Opening the Gates of Heaven Perry Stone

(Gen. 14:20; Heb. 7:9). He was also aware that his own father, Isaac, had been placed upon a stone altar by Abraham and that a ram had taken his place (Gen. 22:13). Thus the land of Moriah (Jerusalem) was not a strange or new territory for Jacob. It had been designated as the location for the future house of God—the temple, where future offerings, sacrifices, and holy incense would be offered and the holy smoke would ascend toward the gate of heaven for generations! In the early 1990s I was in Jerusalem in an office near the famed Western Wall discussing the vision of Jacob’s ladder with Yehuda Getz, the head rabbi. He was asked by a young minister, Scott Thomas, where Jacob had the vision of the ladder reaching from heaven to earth recorded in Genesis 28. The rabbi replied, “Jacob was sleeping somewhere on the Mount of Olives, and the ladder was sitting on the Temple Mount, on Mount Moriah.” Personally I had always believed this, but I knew that in the biblical narrative there were no specifics as to the name of the place, other than it was called Luz (Gen. 28:19). The word Luz refers to some type of a nut tree— perhaps an almond tree. In Moses’s day, the almond was considered as a holy fruit. The rod of Aaron was made from the branch of an almond tree (Num. 17:8). Rabbi Getz referred to the religious and sacred history found in the Book of Jasher: And Jacob went forth continuing his road to