Israel Trip Overview - Part 2

Good morning. Last week we presented some highlights from our trip to Israel, and we talked about things in the old city of Jerusalem and in Joppa, and then a side trip that we made down to the area of the Sorek Valley, which was where Samson lived most of his life out. and also to the Ella Valley, which is where David slew Goliath, and other events that took place in that area.

Today, we're doing a little bit of a shift. We started off from Denver, went on through Frankfurt to Tel Aviv. And as we mentioned last week, we had a rental car. Courtney did all the driving. which is more like that instead of the one that I showed. In Israel, we focus on five areas.

And the first one was Joppa for a day, and then in and around the old city of Jerusalem for six days, and the Ela and Sorek valleys and vicinity for one day. Today, we want to move on to Old Testament Jericho. We went for one day. It's a good place to escape from the snow. the Sea of Galilee region for four days. So we want to talk about those two areas. And of course, as we mentioned last week, we traveled to Israel and back for days and days.

So now we'll take a look here at this Old Testament Jericho site. Jericho looks to be nearby, and in fact it is. However, it's a steep trip down getting down to Jericho. Jerusalem is roughly 2,500 feet above sea level, and going to Old Testament Jericho, you are well below sea level. So anyway, quite a descent.

Interestingly, as you go in there, there are these warning signs on each side of the road, red with white lettering. This road leads to Area A under the Palestinian Authority. The entrance for Israeli citizens is forbidden, dangerous to your lives, and is against the Israeli law, which, of course, gave us a warm, fuzzy feeling as we were entering. Nonetheless, we braved the soldiers who were there with automatic weapons, and Courtney just was boldly driving right through the roadblock, right?

Old Testament Jericho is a tell, and we explained last week, a tell is a series of layers where they keep rebuilding in the same location after a time of destruction. We looked last week at several tells, that is, places that look like hills, but in fact are successive layers built over time. And today we'll be looking at more of those, and Jericho is one of them.

It was destroyed, as described in Joshua 2-6. The Israelites had crossed over the River Jordan in order to get over there from the east side over to the west side. They set up a camp at what was called Gilgal. Once the walls fell and they fell outward the Israelite soldiers rushed into the city and they burned everything and that's in fact what the archaeologists find Here's the map of the situation Gilgal is nearby location and Jericho not that far away so you can imagine the Israelites coming up against Jericho and I imagine that the people at Jericho especially the soldiers were just baffled what is it what is going on that these people will circle the city and then go back and camp again and come back the next day and circle the city some more and And I'm sure after a few days they kind of lost their tension because they thought these people are crazy. But nonetheless, it ended up, the Tell looks like this. Other than a few attempts at putting more minor buildings on there, Jericho was never reconstructed as a city after the time that the Israelites attacked. So here's the aerial view, that kind of parking lot and building at the end. We entered there. That's more recently added. They actually have an aerial tram that goes by this. So we entered here at that end.

And one of the things that caused the people to keep rebuilding in the same spot is there's a spring there. It's called Elisha Spring, and there's a spring there, so there's a constant water supply, which in a more desert environment, that's certainly something welcome.

We saw a lot of different excavations, but the ones that particularly interested me, this is an area where there was a retaining wall called a revetment. At the base, on top of this was a mud brick wall, and that mud brick wall fell outward, and in this specific area, there they had stripped away the old mud brick wall and exposed this retaining wall. Looking at it more of kind of a computer model, this is how Jericho would have looked to the Israelites who were going around and around. This lower retaining wall that you see, rock retaining wall, would have been at the base and then they would have stacked these mud bricks up as you see and actually there's a perimeter mud brick wall and then there's a higher one up on top. So both of those fell outward. Now one of the things that that does, you see this retaining wall, that would be hard to just climb up. But with the mud brick wall falling out, it made a ramp for them to be able to go up directly into the city from all directions.

Now we'll look at the Sea of Galilee region. It was occupied first by the Canaanites. Those are the ones there before the Jews. The Israelites came in initially under Joshua. and overtook many of the Canaanite cities, not all of them, and part of the idolatrous northern kingdom of Israel then reigned in the Sea of Galilee region, and then under several empires. First the Assyrians came in, took a lot of the inhabitants out, and then you had the Babylonians, and you had the Persians, the Greek Empire, In the New Testament times, Christ was raised there. About 80% of Christ's ministry was spent there in the Galilee region, and most of that in the northern part of the Sea of Galilee. Most of the disciples turned apostles, possibly all, but at least most of them, were from the Sea of Galilee region.

So here's the picture, and I think you have that also on your handout. Here's the picture. We started from Jerusalem, headed up to Tiberias, where we spent four nights and used that as kind of home base for going around. What we're going to do is, in great part, go clockwise from Tiberias around the Sea of Galilee. So here would be all the places in the Galilee region that we visited. So one place, to give us some context here, we went north of Tiberias and one of the places we went was Magdala, the excavation of Magdala.

