MembersWho Set Fire to the Temple Mount Mosque – a Jew or a Christian?

Over the weekend, Palestinians commemorated the 52nd anniversary of the arson attack on the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The event occurred two years after the Six Day War and the reunification of Jerusalem, on August 28, 1969, when an Australian citizen, Denis Michael Rohan, set the mosque on fire. The 28-year-old Christian wanted to trigger a political crisis in the Holy Land and accelerate the return of the Messiah. The fire caused great damage to the mosque and at the time it was reported that Jewish and Arab fire brigades were fighting the fire together.

The next day, Rohan was arrested in his hotel room in Jerusalem. He told Israeli police that he was God’s chosen and had been commissioned by God to build the Jewish Temple. But to prove God’s election, Rohan believed he had to first destroy the mosque.

The young Christian from Australia was a member of an evangelical free church called “Worldwide Church of God” which was founded in 1933 in Oregon, US. Like...