Dear Associates, Students and Friends:

The unusual amount of social tranquility that we are now witnessing since the close of the Cold War is about to end. The Holy Scriptures show that a major change in direction in religious matters and human relationships is now on the horizon. This new period of interest that will shake this society to its foundations will emerge on the scene quite quickly. It will particularly involve a prime alteration in the manner that people in the world view past religious beliefs that the ordained clergy have taught and perpetuated. This change will not be limited to Christianity and Judaism. It will also involve Islam and the other religions of China and the Indian subcontinent. The central area of revolution (at least at the beginning) will emerge within Judaism and Christianity (and to a lesser degree, Islam). This is because it is prophesied in the Holy Scriptures (in Zechariah chapters 12 and 13) that a turning away of the general public from organized religion is inevitable and especially from the ecclesiastical authorities now governing Christendom and Judaism. A revulsion will set in among the laity against those in religious leadership positions. The non-professional religiously oriented people will become suspect of priests, ministers and theologians for being in the past outright falsifiers of the truth. A feeling of betrayal by the authorities will develop among the laity because of the erroneous teachings and acts of idolatry that have been palmed off on a hitherto unsuspecting public. The public will soon revolt.

The general population will become educated in religious matters. It will be recognized by most ordinary people that the church and synagogue leaders have been guilty of advocating and promoting a great number of falsehoods about geographical, historical and even doctrinal matters during the "Dark Ages" that are contrary to the simple teachings of the Scriptures. These false doctrines are even being disseminated in our modern times. The outcome of this new education among the laity will be a grand and widespread revolution that will take place in Christian and Jewish societies. They will demand that the church and synagogue hierarchies repent of their ways and ask forgiveness for the falsehoods and wrong teachings that they have promulgated upon the people of the world. This revolt will involve all sects and denominations and it will have a profound effect upon the present-day Christian and Jewish belief systems. To prompt yourself in preparation for the changes, read chapters 12 and 13 in Zechariah. Get ready for exciting times.

Most of these false teachings were inaugurated within Christendom in the fourth and fifth centuries and they have been officially sustained ever since. The Christian laity will discover these anti-biblical falsehoods that became cemented in ecclesiastical creeds when the church dominated the periods of history. The prophecies show that non-clerical Christians will soon begin to hold many of their priests/ministers in disdain for their continued attempts to sustain the false traditional beliefs of organized Christianity (at the expense of what the plain teachings of the New Testament reveal as the truths of God). Equally, Jewish people will do the same with their Rabbis and religious teachers. Most Jewish religious authorities continue to promote the false teachings that were foisted off on the Jewish lay people in the period of the Crusades and further in the sixteenth century by their Rabbis who departed far from the simple teachings of the Holy Scriptures (the Tanak) and even those of the Talmuds. It can be clearly shown that some major doctrines that are not biblically based were embraced by those in Judaism from the time their religious authorities erroneously accepted the Dome of the Rock area during the Crusade period as the place of their former Temples. At this time, the authorities even adopted the belief that God did not have a body (with shape and form as the Scriptures constantly teach). They began to hold in disdain the plain anthropomorphic descriptions of God (indeed, everything connected with Temple symbolism automatically assumes that God has a body with form and shape – albeit, God possesses the composition of "spirit" as a substance, and He is NOT flesh and blood as humans are). Their hierarchical repugnance against the true anthropomorphic concepts of God helped lead the way in making the matter of the Temple irrelevant to the Jewish people. There was even a greater departure from biblical truths when the Jewish religious authorities accepted the Lurianic Kabbalah in the sixteenth century. I will show in the following article that it was in this century that the Jewish authorities selected for the first time the Western Wall of the former Fort Antonia (not the Temple) as their "Wailing Wall." The Encyclopaedia Judaica states that the whole nation went over to the Kabbalah and for over 200 years the Kabbalah as a belief system was the sole expression of Judaism. The majority abandoned the basic and literal teachings of their Scriptures (Tanak) and Talmuds and they adopted in their place various mystical concepts. Those teachings were as foreign from the literal biblical commandments as one could get. They are adoptions from pure paganism. They began to believe in reincarnation and the Transmigration of Souls – doctrines similar to the Hindus. They began to teach that God and Israel were "in a mystic exile," and, no Temple was needed.

