Temple Mount

Revelation 21:21-22

And the twelve gates were twelve perals each one of the gates was a single pearl. And the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass. I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.

As I stood with a group of Ultra-Orthodox Jews praying in front of the western wall of the Temple Mount I read this passage.

"Lord please bring the day when all your children will come to you and not some building to worship you in the complete revelation of your glory. In that day, we will no longer come to your temple. We will offer disatnt sacrifices that rise as a pleasant aromas. We will not bring these sacrifices to priests that will then mediate closer to your presence. Instead, we will bring our worship directly to you. Instead of marveling over the beauty of what we have created for you, the temple, we will marvel over the glory that is you."

Egypt

I just got back from Egypt. I went to Cairo, Giza, Luxor, Sharm Al-Sheik, and Mt. Sinai. Giza is a suburb of Cairo, so I got to see the pyramids. Luxor is the modern name for the ancient capital Thebes and is where all the tombs are (Like King Tuts tomb) and the capital temple, the temple of Karnak (the major Egyptian temple complex). Sharm Al-Sheik is just a tourist town on the bottom tip of the Sinai Peninsula known for its scuba diving. I just passed through there on my way to Mt. Sinai.

While I was in Cairo I got to see 11 mummies including the Pharoah who was most likely reigning during the exodus. Isn't that crazy? I saw the same guy Moses saw. Despite the poor pharoahs best efforts though, he was very much dead. I guess his soul never really came back to get him. Oh well, maybe next time right?

I thought it was kind of weird how in a couple ways these pagan Egyptian temples were similar to some of the Orthodox churches in Jerusalem. They both have a bunch of different little chapels that venerate some spirit like the chapel of Adam in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre or the Chapel of Osiris in the Temple Karnak. Both specified what the believer had to do in each room to bestow some sort of grace or godly blessing from the deity. The orthodox christians light a candle at this bench, recite a prayer at this wall, chant at this stone, wave incense at this altar. The Egyptians did a lot the same plus some sacrifices. I don't really know what to make of that observation, so do what you will with it. I just thought it was interesting.

Egypt has been one of the best parts of my trip so far. I have so many incredible stories from every part of the trip. So many people were so kind and hospitable to me. I talked to my friend Maged who is from the town of Zagazig which is near Cairo and told him my stories of Egypt. He said people someone could go to Egypt 10 times and not come back with the experiences I did.

The Lord gave me opportunity to learn the beliefs of Islam from and share the gospel with several devout Muslims and even some native Bedouins. This has been better than any class on Islam or world religions I could be taking right now. I can't wait to tell more of the stories, but I have to go for now. It's dinner time!

SCUBA

This is Eilat where I'm doing my SCUBA certification this week. Petra and SCUBA have made this week kind of a doing-the-stuff-I've-always-wanted-to-do week. Today I was 30ft under the sea 4inches away from coral and swimming with schools of these beautiful, iridescent silver fish. Tomorrow I will be 45ft down with even more beautiful creatures. These animals are so colorful and so elegant. They are the most beautiful things I have ever seen, but they weren't even accessible until the first underwater breather was invented in the 1950's. Before that, no one even knew about one of the most beautiful things God ever created. I was trying to figure out why God would keep so much of his glory to himself for so long, and I realized that part of God's glory is that his creation is so endless. No matter how far outward we push or how much we come to see and understand about the world around us, we will never reach the limits of the beauty of God's creation. What a disappointing day it would be if we ever did.

Petra

This is a photodocumentary of my time in Petra, Jordan. First, as I walked through the 10ft wide, 1km long, 100ft tall passage way into the city, I was excited. I was one of the first one's there, so I was walking through all alone. It was pretty cool. I'd never seen anything like this. A 1km passage way big enough for 1 cart sometimes 2 into a city. There was an aquaduct cut into the wall the whole distance too. You can see it to the right of my mouth. My right not yours.




