We made it to Jerusalem late yesterday. After the long and slow border crossing, we got to see Jericho before heading to the hotel.
We had another one of the now famous enormous days today. Out the door at 7:30 a.m. and back in at 7:30 p.m. – just in time for a late dinner. We started the morning at the Temple Mount looking at the outside of the Muslim mosque that now stands where the Jewish Temple once stood. Next we went through the Old Town to the Wailing Wall and prayed. It was very moving to be praying with/near the local Jewish people. It gave me a great sense of how gracious God was in grafting in us Gentile types into His family. Then we were off to the Mount of Olives and the Church of the Ascension – where Jesus ascended to heaven. From there we went to the Church of the Pater Nostre – a church built to commemorate Jesus teaching his disciples the Lord’s Prayer. After that we walked down the route Jesus would have walked on Palm Sunday. It’s a steep and curvy road that looks out across the Kidron (sp?) Valley onto Jerusalem. While it sounds like a long way, it really isn’t. Imagine two large hills across from each other and you’ve got a more accurate image than any two mountains I can think of. We kept walking down the hill until we arrived at “The Sanctuary of the Dominius Flevit.” I thought the Latin stood for “The Lord Wept,” but I also thought it was where Jesus looked out over Jerusalem and 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. 38 Look, your house is left to you desolate. 39 For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” (Matthew 23:37-39). Hmmm…I’ll have to do more research at some point. From there we went to the Garden of Gethsemane. It was incredible to see the place in which Jesus did so much praying and was betrayed.
And that was all before lunch.
After lunch we saw the House of Caiphas and a dungeon Jesus was likely lowered into on the night of his betrayal. We passed by King David’s tomb which was a short distance from the location Upper Room where Jesus shared the Last Supper with his disciples. It is also thought to be where the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost. The room itself no longer exists but is now a part of a larger church/chapel that also has been a mosque. It seems like everything has been both a church/chapel and a mosque around here.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
2nd Tuesday
I decided I’d go ahead and try and post today. I’m not going to attempt many photos from here. Maybe when we get to Jerusalem tomorrow evening I will be able to edit these posts if the internet will be reliable and a more reasonable price.
Today was all about the ancient city of Petra and hiking. We left the hotel about 8:30 a.m. on foot. We just got back and it’s 2:30 p.m. There is a lot of speculation about how many miles we hiked. Some say 4 or 5 miles. Others guess it was more like 7. Regardless of the distance it was all hills, stairs, wind and sand. (At least there wasn’t any rain which we had been told was coming about noon.)
Petra is a city that was carved out of a sandstone river bed. The original inhabitants dammed up the river and diverted it in another direction. Imagine the Grand Canyon with a city in it. What I can’t figure out is where the river is today. From what I have seen of it, this area is just desert with no river anywhere.
The most famous part of Petra is the treasury. You may have seen it in Indiana Jones – The Last Crusade (the one with Sean Connery). It is a huge carved edifice in the stone wall. The original inhabitants believed in the kind of an afterlife that lead them to spend most of their efforts on their tombs and according to the guide most of the carved out caves are tombs.
Petra also has Roman ruins (I’m beginning to think that everywhere over here has Roman ruins) and ruins from the Byzantine period including a church carved into the stone wall. These days Petra is inhabited by tourists and vendors selling trinkets, jewelry and “authentic” coins. Oddly the coins are in excellent condition for being thousands of years old and their price drops very, very rapidly if you start negotiating. (No guys, I didn’t buy any.)
Tomorrow we are back on the bus and headed to Jerusalem. 4+ hours on the bus if we go back the same way plus the border crossing.
Today was all about the ancient city of Petra and hiking. We left the hotel about 8:30 a.m. on foot. We just got back and it’s 2:30 p.m. There is a lot of speculation about how many miles we hiked. Some say 4 or 5 miles. Others guess it was more like 7. Regardless of the distance it was all hills, stairs, wind and sand. (At least there wasn’t any rain which we had been told was coming about noon.)
Petra is a city that was carved out of a sandstone river bed. The original inhabitants dammed up the river and diverted it in another direction. Imagine the Grand Canyon with a city in it. What I can’t figure out is where the river is today. From what I have seen of it, this area is just desert with no river anywhere.
The most famous part of Petra is the treasury. You may have seen it in Indiana Jones – The Last Crusade (the one with Sean Connery). It is a huge carved edifice in the stone wall. The original inhabitants believed in the kind of an afterlife that lead them to spend most of their efforts on their tombs and according to the guide most of the carved out caves are tombs.
