertheless, that was the Christian day, the time when the presumed followers of Christ had it within their power to do whatever they wanted in Jerusalem. Concerning the Temple Mount, there was a mosque off to one side, in the area SOUTH of the former Temple; whereas on the site of the Temple itself, supposedly on the very Holy of Holies, stood the Dome of the Rock.
In early Christian times, this had been the site of a modest Christian church. Some time after the
Muslims invaded Jerusalem as occupiers, they converted the church to a shrine in an effort to use it as a place of conversion for Christians. Worshipers were commanded to enter the shrine, then do a circuit of the Holy Place with their BACKS TO THE HOLY PLACE, while they read the Muslim scriptures inscribed on the outer wall. At no time, were they allowed to worship TOWARD the Holy Place; and this situation continues to exist to this day. As for the Muslims, they pray with their
butt ends pointed towards the Dome of the Rock. This is not an act of reverence, but of disdain.
THE DOME OF THE ROCK IS NOT HOLY TO THE MUSLIMS, AND NEVER HAS BEEN.
While the Christians controlled Jerusalem. they turned the Dome back into a church, but did not attack much significance to it; the focus of their worship in Jerusalem was elsewhere, at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This situation also continues to this day, with the Garden Tomb added in later years as a place of pilgrimage by some Christians. The golden Dome, meanwhile, which is alluded to in the Israeli patriotic song, "Jerusalem the Golden" (Yerushalaim shel Zahav), reverted to Muslim control under Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb. When the Jews regained control of the place during the 1967 War, it was almost immediately returned to the Muslims.
As I said, the Christians had their chance to set things right on the Temple Mount during the Crusades, and they squandered it. In 1917, a much more Biblically enlightened group of Christians, the British, again took control of Jerusalem. They made the city part of a mandate to re-establish the Jewish homeland, but they left control of the Temple Mount in the hands of the Muslim Wakf, under the family of
Amin al Husseini, pictured below:
(Al-Husseini is the one without the Nazi helmet). It was to this same family that the government of Israel returned the place after the 1967 War.
So much for the best intentions of the Christian nations, to "help" the Jews order their worship on their most holy place. NOTHING WILL CHANGE with any "new" batch of Christians who want to lend a hand. God has not commanded the Christians to worship at the Temple Mount; He commanded this to the Jews, and THEY must show their devotion to Him by setting things straight THEMSELVES.
Shalom shalom.