A Trip To The Holy Land

(Editor’s Note: The following is part two of a feature on Monticelloan Dianne Parker’s recent trip to the Holy Land. The first part was published in last week’s Monticello News.)

By DIANNE PARKER

Many cities are famous, but Jerusalem towers above them all. Yes, it is the most important place in the Holy Land because of its antiquity, and its association with the many events in the life of Jesus.

Personally, it felt like a family cemetery with generations of loved ones all wanting to tell their life stories. Let’s review what has taken place here. First it is believed that Mount Moriah was where Abraham offered his son Isaac and encountered the Lord. King David purchased the Temple site for a permanent place of worship and his son King Solomon built the first Temple here. The Babylonians destroyed it when they conquered Israel.

Daniel prayed toward the Temple Mount in Jerusalem three times a day and in 538 BC Zerubbabel, the leader of the tribe of Judah, returned as part of the first wave of exiles who came back to this famous city. Both Solomon’s temple and later the one built by Herod the Great were destroyed. The city of Jerusalem might well be called the world’s most hated city, for though its name means “peace” more wars have been fought at its gates than at any other city in the world. But Jerusalem is also the world’s most “loved” city, for just like me, thousands come each year to walk her streets. Muslims, Christians, and Jews claim her as an inheritance.

Our group stood on an ancient paved street looking at the hill where God’s Holy Temple once stood. You can wander through the archaeological park and see the ruins from Jesus day. Massive building stones and pillar sections now litter the ground, many hurled down from the Temple during the destruction by the Romans in A.D. 70.

Herod’s temple was large, the courtyard the size of 30 football fields to accommodate the million pilgrims coming for the three festivals yearly. Jesus did not see the buildings as they were, but as they soon would become- not one stone left on another, which is how they look today.

The Mount is now home to an Islamic shrine, built around AD 690 with a golden domed mosque standing in the place where the Jewish Temple and a Christian church once stood. The Muslims consider this the third holiest place in Islam, and access to the top is restricted and controlled. Jews are no longer allowed to worship on their Temple Mount. The Western Wall or the Wailing Wall is where the Jewish people pray. It is not part of the original Temple structure but a remnant of the long retaining wall that Herod constructed around the mountain to form a plateau.

You look at the Temple Mount, then turn your head and see the Mount of Olives across the valley and the City of David below you. Yes it is a prosperous city today but the mountains and the valleys and the skies look the same as they did to Jesus. All of my group put a prayer written on a slip of paper in the cracks of the Western Wall, not believing that it was made more special, but that yes, we too, have needs that only prayer can help.

You need to be in good physical condition for this trip, for we now are going to climb uphill to the top of the Mount of Olives, where we will visit the Garden of Gethsemane. Imagine seeing trees that are old enough to have heard Jesus’ prayers! Imagine a devotion on the passage where Jesus was in agony and was betrayed and YOU ARE THERE. I prayed for some of you that morning, friends whose hearts are broken and for family members who need to come to Jesus and be saved.

One of my favorite experiences in Israel was walking from the Garden down to the Kidron Valley to Caiaphas house, the same route the mob would have taken Jesus after his arrest. It is just wide enough for two people to walk beside each other, with wildflowers blooming and old structures leaning in as they have been there for years. This house is marked with a beautiful church where Peter denied Christ three times. Our guide explained that “the rooster” was not an animal, but a watchman who would have called out the time so that the High Priest would know it was time for the evening sacrifice.

Every place that Jesus was taken on that night we saw and experienced. Singing a hymn, “There is a Fountain Filled With Blood, drawn from Emanuel’s veins,” and seeing the stones on which that blood would have fallen, will change you. When the world looks like there is no hope, remember that is how Jesus’ disciples felt that Friday but it was not true.

Calvary and the Garden Tomb is thought to be inside The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also called the Church of the Resurrection. It is where heaven became our home. It is where Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead. It is located just outside the first-century wall line of Jerusalem. It is near a public roadway that exited the city, the kind the Romans favored who wanted public execution to be seen by as many locals as possible.

But never count God out. Constantine a Roman emperor was converted to Christianity and he sent his mother, Helena, to Jerusalem to establish churches in key locations. She removed any pagan artifacts and established the first Christian buildings on the spot. Here you will see the slab of marble or the location of preparation for Jesus body for burial. Next you will see the traditional location of Calvary, and finally the Tomb of Jesus.

We left here and had devotions in a private garden with communion, in a setting which would have resembled more closely those holy days.

The ancestors of the Bible want me to tell you more, but it is time to pack and go home. It was the “best trip of my life.” It was the most important trip of my faith, it was an introduction to what is to come, and I pray your taste of it has made you want to go too. The nation of Israel gave me a PILGRIM CERTIFICATE—“By virtue of fulfilling the Biblical calling, has ascended to Jerusalem, the Holy City, capital of Israel and is henceforth authorized to bear the title of JERUSALEM PILGRIM.”

I really like that.