Petra also has Roman ruins (I’m beginning to think that everywhere over here has Roman ruins) and ruins from the Byzantine period including a church carved into the stone wall. These days Petra is inhabited by tourists and vendors selling trinkets, jewelry and “authentic” coins. Oddly the coins are in excellent condition for being thousands of years old and their price drops very, very rapidly if you start negotiating. (No guys, I didn’t buy any.)
Tomorrow we are back on the bus and headed to Jerusalem. 4+ hours on the bus if we go back the same way plus the border crossing.
2nd Monday
Well, my internet connection tonight is pretty poor as a whole. I tried it out earlier because I had heard it was bad, and the person who told me was right. It’s extremely slow and I can only get to half of my e-mail. I suspect the whole hotel here in Petra is sharing one slow connection. I guess I’ll try and post this from Jerusalem on Wednesday night.
A lot of driving today. We started the day in Ammon(sp?), Jordan with a trip to the local antiquities museum.
Just down the road from there is the site where it is thought that Uriah the Hittite, Batheshba’s first husband, was killed in the siege of the city following King David’s order. It was amazing to look out over the valley and imagine the battle (2 Samuel 11:1ff). More Roman ruins in the form of an ancient church and a neighborhood and a very wealthy man’s house were across the street.
From there we traveled to the Jordan River to the site where Jesus was baptized. The desert approaching the Jordan on the path we traveled was certainly the most desolate place I have ever seen. It makes the West Texas desert landscape look like a plush garden. Imagining the Israelites wandering around through that type of desert gives an awe of how rugged they had to be and how gracious God’s provision must have been.
The Jordan isn’t a river on the scale of the Mississippi. At maybe 30-40 feet across one could very easily walk across to the Israeli side. However, the armed Jordanian guards, while not menacing served as more than enough deterrent. Our leader, Dr. Jim Jackson, talked about how John’s baptism wasn’t Christian baptism but was a baptism of repentance which was really quite common in the Jewish community which expected you to be baptized every time you sinned. Jesus’ participation wasn’t because he needed to repent, note John’s hesitancy to baptize him, but was a matter of doing the right thing for the mission he was undertaking. The scriptures sure seem to bear this out. I’m going to have to do some reflecting on the implications of all that.
Matthew 4:1 records that after his baptism Jesus was driven out into the desert. I really wish I could load up some pictures today of the utter lifelessness just beyond the river valley. I saw it just a few hours ago and am still having trouble believing it.
After the Jordan our lunch plans took us to the lowest point on earth – the Dead Sea. It’s roughly 1300 feet below sea level and has a salt concentration that is about four times that of the Gulf of Mexico and other ocean water. We didn’t float in it today – that’s for later.
We moved on to Mount Nebo/Mount Pisgah where Moses was allowed to look out onto the promised land the Israelites were about to enter. He died on that mountain having led the Israelites for 40 years through the desert without going into the land itself. See Deuteronomy 34:1-12 for the story of his death and Numbers 20:1-13 for the reason he wasn’t allowed to enter. Reflecting on his presence there and the deaths we from time to time experience over things we have poured ourselves into but are not allowed to bring to full completion for one reason or another was powerful and profound.
Four hours of bus travel later (ughhh!) we arrived in Petra.
Tomorrow we are supposed to walk 1.5 miles each way to the historic Petra treasury (the carved rock façade in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”). It is also supposed to rain tomorrow. It promises to be interesting.
A lot of driving today. We started the day in Ammon(sp?), Jordan with a trip to the local antiquities museum.
Just down the road from there is the site where it is thought that Uriah the Hittite, Batheshba’s first husband, was killed in the siege of the city following King David’s order. It was amazing to look out over the valley and imagine the battle (2 Samuel 11:1ff). More Roman ruins in the form of an ancient church and a neighborhood and a very wealthy man’s house were across the street.
From there we traveled to the Jordan River to the site where Jesus was baptized. The desert approaching the Jordan on the path we traveled was certainly the most desolate place I have ever seen. It makes the West Texas desert landscape look like a plush garden. Imagining the Israelites wandering around through that type of desert gives an awe of how rugged they had to be and how gracious God’s provision must have been.