One time that we know that Jesus went there was immediately after feeding the 4,000, which would be on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. The disciples took Jesus across and landed at Magdala. That was in a region called, excuse me, Dalmanutha. And so that would be one time when Jesus went there.

One of the things that we did when we went to Magdala is to go out towards the shore. And that's what this picture is here. Out towards the shore, which would at the time have been where the disciples would have brought Jesus there to Magdala. So landing right about what you see in front of you, right here. This was a synagogue that in order to protect it some from the elements, they built a structure over the top. It was a synagogue discovered there. And we know also that Jesus taught in the synagogues of the area, so we see that.

He came to this area, that must be from Mark 8.10. Mary Magdalene, that's why she's called Magdalene, that's indicating that she was from Magdala, from this particular city. Jesus would have spoken in this synagogue probably a number of times, in this very synagogue right here.

Here is another angle on this synagogue, and one of the things they found is this little piece of kind of stone furniture, and on the end of it, very interesting, what you see in the middle of there is a candelabra, seven-branch candelabra, which would have been to kind of indicate in relief the candelabras that would be in the temple in Jerusalem. This is the oldest candelabra relief in existence, at least that we know of right now. This menorah, as it is otherwise called. So it was amazing to be here and to think that Jesus was right here and taught in this synagogue probably numerous times.

In the houses nearby, he was probably brought as a guest a number of times. Mary Magdalene lived in and was from this particular city. One of the reasons why this was significant to me, and frankly for me, I was there, I just had to walk away for a minute. I just couldn't talk.

One of the things you'll see in a lot of the skeptical literature from times past is they would say there were no synagogues during the time of Christ. All the stories of the synagogues are all made up. And what this synagogue demonstrated, because the coins in the floor date from the time of Jesus' ministry, is that yes indeed there were synagogues and the gospel writers are not making it up. And they're telling the truth. So this is a book that I have, and I just recall reading on January 11th, I told you about two and a half weeks before when they'd announced the discovery of the synagogue.

Excavations at Magdala are continuing, so they're finding more and more of the city. When the Jews rebelled against the Romans, Magdala was the last holdout in northern Israel against the Romans. And so when the Romans came in, they slaughtered everyone in Magdala. They basically ruined the town for some time. But the excavations are continuing and we may find even more evidence and valuable information that helps us to understand what was taking place there.

Just north of there, a boat was found at the water's edge. It was during a time when the Sea of Galilee was kind of at a low point due to some drought. And so in 1986, a boat was found based on carbon-14 dating of this boat. It was built or made around 40 BC, 13 different kinds of wood. I think probably what they did is just wherever you can get it, right? And so 13 different kinds of wood.

The boat was in use during the life of Christ at a time when there were about 230 boats working the Sea of Galilee. So one of the questions was, was Jesus ever in this boat? Possibly, but figuring that there were about 230 boats at the time working the Sea of Galilee, chances are small. More than likely it was just some fishermen, but it was used during the time of Christ, and it may have been in the rebellion against Rome that this boat was sunk. The people of Magdala may have used it for military purposes, and so the Romans would have sunk it. Here is a picture of this boat.

The wood there is very fragile, so it had to be taken out of the Sea of Galilee very, very carefully. That great stuff, foam, that stuff that you spray and it's kind of rigid, they basically put that all around it to get it lifted up and have it stay in one piece. So it's an amazing thing. We don't know that Jesus was ever in this boat, but it's a boat like the disciples would have used during the time of Christ. And so it's quite a find. It's the only one of its kind that they found there in Galilee.

We moved north from there to the Mount of Beatitudes. This is where it's traditionally looked at as the Sermon on the Mount location. Jesus would have stood there and there's a kind of a bowl configuration as this slopes towards the the Sea of Galilee and you can imagine a number of people gathering there from nearby villages including Capernaum and Magdala and places like that and gathering at this location here. We went from there to Capernaum and this is a synagogue there. What you see however in this synagogue is not specifically the one that Jesus was in.

I'll explain why in a minute. The architecture for this synagogue dates from about 200 AD. That's the style that it's in. However, and this is notoriously difficult for archaeologists to date, because underneath the floor are coins from the late 4th century, so several centuries later. So this synagogue here was actually put in later than the time of Christ. But something I looked at when I saw that I said, ah, I see something on those pillars.

It reveals a cultural pattern, and in Revelation 3.12 it reads this way, He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God, and he will not go out from it anymore. And I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from my God, and my new name. So that pattern of writing on pillars and writing contributors or significant people in the in the time of the synagogue We see demonstrated right above where Courtney and Ingrid are there, okay? So anyway, I saw that and I think it's cool.

