About half of my Jordan group continued on with me for the Israel/Palestine portion of our tour, and we were joined by twenty-four new arrivals, so we pulled out of the hotel in Tel Aviv this morning with fifty-six. Paul Jennings (my roommate) offered the devotional, using the conversion of St. Paul to talk about discipleship and coming to know the the Lord and then read the passage in 3 Nephi 5:13, that begins, "I am a disciple of Jesus Christ . . ." We then sang "I Believe in Christ."
Caesarea Maritima
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| Our group standing in the remains of Herod's seaside palace |
As we drove to our first site,
Caesarea Maritima,
up the coast, we talked about some of the events that had happened in
Jaffa just south of Tel Aviv, the ill-dated trip of Jonah and especially
the vision of Peter regarding the Gentiles from Acts 10:9-18. After that
vision, Peter was summoned to Caesarea, which was then the capital of
the Roman province of Judea. There he preached to, converted, and
baptized the centurion Cornelius and his household (Acts 10:24-48).
Our local guide, Salah Siyam, could not join us until part way through the day, so a colleague, Tarik, assisted me in leading the group through Caesarea. It was built by Herod the Great as the main port of his kingdom,
which was a client state of the Romans at the time. He built it as a
great Greek and Roman-style city where he could enjoy "Gentile" culture
when he wanted to get away from the Jewish strictures of Jerusalem.
After serving as the Roman capital after the death of Herod and the
deposition of his son, Herod Archealus, it later became the capital of
the "Byzantine," or Greek-speaking, Christian, late Roman Judea. Later
it was captured by the Arabs, held by the Crusaders, and destroyed by
the Mamluks.
Much of this history was reviewed in a video presentation that our
group sat through after Tarik and I took them to the Roman theater,
where a grandson of Herod the Great, Agrippa II, had been struck dead by
the Lord (see Acts 12:20-23).
Next we walked down to the remains of Herod's palace, which was built on
a jetty out into the Mediterranean so that it had sea views on three
sides. When Judea was a province, this palace served as the headquarters
of the Roman governor, so we held our main devotional in the place of
the judgment hall of the Palace of Herod, talking about the trial of
Paul before Festus and Agrippa II (see Acts 25-26) and singing “I’ll Go
Where You Want Me to Go, Dear Lord.”
Next we quickly walked through some of the other ruins at Caesarea, such as the hippodrome or horsetrack. As we exited, I read from 2 Timothy about Paul's "finishing his course," or race, before his death.
As we drove out of Caesarea, we stopped at the ruins of the aqueducts
that Herod had built to bring water to his city from Mount Carmel in the
north.
Mount Carmel and Muhraqa
We then drove up to Mount Carmel, which overlooks the sea and the great
port city of Haifa on one side and the Jezreel Valley on the other. This
was the site of Elijah's legendary context with the priests of Ba'al as
recounted in 1 Kings 18, which is commemorated at the Monastery of
Muhraqa, which means "place of the burning" in Arabic. It was . It was
drizzling at Muraqah, so we sang, “Who’s On the Lord’s Side, Who?” and
then went right up on the roof of the monastery but could not see much
of the Jezreel Valley through the haze.
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| Under the statue of Elijah killing a priest of Ba'al |
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| The small chapel of the Carmelite monastery at Muhraqa |
From Muhraqa, we drove to the
Druze village of
Daliyat al-Karmel, where we had a lunch of falafel and schnitzel.
Megiddo
The wide Jezreel Valley is one of the most fertile parts of Israel,
ancient and modern. It separates the hills and mountains of Samaria to
the south from the hills of Galilee to the north, and it also connects
the coast with the Jordan Valley inland. As a result, it forms an
important crossroads, and almost every invasion of the the Holy Land in
antiquity came through it.
To control this strategic area, ancient Canaanites built a massive
fortress city at a place called Megiddo. King Solomon of the united
kingdom and later Omri and Ahab of the northern kingdom rebuilt Megiddo
as an important fortress. It is also mentioned in prophecies, such as
Revelation 16:14-21 where the Hebrew Har Megiddo, or "Mount of Megiddo," is incorrectly rendered in Greek as Armageddon.
After talking about the ultimate victory of the Lord over all evil and opposition, we sang, "Come Thou Glorious Day of Promise."
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| View of the strategic Jezreel Valley (or Valley of Esdraelon) where many battles have been fought through the millennia |
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| With the valley tel, or archaeological ruins, behind us |
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| Solomon and then northern kings such as Omri and Ahab used Megiddo as a military center for their chariots. In the remains of its many stables are the remnants of stone mangers, or feeding troughs. It's hard to imagine the baby Jesus being laid in a stone bed! |
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| Remains of ancient Megiddo |
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| The tunnel of the ancient water works, which are an anticipation of the more famous tunnel of Hezekiah in Jerusalem |
Nazareth
We then drove into Nazareth, which is the largest Israeli-Arab city in
the country. Like Bethlehem, it was historically a Christian majority
town, but the displacement of so many Palestinians after
the Nakbah (Arabic, "disaster") of 1948 changed its demographics, and there are now many Muslims residents.
In the city of Nazareth itself, we went first to the Greek Catholic
“Synagogue Church,” which is supposedly built over the site of the
original synagogue of Jesus' time. There we recalled the account of
Jesus in the synagogue from Luke 4:16-27 and sang, quite movingly,
“Jesus of Nazareth.”
Went to the Basilica of the Annunciation, where I first recounted the
annunciation to Mary in Luke 1 and then read from 1 Nephi 11 and talked about the importance of Mary not only as the mother of Jesus but also as one of the most powerful witnesses of her Son. After letting the
group go through the basilica and the Church of St. Joseph on their own, we met for a picture on north side before having a devotional about the role of Joseph as the guardian of Jesus and as a model for us in a shady area before letting people visit the church dedicated to him.
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| the grotto in the lowest level of the Basilica of the Annunciation.
It has the remains of the first Byzantine church and the later Crusader
church. |
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| The upper main sanctuary of the basilica, which is the largest Catholic church in the Middle East. |
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| I love this fresco of Mary and a grown Jesus comforting an aged Joseph before his death |
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| The interior of the Church of St. Joseph |
Our final stop was Mount Precipice, which by tradition is where the people of Nazareth
tried to throw Jesus down after he angered them in their synagogue (see
Luke 4:28-30). Looking at Mount Tabor across the valley, we talked about
the Transfiguration and sang “Jehovah, Lord of Heaven and Earth.”
Tiberias for the Night
From Nazareth, Rami drove us to Tverya, or Tiberias, the largest Israeli
city on the Sea of Galilee, where we checked in to the Leonardo Hotel.
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