The last two days of the our trip have been action-packed, so much so that my first time to really be back in my room last night was at 11:00pm, so I wasn’t able to post anything yesterday.

But when we leave Israel tomorrow, the four of us will leave with full hearts.

Before we leave, though, I wanted to leave you with a few images from the past two days that have moved me the most.

Yesterday, and then again today, we visited Gallicantu, otherwise known as Caiphas’ House.  It was here where Jesus was drug up stone steps after crossing the Kidron Valley, given a mock trial, beaten, abused, and mocked.  And it was here where He would have spent the night, waiting for the early morning hours to be taken to Pontius Pilate who would condemn Him not just to death but to death on a cross.

Since holding cells did not exist in the time of Jesus and Caiphas, prisoners would have been lowered down into an abandoned cistern to spend time in the dank, dark, sludge-filled floor below.  Since pottery was used to draw water from cisterns, broken shards of pottery would have laid in broken bits on the floor of the pit as well, creating as uncomfortable, dark, and depressing of an environment as one can imagine.

To add insult to injury, Gallicantu was also the place where Peter denied Christ three times in the courtyard of Caiphas, the high priest, while Jesus was on trial inside.  When Jesus walked out, He looked straight at Peter as the rooster crowed, and Peter fled the scene of his betrayal and wept.

So not only was Jesus suffering physically in the dark, cold pit, He was suffering emotionally as well.  He was, in every sense of the word, alone.  Even His closest friends had fled, and one had even gone so far to deny Him.

Two thousand years later, there is a hush in the stone pit walls of Gallicantu that still contains holiness.  It is traditional to read Psalm 88 surrounded by the stone walls, and a podium holds up the words of the Psalm for all pilgrims and passerbys to read in at least ten different languages.

And that’s what He did there in Bethesda.  Our guide reminded us that when David conquered the city of Jerusalem and took it from the Jebusites, he cursed the lame and the blind in the city saying that they should not be able to enter (II Samuel 8:5).

But Jesus thinks differently.  Instead of cursing the blind and the lame, He heals them.  In fact, the two specific people He heals in the Gospels within the city limits of Jerusalem are…you guessed it…the blind man and the lame man.

Does our God miss anything?  Do any details ever escape His notice?  No.  Not one.  He didn’t come just to reverse the curse generally.  He came to reverse it specifically.  For all those who cannot see and cannot walk and have lived life on a rotting mat by a stagnant pool, He comes.

Sometimes, I forget that.  Sometimes in the rut of human life and every day life, I forget the sweeping story I am in, the part that Jesus played, and the part that He asks me to play.  I forget where we are in church history and in world history.  I forget how privileged we are to stand on this side of the cross and see things the patriarchs longed to see.  I forget that for over a thousand years, the church used the Temple Mount as dumping grounds for their garbage and forgot that God’s promises to Israel were still standing.  I forget what a miracle and mystery it is that Israel became a state again in 1948 for the first time in 2000 years and prophecies in the Bible are being fulfilled at a rapid rate.  I forget that while the Gospel, the rule and the reign of Christ, is for all peoples, the pace of taking of that Gospel to all peoples has been measured in inches for hundreds of years, but in the last fifty years, the measurement has started to take place in miles.  I forget that by the year 2025, every last remaining people group on the face of the earth will have some portion of the Bible begun in their language.  In other words, the Gospel will have been preached to all peoples.  And I forget that that means…then the end can come (Matthew 24:14).

We are not living in just any generation.  We are living in a breath-taking, end-of-the-race running, big picture perspective sweeping kind of a generation.  And while I’m not saying that I know the end is near or that you should quit your day job and wait for the rapture, what I am saying is that I don’t want to forget be amazed and look up from my every day duties of home school and hair brushing and house cleaning and carpool and making pbjs and remember: we know the end of the story.  We have a God who came – He really came – and He is coming again.  And all peoples on the face of the earth are getting closer and closer to waiting and longing for His appearing.

My prayer is that I can remember.  My prayer is that I can remember not what the world says the story line is but what God’s Word says the story line is.  And then no matter what happens, personally, politically, nationally, culturally, or globally, I will remember the humble King who came and who is coming again to take us all home.

Today was another day of visiting incredible places, first on the list being the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.  Children under 10 are not allowed in the exhibit, so while Lillian and I walked through together, our tour guide sat outside with Lizzie and treated her to ice cream.  As I walked through the entrance, I thought of the irony that my eight-year-old was not allowed in to see an exhibit on the Holocaust while so many eight-year-olds endured and died in the Holocaust.  After seeing what I saw today, my prayer is that we learn from history and and the horrors that occurred and that the church learns to love our Jewish friends and neighbors well, using the cross as the ultimate way we choose to love and not as a weapon we choose to wield.

