Jan 13, 2020 | Nancy’s Holy Land Trip 2019-20
This is our last day of touring, and whoa what a doozy! We went to another place pastor had never been before. First thing in the morning we went to the place I wanted to go to the second most. The place I wanted to go to the most was Jacob’s well, but that is currently in the middle of a Palestinian refugee camp, and is not particularly the safest place to be, so we didn’t get to go there. But because of the rain, we were able to go to Mt Tabor, the Mount of Transfiguration! Whoa cool. We had been seeing it from all sides while we were there, and I was hoping and wishing to see it. We also went to the top of Mt Gilboa, the valley of which is where Saul and David met the Philistines and Goliath. Then lastly, we went to Bet She’an. Remember when we went to Kursi and I talked about that? Today is the day we got to see it.
We were finished touring around 2pm after eating lunch at Bet She’an, and yes, there was a kitty there and Evan loved it. I didn’t get a picture. It was rainy but a pleasant enough day. Afterwards we went back to our rooms at the kibbutz. We packed and weighed our bags to make sure they would fly without extra weight charges. After a little jockeying, we got everyone’s bags under the right weight. I then went directly to bed, at like 4:30pm, not a problem for me to sleep because I still wasn’t feeling 100%. I decided to sleep through our last supper there, and ultimately I’m glad I did. I would have suffered even more with our 28 hours of straight travel starting at 11:30pm. So I got some good rest. Evan played cards with the crew and went to supper, I slept.
I found out later that pastor had asked everyone at supper that last night to share their highs, lows, and aha’s or haha’s moments with the group, which of course I missed. He asked me on the plane to share mine with him for his journal. For highs, I chose the Southern steps of the Temple and Magdala, although there are so many more. Really, how do I pick? For my low, I said walking up any hill when I was sick. That really was a bummer because I couldn’t breathe. In fact, as I type this like 4-5 days later, I am still coughing and not able to breathe all the way right. I’m sure a visit to the doctor is in my near future. Good news is that I feel pretty good, just the cough yet.
For my aha or haha, I told him that I would have to tell him later. I knew that if I told him right there on the plane that I would start crying, and that is not a good idea to cry and be congested when you’re about to climb to 40.000 feet for 10 hours, if you get my drift. I gave him a hint though, because I had already told him a few days before that and started crying, and he remembered it, so I didn’t have to say it again.
Since I’m not about to fly and I have kleenexes on hand, I’ll tell you what it was. My big “aha moment” of the trip was more like a series of aha’s repeated over and over again. I’ve mentioned it already in my blogs. It was an over-arching feeling of not being alone. To see all the people in this region who love God and believe in Him, to see the importance they have placed on knowing Him and remembering what He did. To know that there are so many people I will never know personally who believe what I do…I am not alone. At Shepherd’s Field with the man who recognized the song we were singing, but not the language. He’s my brother. The woman praying at the Western Wall. She’s my sister. The culture, the language, the location…none of it mattered. These are my people and I love them all. Juxtapose that global kind of agape and phileo love for my brothers and sisters in Christ with the very personal and intimate love I felt between just me and Jesus at Magdala. Or the Mount of Beatitudes. The awe kind of love I felt at the Jordan River where Jesus was baptized and His people enter the Promised Land. The sorrow-filled love at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher I felt when I saw the Stone of Flagellation or the Stone of Anointment or powerful love to see the crack in the mountain under the site of the crucifixion. Then there is the other side of it with horror stories of human sacrifice and Herod’s genocide, the gates of hell and the current oppression of Christians in Bethlehem and Palestine. All the rainbows we saw, what, like 5 or 6? A reminder of God’s promises. Pastor said I would not return the same person as I left. He was right. Something deep healed in me.
For me, all of it hinges on the humility to receive His grace, and not deny it or turn it away. It is where my peace comes from. Hence the tattoo, which has been a long time coming. It’s healing nicely by the way.
A little red yet, but coming along nicely. And I never showed you the ring I got, either. It also says grace, in Hebrew.
Well, let me tell you my stories about Mt Tabor, Mt Gilboa, and Bet She’an before I wrap up my Holy Land trip story with a big bow on top. Thanks for joining me!