As you walk through the corrider, you go around a corner and you start to see something ahead of you through the thin, little sliver of opening that is before you. All of the sudden the corridor ends and you are face in front of the treasury build in an area about 400m wide by 200m long. To the right of the treasury, te corridor continued briefly until opening up into the city. The city is surrounded by rugged, rugged desert mountains. There I stood amazed for quite awhile. The most amazing part was that the only thing behind these giant facades were rooms that were only about 5m tall by 12m wide (I'm getting used to the metric system. Temperature still throws me for a loop though). One room, that's it. I don't get it. Why all that work for one small room?



After I let myself be overwhelmed for awhile, I decided to get lost. I didn't really decide to I guess. It just happened that way. While this photo was not taking while I was lost, I think it portrays the accurate level of fear and confusion that I felt when I was lost at the Wadi bottom (Wadi's are the canyons that drain water from the top of a mountain range to the the plains outside of it. They are the easiest way to travel, but when you get to the bottom, you are so far down you can't see anything else around you) and walked into the pack of wild dogs.

I'm in Eilat now getting my SCUBA license, and then it's on to spear hunting for sharks in the Mediterranean.

The Lord is Faithful

So I'm in Israel. I don't know a single person. It's my first day out of the school dorms. It's Sunday. That's the context.

On Saturday night, I prayed two things: 1) I know that there is an incongruity between the hope that I have in Christ and the way it affects my life, so I prayed that God would introduce me to people that would help me mature and better put in to practice the things that I say I believe. 2) I prayed that the Lord would provide me with someone in Jerusalem to live with.

There are so many things that I never thought to ask the Lord for. It has been fun to ask for things and watch him provide. Saturday night, I was walking down Hebron Rd. and saw a sign on a fence that said 24/7 (and a bunch of other stuff in Hebrew on a sign next to it). I knew that was a sign that some houses of prayer have used in the past, so I decided to check it out. Sure enough the Lord, in all of the huge city of Jerusalem, directed me to a house of prayer. While I was there, I worshiped with some American's, some Jews, a Swedish guy, and a Canadian. I have never been a part of seeing God's presence in all nations. It's incredible. Coming together with random people from all over the world and being united through his Spirit has given me a small picture of the unity there will be in heaven. One of the American's I met will introduce me to a man on the Mt. of Olives who rents rooms in his house to believers traveling through the land. I hope that Moshe will have a room for me.

Then on Sunday, through a weird and equally unplanned series of events I ended up at an Arab speaking church and enjoyed worship there. Afterword, I was desperately trying to introduce myself to people and make friends. That got me nowhere. Then this guy walks up behind me (the first guy to introduce himself to me) and said, "Hi I'm Paul. Are you doing anything? Oh. Do you want to walk around the city for awhile?" So we hung out and eventually made our way to his church in Bethlehem where I met some incredible believers who I can tell will be good friends. Paul also offered me a room in his house. I really want to live in Jersualem not Bethlehem, but I know that I have someone that I can live with any time I need a place. Praise God. In the States, it's so easy not to need anything. In another country, it's a little different.

More Bathroom Girls

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In Shilo, guys have to wear ties when they use the latrine and girls have to wear bomb-proof helmets

Cisterns and Crypts

I just got back from an underground tunnel tour of the western wall of the Temple Mount. It's already late here, and I should go to bed, but here are a few photos. In the last 10 days I have stood in about 26 cisterns including one at Massada that held 1,000,000 gallons. The first dozen were pretty cool, but now I'm sick them and don't really ever want to see one again in my entire life. Here's a photo of a small Byzantine one in the city of Kursi (ancient Gergesa).







We've been to a lot of crypts as well. These are some bones we found in a locked up crypt also at Kursi. The crypt was pretty small compared to most that we've seen with only 6 burial containers. As Gabi Barkay says, (Gabi is a professor at Hebrew University and is one of Israel's leading archaeologists. He says he enjoys the classes he teaches at JUC better than his normal classes at Hebrew University because we tend to care more about the Bible) "There is a hole in every fence in Israel, and if there isn't one when you get there, there is when you leave."

I also should mention that I went Youth Hostel shopping with some people today. I would put pictures up from that experience, but I think they might make some people puke a little in the back of their throat. I think I found some decent ones though. I guess we'll all see soon enough!!!