The Jordan isn’t a river on the scale of the Mississippi. At maybe 30-40 feet across one could very easily walk across to the Israeli side. However, the armed Jordanian guards, while not menacing served as more than enough deterrent. Our leader, Dr. Jim Jackson, talked about how John’s baptism wasn’t Christian baptism but was a baptism of repentance which was really quite common in the Jewish community which expected you to be baptized every time you sinned. Jesus’ participation wasn’t because he needed to repent, note John’s hesitancy to baptize him, but was a matter of doing the right thing for the mission he was undertaking. The scriptures sure seem to bear this out. I’m going to have to do some reflecting on the implications of all that.
Matthew 4:1 records that after his baptism Jesus was driven out into the desert. I really wish I could load up some pictures today of the utter lifelessness just beyond the river valley. I saw it just a few hours ago and am still having trouble believing it.
After the Jordan our lunch plans took us to the lowest point on earth – the Dead Sea. It’s roughly 1300 feet below sea level and has a salt concentration that is about four times that of the Gulf of Mexico and other ocean water. We didn’t float in it today – that’s for later.
We moved on to Mount Nebo/Mount Pisgah where Moses was allowed to look out onto the promised land the Israelites were about to enter. He died on that mountain having led the Israelites for 40 years through the desert without going into the land itself. See Deuteronomy 34:1-12 for the story of his death and Numbers 20:1-13 for the reason he wasn’t allowed to enter. Reflecting on his presence there and the deaths we from time to time experience over things we have poured ourselves into but are not allowed to bring to full completion for one reason or another was powerful and profound.
Four hours of bus travel later (ughhh!) we arrived in Petra.
Tomorrow we are supposed to walk 1.5 miles each way to the historic Petra treasury (the carved rock façade in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”). It is also supposed to rain tomorrow. It promises to be interesting.
1st Sunday
Quite a day today. We left Tiberias, Israel this morning and crossed into Jordan. It took a little more than two hours to get through the border crossing. Off the bus and through passport control in Israel. Back on the bus. Off the bus to ensure we had paid our exit tax. Back on the bus. Stay on while passports are checked at the Jordan border. Off at passport control. Take your luggage through security. On the bus and away.
The Jordan countryside is rugged and largely undeveloped. It wasn’t hard to imagine it as it was in Jesus’ time. There weren’t that many buildings, and you could see numerous caves that could easily have housed families.
Our main stop around noon was quite a surprise. I had never heard of Jerash before and wasn’t overly thrilled to be seeing some more Roman ruins. Boy was I wrong. The ruins of the city were incredible. Several of the more traveled members of the group said there were significantly more ruins to see here than in Rome (with the exception of the Coliseum). Jerash may be one of the top two most complete Roman city ruins left in the world. Haidrain's gate. The Temple of Zeus. The Temple of Artemis. The Cardo Maximus (the main north-south road). The main east-west road (I don’t remember it’s name). The theater. The hippodrome. STUNNING!
There is a drought in Jordan. The tour guide said they should have already received 50% of their annual rainfall but are very behind this year. Crops look, from the bus, to be doing well enough, but the concern is for water to drink and use later this year. The tour guide said they currently have water pumped/turned on to their house every seven days and if the rainfall doesn’t catch up it will likely be every ten days this summer. He was concerned.
Our religious stop was at the Jabbok river where Jacob wrestled the angel. It was not a beautiful place physically. People have thrown lots and lots of trash on the banks of the river. The river wasn’t large, maybe 20 yards across and not more than a few feet at its deepest points. Dr. Jackson read the Genesis 32:22-32 passage, reflected on our own wrestling with God and the fact that our future can be different than the past, and we shared in Communion.
The Jordan countryside is rugged and largely undeveloped. It wasn’t hard to imagine it as it was in Jesus’ time. There weren’t that many buildings, and you could see numerous caves that could easily have housed families.
Our main stop around noon was quite a surprise. I had never heard of Jerash before and wasn’t overly thrilled to be seeing some more Roman ruins. Boy was I wrong. The ruins of the city were incredible. Several of the more traveled members of the group said there were significantly more ruins to see here than in Rome (with the exception of the Coliseum). Jerash may be one of the top two most complete Roman city ruins left in the world. Haidrain's gate. The Temple of Zeus. The Temple of Artemis. The Cardo Maximus (the main north-south road). The main east-west road (I don’t remember it’s name). The theater. The hippodrome. STUNNING!
There is a drought in Jordan. The tour guide said they should have already received 50% of their annual rainfall but are very behind this year. Crops look, from the bus, to be doing well enough, but the concern is for water to drink and use later this year. The tour guide said they currently have water pumped/turned on to their house every seven days and if the rainfall doesn’t catch up it will likely be every ten days this summer. He was concerned.