Jan 13, 2020 | Nancy’s Holy Land Trip 2019-20
This area is where my screen-shot of my map was taken…way up north in the Golan Heights, almost to Lebanon and Syria. This place was a place of massive pagan worship to the Roman gods, particularly the Roman god Pan. So Pan had himself a bit of a fetish, he liked to pinch the bottoms of young girls. Given the stories I heard throughout the day about Pan, I feel pretty comfortable labeling him a pedophile. This from a person who is not a fan of labels, but if the shoe fits…in this case, I’m gonna call it like I see it.
So Caesarea Phillipi was a Roman-run city, by Herod’s son Phillip. There were places to worship several Roman gods, and like I said, Pan in particular. This area also is the second of three headwaters of the Jordan River. Where the spring/headwater is here is a site of Roman lore. It was thought that this was the place where the river Styx, the passage to hell, met the living world. As such, it was a place of pagan sacrifice, particularly to Pan. Little girls that would hopefully appease Pan were thrown into the headwaters which bubbled up and then went underground and appeared again a short distance away. If the sacrifice were acceptable to Pan, they would see no blood in the water where it re-exited the stone. If blood from the sacrifice was seen, it was not accepted, and they would sacrifice another little girl. Not really a feel good kind of story, huh. So sad.
Here is where it went down.
We arrive to these gentle falls, a short series of them. To the right is the gift shop and rest room area where they had the fuzzy socks and Bambas. Mmm.
The large hole in the mountain is where the spring used to exit the mountain, that’s the River Styx place. The smaller hole next to it was a place to worship the Roman god Zeus, and there were places to worship other gods up there, too.
This is near where the spring/headwater now exits the mountain, just below.
Here’s where they would sacrifice to Pan, in the spring that was here. So this was basically believed to be the Gates of Hell.
Here’s a closer up picture of the worship site for Zeus.
There were sites to worship 20+ Roman gods here…this is the ruins of that area.
Looking at it from the other side.
So, shift gears for one second…Pastor had pointed out in the Garden Tomb tour an olive tree with new shoots coming from the dead stump. I looked back at the Garden Tomb blog, I did not include it, so I will here…This picture is from the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem:
The sign next to it is difficult to read, it says, “And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” Isaiah 11:7. This picture from Caesarea Phillipi reminded me of the same thing…check this out…right below the River Styx place…
This large trunk looked completely dead, yet there was life, live shoots, coming from it. Jesus is the life that comes from death. Even at the gates of hell. No forgetting. : )
Next began our about 2 hour hike down to Banias Falls. This is a path Jesus and the apostles would have walked for certain…this path has been there for that long. I asked Eitan why there were no orange dots on the trail marker.
He said all of those trails with the orange markers are down closer to Nazareth, but that this would have been the path that they took. Just think…Caesarea Phillipi, a huge center for pagan worship, was the place where Peter first proclaimed Jesus’ identity. (Ref. Matthew 16: 13-20). Remarkable.
We also saw a Roman flour mill. This was pretty cool engineering. Of course they used the power of the flowing water to grind their flour.
Very cool to see how this was done.
Pretty impressive that all of this stuff still stands. With some modern material help, but the grinding stuff itself was from the period.
This was a swimming pool built by the Syrian army, I want to say around 400-500AD, but don’t quote me on that. Old for sure. Only the officers of the Syrian army were allowed to swim in it. It had fish in it that were quite hungry. The powers that be took down some of the wall to keep it more empty so it would not be dangerous for hikers, etc.
As we are walking along, Eitan stops and says, “Look at this plant along the path.” It looks like bamboo, and is in the bamboo family. So the story goes like this. Pan was getting quite the reputation of pinching girls, so the girls would stay away from him. So here is the story from Eitan…
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Cool huh? I mean, not that it happened like that, but I had no idea that was the story behind the word “panic.” I’ll never think of that the same again!
This really was quite the incredible hike. Muddy from all the rain, but beautiful.
This bush is the kind of bush that Jesus crown of thorns was made from. It is definitely a wicked, pokey plant.
We stop along the way and Eitan points out that back in the day, Mark Twain came to visit Israel. He was not a fan, and called it the most ugly country in the world (not a quote, but you get the idea.). He also said that the Muslim fortress on top of this mountain was the most beautiful place on earth.
Unfortunately we were not able to go there to see it, but there it is. A cool story.
Once again, Eitan stops and points and says, “There’s our bus, but how will we get there?”
There is a massive ravine between us and the bus. We can hear the falls from here. The way to the bus is down the ravine and back up again. Oh boy. I will say, it was not as bad as I thought it would be, and my walking sticks were a GODSEND for this bit!
