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.

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

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 Cana – the site of Jesus’ first miracle in turning water into wine at a wedding. A reaffirmation of marriage vows was performed for all interested. This angel is on the outside of the church.

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 Galilean Village. It was a Roman occupied city and had “the four things always built by the Romans in their towns” (said the tour guide) a theater, an amphitheater, a gymnasium, and a hippodrome (race track). Extensive archaeological work has been done there, and it looked like some was still going on. The picture is part of a mosaic on the floor of a wealthy Roman citizen and was referred today as “The Mona Lisa of the Middle East.”

It turns out they also have some very familiar plant life over here.

Nazareth, our next destination, has become a major (possible the largest) Arab city in Israel. Nazareth during Jesus’ time was thought to have about 250 families in it. I’ve been surprised at how small the towns were thought to be and how close together they were. We saw, but didn’t stop at, Mary’s Well which was the only source of water for Nazareth during Jesus’ time. The Church of the Annunciation, pictured, is the non-Orthodox’s choice for where the angel spoke to Mary about becoming Jesus’ mother. The Orthodox church has another option. The local Muslim community seemed to be protesting to get a large Mosque built adjacent to the church, but the word is that local officials are not cooperating because it might hurt income from tourists.

We ended the day at Mount Tabor which was the site of Jesus’ transfiguration where the acoustics were awesome and Jim’s devotional was exceptional. The image I’m showing was taken inside of the church that was built in honor of the event and pictures Moses and Elijah with Jesus. Look it up – Matthew 17:1-8. (Also see Judges 4:1-22 for a less talked about bible story involving Mount Tabor and tent stakes.)








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

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.

Wednesday

Wednesday:
We started with a boat ride across the Sea of Galilee. This is not our boat. It also isn’t the 1st century boat they found in the 1980’s which some have speculated would be just like the boat Jesus and his disciples used, but it does look kind of like it.

Next stop was Mount Aribel, where Kenn blew his newly purchased Shofar. Quickly off to Bethsaida and some archaeological ruins. We went to the church at Tabgha, the site of Jesus’ miracle of feeding five thousand with five loaves and two fish (Matthew 5:13-21).

After that we headed off to the church at the Mount of the Beattitudes, which not surprisingly is the location associated with the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus proclaiming the Beattitudes.

Our last stop of the day was Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee. It was the base of Jesus’ early ministry. Within the ruins of the 4th century synagogue located there was an archaeological dig showing early foundations which might just be the synagogue referenced in Luke 7:5.

Capernaum is also the location where Jesus healed the paralytic who was lowered down through the roof. They think it happened at Peter’s mother-in-laws house (Mark 2:1-17).

Tuesday

Ok, getting on the internet here is not as easy as at home. I’ve become used being able to get on the internet anywhere and anytime. Access at the hotel costs 37 cents per minute and is slow. Yesterday I found a store front that offers internet access at a rate of $3 for 30 minutes, but you can’t use your own computer. So, I’m doing a pre-written/designed upload with quick overviews of Tuesday and Wednesday.

Tuesday:
The plane landed an hour late setting everything behind schedule for the tour, but we were so tired it didn’t really matter.
Joppa: Jonah ran here instead of going to Ninevah. They have a statue of the “big fish” that swallowed him (popularly called the whale). Also it’s the location of Simon the Tanner’s house where Peter had the vision in which the Lord told him “What god has made clean, you must not call profane.” (Acts 10:5-16).
We tried to get to Caesarea Maritima, but got caught in a traffic jam for about an hour and didn’t make it before it closed, so we went too…
Mount Carmel where Elijah and the prophets of Baal had their showdown (1 Kings 18).
Made it to the hotel at Tiberius on the shore of the Sea of Galilee for the night and the rest of the week.

On the way...

We're currently on layover in Newark, NJ. Our connecting plane is delayed by about 1 1/2 hours. Hopefully that will equate to a shorter flight to Tel Aviv tonight. We arrive Tuesday morning in Tel-Aviv and go straight into a full day of sight-seeing. I expect I'll be tired by the time we get to the hotel. With a little bit of luck I'll be able to post updates here throughout the trip.