Our religious stop was at the Jabbok river where Jacob wrestled the angel. It was not a beautiful place physically. People have thrown lots and lots of trash on the banks of the river. The river wasn’t large, maybe 20 yards across and not more than a few feet at its deepest points. Dr. Jackson read the Genesis 32:22-32 passage, reflected on our own wrestling with God and the fact that our future can be different than the past, and we shared in Communion.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Saturday
A busy day and I'm likely going to run out of internet time before I get too much done on here, but I'm going to try and put up something. We are headed to Amman, Jordan tomorrow and Petra, Jordan for two nights after that. I don't have a clue what the internet situation will be there.
Today...
Tel Megiddo - Megiddo valley is where Revelation talks about the final battle happening. It's known more commonly as Armagedon. The "tel" or hill that is there is the remains of some 26 conquering, destroying, building cycles. Finding that out I can begin to see why this desolate but beautiful place would the site of the final battle in which good wins out decisively and for all time in John's apocalypse. (It was cloudy today.)
We next went to Caesarea Maritma (Acts 10:1-46). In a truly unfortunate decision, I decided to leave my camera on the bus to tour the location of the ancient Roman ruins in the national park. Major mistake. It was GORGEOUS! Hopefully I can grab some of the pics of others later. I did manage to snap some photos of the local aquaduct at a brief photo stop after we left the park.
We also went to Haifa and Accho/Acre/Acko/Ptolemais.
More later if I get internet connectivity again.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Friday
Well, I'm still having some issues mastering this Blogger control panel. Hopefully I'll be able to figure out how to go back and clean up some of the previous posts. Tonight Sabbath (Shabbat) has begun. The town we are staying in, Tiberius, has almost completely shut down. The hotel has filled up with numerous Jews who we have been told check into hotels so as not to have to do all the pre-cooking required for Sabbath and to have everything they need accessible to them without having to break any of the Sabbath laws. (Currently there is some loud singing happening down the hallway. I don’t know what they are singing but they are having a good time.) The internet storefront I was using has closed for Shabboth, so I've bought some in-room internet access to be in contact.
We started the day with a trip to
We drove by Jonah’s tomb and could only see it from a distance as a Mosque has been built over the site.
Next stop was Tzipori or Zippori or Sepphoris (it turns out that there are numerous ways to spell almost every town’s name over here – Hebrew, Arabic, and English) where we saw the ruins of a 
It turns out they also have some very familiar plant life over here.
We ended the day at 
This is my favorite picture of the day. I was trying to take a picture of the artist’s rendering of the synagogue at Zippori and caught Jim S. in as well. No, he wasn’t posing.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Thursday
Thursday:
Not as much of a biblical tour today as much as a historical tour.
We started the day driving to the Golan Heights and taking a Jeep tour of a part of the area specifically running along the Jordan River. If I understood correctly, this marker was a part of the line dividing the British and French division of the land before 1948 when Israel came back into existence as a country. Since that time, the Golan Heights has been a heavily contested piece of land finally coming into Israeli control in the 6 days war in 1968.
There are still remembrances of the fighting. (The tour guide said that the Syrian mines gave out after about 30-40 years, but Israel’s policy was to leave the land alone for 100 years just to be safe.)
After our tour, we made our way up Mount Bental, a volcanic mountain in the demilitarized zone, which gave us a view of Damascus. There was a military bunker at the top of the mountain which showed obvious use in combat. However, at the entrance, were a number of metal sculptures which seemed to be made of metal from scrapped pieces of war machinery. (I’m going with the beating your swords into plowshares theme here.)
Kenn had some trouble with this one.
We went from there to Caesarea Philippi, a city which had a large pagan component and was the northern-most point visited by Jesus and his disciples. Matthew 16:13-28 records one of Jesus’ interaction with his disciples and Peter’s confession of Jesus as being the Messiah occurring there.
We finished the day with a tour of a Kibbutz and a service of remembrance of baptism.
Each day we are returning to the hotel in the evening. Tomorrow that will put us back after Sabbath begins at sundown. Having already experienced so many internet access problems, I’m betting there is no internet store front access to be had tomorrow evening.
Each day we are returning to the hotel in the evening. Tomorrow that will put us back after Sabbath begins at sundown. Having already experienced so many internet access problems, I’m betting there is no internet store front access to be had tomorrow evening.
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