What the prophecies show is the fact that the majority of Christians and the Jews will soon want to return to the pristine teachings of the Holy Scriptures (this will include the Jewish people accepting a significant role for Jesus of Nazareth as their Messiah). The majority in the nation will come to "mourn for the one who was pierced" (Zechariah 12:10-14) – the one who was pierced by crucifixion. This will occur before the Second Advent of Christ (which event is described in Zechariah 14). In preparation for this, the Jewish people will soon discover that Christ Jesus was correct when he said the Herodian Temple would be so destroyed that even its interior and exterior walls would be torn down – including their foundations. The present "Wailing Wall" where they are congregating is NOT the Western Wall of the Temple of Herod. It is the wall of the former Fort Antonia (a Roman military camp). The Jewish people of the first century would be horrified to see their modern descendants calling this Roman military citadel a part of the Temple built by Herod. The real Temple was located near the Gihon Springs, 1000 feet south.

Sobeit, but why is pointing out these geographical errors of the religious leaders important? After all, what does a mere 1000 feet make, some might state? Yes, I agree in the unimportance of mere physical factors, but it is spiritual matters that concern me. Even the physical factors, however, are important. Indeed, if you were in an airplane and the pilot missed the runway in landing by even a hundred feet, you might not live through the pilot’s error. But with clergymen telling us they have direct contact with God on spiritual matters that are difficult for us ordinary humans (such as you and I) to see or touch, then how can we trust their opinions when they can’t even find their own Temples or holy sites that were as huge as football stadiums? If errors of the clergy show that God is not guiding them in their geographical opinions, then God must not be directing them in their spiritual and theological opinions. That is why it is important.

All should read my book "The Temples that Jerusalem Forgot" (and the other articles on the ASK Web Site) for proof of these matters. I will be showing on the Internet many more historical and biblical references revealing how the Jewish people lost the whereabouts of the Temple. We Christians should not gloat over these matters of Jewish error, because Christian ecclesiastical authorities also lost even the site of the crucifixion of Christ and modern Christians now worship a mile away from the true site. You should send for the next installment for my August research titled: "The Expansion and Portability of Zion." It shows how the Christian, Jewish and Muslim clergy made extensive errors in biblical interpretations. And while it is true that we Christians do not have to be concerned any longer with a physical Temple (in the teachings of Christendom), we would be in the dark concerning impending prophetic events that will involve our lives in the next few years if we do not keep abreast of these matters about Israel, the Jewish people and other nations of the world. This is what Jesus meant when he said "watch" world events (Mark 13:33-37).

Folks, all of you should soon get "online" (that means, get on the Internet and start using it). You need to view your ASK Web Site and be acquainted with it and the MANY articles that we publish on it (with your ability to search any word that I have written on the Web in a matter of seconds). This is our FREE "missionary" outreach program to the world. Even in the Temple Updates that each of you receive through the mail, I add very much more material in the Internet version simply because I have all the space I need and I am not limited to 12 pages as in the written edition. If you feel that the telephone, radio, television, the FAX and satellite communications are valuable, THEN you should also believe the Internet is equally essential. I get E-Mails from Russia, Japan, India, Africa (and all over the globe) from people who read our material on the Internet and are grateful for it. It is like a radio beacon that is beamed over the entire world. I am able to teach the Gospel of Christ to all who have the ability to be "online." Whenever you read this Newsletter (day or night), there are also scores of FREE articles being read on our Web Site.

Brethren, it is you who make this possible. It is by your consistent and generous contributions that you give each month that allow us to offer this FREE service to all in the world. We need to advertise our Web Site in various ways so that even more people will "click in" (or, in radio and television terms, "tune in") so that people can learn the teachings of God in the privacy of their own homes or in libraries or in senior citizen centers. I am not ashamed to ask you for your free-will offerings every month to sustain this service (the selling of books and tapes alone do NOT pay for the costs that we encounter in operating the ASK offices and to do the research and publishing that is required). We are not in the business of simply selling books. Our job is to teach the Gospel to all in the world whom God will direct toward our efforts. As Christians we need to be involved in helping to finance the efforts of ASK. We are an Ekklesia of God in the New Testament sense of the word (an association of Christian people who pool our resources to teach the Gospel to ourselves and to others in the world). As we approach the Second Advent, we need your support and your devoted commitment to the dissemination of God’s teachings. I am sure that God will bless all of us as a group (and individually) as we do the job of presenting the Gospel and the prophecies of the Bible to the world. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the support you faithfully donate to keep us at ASK teaching the Gospel loud and clear. We do not serve you spiritual "pabulum," but the strong meat of the Word. Until next month,

Ernest L. Martin