March 2008

I have lots of pictures for this last day on my tour through Israel. It’s hard to see it end, as I’ve enjoyed the daily reminders of the trip. A part of me will always be in that land, as the land has always been important to me since I came to faith in Christ. The difference is that before I was able to visit in pictures alone. Now I have memories to go with the pictures – memories that grow sweeter every time I read Scripture and see geography mentioned here and there.

The Via Dolorosa is a thoroughfare with shops lining either side of the road. Chapels (shrines again) have been erected at designated stations where tradition says Christ stopped on the road to His death. One of the chapels was the spot where they say Simon of Cyrene was commissioned to carry Jesus’ cross.

Different denominations have built these small chapels and they don’t seem to like each other much. Our guide spoke with the man in charge of one of the stations who told our guide not to mention one of the other chapels. Apparently, it’s all right to talk about church number five but not church number four – or perhaps church number three but not church number seven. I can’t remember which was which, but the whole thing seems a bit sad. If these people all claim the name of Christ, there should be no such disunity. But whether they truly know Jesus or just know His name is debatable.

The Via Dolorosa is the traditional route Jesus took to the cross, but a few days earlier our guide showed us a wider street that may have been the actual road he took. It is much wider and more likely to have been a main thoroughfare or marketplace where more people would have seen the condemned men. The Romans would have wanted to make as big a spectacle of the event as possible so would have taken him down the most populated road.

Either way, merchants would have lined the road and people would have watched Jesus as He stumbled toward the cross. The same people who hailed Him the week before as the Son of David and wanted to crown Him king, now shouted “Crucify Him” and turned the other way as His blood spilled for them.

Of all the shrines in Israel, The Church of the Holy Sepluchre was my least favorite. It’s a huge, ornate church and home to five denominations – Armenian, Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Coptic, and I think Russian Orthodox.

Each denomination has a specific area of the church and no one apparently knows how big it is because they don’t cross over into each other’s area. Our guide said these denominations also do not get along – a sad commentary on what the church stands for.

The church is very dark inside. The picture with the people kneeling over a stone is supposedly the stone where Christ’s body was prepared for burial.

The framed glass-enclosed rock is supposed to be the spot where the cross stood. There is a split in the rock, possibly where it split when the earth quaked after Christ’s death. It was hard to see let alone get a picture. Beneath the church is supposed to be catacombs or tombs where some think the real tomb where Christ was laid still stands. But we weren’t allowed underground in that area. Funny, we could traipse through tunnels to talk about water systems but when we got to the place we would have most liked to see, the empty tomb, we weren’t allowed down there.

I was pretty disappointed with such policies and found this shrine to be most depressing. It was impossible to see things as they truly might have been for all the trappings men and women put over them. I loved everything about our trip to this land and Jerusalem is a city that will always hold a special place in my heart, but this church made me sad.

On the other hand, the other Garden Tomb – the one the tourists are allowed to see – does look like the tomb as we imagined it would be. It is similar to other man made tombs in Israel and was a more uplifting experience.

The site of the Garden Tomb appears to be run by Christians, and our guide there (not our normal guide) spoke of Jesus as if he knew Him. We all took a turn going inside to look at the empty tomb, then moved to an area in the garden where we took communion with our entire group. There are several places in the garden for the different tour groups to split up and hold their own individual communion services. It was fairly crowded the day we were there, but not nearly as crowded as I heard it was a few weeks later on Easter.

Still, it was a wonderful experience and a fitting end to our tour of Israel. We left the garden and went back to the hotel to pack, have dinner, and take the bus back to the airport. Our time in Israel had come to an end. (Even now that I’m home that seems sad to say.)

But the wonderful thing about this Holy Land is that it is far more than a piece of property in the Middle East. It holds both history and future glory. One day I will visit again and maybe even live there for a time. Maybe in this life. Maybe in the life to come. Someday Jesus will walk the streets of Jerusalem again, no longer the meek and bleeding Savior but the strong, conquering King of kings.

I look forward to that day with great joy!

Even so, come Adonai Yeshua.

’sar-salom – Prince of Peace!

