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!!!

The South

I just got back from a 3 day trip to the South, and as of tomorrow, I'll be on a 4 day trip to the north-Galilee. The point of the trip south was first to show us the four radically different types of land that span Israel from East to West (desert wasteland, hill country, lowlands, coastal plain equipped with sand dunes and beeches). The second point was to show us how that geography shaped the history of Israel. We visited modern Sataf (A perfect example of what a highland village would have looked like with its ancient farm terracing, foot paths, cisterns, and steep hills. 1 Kings 4:20), Beth-Shamesh (Judges 1:27; 13-16), the Mediterranean Sea (Coastal Plain), Azekah and the Elah Valley (1 Sam 17), Lacish (2 Kings 18:13ff), Beer Sheva (Gen 12-20. Abraham traveled from the North to this land in the South before going on to Egypt), Arad (Desert Wasteland), Masada, The Dead Sea, En Gedi (1 Sam 23:28ff), and Qumran. I think there is one that I'm forgetting, but I can't remember what it is. Tomorrow we head to the North to go through Galilee, the sea of Galilee and all kinds of cities up that direction.

I don't have much time so I just wanted to up date where I had been, throw down a couple pictures and make a few comments.

I visited the temple mount and the dome of the rock yesterday on our free day. It was really interesting to see the differenct way the Muslim culture treats their 3rd most holy site--the Al-Aqsa mosque which is on the temple mount next to the dome of the rock. It is actually more holy to the Muslims than the mosque inside the dome. I think the picture above does a good job of showing how much trash and debri there is all over the temple platform. The place looked like a junk yard. The most distrubing thing about it is the blatant disregard for the history of the sight.

Much of the debri is from a digging project to make a new descending staircase from the top of the temple platform into an underground mosque that happened several years ago. The new entrance is massive and displaced tons of dirt across several levels of the temple mount. All of which was done via buldozer without the knowledge or participation of the Jewish Antiquities Department. The dirt was then dumped in a pile outside the city. In doing so they slashed and burned through centuries of Jewish history that is now lost forever. Although archaeologists are now sifting through the trash pile and are finding things, most of it is probably destroyed beyond value.

While it might not have always been the case, I think that Jews and Christians both appreciate understanding people and their history enough that if we were to be in the possession of the pinnacle of Muslim holy sites, we would not destroy it the way the temple is now being destroyed. If Mecca had been destroyed, and the Jews were now in possession of it, they would not buldoze it. They would excavate and preserve the interpretation of the site just like they have done with ancient Canaanite and Philistine cities.

After our trip to the temple mount, we traveled through stone quarries that open up under about half of the Old City. Most think this is where the stone for the temple came from. It is incredible. Huge caverns underneath the city, and you can see where the blocks were cut from floor to ceiling. There are even secret tunnels at the end that say keep out. Of course we obeyed the signs. After that we went to Tel-Aviv. It was cool. Especially the floating orange tree.

And let's end it with a picture of me at En-Gedi.

The Wilderness

Deut. 32:9ff

For the LORD'S portion is His people; Jacob is the allotment of His inheritance. "He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of a wilderness; He encircled him, He cared for him, He guarded him as the pupil of His eye. Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that hovers over its young, He spread His wings and caught them, He carried them on his pinions. The LORD alone guided him, and there was no foreign god with him.

This is a picture of me in the wilderness spoken of in this chapter and the wilderness frequented by many people throughout scripture. David fled to these hills and the early disciples were banished to them (Heb 11:36). Though it is not the exact wilderness the Israelites wandered for 40 years, the wilderness they spent time in is just as barren.

Just as the Spirit of the Lord hovered over the wasteland (same Hebrew word as "wilderness" in Deut. 32) of creation, he hovers over the LORD's people like an eagle providing for its young, taking care of their needs. One of the lessons God sent the Israelites into the wilderness to learn was to recognize that he alone was their provider. He took them to a place where it would be physically impossible to support the 1-2 million people of the wanderings and by supporting them, prove his power. If our God can support 2 million people in a desert wilderness like this one, how much power he must also have to transform our lives, free us from the curse, and make us able to do the impossible. As I live my life, I cannot wait to see the things God will do to provide for his people.

Funny Video

I've only got a second, so I'll just post a funny video. The picture caught my eye from all the way across the basilica. Yes, it is pretty creepy.

Pools of Bethesda

This is me with a monk serving at St. Anne's. The site was a crusader church built on a compound that contains the pools of Bethesda spoken of in John 5. To help you read the passage with a little more understanding, the pools are very deep and it is usually about a 20-30 foot drop from the walkways to the pools. As the first waters from the early rains began to fill the pool, every year the water would "stir." Traditions taught that the first person to enter the pools when the water stirred would be healed. For a lame man, the only way to beat the other people would be to throw yourself over the edge and down the the 20-30 drop or to have someone carry you down the long narrow stairs. This is what the man was speaking of when he said there was no one to help him into the pool. Even if there would have been someone, a person who had other ailments than being lame would always get there before him. Realize, that if he would have thrown himself over the edge in hopes of being the first to touch the water, he would have run the risk of still being beaten to it somehow which would make him a cripple in a deep pool that only had one small staircase entrance. He would sink like a rock and die. That is why he chose to stay by the wall completely hopeless.

