President Donald Trump has just been honored with his face on an Israeli coin. However, this is not any coin, as the coin has both the faces of Trump and Cyrus on it, and a drawing of the Third Temple on the reverse. The coin is special because it has been issued by a Temple organization, which while small and politically lacking major significance in Israel, is of symbolic interest because the purpose of the coin is supposed to be used to pay the “temple tax” as mandated in the Old Testament. Professor Hillel Weiss of the Temple in Zion organization said that the decision was made to put Trump’s face on the coin due to his support of Israel and the Jewish people:
Temple organizations have issued a half-shekel coin, the likes of which the Torah mandates every Jewish male must donate to the Temple, with a weight of 9.5 grams in real silver.
On the facade of the coin is a picture of the Temple with the inscription “Half Shekel.” On the other side is the figure of US President Donald Trump, alongside Cyrus, King of Persia, who made the building of the Second Temple possible. Below them is the inscription, “Cyrus – Balfour – Trump – Declaration 2018.”
The producers of the coin say that it is in high demand abroad. Prof. Hillel Weiss, Chairman of the organization “Hamikdash Betzion” (The Temple in Zion), says that the motivation to embed the image of the President of the United States on the coin is gratitude for his support of Israel and especially for the recognition of our sovereignty over Jerusalem.. “This is a historic act for which the Jewish people is grateful,” says Weiss, who believes that the declaration sets off a process at the height of which the Temple will be rebuilt.
On the other hand, warns Weiss, the coin is a reminder of what happened to those benevolent kingdoms when they turned back from their great declarations. Cyrus, in the language of the sages, “missed,” was swayed by factions opposed to building the Temple and halted its construction – and only ruled for three years. And the British empire, which renounced and crushed the Balfour Declaration, was shattered as a superpower on the stage of history.
“The Trump Declaration must continue with a declaration of the role of the Jews in establishing the Temple in its place. Only then will President Trump’s international ambitions come true in the Middle East.” (source)
Some points that need to be made:
1)The first heresy was the Judiazer heresy, as it said that in order to be a Christian, one must tie oneself to the rituals, practice, and even bloodline of the Jewish people. The controversy is narrated in Acts 15 at the first council in Jerusalem.
This controversy was a re-emphasis of a major theme in Jesus’ public ministry as articulated through the New Testament. To be a member of “Israel” is not to have “Jewish blood”, but to follow the Law that has been perfected in Christ, for Christ is the Law made flesh, and in Him the Mosaic law has been, fulfilled, perfected, purified and put to rest the controversies of the Talmud and Torah for all time. If salvation still came through following the old law, then Christ would not have needed to come, for the old covenant which the Jews of the time broke (see Jeremiah 31:31-34) would have sufficed.
While the Jews are a real people in the ethnic sense, the Church and all of Christian history until the 19th century noted that to be a Jew in the Biblical sense is not to be one of blood, but one of spirit as was prefigured by Jesus’ descendant Ruth, for she was not a Jew and thus her children would not be Jews, but she became a Jew by her faith in the One True God. There is a “chosen people,” yet the election and adoption of God does not come from genetics, but through faith and love, for as St. John notes in his Gospel, all who believed in Him were given power to become children of God by the will of God, not human origin.
This is why hatred of the Jews is uncalled for and immoral, for as the Christ established His Church on Peter as the Rock that He said the gates of hell would not prevail against it, to be Jew is to enter into the Catholic Faith, as this is the ancient faith of the Hebrews, of Noah, of Melchizedek, and of all the prophets, circumcising one’s soul and realizing that the grace of God transcends all races, for God is the Creator of all men.
2) The Catholic Church has always supported the rights and dignity of the Jewish people for the same reason they support all other peoples, because all men are made in the image and likeness of God. This obviously does not always speak to the actions of individuals and even groups within the Church, for people can and do participate in actions that can be contrary to the faith they believe. However, the fact is that the Church as an institution consistently stood for the rights of the Jews when they were being unjustly persecuted many times throughout history and through today, such as how the Church helped to rescue thousands of Jews from persecution by ethnonationalists in the Second World War.
3) The Protestant and American obsession with “Israel” as a physical state is tied to 19th century Anglo-American beliefs about dispensationalism, which in modern times manifests in the “Hebrew Roots” movement, which is a 21st century version of the 1st century Judaizer heresy that is condemned in the New Testament. The heresy is that the concept of “Israel” adopted by this group is reversed in that it is believed that Israel must be established as an ethnonationalist entity as the Jews are already saved by the possession of Jewish blood. The “church” is viewed as the collective body of “believers in Jesus” who are saved by faith. This effectively creates two groups- “blood” Jews who by their genetics are saved (and even in spite of rejecting Jesus as Messiah), and Christians who are saved by faith but not genetics.