After the Museum, I had several significant moments of the day, one of them standing on top of Haas Promenade, providing a beautiful and sweeping view of the city of Jerusalem.  It was from this vantage point that Abraham would have seen Mount Moriah in the distance as he approached the appointed place of obedience and sacrifice with his son, Isaac.

But my favorite moment of the day came while standing inside the Church of the Holy Nativity in Bethlehem.  And as much as I hate to disappoint, Bethlehem is a disappointment.  Through the last 1500 years that a church has stood on top of the site that Jesus supposedly was born, the place of His birth has become a shrine to relics instead of an experience with a holy God.  In fact, the overwhelming emotion one feels is sorrow that the birth place of Christ seems to mean more than the actual One who was given.  But, as we made our way out of the church and out into the courtyard, we came face-to-face with a statute of Jerome.  Born in the 4th century A.D., Jerome was a priest, historian, theologian and translator.  In his 60’s, he moved to Bethlehem and took up residence in the cave where it is believed that Christ was born.  He spent the last part of his life translating the Scriptures from the Greek and Aramaic languages into Latin, the people’s language of the day.  He was the first translator, so to speak, who gave the Bible to God’s people in their heart language, a language they could hear, digest, and understand.

But here’s what I really love about Jerome.  On his desk, he kept a human skull.  Gross, I know.  But he did it to remind himself of death.  He did it to remind himself that his days were short, his work of translation must continue quickly, and that his time must be used wisely.

I could use a reminder like that on my desk.  Perhaps not a skull.  But maybe, like my friend Roy Peterson, an hour glass, a symbol to remind me that my days are short and the time I have been given to love God, love people, and seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness are short.

I want it to be said of me like it was said of David, another resident of Bethlehem, that “when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep; he was buried with his ancestors” (Acts 13:36).  And when the sands of the hourglass run out and it is my time to fall asleep, like David, and seemingly, like Jerome, I want to have served God’s purpose in my own generation, remembering that my time is short and the moments that I have must be moments that are lived for Him.

My favorite moment of the trip occurred this morning standing on the Mount of Olives, looking out over the city of our great King, singing praise and worship to His Name.  Brandon Heath led us in worship as we lifted our voices to heaven singing Before the Throne, Come Thou Fount and Be Thou My Vision.  

The words from Before the Throne have never meant as much to me as they did this morning as we sang and looked down upon the place where Jesus died and gave His life for you and me:

When Satan tempts me to despair
And tells me of the guilt within,
Upward I look, and see Him there
Who made an end to all my sin.
Because the sinless Savior died,
My sinful soul is counted free;
For God the Just is satisfied,
To look on Him and pardon me,
To look on Him and pardon me.

Looking down from the Mount of Olives, we could see the Kidron Valley below, a place also known as the Valley of Kings or the Valley of Jehosophat, meaning God Judges.  Never before has the reality of my need for a Savior and the reality of the payment He made for me been made more real than in those moments on top of the Mount of Olives.  I deserved a Judge’s sentence and the penalty of death, but because of Christ, I received life.

We looked down upon a city who still needs to know and turn towards the grace of the Savior who died, and who still cries out for the Prince of Peace to make His way through her streets, offering atonement and restitution for all those who draw near.

As we looked out over the city, worshipping the God we love, asking Him to draw near, I pondered what our guide shared with us concerning the meaning of the word Zion.  In the Hebrew, Zion means something small, green, and insignificant growing up out of the ground, coming up at the edge of the desert.  And that’s a perfect description of the city of God.  There is nothing special or magnificent in and of itself about Zion.  No towering, sun-soaked mountains towering high above her. No magnificent water source rushing below her.  Nothing stately or special to mark her or set her apart.  God chose this place precisely because it had nothing to offer Him.  Just like you.  And just like me.  Jerusalem is set apart because God Himself has set His Name upon her.  And because there was nothing Jerusalem did to deserve God’s presence, there is nothing she can do to un-earn His presence.  Just like you.  And just like me.  We are kept as the people of God, like the city of God, because of God, not because of us.

From the top of the Mount of Olives, you can also see the Eastern Gate, also known as the Golden Gate or Beautiful Gate, one of the eight gates that surround Jerusalem.  What’s notable and interesting about the Eastern Gate is that it is completely sealed shut.

