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.