Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth floated the possibility of a third Jewish temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, according to a recently unearthed interview.
“There’s no reason why the miracle of the re-establishment of the temple on the Temple Mount is not possible,” Hegseth said during a 2018 speech at the Arutz Sheva conference in Jerusalem, according to the Times of Israel.
“I don’t know how it would happen. You don’t know how it would happen, but I know that it could happen,” he continued. “A step in that process, a step in every process, is a recognition that facts and activities on the ground truly matter.”
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“That’s why going and visiting Judea and Samaria and understanding that sovereignty — the very sovereignty of Israeli soil, Israeli cities, locations — is a critical next step to showing the world that this is the land for Jews and the Land of Israel,” he added.
Hegseth’s unearthed comments come as President Donald Trump, who moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem during his first term, has proposed that the U.S. seize Gaza.
“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a [good] job with it, too,” Trump said Tuesday during a press briefing with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The reconstruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem features prominently in some veins of Christian eschatology, though other Christians maintain that Christ assumed the temple’s sacrificial system on Himself and rendered it unnecessary.
The First Temple, also known as Solomon’s Temple, was destroyed by the Babylonians when they conquered Jerusalem in 586 B.C.
Herod’s Temple, which was the second Jewish temple constructed in Jerusalem, was destroyed by the Romans when they sacked the city in A.D. 70, following a months-long siege.
The destruction of Herod’s Temple took place approximately 40 years after Jesus Christ prophesied the event, according to Matthew 24:2.
Christ’s claim that He would rebuild the temple in three days after its destruction was among the accusations He faced during His trial before the Sanhedrin for blasphemy, according to Mark 14:53–62.
Christ’s accusers failed to understand that He was speaking about the temple of His body, according to John 2:19-21.
According to contemporary Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, Herod’s Temple caught fire and was destroyed after a Roman soldier tossed a torch through one of its windows.
Before the Islamic Al-Aqsa mosque was built on the Temple Mount in the seventh century, multiple attempts to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem failed, according to contemporary historians.
During the Bar Kokhba revolt against Roman rule that lingered from A.D. 132-135, an attempt to rebuild the temple fizzled after the revolt failed.
During the fourth century, Roman emperor Julian attempted to rebuild the temple in A.D. 363 until workers gave up the project after Julian died, an earthquake shook Galilee and fire erupted from the Temple Mount, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Jon Brown is a reporter for The Christian Post. Send news tips to jon.brown@christianpost.com
