Prophecy of the East Gate

Ezekiel 44

1 Then He brought me back by the way of the outer gate of the sanctuary, which faces the east; and it was shut.
2 The Lord said to me, “This gate shall be shut; it shall not be opened, and no one shall enter by it, for the Lord God of Israel has entered by it; therefore it shall be shut.
3 As for the prince, he shall sit in it as prince to eat bread before the Lord; he shall enter by way of the porch of the gate and shall go out by the same way.”

The Eastern Gate was destroyed during the Roman conquest of Jerusalem, and the subsequent destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70, thus fulfilling Christ’s prophecy that there will “not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down” Matthew 24:2. Prior to this, the Eastern Gate had never been sealed.

In the year 1541, the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman I sealed the Eastern Gate. Historians disagree as to why he did this, but legend abound that, learning of the prophecies which predicted the Messiah’s entrance through the Eastern Gate, Suleiman tried his best to make sure it wouldn’t happen during his reign. And just in case a sealed entrance didn’t thwart the Messiah’s coming, Muslims built a cemetery directly in front of the gate – conventional wisdom being that a Jewish Holy man would never defile himself by walking through a Muslim cemetery.

It’s been over 465 years since Suleiman sealed the Eastern Gate, and despite numerous well-documented attempts to open it, the gate has remained sealed just as the Lord proclaimed to Ezekiel over 2,600 years ago.