Our last morning in Jerusalem began at 5:30 A.M. The night before I had told the Lord that I would love to see a sunrise over Jerusalem. We were on the 11th floor of a 21 floor hotel so our view of the city was superb. When I opened the curtain at 5:30, the sun was just peaking over the horizon. A glorious sight – and a special answer to prayer.

We got on the bus at 7:30 and went to St. Anne’s Church where the acoustics were phenomenal. We sang two songs as a mini congregation – Alleluia and How Great Thou Art. It echoed all around and sounded wonderful. A tiny taste of heaven. The church actually isn’t so great if you’re speaking – it’s rather hard to understand the speaker – but singing is awesome.

We walked from there to the temple mount where we had to go through security to enter the Dome of the Rock property. We could not take Bibles with us as the Muslims are offended by our Scriptures. Apparently, they believe Mohammad ascended to heaven from a spot inside the temple. They expect him to return with Messiah to that spot someday.

There are actually two buildings on the temple mount site. One is the Dome of the Rock and one is a Moslem mosque. We were not allowed inside either one but got plenty of pictures from the outside. Hawkers were selling pictures of inside the Dome, which we bought for a dollar, but I can’t find what we did with them!

It was awesome to stand on the site of the mount, Mt. Moriah, where Abraham was asked to sacrifice Isaac and where, years later, David saw the angel of the Lord standing at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite ready to strike Jerusalem with a sword. (See 2 Samuel 24) David purchased the threshing floor from Araunah, and Solomon built the first temple to Yahweh there.

The Dome of the Rock is a beautiful building. The blue and gold shines like jewels in the sunlight, but its presence there seems so out of place. I really don’t understand how it all came about since Moslems used to consider Mecca their ultimate place of pilgrimage. Our guide did explain it to us, but I don’t remember all of the details. If the records in the Old Testament Scriptures were accepted as authentic deeds of purchase, this piece of property would still be in the hands of the Jews. David paid for it and he was their king, therefore it ought to belong to Israel.

But Jews and Muslims have fought about this issue and have a greater interest in it than I do. I believe the Scriptures that teach that Jesus will rule one day from Jerusalem, so what happens with the temple mount right now isn’t as important as what will happen one day in the future.

Yesterday I posted an outside view of the gate Jesus will enter when He steps down on the Mount of Olives and walks into Jerusalem again one day. These pictures show the inner view from the temple mount area. You can see the width of it from the side view and the smaller area, which is the part that actually opens.

From there we went to the pool of Bethesda, where Jesus healed the paralytic who could not get into the moving waters quick enough to be healed. “Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades.” (See John 5) The pool holds no water today, but you can see the ruin where the pool once lay. One can imagine Jesus healing the paralytic man. It’s a rather surreal feeling to stand where Christ once stood.

After the pool, we got back on the bus and went to lunch. We ate at a little restaurant that didn’t look like much on the outside but the food was quite good. It was the first time that I know of that we had lamb to eat, which is really rather strange considering our meals were all kosher. They did not serve milk or milk products in the same meal with meat, and the meats they did serve most of the time were chicken and beef along with fish, which doesn’t qualify as meat, I guess, because they served it at breakfast as well, along with milk and cheese. We’re so used to eating cheese with a hamburger or on a salad with chicken. Not here. They take this from Exodus 34:26 among other passages, which says, “Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.”

After lunch we walked the Via Dolorosa, visited the Church of the Holy Sepluchre, and went to our last stop at the empty Garden Tomb. But I’ll save that for my last post on this tour of Israel tomorrow. It’s been fun to relive the moments here as a part of me is still mentally there. I’m not sure any Christian can visit that place and leave feeling the same way. I hope God allows me the privilege of writing Biblical fiction for years to come because now when I write, I get to travel there mentally in more ways than one.

Until tomorrow…shalom~

This first picture is of the Cardo Mall, an 800-year-old shopping mall. Different shops exist today, of course, but the stone structure is the same. The Cardo is home to some fancy shops that many of our women would have liked to spend time in, but our guide pushed us along. We did have a chance later to go back for those who wanted to. The whole thing looks pretty cool, more intriguing than the typical local shopping malls around here for sure!

This picture is from outside the Golden (Eastern) Gate, which has a smaller actual opening but it a pretty big gate. This is the place where Jesus will come through from the Mount of Olives when He returns someday. (Which is why we mention looking to the East when we speak of His return.)