Okay, so we got that but there's something else all the buildings and walls and everything in Capernaum except for this white synagogue, which is made from imported rock, all of it is black basalt, dark basalt. And there is a line here between the black basalt on the lower part and the white imported stone on the upper part. And so what they did when they built this upper part that's from white imported stone is they took the old synagogue, the one that Jesus was in, and they took that down to the foundation and then built the new white synagogue on top of the foundation of the synagogue that Jesus was in.

And so it says he went to Capernaum, Jesus went to Capernaum and a centurion slave, and by the way the centurion was from the Roman compound which is just east of this place where we were in Capernaum. So the Roman compound is just to the east of here So a centurion slave, and it talks about him being ill. And verse 4, when they came to Jesus, that is the servants of the centurion, they earnestly implored him saying, he is worthy for you to grant this to him, that is to heal his servant, for he loves our nation and it was he who built us our synagogue. That synagogue with the black rock foundation that was underneath this white one, that's the one. that this centurion paid for, that Jesus was in.

Now, something else that I noted, standing at the closest part of this white synagogue, the closest part to the edge of the Sea of Galilee, so I'm standing up there as I'm taking this picture, what you see under this monstrosity that's been built over the top of this thing, underneath there is Peter's house. Underneath there is Peter's house.

The impression you get from reading Luke 4.38, it says, and he, that is Jesus, got up and left the synagogue and he entered Simon's home.

You get the impression it's not very far from the synagogue to Simon's home. And in fact, it's not. It is a very short distance, and so what Dr. Luke wrote here exactly reflects the situation. He just left the synagogue, went for a short walk to Peter's house, which you see right there. So again, what scripture contains is something that is confirmed by the archaeological evidence there. It didn't say he took a long walk or later on that day. He left the synagogue and entered Simon Peter's home.

We went from there north to Tel Hazor. There are more than 200 of these tells throughout Israel, so we only went into eight of them, not all 200. It's the largest, however, at 200 acres in this tell. And again, that's not a hill. It's been a matter of the city being built up again and again after times of destruction. and developing the hill configuration from the successive rebuildings. So we went to tell Hazor, and the guy at the gate was very friendly. He says, you want to get it? It's offering us, I'll roll my own. So anyway, a number of things to see, some of the things.

Because it was in the Northern Kingdom and had previously been Canaanite, what you find is there's quite a bit of evidence of pagan worship here at Hazor. Between the Canaanites, that's what you'd expect, and also the idolatrous Northern Kingdom. Between those two, you'd expect to find a lot of pagan religion, and that's exactly what you find there. So there's a private dwelling in the background and then a pagan worship structure there at Hazor.

Here's Courtney and I at the military citadel. During the time of David and Solomon, the upper part of the citadel was a watchpoint because you could see for some distance in different directions. It's a watchpoint to look out for any approaching armies. And so this was a place that David and Solomon maintained as a place to look out for foreign armies that might be coming. And what we saw was there was a number of those kinds of places as we went to different locations.

Hazor is mentioned first in Joshua a number of times as Joshua took forces up there to capture Hazor. Prior to that, The king of Hazor brought in troops and people to help defend neighboring Canaanite cities. So that's what the earlier mention of it is about. In Judges, in chapter 4, 1 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, on into Nehemiah.

But we found that Hazor was not inhabited now, which fits with what Jeremiah said, Jeremiah 49, several times. It reads this, Hazor will become a haunt of jackals, a desolation forever. No one will live there, nor will a son of man reside in it. So Hazor was not rebuilt again. So now we went to Chorazin. Chorazin is one that's not mentioned a lot in the New Testament. It is, however, mentioned as a place of, you know, woe unto you Chorazin.

What we found that there was a lot of the structures that were there from a couple centuries after the New Testament era. We did find some good kind of cultural indicators, however, and one of them was watering troughs and mangers, as we saw at other places, were made of stone, similar to this.

This was a configuration we saw at a number of different places. At Corazon, there are many good examples of stone carvings and stone tools like this mill. They would have a kind of a conical topped stone and then they'd have a grinding stone that they would have on top and you'd pour the grain in and be able to get the grain from the outside. Here would be another example of one of the mills, at least the bottom part. At Chorazin we also saw a thorny tree of the kind that is thought to be the source of Christ's thorny crown.

So looking like this. So there was a tree and we took off one of the branches to be able to photograph it here. Something else I saw at Chorazin, this is actually a replica because the original went to the Israel Museum, which we didn't quite get to see very much of.

Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples saying that scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses. This is the chair of Moses. And they would have these at the synagogue, and it would be a special place of authority and judgment in each of the synagogues. So this is the Chair of Moses that he's talking about. And it has not only a chair configuration, but various kinds of Hebrew writing around it and whatnot.