So we go down down down into the ravine, and here are the falls. Eitan says he has only seen them this high maybe one or two other times in his life. They were some angry falls!
Here is the tourist shot. Would you look at how much taller that boy is than me??? Sakes. I’m going to try to add a clip of them roaring…
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Hopefully those are working. Next we make the climb out of the ravine, and at the top we see an old Jeep.
Eitan says that this was once a border back in about 1967, and likely this Jeep got off the path a bit and it hasn’t been moved since. He said there is also an upside down tank from the same era at the bottom of the ravine, same fate.
We exited the hiking path and then stopped at the much needed shoe washing station. Hasim was most grateful we were not tracking all that mud into his bus.
So that’s the story of Caesarea Phillipi. Tomorrow is our last day of touring before we head for home. Whew! Stay with me, tomorrow’s destination is AWESOME.
Jan 13, 2020 | Nancy’s Holy Land Trip 2019-20
So if you remember way back to Tel Megiddo, the word “Tel” means that it’s an area that has been built up, one civilization on top of another. In the case of Megiddo, it was 26 layers, one on top of another. Here at Tel Dan, it is two. The original buildings and town here were built by the pagan Canaanites. Later, the Israelite tribe of Dan came in and conquested it and built the city of Dan on top of the city foundations of the Canaanite town of Laish. The tribe of Dan was not really happy with their allotment of the Promised Land, and sent their spies out to find a new spot. They found this spot, including one of the three headwaters of the Jordan River, and decided they’d go to war with the Canaanites for it, and won. The ruins we saw here were from the time of David and Solomon, for the brief years that there was peace and prosperity while they were ruling the Israelites. But let’s start at the beginning of our hike.
There is a visitor center, like most national parks in the states, with a gift shop and rest rooms, etc. So we start our hike and immediately cross one of the tributaries of the Jordan. Eitan assures us that this is the highest he has seen the water flowing, because it has been raining the last few days. He said the “sponge” that is Mt Hermon is full, causing the spring here to gush. So the first thing we see is this.
We hike for a little while, weaving around the water and other tiny streams that are adding into the river from the mountain. Here is the headwaters.
We have a devotional here before moving along to the old ruins.
There is the old Canaanite ruins and the stuff the tribe of Dan built on top. Here is the temple area, and the place where sacrifices were made.
Steps up to the altar, which is not a part of the Levitical code. God said not to make steps up to meet Him. This is called a cultic site because of the pagan nature of this altar area.
And here is a video of pastor explaining it that does so much better than I could explain.
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I got feedback that videos inserted like this are playable, so hopefully that is the case for everyone. Here is the Temple Mount from the time of Solomon and David as well.
I found it interesting that the bricks for this temple in Tel Dan were so similar to the bricks used at the temple in Jerusalem.
Here are some more of the pagan bricks. That’s a long time ago, impressive to see ruins that old.
We walked further through the city streets, sort of, and up to the city gate.
Also near the city gate is where the city leader or judge appointed by the city leader would sit and settle disputes. This person would sit on something similar to a Moses seat, like we saw in Chorazin.
One of our crew was showing how it’s done. I also found it interesting that cities with walls around would have 2 or more sets of gates, and the second gate would involve making a left turn to get to it. The reason is so that invaders with swords and shields were predominately right handed. So what does that mean? Soldiers attacking the town would come into the first gate with their swords in their right hands and shields in their left. As they make a left turn to attack the second gate, their right unshielded side is exposed to attackers on the wall inside the city. Pretty brilliant.
We exit the city gate and walk over to a place called the Abraham gate. We round a corner and see this model.
Here’s the backside of the model. This is an area that has very recently been found, like within the last 10 years, maybe even 5, I’d need to ask pastor for sure. Above the model, we look up and see this.
WHOA. This is steps up to an ancient city entrance here at Dan. The archaeologists did excavate this which is how they got the model. Then they filled it back in so it would be preserved and not collapse, as it is mud brick and they are fragile. They built this structure over it so the rain wouldn’t erode it. The hills nearby, just north of where we were standing, is the place thought to be where God cut covenant with Abram. After that, Abram would have entered then Laish through this gate. That is some old archaeological site stuff going on there. Scripture talks about Abram going into Dan. But how could that be? It wasn’t Dan yet. It wouldn’t have been Dan until much later, after the Israelites, Abraham’s descendants, took this area over. See the problem? Pastor gave a talk about how this could have happened in scripture. I did record his talk, but it is an 11 minute video and too large to include on the blog.