From there we went to the Western Wall. We had to go through security to get inside. Army members carrying machine guns walk around the place but no one seems to pay them any attention. I guess when you’re used to seeing such things they become part of the scenery.

The Western Wall is a holy site. Men and women are expected to dress modestly and out of respect, Jewish people do not turn their backs on the wall. They walk up to it to touch it or with prayer books or to put prayers on slips of paper into the cracks. I wrote out a quick prayer for the Jewish people and rolled it up and placed it in the crack along with the many slips of paper that were already there.

This is my prayer:
Ah Adonai, Please grant grace to these your Jewish people that they may see their Messiah Yeshua. Amen.
After we finished at the wall, we walked backward to the entrance.

The wall is actually partitioned off between the men’s side and the women’s side. The men’s side is three to four times as big as the women’s side. The women’s side was more crowded – maybe because it was smaller it just looked like there were more people, or maybe the women are more devout than the men as happens sometimes. The men were required to wear hats or were given one of the Jewish caps to wear before they could approach the wall. (I forget what the caps are called.)

From there we went into the tunnels beneath the wall where the Western Wall Heritage museum or something is located. It’s not exactly a museum, but it is a little like one in some ways. We saw a model of how the temple mount used to be compared to how it is today. We walked through what felt like miles of tunnels – very narrow – and we came across two groups of children coming the other way that we had to squeeze by. Our guide stopped us several times (underground) to explain things about the architecture and the water system and other things I didn’t catch. By then we were all pretty tired and I was longing to see the light of day – literally! I would have enjoyed the Cardo Mall more than the explanations of ancient engineering. Randy liked the engineering lecture more than I did. :)

We finally made it out and back to the bus. My calves aches so bad I wasn’t sure I could get up again! But tomorrow is our last day on the tour – which may take me two days to post.

On a side note, since I mentioned needing some prayer a few days ago – I saw a specialist today and he wants more tests to confirm but says I have two pinched nerves in my back and neck and possibly carpal tunnel. So I’m scheduled for some tests I don’t want and physical therapy for weeks to come. But he assures me he can fix me, so I’m hopeful. Thanks to all for your prayers.

Shalom ~

Jerusalem is such an interesting city. All of the buildings are required to use the same type of stone, making the whole city look connected, giving it an old yet new feel. Many signs are written in Hebrew and English. I think most people here speak Hebrew, which is read from right to left, rather than left to right as we do in English.

Jerusalem is home to several tunnels, which protected the city’s water supply. During David’s day the city seemed impenetrable, and the Jebusite residents taunted David saying he would never get in to conquer them. David told his men that whoever went through the water shaft would get in, which his nephew Joab did, earning the right to become David’s general.

Later, during Hezekiah’s reign, another tunnel was dug to offer better protection from Assyrian and other enemies. We went through two of these tunnels, Joab’s and either Hezekiah’s or the Canaanite tunnel.

The sign showed both and I’m not sure which one we squeezed through. I say squeezed because some of the passageways were quite narrow, causing us to have to turn sideways. I really enjoyed walking through these tunnels imagining what it must have been like then, as long as we kept moving. We spent so much time underground talking about water systems that at times I got a little claustrophobic. When we kept moving, I was fine. :)

From there we walked to the pool of Siloam, which I don’t think has been fully excavated. The water looked a bit stagnant though I think it did keep moving somewhere. The whole pool seemed pretty small, which is another reason I don’t think they’ve uncovered it all.

Excavation sites can be seen throughout Jerusalem, so I suspect in the future there will be even more tourist stops to see things they’ve uncovered.

Gethsemane was our next stop. The Church of the Nations (another shrine) is very large and ornate and stands in the middle of the garden, which I suppose is nice to allow a place to worship, but I still think all of these shrines take away from the beauty of the place as God intended or first created. The garden has been blocked by a number of fences and gates so you can look but you can’t walk through and really get the feel for the place. A bit disappointing.

Gethsemane means olive press, as I said the other day. Eight of the trees there are 2500 years old. The oldest has a split trunk but new growth has sprung from the roots. If trees could talk, imagine what they could tell us about the history that happened here.

