'The End of Days'
David B. Green, Books Editor

The Jerusalem Report has a policy of not reviewing books by staffers, but we take pleasure in bringing to your attention a new book by senior editor and columnist Gershom Gorenberg, "The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount," to be published in the U.S. December 6 by the Free Press.

The outbreak of the current Palestinian uprising, after negotiations deadlocked over the Temple Mount, demonstrates that the 35-acre site at the southeastern edge of Jerusalem�s Old City remains all important. Gorenberg�s book looks at the role the Mount plays in the religious imaginations of Muslims, Jews and Christians alike, and the convergence of the messianic visions of the three on the spot.

"The Temple Mount," writes Gorenberg, "beckons seductively to believers ea-ger to restart redemption." They are often mocked, though, by journalists, security officials and more mainstream theologians, for their messianic if not apocalyptic agendas. Gorenberg points out the dangers of not taking them seriously, citing examples ranging from the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas, to the slaughter the next year of Muslims at prayer in Hebron by Baruch Goldstein, to the outbreaks of violence among Palestinians when they believe Haram al-Sharif is threatened. In each case, the religious fanatics are motivated by their own particular reading of scripture. They see events as fitting a divine plan that more often than not involves the spot in Jerusalem that so many see as the Center of the Universe. The Mount, warns Gorenberg, "is potentially a detonator of full-scale war, and a few people trying to rush the End could set it off."

Gorenberg shows us the Jews who are preparing for the establishment of the Third Temple, along with evangelical Christians, who are giving them significant help. (One joint project he details is the effort to breed a red heifer). That alliance is an ironic one, he reminds us, for many evangelicals see the creation of Israel and the reestablishment of the Temple as prerequisites for the End of Days, when only those who have accepted Jesus as savior will be redeemed. Jews are instrumental in that vision, but as long as they remain unsaved, their fate is not a pretty one. Similarly, a growing body of Islamic literature finds evidence of "the prophetic certainty of Israel�s destruction."

Combining interviews with many of the principal players in the interlocking dramas projected onto Temple Mount, with reporting of events from the field, "The End of Days" serves as a timely decoder of today�s End-time believers, and helps to make sense of recent explosive events.