The meaning of the story is tied up in the irony that the simple man who was blind could now see, both physically and spiritually. The teachers, in contrast, could always see physically but had no vision of spiritual things. They were claiming that they were teachers not in need of any instruction while the blind man was in need of help but he could not see where it would come from. The pride of the Pharisees stopped them from depending on God while the blind man had no other choice. The Pharisees took their vision for granted and came to see their power as their own. The blind man had no power and accepted it. God is our provider who has come in flesh to heal us and give us power to do more than we are capable. It is in these things that his power is most evident and that he is most glorified. If God is our provider, our focus should continually be on our dependency on him rather than our own strength. I know it how vague it is just to say "depend on God." It is more difficult for us in a time when we don't have many needs, but we must find what they are and take the time to figure out how to allow ourselves to depend on God to provide for us.

Arrival part II

Frankfurt has much cooler girls on their bathroom signs. They don't have the same old boring long skirts that American Bathroom Sign Girls have. They have short skirts that stick way out there. And everyone says that Germans are boring. Correction: If we compare bathroom sign girls, Americans are much more boring.

Hezekiah

I know this is hard to read through with all the typos, but I only have a few minutes to write whenever I do get the chance, so bear with me.

They won't all be this long I promise!!!! I wish I could share everything I'm learning, but I don't think anyone would want to read the 5 or so pages of non-sensical chicken scratch I've been taking at every lecture, so I'll just share some highlights.

2 Chronicles 32:1-5

"Now when Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come and that he intended to make war on Jerusalem, he decided with his officers and his warriors to cut off the supply of water from the springs which were outside the city, and they helped him. So many people assembled and stopped up all the springs and the stream which flowed through the region (look at the next verse to see what this meanse), saying, "Why should the kings of Assyria come and find abundant water?" And he took courage and rebuilt all the wall that had been broken down and erected towers on it, and built another outside wall and strengthened the Millo in the city of David, and made weapons and shields in great number."

2 Kings 20: 20

"As for the other events of Hez. reign...he made the pool and the tunnel by which he brought water into the city."

The spring Gihon, Jerusalm's main source of water, is located outside of the walls in a valley next to the city. Knowing that the city would soon be under siege, Hezekiah extended the wall to cover the spring and tunnelled the spring underneath the city into a pool in the heart of Jerusalem. Their water was safe. Hezekiah built the wall so that all who fled the destruction of Samaria in the North 15 years earlier could be protected from the attack. Their people were fortified. Nonetheless, Isaiah was still pleading for Hezekiah to repent before the city was destroyed.

The reoccuring theme of this Blog will be how God gave the Israelites a piece of land that geographically, pollitically, and economically would teach the people to depend on God as their provider and protector. The things Hezekiah was doing to fortify the city were good things to do, but they were laughable in comparison to the might of the Assyrian army. Isaiah was calling Hezekiah to repent of trying to ward of the Assyrians in his own power and to recognize the weakness of Israel. In Israel's weakness (and yes, Israel was weak country) God's hand is shown to be strong. Only when Hezekiah saw the Assyrians encamped on the high ground all around Jerusalem did he realize his foolishness. He repented, admitted his dependency on the Lord, asked for the Lord to save the people, and the Lord heard him and destroyed the army of Sennacherib.

The Holy Spirit is our Isaiah convicting us of our pride, telling us to depend on God. Too often we are like Hezekiah and ignore the Spirit as we struggle to defend ourselves. We do not live in a land like Israelites that forces us in every way to depend on God. As Americans, we are more like the Assyrians, the mighty empire that did not need God because it already was more powerful than anyone else. If not our country, what things has God given us in our lives to teach us to depend on him?

Exciting Part:

We got to wade through Hezekiah's tunnel today. It was half-filled with water, only about as wide as my shoulders, about 5ft high some places and 20ft others, and a little over a half mile long deep under the hill of the City of David. No lights, the water was freezing, and the water was rushing by your legs. It was the main source of water from Hezekiah to Jesus and I got to walk all the way through it! (It was king of like caving Rebecca) We got to see the wall that Hezekiah built to fortify the city. We got to see the part of the Siloam pool (where Jesus healed a blind man as well as the pool that the tunnell empties into) which has just recently been found, walk on original Roman roads, walk along the city wall, and eat horrible food in the cafeteria. The school will let me store my bags here when I travel, so I think I will just rent some automobile and travel to hostels when I'm finished with the class.

Last night a couple of us walked around the city at night. It's unreal. It's like a whole different world or something.

Arrival

Well I made it. I had a lay over in Frankfurt from about 1am to 4am Eastern Time which I planned to spend sleeping. However, there was a George Mason student flying to Tel Aviv too who I was able to share the gospel with for the whole 3 hours. She was not able to understand salvation through grace. Since the gospel was very new to her, pray that the Lord will begin to convict Rebekah of her need to be saved from her sin.

In this blog, I want to mainly give insights into the scriptures that I interact with along my trip. I hope that it will not be just an update of where I am for all those who might be worried about me (Mom), but that it will be a tool you go to for better understanding the Word of God. Of course there will also be pictures and stories of the things I do like how I've already waded through the flooded portion of Hesekiah's tunnel deep underneath the city walls and out into the hillsides. Pictures will come later.

Got to go to class. Talk to you all soon.