We moved from there to the Mount of Olives where we had a group photo taken, which turned out pretty well. This was also where I got my camel ride, but then we had to half run to catch up to our group. We found them at a Jewish cemetery. Our guide told us that the Jews believe that only people buried in Jerusalem will be resurrected. In contrast to that, Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” John 11:25-26 NIV Apparently, these Jews do not. (Some Messianic Jews do.)

After the cemetery stop, our guide took us on the Palm Sunday walk following the path near the one Jesus took from the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem when the people wanted to hail him as king. Overlooking the city one cannot help but think of Jesus’ words when He said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate.” Matthew 23:37-38 NIV

How much different things might have been if they had recognized their Messiah when He came. But someday – “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.” Zechariah 12:10 NIV

Someday, they will see Jesus in a different light and love Him as He deserves.

As He loves them even now. As He loves us all.

Shalom ~

The trip to Bethlehem was most interesting. Today, as in David’s day, Bethlehem was not in the hands of the Jewish people. Then it was under Philistine control, whereas now it is under Palestinian control.

2 Samuel 23:13-17 says “During harvest time, three of the thirty chief men came down to David at the cave of Adullam, while a band of Philistines was encamped in the Valley of Rephaim. At that time David was in the stronghold, and the Philistine garrison was at Bethlehem. David longed for water and said, “Oh, that someone would get me a drink of water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem!” So the three mighty men broke through the Philistine lines, drew water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem and carried it back to David. But he refused to drink it; instead, he poured it out before the LORD. “Far be it from me, O LORD, to do this!” he said. “Is it not the blood of men who went at the risk of their lives?” And David would not drink it.”

I was reminded of this when we had to drop our Jewish guide off along the road before leaving the State of Israel and crossing over into Bethlehem. The difference between the two states is immediately obvious. While Israel has its rougher sections, it appears to be relatively modern and clean. Bethlehem, on the other hand, appeared poorer and dirtier.

Our first stop was a large shop filled with all kinds of things tourist would find fascinating, the primary choices being olive wood and jewelry. The shop was owned by a Palestinian Christian. Bethlehem is half Muslim and half Palestinian Christian.

From there we went to the Church of the Nativity where they claim Jesus was born. They base their claim on some guy who marked the spot due to what he learned from people living there that would remember the events that happened during Jesus’ birth and probably later at the slaughter of the innocents. I’m not sure how many years later this spot was supposedly marked. I tend to be a bit skeptical when they say this is the exact place as no one living today can know that for sure.

The church has a very low door that you have to duck down to enter. This was built in place of a much larger original door to prevent men on horseback from entering the sanctuary and sacking the church.

The inside of the church is huge in comparison to the door! It is home to three different denominations: Orthodox, Armenian, and Catholic. The guide pointed out the different sections. I think the Orthodox and Armenian were close together but the Catholic had a different sanctuary.

The Star of Bethlehem is the place where they say Jesus was born. Our Palestinian guide (we got a new guide just for Bethlehem) was so soft-spoken it was hard to hear everything but unlike our Jewish guide, he seemed to think all these places were authentic, whereas our Jewish guide told us the difference between traditional sites (those that were believed to be the place) and authentic sites (those where the evidence indicates it likely is the exact place).

The picture with the linen-covered table is the other spot, where they say Jesus was placed in the manger. (See previous days for a stone feeding trough, which is an authentic manger, not like the wood and hay type we think of today. We barely had time to get through this area, which is below the church because monks were conducting a service and tried to rush us through. Randy talked to the guy to distract him, hoping all our people would have time to see it all. He managed to delay things a bit.

The church was very crowded. We had to wait 20 minutes to go down the steps to visit Jerome’s Caves. Jerome was a monk from Italy who came to Israel to live and translate the Scriptures into Latin. It is where we get the Vulgate translation of the Bible.