In the words of one commentator, “[This] is the gate that gives the most direct access to the temple mount—if a person could pass through the arches of the Eastern Gate, he would be very close to where the Jewish temple used to stand. When Jesus entered Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives in Matthew 21, He used a gate in the same location as the current Eastern or Golden Gate.

The Eastern Gate was sealed shut in AD 1540–41 by order of Suleiman the Magnificent, a sultan of the Ottoman Empire. It’s believed that the reason for the closing of the Eastern Gate was to prevent the Jewish Messiah from gaining entrance to Jerusalem. Jewish tradition states that the Messiah will pass through the Eastern Gate when He comes to rule. The Muslim Suleiman was attempting to thwart the Messiah’s plans with sixteen feet of cement. The Eastern Gate has remained sealed for nearly the past 500 years.”

According to the words of Zechariah 14:4, when the Messiah comes again, His feet will touch the Mount of Olives, the ground will split underneath His feet, and the Mount will be divided into two.  And then, according to Ezekiel 46, the Messiah will enter Jerusalem from the East, taking His rightful place as King.

Because of the surety we have that He came once to give His life for us, we stand in the surety that He will come again, and no gate, no matter how tightly sealed shut it is or how locked it looks from the outside from a physical or political stance, can keep Him out.  The grave could not hold Him…

…and neither can a Suleiman-sealed, 500-year-old cemented-crusted gate.  Resurrection life in the presence of Jesus will burst through all closed doors in Jerusalem once again.

Another striking feature looking down from the Mount of Olives are the 100,000 Jewish graves that descend down the hillside like a stark white stone avalanche.  Every grave stands there as a bold prophetic act, a-fly-in-your-face testimony of believing that when the Messiah comes and His feet touch the Mount of Olives, their bones will rise to meet Him, and resurrection will occur, no matter how long those bones have been there.

I asked Jason if there was any way we could be buried on the Mount of Olives.  And while I’m pretty sure there is a pretty slim chance of that ever happening, I am certain of one thing:

Before the throne of God above
I have a strong, a perfect plea;
a great High Priest, whose name is Love,
who ever lives and pleads for me.
My name is graven on his hands,
my name is written on his heart;
I know that while in heaven he stands
no tongue can bid me thence depart,
no tongue can bid me thence depart.

And when He returns, when His feet touch the place where our feet were standing today, I will rise to meet Him and see the nations of the earth take their place under His feet, under His loving rule and reign.

Come, Lord Jesus, come.

We started our day in Migdal synagogue in Galilee, a synagogue that was recently discovered and opened to the public just a few years ago. This would definitely have been a place Jesus where would have taught.

Then we sat on the slopes where He fed the 5000 and preached the Sermon on the Mount…

And enjoyed a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee.

All in all, it what a beautiful day…even the gas station camel rides on our way up to Jerusalem.

Shabbat shalom!

This morning, Jason, Lillian, Lizzie and I landed in Tel Aviv, Israel.  We will be here for the next seven days, soaking in sights that make the pages of our Bible come alive.

In order to show you a snap shot of what we are seeing, I am going to post a picture each day so that we can “see” Israel together.

Today our bus climbed its way to the top of Mt. Carmel, the same mountain where Elijah called down fire from heaven to consume his altar and sacrifice and to defeat the prophets of Baal.  We stood on top of the mountain as the late afternoon sun pierced through the clouds in the sky and glistened off the shores of the Mediterranean.

It is the same spot where Elijah bowed his head between his knees seven times and told his servant to look for rain after three long years of drought…and on the seventh try, he saw a cloud, as small as a man’s hand, come up from the sea and make its way toward the mountain.

It’s the same mountain where Elijah ran twenty-six miles in front of the chariot of King Ahab, all the way to Mt. Gilboa, across the Jezreel Valley, otherwise known as the Valley of Armageddon.

In the picture, from the vantage point of standing on top of Mt. Carmel, you can see the Armageddon Valley spread out in front of you, you can see Mt. Gilboa in the distance and the town of Nazareth to the left.  In the middle of the Valley runs a major highway that used to be a road running straight from Nazareth to Jerusalem, a road that men and women for centuries walked, including Jesus.

This Valley holds history from the stories of Gideon, Saul, and the witch of Endor, David, Jacob, Abraham, Jesus, and Elijah.  It is a place where the past runs rich with the fertile soil of men and women whose roots are in the Bible, and it designates the future battle with the kings of the earth that John foresaw in the last chapters of Revelation.

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Linger with me for a few moments and let your eyes look over the Valley of Armageddon, a place where we not only have a past, but as the people of God, we have a future.