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178 and in turn took an oath, “by the God Most High, possessor of Heaven and Earth.” It was again there, when Abraham’s devotion was tested, that he was granted a Covenant with God. Yet it took a millennium, until the right time and cir- cumstances, for the Temple to be built. The Bible asserted that the Jerusalem temple was unique— and so indeed it was: it was conceived to preserve the “Bond Heaven-Earth” that the DUR.AN.KI of Sumer’s Nippur had once been. And it came to pass in the fourhundred and eightieth year after the Children of Israel came out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign, in the second month, that he began to build the House of the Lord. Thus does the Bible record, in the first Book of Kings (6:1), the memorable start of the construction of the Temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem by King Solomon, giving us the exact date of the event. It was a crucial, decisive step whose conse- quences are still with us; and the time, it must be noted, was when Babylon and Assyria adopted the Sign of the Cross as the harbinger of the Return... The dramatic story of the Jerusalem Temple starts not with Solomon but with King David, Solomon’s father; and how he happened to become Israel’s king is a tale that reveals a divine plan: to prepare for the Future by resurrecting the Past. David’s legacy (after a reign of 40 years) included a greatly expanded realm, reaching in the north as far as Damascus (and including the Landing Place!), many magnificent Psalms, and the groundwork for Yahweh’s temple. Three divine emissaries played key roles in the making of this king and his place in history; the Bible lists them as “Sam- uel the Seer, Nathan the Prophet, and Gad the Visionary.” It was Samuel, the custodian-priest of the Ark of the Covenant, who was instructed by God to “take the youth David, son of Jesse, from herding sheep to be shepherd of Israel,” and THE END OF DAYS