Touring the Holy Land is not easy, but it is good. One of the good things one receives from the tour is good physical conditioning--we all went home in better condition than we came, not only physically, but spiritually, and emotionally as well. This day, March 19, 2014, we spent all day on our feet, as much below ground and above it. We became very intimate with this city, learning and experiencing much of its history. If a person does not go to Jerusalem then he has not gone to the Holy Land!
We started the day at the Jaffa gate where the "tower of David" stands. It was originally built by Hezekiah some 2700 years ago, having been knocked down and rebuilt no less than 7 times since then. At the Jaffa Gate citadel we ascended to the ramparts, top of the wall, at walked up and down and over very irregular walkways to the Zion Gate. One gets a real sense of what it must have been like to defend the city from these walls that have withstood onslaughts for literally hundreds of years--there are bullet scars from 1967.
We descended the wall at the Zion Gate and walked to see David's Tomb at Mt. Zion. While there we encountered a great number of black folks from Nigeria. Keren told us the Nigerian government was paying the travel expenses for Christians to see Jerusalem and for Muslims to see another of the Islamic holy cities. David's Tomb is a traditional site, but it is next door to the upper room, site of the Last Supper and the site of the disciples being overwhelmed with the Holy Spirit. If those are actual places it makes Peter's statement in Acts 2:29: Brothers, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day, much more colorful. Peter says these words and gestures in the direction of David's tomb. But of Jesus, Peter declares: God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses to this fact (Acts 2:32). Praise the Lord!!! Jesus Christ has risen!
We walked the "Cardo" of Jerusalem, an 1800 year old shopping mall, still in use today. The Broad Wall is near the Cardo, and was the next place for us to visit. The BW is the remnant of the city fortifications dating to the eighth century b.c. built by Hezekiah. The wall is 22 feet thick.
We stopped for lunch. There were quite a lot of choices for lunch, but I kept it simple: pizza and a Coke Zero. After lunch I needed a bathroom break and it was here that we had our first experience with a unisex bathroom. Helen and I both looked straight ahead--no looking around! We have no pictures of that.
When we gathered after lunch, we walked to the City of David--the original Jerusalem. This was the Jerusalem that David captured from the Jebusites (2 Samuel 5:6-17). Some of our group walked through the wet Hezekiah water tunnel, but Helen and I walked through the dry section. Hezekiah's water tunnel is an amazing fete of engineering that no one today is quite sure how they accomplished it, but it did bring water into the city which was especially import during times of siege. Hezekiah was quite a builder and engineer. Check out 2 Kings 20:20 & 2 Chronicles 32:2-4 & 30.
At the end of Hezekiah's tunnel was the Pool of Siloam, and important place in the gospels (See the man born blind, John 9). Siloam was excavated in 2005. Since I was there in 2008, a walk way has been excavated that the pilgrims of Jesus' day would have taken from the pool of Siloam to the Temple. Back in the day it would have been an open-air walk, but now it is a long, narrow, rough, wet tunnel. It was a difficult walk for our seniors, but we imagined what it must have been like for pilgrims eagerly anticipating worship in the Temple of God.
We walked to the southern wall of the Temple Mount and walked the teaching steps of the temple where Jesus taught his disciples and the Apostles taught those first members of the infant church and preached their first sermons. We visited the holiest place of the Jewish people, The Western Wall and we were guided through the tunnels of the Western Wall, by a young man specifically trained to do this. He gave us a very good lecture on the construction and history of the Temple Mount and then asked if there were questions. I asked, not intending to cause trouble, what he thought about the different theories of the placement of the Temple on the Mount. He acted as if I had asked the stupidest question in the world. 'The only place the Temple could have been located,' he said, 'is where the Dome of the Rock now sits,' "There are no other choices!" I didn't say, though I should have, "I'm sorry, but there are some credible scholars that believe otherwise." I'm too easy.
Heim met us with the bus. We were glad to see him because we were tired, having walked about 6 miles that day.
Our Father's Love
Tom
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