We had all better get ourselves prepared for a very big day in next year’s calendar, if a snake seen scaring away a pigeon between the ancient stones of Israel’s Western Wall is indeed, as some are claiming, “a prophecy directly pre-dating the coming of the Messiah.”

The snake was seeing slithering out of the Western Wall ( matiplanas/ Fotolia)

Prophecy: Snake Signifies Resurgence of Evil

A video of the snake incident posted on YouTube was picked up by Jewish bloggers who began making claims that a pigeon fleeing a snake shows that we are “living in dangerous times.” And the bloggers told journalists at Breaking Israel News that “the evil inclination, personified by the snake in Eden, will make a resurgence in the days before Messiah.”

Even less religiously inclined readers will understand why a snake might be taken by a God-fearing person as being symbolic of Satan, but they might also ask “what is so special about a pigeon, I thought doves were the holy bird in the Bible?” Doves represent Peace, after that famous brave one made its Biblical landing after the great flood. What is more, after Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all reported a spirit flying down from heaven and ‘descending on Jesus like a dove’ when he was baptized, it stared to represent the Holy Spirit. Pigeons; they represent the embodiment of Jewish Hebrew teachings in Israel.

Dangerous Times Ahead?

A Daily Mail article tells of one Hebrew blogger saying “Just as the pigeon is safe so long as it seeks shelter among the stones of the Temple Mount , the Jews are protected by the Torah commandments. When the pigeon comes out from the stones or the Jews move away from the Torah, they are in danger. We are truly in the dangerous times that directly precede Mashiach (Messiah).”

Skeptics will no doubt argue that the snake attacked the pigeon with no supernatural assistance, but believers would be quick to add that this occurrence comes after a series of other prophetic incidents, interpreted as religious signs, revolving round the Temple Mount which is famously situated in the Old City of Jerusalem . For thousands of years, this hyper-spiritualized location has been venerated as one of the holiest sites in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam alike. The Jewish Voice reported in July of this year that “a 220-pound boulder dislodged from the wall and fell to the plaza floor, nearly crushing a woman at prayer below.”

Temple Mount in Jerusalem ( alon / Fotolia)

Signaling the Need for a Third Temple

Looking at the happening from a Jewish Kabbalist mystics point of view, according to the Daily Mail a practitioner said he had “interpreted it as a sign that the Third Temple should be built, because the stone fell the morning after Tisha B’Av, which is a fast to commemorate the destruction of the first two temples.” Tisha B’Av is an annual fast day in Judaism and it is held as being the saddest day in the Jewish calendar where disasters in Jewish history are commemorated including; the destruction of Solomon's Temple by the Neo-Babylonians and the sacking of the Second Temple by the Romans. The construction of the Third Temple is supposed to predict the Messiah's coming.

Reports claim that shortly after the snake vs pigeon incident “a large cloud of dust billowed up from inside the Temple Mount Compound, surrounding the Dome of the Rock for several minutes.” This according to one Rabbi “suggested the dust revealed a conflict taking place on the spiritual plane.” On a temporal plane, skeptics might suggest that this is probably not the first time in the last two thousand years that a snake has startled a pigeon in Jerusalem and they might add that David Attenborough built a career on such conflicts in nature.

The Snake Speaks

The pigeon has never been seen since, but the snake allegedly told reporters at the Daily Asp, “hundreds of us live in this particular part of the old wall, it gets great light all year round you see. It gets awful dry in the autumn, around Tisha B’Av, so we love a pigeon egg to freshen up.” In support of his claims of “2000 years of animal racism” the snake pointed out, “When lizards chase pigeons nobody gives a toss, but when one of ‘us’ have a go it’s like Christ is coming back or something…. And don’t even start me on pigs…”

Readers. Please forgive that last bit, I went well off-piste there, but it is Saturday after all, so just good clean fun, with no disrespect intended whatsoever to believers in ancient Judeo-Christian prophecies. On the contrary, it is a mark of great faith and persistence that after 3,500 written and recorded ‘end-of-world’ prophecies over the last 3,500 years, people still see symbolic meaning in the otherwise mechanical animal kingdom.

If you think about it, in the most ironic way conceivable, such prophecies echo animistic Pagan traditions, the old ways, timeworn beliefs in the spiritual nature of animals which pre-dated the arrival of today’s three monotheistic giants.

Top image: Vipera palaestinae, Israel ( CC by SA 4.0 ), the same species seen at the Western Wall

By Ashley Cowie