First Trip to Jerusalem

This is suppose to be for yesterday, but the internet in my room wasn't working so I couldn't publish it until today.

Today I learned, as I have with many old places, that not everything you think is original is. For example, I had thought the walls were the real walls from thousands of years ago but they are not. The walls around the Old City don’t even include the true City of David. The citadel at the Jaffa Gate was impressive because we could see all Jerusalem and the citadel was probably the place where Jesus was condemned to die. From the citadel we could see the three towers which were the Tower of Ascension, built by Catholics which is right across from the Temple Mount; the Augusta Victoria, built by the Germans; and the Hebrew University, built by the Jews. We could also see the Church of the Holy Sepulcher which was where Jesus was probably crucified and buried. The other main sight we could see, and one of the most prominent in Jerusalem was the Dome of the Rock, which was built in 70 AD. Buildings on a religious sight mean that it is always a holy place to that religion and in doing that the idea is conveyed that the god represented in the building is greater than the other ones that aren’t. Thus, the Muslims say that Mohammed and Allah are greater than the God of the Jews. Also for the Muslims, Jerusalem is a more important declaration than Mecca or Medina.

We then walked through the stores along the narrow streets and I was surprised that the shop keepers weren’t like yelling at us or something like that. When I was told of how they acted I thought they would be all over us trying to get us inside their stores. As we walked through the streets we came to Christ Church. Christ Church is the oldest Protestant church in the Middle East. They couldn’t get one in because of the Muslim millet system which controlled the society at the time missionaries from England wanted to build. The millet system controlled who could build what, who could marry who, and so on. They were finally to build it in 1849 through a different approach. They then had a Jewish bishop come in and he was the first Jewish bishop since 135 AD. The unique thing about their church is that there are no crosses in the church because that associates them with Catholics. They also do not call themselves Christians, because that associates with Catholics, instead they call themselves believers. In the front of their church they have a class pane of olive trees which represent what is talked about in Romans 9-11 where it says that there are Jews cut off and Gentiles grafted in. We do not ask the Jews to join us in our religion but we want to join them because our faith originated from them.

We then walked over the Church of the Holy Sepulcher where Jesus was crucified and buried. We do not want to be so confident in saying that this is the actual place, because it probably couldn’t, but Bill gave us a sober reminder that “This could be the place where God broke the curse of sin and death.” As we went into the church the first thing I noticed was the aroma of the incense and the grandeur of it all. As I sat up on Golgotha I read the crucifix account from Luke and John and remembered how my sins were paid in full because of the work of Christ on the cross. As I walked down the steps I was sang in my head the chorus “Oh praise the One who paid my debt and raised this life up from the dead”. I was also reminded that my faith is not built in a building or a piece of land but in Christ.

At the Damascus Gate we went up on the wall that was built by the Ottoman Turks and walked over to where we could see the second plausible site of Golgotha, which was claimed by Charles Gordon in the 1880’s. It is probably not the site because the tomb is dated back to 600 BC and the tomb Jesus was laid in was newly hewn and the tradition is really late. We then overlooked the Mount of Olives and Zechariah 14:1-5 was read which talked about the Lord coming and standing on the Mount of Olives, splitting it in half, which is talking about the Second coming of the Messiah.

As we came off the wall we went down to the Lion Gate where tradition says Stephen was stoned, but it is unlikely. Afterward we walked to the Pools of Bethesda, which were right next to the gate. The pools were used to store water and for healing, which was probably some superstition, during the time of Jesus. They were 50-60 feet deep, so they were not for swimming. The incident where the lame man was healed is found in John 5:1-5. The miracle could have been during the Feast of Weeks. It was the first time the religious leaders wanted Jesus dead, and it was the first time Jesus claimed to have power over death. We went inside the church they have there and gloriously sang “It is Well with My Soul”, “Kadosh”, and “Hodu”.