On the way back to Israel, we had to stop at the border. (They had warned us to bring our passports to get back into the country.) Two Israeli military – a man and a woman – boarded our bus carrying machine guns. The woman was clearly in charge and carried an attitude along with her gun. She had apparently seen one of our men snap a picture from inside the bus, which supposedly a sign prohibited (we didn’t see the sign). She made him delete his pictures, then proceeded to walk through the bus asking random people to see their cameras or their passports. Randy had taken three pictures of them but they didn’t notice him (guys like pictures of guns). Still, at my suggestion he agreed to delete them. We thought the woman would turn around and come down our side of the bus, but she never did. So they were deleted for nothing! Oh well. Better that than to risk having our camera confiscated!

Through it all, I was sitting within a foot of a woman with an attitude and a machine gun, but amazingly, I wasn’t worried. On this trip I honestly never had more peace in my life. God heard the prayers of so many that prayed for us and answered beyond what I could have asked or imagined. I cast all my cares on Him and He did not disappoint me.

However, the whole bus breathed a sigh of relief when the military personnel got off the bus. Next stop was the Holocaust Museum. We didn’t get any pictures inside as they weren’t allowed. I don’t think we could have taken pictures even if they were allowed. It’s one of those places that are best left to each person’s own thoughts. As I walked through the place Amy Grant’s song Lead Me On continually played through my head. I searched my mind trying to remember the whole thing – I remembered some of these words – couldn’t shake most of the final paragraph:

Waiting for the train
Labelled with a golden star
Heavy hearted boarding
Whispers in the dark
Where are we going–is it very far?

Bitter cold terrain
Echoes of a slamming door
In chambers made for sleeping, forever
Voices like thunder in a mighty roar
Cry to the Lord.

I also copied a few quotes that I found particularly poignant. Maybe I’ll share my thoughts on them in the future.

Next time – Gethsemane, Palm Sunday walk, and the Western Wall.

Shalom~

The Valley of the Shadow is in the Wilderness of Judah where Jesus likely spent 40 days and nights in temptation from the devil, where David traversed with his 600 men plus women and children, and possibly near where the story of the Good Samaritan was set.
It is also similar to the land where the children of Israel wandered for 40 years – a vast, barren land, truly desolate except for a valley wadi with scattered trees here and there.

Bedouins were at the place here in the wilderness where the bus stopped for us to get a better view. They were peddling orange juice, beads, silks, and camel rides. I wanted a camel ride but didn’t want to miss what our guide had to say and there was little time when he finished to get one. (I did get one later near the Garden of Gethsemane.)

This was our last visit in the Dead Sea area. Our next stop after about a two-hour drive was Jerusalem. All of the other hotels gave us nice rooms, one was even a suite. The hotel in Jerusalem was nice in the foyer area with good food, but our rooms needed upgrading. The view was great, however.

One morning we got up early enough (5:30 A.M.) in time to see the sun rise over Jerusalem. The camera doesn’t do the scene justice, but we took several photos just the same. Here’s my favorite…

The next day we went to Caiaphas’s house or what they think was his house. We went down into a dry cistern, the possible place where Jesus was interrogated after being arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane and where Peter denied him three times. There is a rooster on a statue outside the house, hard to see but on top of the black statue in the background of this picture. I got a little claustrophobic standing against the wall at the back of the room so moved to the exit when they said they were going to turn the lights off to give us a better feel for what it was like then for Jesus.

We saw the way Jesus would have taken from the upper room, which was in this same vicinity, across the valley to Gethsemane, back to this area to Caiaphas’s house. The distance was quite a trek – longer than I imagined. For us it would have been very long and tiring to walk uphill and down. The people of Jesus’ day would have been more used to the walking. But seeing the path, even from a distance, puts things in better perspective.

The next stop was Bethlehem, which is under Palestinian control so our Jewish guide had to leave the bus until we came back into Israel. But I’ll leave that for another day. I uploaded more pictures on Facebook on my new account there, so if you’re a member, you can check out more pictures of Israel. My tour through Israel on this website will continue until I’m done, but I may be spacing it out a bit more. I’m suffering numbness issues in my hands and feet and I think I may have a pinched nerve, which seems to improve when I rest from typing and sitting too long. Hazard of repetitive movements, I guess. Prayers for healing from these issues are most appreciated.

I’ll leave you with a fun picture of me and a friend finally getting that camel ride! What a blast! I couldn’t help but laugh. The ride ended too soon, but I can imagine one would get mighty sore on one of those beasts for any length of time. :)

Shalom~