4) Jesus spoke of Him rebuilding the Temple in three days, which the Gospel notes refers to His resurrection. This is because as Christ is the fulfillment of the Law and the Incarnate World Made Flesh, He IS the temple. This was the significance of the tearing of the veil in the temple in Matthew’s Gospel (27:51) when Jesus was crucified, for the true temple, Christ, had been destroyed and was about to be resurrected in three days. God’s presence had left the old temple because its place in history was fulfilled and has now passed to God Himself.
From the view of the ancient Christian writers going back to the time of Christ Himself, there is no need to build a physical temple to God because the Temple already exists. This is the reason why in every Catholic Church the Eucharist IS the focus, because the Eucharist is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ and He is what makes the Church Holy because He is present. Just as the Hebrews went to the temple to worship God, the temple is now brought here by the grace of God in His only Son.
Thus any attempts to rebuild “the Temple” in which the veil was torn and the Romans destroyed in 70 AD would be blasphemous, because it is to declare that Christ is not the Temple and thus is not God. To use a Biblical analogy, it would be to take new wine and pour it into an old wineskin, which is a thing that one simply does not do.
5) Professor Hillel Weiss, who in addition to wanting to rebuild the temple and the Sanhedrin and has made himself known about this for years, is not friendly to Christians or even non-Jews. He wrote an article specifically denouncing Pope Benedict’s visit to Israel, calling him a persona non grata, a “loser”, a Nazi, and claimed he was part of a secret Vatican-US conspiracy against Jews:
He also mentioned Pope Benedict’s past during World War II: “This loser, who was a member of the Wehrmacht in his youth, is expected according to the itinerary to visit the Temple Mount on Lag B’Omer.
“The pope is the chosen Trojan horse, through which not only the Vatican, but every army of Gog and Magog, led by the United States, is trying to apply the Holy Basin policy according to the vision of (former Minister Yossi) Beilin, (President Shimon) Peres and (Prime Minister Ehud) Olmert.
“The Holy Basin is a form of baptism, or rather an attempt to drown the Jewish religion and the Jewish people behind the screen of the peace process, which is another name for the disownment of Jerusalem, while annulling the Jewish sovereignty and passing it to Ishmael.”
According to Weiss, the Holy Basin idea is none other than “the same satanic plan aimed at returning to the internationalization of Jerusalem – the US dream since before the State’s establishment. The swift reconciliation with the current pope after his chapter of blunders does not grace the people of Israel. (source)
He has also called for the massacre of Arabs in Israel:
Listen, Abu Mazen: you aren’t a people and therefore there can be no genocide [against Palestinians]. To exterminate you like a simple rabble is a mitzvah and it will be fulfilled finally despite the fact that the government of Israel still doesn’t accept its responsibility for raising mendacious international recognition of you [Palestine]. [This process] started with Begin ended with Gal-On. It contributed to the deception of the entire world and [increased] the popularity of these monsters [Palestinians] who rose up due to our weakness and lack of faith.
The quicker you [Abu Mazen] can concede that you are not a people and that your place is nowhere within the borders of the land of Israel, the better off you will be…as long as you evacuate the country of your own volition. (source, source)
Having made these points, regardless of the explanation given by the organization, why on earth is Donald Trump’s face, as a current and living President, being placed on a coin of theoretically major religious significance connected to a group run by a man who hates the Catholic Church, rejects the Son of God, has called for a genocide against the Arabs, and now wants to destroy a mosque so he can build the third temple?
What exactly does Weiss and his group “expect” from President Trump?
We know for a fact that Israel has been clamoring for war against Iran and for more weapons deals, and that he is tied to Bar-Ilan University, which has extensive connections to the military-industrial complex in the USA. Could this be a way to brownnose Trump to giving Israel more arms deals?
We know that he wants to see the Temple rebuilt. Is this a ploy to solicit American taxpayer funds to pay or garnish American public support among the dispensationalist-inclined Evangelicals to support the rebuilding of the Temple?
We know that he hates the Catholic Church. Could this be a ploy to build support for causes to undermine the Church’s presence in Israel and abroad?
We know that he has called for the genocide of the Arabs. Could he be reaching out to garner American support for the support of Israeli ethnonationalist policies as well as ethnonationalism abroad in general?
Weiss himself alludes in his own statement to “threatening” Trump if he does not “listen.” Is this a way of giving public notification that Weiss and his “associates” (whoever those may be in positions of power and influence) are “making (Trump) and offer he can’t refuse?”
Could it be a combination of some or all of these possibilities?
The fact is that ultimately we do not know for the moment what exactly is going on here. However, before making calls that this is BIBLE PROPHECY BEING FULFILLED RIGHT BEFORE THE RAPTURE HAPPENS, one must stop and carefully consider the source that is Professor Weiss. This is a man who rejects the divinity of Jesus and Christianity and has openly expressed hostility towards it, supports murder in the name of ethnic nationalism, and wants to erect a structure that for the entire history of Christianity has been not just coated in heresy, but represents blasphemy by his denial of Christ and desire to establish the Temple.
The real question is- cui bono- who benefits?