Today is our final day with our tour guide; ami has been marvelous and taken us to many sites, not on our tour but that have been of great interest to us. We have valued his knowledge and understanding of the Christian story, and his wide network of people and places right throughout Israel. Today has been no exception!
We visited the site of the house of Caiaphas the high priest of Jesus day, the site where Jesus was bought and housed as a prisoner before standing before the council. It was also the place where Peter denied the Lord three times.
Today it is a beautiful church and monastery: most of Jerusalem has for centuries built on top of older ruins, and this place is no exception. There is a clear line of sight and ancient trail between the Mt of Olives where He was arrested, and this place on Mt Zion. Underneath the church are cisterns and what I would call dungeons where prisoners were kept, they are plain to see. Prisoners would be dropped into these places through a hole just big enough to fit through and about 10-22 meters of the ground, there would be no escaping!
In the courtyard is a statue of Peter denying he knew Jesus. I have uploaded it in the albums, take a look at it, I think it is fantastic.
After leaving this place we had a short drive to the resting place if King David, Israel's greatest and best known King. It is housed in a church that was taken over by the Turks and changed into a mosque. When this happened all over Jerusalem the Moslems destroyed the beautiful frescos and mosaics, and statues, taking away the beauty if these wonderful places. David's tomb is no different, if this place were in Australia it would be condemned!
On top of this place the early crusaders built a chapel that suffered the same fate under the Turkish rule, but what is interesting is that small chapel is/could be built over the place of the upper room where Jesus had his last meal with his disciples. As we sat there we could imagine that this was the place, again just across the valley from the Mt of Olives and in the resting place of King David.
Pilgrims from many countries were here too, they each have come on this journey to see the place and experience it firsthand; but! Some pilgrims can be very rude to others, Christian grace goes out the window in order to see the sights, pushing, shoving, and speaking over you in the hopes you will just go away and leave them space to do what they have come to do: we are over the rudeness and being push around, but remember that Jesus too had to put up with much more than we have , and so we will continue, by His grace to smile and be nice to those who are not.
We visited the church of Dormition, the church where it is said that Mary fell asleep and was taken bodily to heaven to be with her son Jesus. There were many devout pilgrims at this site.
The next stop was the garden tomb, Gordon's Calvary. What a beautiful place!
It is here that we found Skull hill talked about in the gospels, the place where Jesus was crucified between two robbers. And also not far away the tomb where Joseph of Aramathea laidJesus after taking him down from the cross. Why do we have two places claiming to be the sites of crucifixion and resurrection? Well it is because no one knows exactly the place, 2000 years have past, many conquerors have come and destroyed or rebuilt over old ruins, and these sacred places have been forgotten or lost. But as we stood in this place and heard the story about it plus why it is believed to be the actual site, it all began to make much more sense. This plus an assurance in our own spirits from God makes us believe that this place is a more likely site than the holy sepulcher (spelt it right today!)
We loved the Garden Tomb and will come back here again before leaving the holy land on Tuesday morning.
Ami took us to an Arabic restaurant today as all Jewish businesses are closed because of Shabbath (Sabbath), and very nice food it was too!
Our final destination on this tour was the beautiful Benedictine monastery in Abu Goshen, or Emmaus.
This place is in the vicinity of the old Emmaus but no one really knows. But it is a beautiful place and you can feel the Spirit of God moving in this place as you wander around this ancient crusader built church. In the lower parts of the church, underneath the main sanctuary, is a musty and damp cellar, quite big in fact, a place where water was drawn from the huge cistern.
As we reflected on this place and the sorrowful journey away from Jerusalem we thought about our leaving Israel and continuing our journey to Croatia and Italy. It struck me that The lord would meet us and join us on this journey and reveal the secrets of the Gospel and himself as we journey, just as he did to the disciples so many years ago as they journeyed to Emmaus.
Luke 24:13 Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem.
14 They were talking with each other about everything that had happened.
15 As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them;
16 but they were kept from recognizing him.
17 He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?”