
I’ll tell you if you promise to keep it a secret. It’s not something I talk about often, but I think now might be a good time. I have a secret love I think about a lot and have had for many years. An obsession, really. I love the Temple of King Solomon in Israel and have since I was very little. Its one of those stakes in the ground of human civilization that I think is a massive statement by any emerging culture and was the window into the world of how the world thought before the great Library of Alexandria was destroyed right around the time of the Roman Empire struggling to maintain its power, starting around 145 BC, then being demolished in 391 AD. And that is what the Holy Bible means to me, validated through archaeology, that enough of the contents are very ancient, going back to 1400 BC to 2000 BC, respectfully, with dates that are reliably coordinated, and I really find that window into the world valuable at that time, especially the specifics of temple life under the rule of Solomon. Why had a group of people gained so much power in a relatively short time after invading the pagans of Canaan and establishing themselves as a force in the world? Because understanding that story helps us understand our own story in America, where a very similar trajectory of action occurred, and the challenges of maintaining that success were very difficult. Solomon’s Temple continues to be one of the hottest pieces of real estate in the world, with the Muslims now occupying what’s left over of the remains, where the popularly known Dome of the Rock now sits over the exact spot where Abraham supposedly went to sacrifice Isaac. The Muslims believe it was the older son, Ishmael. And it’s where Muhammad journeyed into the heavens in what sounds like a UFO encounter to me.


Without question, that exact spot is where King David, Solomon’s father, set up a location for building the Temple had an importance that peaks back into prehistory to the beginning of time. Many people literally believe that the stone where all this happened is the precise spot where the European continent, the African, and the Asian land masses join perfectly and is the spot for the beginning of the world, literally. What we do get in the Bible is fragments of fragments of information from those prehistory times, but it’s valuable what it is. Then to understand that all of Western Civilization essentially evolved from the building of the Temple and the loss of it to history is exceptionally significant. For instance, the east/west alignment where the high priests would make their sacrifices then carry the elements to where the Ark of the Covenant sat on the exact spot where the stone on top of Mount Moriah peaked into the floor of the very elegant Temple finished in 960 BC after eight intense years of construction. They would pour the blood of the sacrificed animals over the Ark to atone for the people’s sins to the God Yahweh, traveling east to west to mimic the actions of being thrown out of the Garden of Eden, which occurred from west to east. There is a lot of growing evidence that this casting from the Garden was more than a metaphor. The lost land of Edan looked to be in America, and it was the Middle East where all people had to make their way again, knowing that they had knowledge of Good and Evil, a world of pairs of opposites that would always be tainted by sin and appeased by sacrifice.

So the building of a massive Temple, respectful of all the other attempts in the world on such a grand scale, says something about the culture that created it, a kind of heaven-on-earth mentality. But as humans, it only represents the eventual efforts of every human being. And that is for people to experience the relevance of a temple individually, for their personalized needs. Because, in many ways, humans need to see themselves as their own version of King Solomon’s Temple. No matter where in the world they occurred, Temple construction needs to inspire in people the concept to usher such reverence into their own lives. And that is how I’ve always seen the human body, as a temple built by God for the purpose of living a good life. And that we are supposed to treat our bodies with that level of respect. A human body is not something to despise or cast aside as inferior but is in itself a temple for the human soul, and it should be treated as such. We should not desecrate our own bodies, and for me, that means not coloring our hair, getting tattoos, breast implants, body piercings, or abusing ourselves with alcohol and drugs. Like King Solomon’s Temple, we should care for our bodies like the sacred objects that they are. I’m now at an age where I have advised many young people on these things. The ones who listened have pretty good lives. But many didn’t listen; they have many problems, and it is painful to see. Because they were told, just as I would say to everyone even now, to treat your temples well, give them great respect, and you’ll find a much better life in the aftermath than if you allow your Temple to be desecrated.

Of course, Solomon’s Temple didn’t last long after his sons took over and started fighting among themselves. The surrounding kingdoms, especially in Mesopotamia at the city of Babylon, were very jealous and wanted to take out the people who built such a magnificent place. In 605 BC, Nebuchadnezzar invaded and plundered the Temple stealing the wealth and taking it to the temples of Babylon. By 586 BC, the entire Solomon Temple was destroyed, and there has been much effort in the world, including the current tensions in the Middle East presently that want to rebuild the Temple and restore the world to how it was before that invasion, including many secret societies as their sole purpose for existing and the political movements that spawn from them. And such a downfall started when the Kings of Israel began to allow the desecration of their Temple to false idols and impure beliefs, which culminated with King Manasseh failing massively and his grandson King Josiah attempting to restore the Temple of its lost function. I look at a lot of older people, and I see many who have allowed their temples to be desecrated by many bad decisions in life. Children are new, like the Temple of Solomon at first. But they become disasters as adults when they allow their temples to be desecrated by invading cultures with bad ideas. It’s a lesson in values that I find well described in the effort of civilization to build King Solomon’s Temple in the first place and how other jealous cultures would be inspired to ravage it with great hatred. And to suppress that culture with desecration. This is precisely what we see happening to America now by the jealous cultures of the world. They want to desecrate our country, starting with each and every one of us, through LGBT Pride flags, loose abortion cults, a society of too much drinking, too many drugs, horrendous social customs, and a terrible government-controlled public education system. Our temples are under attack, and we let the enemies desecrate them without a fight. And that is how a lot of evil starts in the world and brings so much misery with it.

Rich Hoffman
