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2008
Soap Box Archives Israel Trip Part Five Day Five There is absolutely nothing that can prepare you for the sight that greets your eyes when you climb the final hill and get your first glimpse of Jerusalem. The walls of the city, the domes, the minarets and the surrounding mountains all come into view at the same time. It's a classic sight that is famous all over the world, the one that you've seen on TV countless times when they talk about Israel. It's like a classic painting come to life. The first place we stopped was the Mount of Olives and walked the path where Jesus rode the donkey down the hillside on Palm Sunday and wept for Jerusalem because they didn't recognize their Messiah. In the Garden of Gethsemane there are olive trees that are literally two thousand years old and could have well been standing when Jesus was arrested there and taken away to die on a Roman cross. I would like to interject something here concerning the placing of the blame for the crucifying of Jesus Christ. I remember when Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ was released, there was much apprehension among the Jewish people who thought that the movie would inflame Christians against Jews because of what was done by the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees concerning the death of Jesus, even though the actual crucifixion was carried out by the Romans. The truth of the matter is that every man and woman ever born put Jesus on that cross. He didn't go to the cross just for the Jews or the Romans, He went for all of us and I, as a sinner, bear the blame along with everybody else. My sins helped nail Him to that cross. The Muslim presence is very evident, minarets dot the skyline and you can hear the Muslim call to prayer several times a day. The Muslims pray five times a day and are apt to put a prayer rug on the street, face Mecca and say their prayers if that's where they happen to be when the call is issued from the minarets I never understood why the Jews considered the Western Wall to be more sacred than any other wall until this trip when I found out that the Western Wall was the closest to the Holy of Holies in the now destroyed temple The Western Wall, or the Wailing Wall, is constantly alive with Jews praying, and reading from the Torah. I went up and touched the wall and it was special, but I have to realize that as special as it is to a Christian, I can't even begin to understand what it means to a Jew who has come to Israel from Russia or some far away land where they had been persecuted, come home to the land of the patriarchs as part of the ingathering of God's people that was foretold in the ancient scriptures. No trip to Jerusalem would be complete without a walk to the top of the Temple Mount. The Mount is under control of Muslims now and is the site of the al-Aqsa Mosque. Most people, including myself at one time, think that the al-Aqsa Mosque is the blue building on the temple mount with the gold dome, but actually the gold dome building is called the Dome of the Rock and is a shrine to Mohammed. Rabbinic law forbids Orthodox Jews to go to the top of the Temple Mount. The actual al-Aqsa Mosque sets apart from the Dome of the Rock and is a much less imposing building. Jerusalem, being
considered to be a holy city by three major religions is loaded with
churches and mosques and Jewish holy sites and everybody wants to have
a visible presence there. With so many different denominations vying for a piece of the Church of the Holy Sepulcre, they had to sit down and agree to which group would be in charge of what aspect of the church, and they wrote down all these guidelines in a book that established the status quo for each denomination. But even with the rulebook, territorial overlaps have become absolutely ridiculous, as in the case of a ladder that leans against one of the balconies which no one seems to have the authority to move, so it sits there for over a hundred years, no one willing to give the authority to the other party to move it. To this day, it is still such an uneasy balance that a fistfight broke out in the church the day before we visited when Armenian monks claimed that Greek monks had violated one of their traditional ceremonies, and the Greeks put the blame on the Armenians for not recognizing their rights. Don't sound very Christian to me. I am certainly not a Biblical expert but if I had to express an opinion. I would choose The Garden Tomb as Calvary, the place of crucifixion and burial. The reason being that the Bible says Jesus was taken to a place called Golgotha, which means "the place of the skull" and at The Garden Tomb there is a hill with what looks like the impression of a skull in it and the tomb in the garden was carved out of rock and the track for the entrance stone the angels rolled away is still there. The spot was also very likely a garden in the time of Christ because a very large well had been carved out of the rock dating back 2000 years ago, and it is very easy to imagine that this tranquil and serene place could have been where Jesus was buried and resurrected. As with so many Biblical things in Israel there is no way of being absolutely sure which site is the one, but it is really not that important to know exactly where the death and resurrection of Jesus took place, but to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it did take place.
Pray for our troops. What do you think? God Bless America Charlie Daniels
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