What an incredible site. Old. Old Testament old. The next place we went is also old. Next up is Caesarea Phillipi.
Jan 13, 2020 | Nancy’s Holy Land Trip 2019-20
Day 10, again, was a bit slower paced, and we spent longer at our two destinations with more hiking involved. Thankfully, I was feeling a bit better this day because we did some walking. I think I ended up with north of 14.000 steps. These two sites were worth the effort though, as everything was. Today we hiked Tel Dan and Caesarea Phillipi. Very cool. Tonight was our first night staying at the kibbutz as well, which was very nice.
Tiny balcony, but an OK view.
I had a picture in my mind of a place to stay at a kibbutz more like a youth hostel. Nope. Just like a hotel. Very nice dining hall, even if they did put us Gentiles in the corner. : )
A few other things from today I thought I would include. At Tel Dan we saw a scaly friend, which Evan was also enamored with…he was loving the animal creatures.
He was pretty cool, although unlike Evan, I did NOT want to hold him.
Those of you that know me well, know that I have a love for fuzzy socks. I am not the only one…these were in the gift shop at Caesarea Phillipi. They reminded me of a certain group that knows of my love of the fuzzy socks…you know who you are…
I also took a screen shot of my position on my map when we were hiking around Caesarea Phillipi. Awfully close to Syria and Lebanon way on up in the Golan Heights. Didn’t know that would happen! Glad we got to see it though.
One of the highlights was also actually McDonalds. While not normally a favorite of mine, it was tasting really really good round about Day 10. There was no cheese on the Big Mac, they don’t do cheese with meat normally, but it was still really yummy. They have better burgers than we do. Evan got a huge burger.
Another treat we were introduced to by both guides…a food that they said every 2 year old in Israel knows and loves…Bambas. The best way I can describe what they taste like is peanut butter flavored Cheetos. Oh ya, they’re good. We heard you can get them at Trader Joe’s. We’ll be needing to check that out, because they are darn tasty!
All the kiddos loved them, adults too!
OK, only two lengthy stops today, Tel Dan is first.
Jan 13, 2020 | Nancy’s Holy Land Trip 2019-20
Our guide for the hike extension, Eitan, had gone to live on a kibbutz when he turned 15. The one he went to is on the southern end of the Sea of Galilee, and we happened to drive right by it, so he took us for a tour. A kibbutz is a community that runs with socialist ideals. Everyone contributes what they have to the kibbutz, and whatever the people of the kibbutz need is drawn from the community pool. He said that this worked for some time, until members began to take advantage of it. Sounds like the over-arching difficulty socialism struggles with across the board. There are still operating kibbutzim in Israel, however; they are just run differently now. It was interesting to get a small glimpse into kibbutz life now.
They apparently had a small animal zoo there, although we didn’t get to see it. They definitely had a large cattle operation that produces income for the community.
We got to see the school where all the kids go. Longer ago, the kids were taken from their homes to the community schools and daycares when they were very little and the parents didn’t see them much. Eitan said that has changed some now, and parents get to see their kids in the evenings now, and are allowed to make supper in their own dwellings now if they wish, instead of having supper in the community dining hall.
Evan the cat whisperer found a friend while we were there, of course. Then we walked by the hotel, a place where people can stay and a source of income for the kibbutz. In fact, our last two nights in Israel, we stayed at a different kibbutz.
Here is Eitan describing the building behind him, the community center which included the dining hall and the place where the community’s “board” meets to make decisions regarding public matters, like whether or not it is OK to cut down a certain tree, or if someone will get funding to go to college.
In the mid 1900s, this was a rather unstable area of the world, and they had multiple bomb shelters in case of air-raids. They are still usable, although the need to use them has not been there for several decades. Still…un-nerving a bit to have a bomb shelter in the middle of your community, just in case.
Upon leaving the kibbutz, Eitan showed us a chocolate shop near the bus. All the ingredients for the shop are produced by the kibbutz.
They had ice cream and specialty coffees as well. Neat place. On the way back to our hotel in Nazareth, we got a pretty spectacular sunset show.
Nice cap to the day. Tomorrow we tackle Day 10!
