While hundreds of Arabs barricaded themselves inside the Aqsa Mosque, a conference held just outside the walls of the Old City quietly set the stage for the building of the Third Temple.

 Cry for Zion hosted the Temple Mount 23 Jerusalem Convention at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center on Sunday. Cry for Zion is a movement of Jews and Christians that support the Jewish people’s rights to sovereignty over the Temple Mount, guaranteeing Jewish rights and freedoms in their most holy place. They seek to achieve this goal by educating the public about the Temple.

“The second Temple Mount Jerusalem Convention (TMJC) 2023 was a resounding success,” the organizers told the media. “What better time to come together for the Temple Mount than during Passover, the Festival of Freedom, and as millions of Christians worldwide commemorated the Resurrection and new life?”

Doron Keidar, executive director of Cry for Zion

The first convention in December 2018 was an unprecedented new meeting between Bible-believing Jews and Christians. At TMJC 23, that relationship and cooperation had matured even more with a new spirit of friendship and solidarity permeating the event. Noticeably many young, new, and creative voices participated.

Cry For Zion, who hosted the Temple Mount convention, was honored and grateful to have a truly amazing lineup of speakers who spoke back-to-back at the all-day event. The perspectives were diverse, but the themes were noticeably complementary, with speakers referring to each other’s comments throughout.

John Enarson, the Christian Relations Director at the organization Cry for Zion, opened the event with a request that mutual respect and tolerance be the rule.

John Enarson (Photo courtesy Cry for Zion)

“This event is a meeting place of both Jews and Christians coming from different perspectives,” Enarson emphasized. “This should be done with mutual respect, acknowledging differences and finding common ground on important issues without signing up. The fact that you are here or someone speaking here doesn’t mean that they are signing up for any political or religious position. We asked everybody here all the participants to show this grace towards each other.”

Enarson gave a disclaimer, warning that many in the media and in the Christian and Jewish religious spheres would reject the Temple Mount movement as extremist and an attempt at incitement.

“There’s a certain group among the media that are going to be watching and they’re bound to call us all sorts of words, whether it’s racist or bigoted bible thumpers or irresponsible troublemakers, or zealots or extremists, but the era of name-calling when it comes to the Temple Mount is over,” Enarson declared.

“The Temple Mount is now a mainstream concern in Israel and around the world. And I would actually say that the position that represents perhaps the opposition is the one that is extreme, that wants to again, divide Jerusalem into something like East and West Berlin, that says that Arabs and Jews cannot get along together in the city and would like to segregate the city that to us is the extremist position.”

Indeed, the event came during a particularly turbulent time, coming after a week of rocket attacks targeting Israel from the north and the south. The Muslim month of Ramadan coincided with the Jewish holiday of Passover and the Christian holiday of Easter. The focus was clearly on the Temple Mount as hundreds of Arabs barricaded themselves in the Aqsa Mosque in an attempt to prevent Jews from ascending to their holiest site.

Speakers included former Israeli presidential candidate and MK, Rabbi Yehuda Glick, who shared a wider vision for Temple Mount advocacy. He declared that the event was the launch of a global Zionist movement—not just the important movement of support for the State of Israel, but a global movement among the nations for Zion itself, the Temple Mount, to fulfill its destiny as the House of Prayer for All Nations. He called upon everyone in practical ways to make Jerusalem Day a global celebration with universal significance.

Rabbi Yehudah Glick (Photo courtesy Cry for Zion)

A big shout-out to the organization HaYovel who truly came alongside in heart and vision with the convention. Luke Hilton of The Israel Guys spoke of the need to increasingly normalize Christian ascent to the Temple Mount as an integral part of the pilgrimage of millions of Christians to Israel.

Bishop Glenn Plummer also addressed the convention as the official representative of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), the largest African-American Pentecostal church in America. Some historic churches have bishops of “Jerusalem” in the “Holy Land,” or similar. COGIC took the unprecedented step to recognize the significance of the State of Israel by appointing Dr. Plummer as “Bishop of Israel” where he has now started the Fellowship of Israelis, Ethiopians, & Black Americans.

Bishop Plummer (Photo courtesy Cry for Zion)

Bishop Plummer emphasized the Temple Mount Jerusalem Convention’s theme, that according to the Prophet Isaiah, God Almighty Himself is bringing foreigners, “who may look different from you,” from all over the world, and that they should “be welcome” in God’s “House of Prayer for All Nations.”

Delegates were especially struck by Dr. Melissa Jane Kronfeld’s heartfelt and powerful presentation. Her new organization “High on the Har” has quickly become one of the most dynamic and exciting movements to join in the struggle for freedom on the Mount, hosting noted profiles such as Ben Shapiro while ascending the Mount.

Dr. Kronfeld (Photo courtesy Cry for Zion)

Common themes throughout the convention were the practical steps that must be taken for the Temple Mount. Common to all of them was the civil right for Jews and Christians to continue to ascend and to pray.

Dr. Kronfeld, who herself commutes daily from Tel Aviv to ascend, called upon Israel’s governing bodies to make official what is already a fact: corporate Jewish prayer services already happen multiple times a day, every single day that the Mount is open.

Along with Rabbi Glick’s calls for making Jerusalem Day a universal movement, Bible Teacher Lars Enarson called on Christians everywhere to adopt a simple part of the Jewish prayer after daily meals, “Please have compassion, Lord our God, on Israel your people, on Jerusalem your city, on Zion the dwelling place of your glory, and on the kingdom of the house of David, your anointed one.”

Lars Enarson (Photo courtesy Cry for Zion)

The convention took the format of a live studio audience as speakers broadcast live to delegates all over the world. Present in the Jerusalem studio were about 70 delegates from multiple countries, including an Iranian Christian pastor who identified himself as a proud Zionist.

Many agreed that it was time to shift the image of the Temple Mount from conflict to prayer and music. Israeli music artist Yair Levi is himself a Levite who dreams of performing the Psalms of Ascent on the Temple Mount one day. Levi gave a riveting acoustic performance of songs that Levites sang on the Mount during the festivals, reimagined in new arrangements.

Yair Levi

Keeping with this goal, director and filmmaker David Kiern gave an exclusive sneak preview of an upcoming, epic film about the Temple Mount as it has never been shown on screen before. The film, which features artist Yair Levi and other participants of TMJC, is well into post-production and awaits its final release date.

All the live-stream delegates who funded the event have been given exclusive access to the Play-On-Demand 7:30-hour video of the convention until May 9th, 2023, when segments may become public.

By popular demand, TMJC is now making tickets to Play-On-Demand video access before May 9, available on TMJC.ORG.

Cry For Zion wishes to thank all the amazing delegates and speakers who made it possible to produce this ground-breaking educational initiative.