Then we cross the Upper Jordan River between Capernaum and Bethsaida. The Upper Jordan River It comes out of mountains that are snow-capped and that sort of thing. It flows into, between Capernaum and Bethsaida, flows into the Sea of Galilee. Then we went to Bethsaida.

It took a little digging to find it. Taking them, that is the apostles, with him, he withdrew by himself to a city called Bethsaida. Bethsaida is actually fairly ancient. It was around during the time of the Assyrian Empire many centuries before the time of Christ. The old gates have been found. It was a walled city in earlier times. Here is the ruins of what had been a palace at Bethsaida in the 10th to 8th centuries BC.

So this would have been from about the time of Solomon and later. We found something else, and there was an animal there, and I said, ah, I know what that animal is. It's called a rock hyrax, and the King James is called a coney. In the Hebrew, it's a chafan, and then it gives the technical name.

Leviticus 11.5 and Deuteronomy 14.7 said the Jews could not eat them, even though they're plentiful. Why? They don't have any hooves. So excluded from the list of things you can eat.

But Psalm 104 and Proverbs 30 each talk about the Kones, if you will, and give some spiritual truth based on these animals. Now, here is, for instance, a fisherman's house at Bethsaida. It's interesting, Bethsaida was the home of Peter and his brother Andrew, and also of Philip. And they appear to have moved to Capernaum, and we found out why. And that's because Bethsaida is a long way from the water. And after a long day fishing, to have a commute up to Bethsaida would not be a pleasant thought. Here is looking from Bethsaida towards the upper Jordan River and Galilee and Capernaum. I think, Courtney, you mentioned last week that that Just kind of looking over there and thinking of, here's Bethsaida, which ultimately was condemned by Christ. Looking across there towards, you know, Chorazin and towards Capernaum, and the upper Jordan River where we stopped. It's really something to ponder. You know, here are places he spent lots of time. And did they respond to those appeals? No, they did not.

This is about the place in the Jordan River where John the Baptist baptized Jesus, just at the outlet of the Sea of Galilee into the Jordan River. It's a nice spot, they've kind of commercialized it. You can go there and find people getting baptized there. I want to get baptized where Jesus was baptized. Now, the water is real different. It's long gone, the water that Jesus and John the Baptist had. I mean, it's long gone, right? So it's not the same water. But if you want to buy a gallon of it, they'll sell it to you. Right? Yeah. Okay. Oh boy.

Now, from there we did a loop starting from Tiberias. We went from Tiberias to Cana, to Nazareth, and from there to Megiddo, and Jezreel, which I'll talk about in a minute. I think that's where Courtney learned Hebrew. And then Scythopolis. And so we had kind of that loop that we did one day, and just a great set of places to visit. At a place called Nazareth Village, which was actually during the time of Christ was a farm on the outskirts of Nazareth. They have a place there where you can go and take a tour, so that's what we did, and take a look at some of the things from the time of Christ. So it's really good for looking at kind of cultural context, aside from having some history we'll talk about in a minute.

One of the things that they showed was a lot of the houses would have a smaller door that you would be forced to go through. And why? Because a soldier, fully armed, would have a tough time going through that door. And so it would at least slow them down. So that was the reason for the smaller door.

They also talked about the cross, and the cross being one way that during the time people would be killed, crucifixion, It wasn't the only way, and one of the things they mention, when Jesus went back to Nazareth, after moving to Capernaum, when he went back to Nazareth and was at the synagogue, he read from Isaiah 61 verse 1 and first half of verse 2, and at first they were very impressed with him, and they said, wait a minute, aren't you the carpenter's son? Don't your brothers and sisters live here? And when he made claim to be the Messiah, then they then became very offended.

And they tried to push him off the cliff. And one of the things in the tour that they explained is that the Jews, one of their methods of execution, not being the cross, was to take someone, tie their hands behind their back, and shove them off a cliff so that they would land head first, and that would break their neck, hopefully. And if that didn't finish them off, then they'd use stones. But Jesus was killed by the Romans and therefore a cross.

Some of the things they took us by is just things that were on the property. And one of those is an olive tree. And that, of course, was the source of a lot of the olives. We'll talk about the olive press in just a minute. Another thing they talked about is because of the hilly configuration, a lot of the farming was done in terraces, similar to what you see here. And one of the things that Nancy has told people repeatedly is Israel is made of rock. There's rock everywhere. And so one of the good things about taking the rocks and gathering up and making a rock wall is you got it out of the soil that you're trying to grow things in, right?

Another thing that they showed us here would be a typical shepherd. And rather than being able to drive in metal stakes and put wire across there, things would be bound together with sticks and you'd have a corral for the animals that way. One of the things we did see quite a bit of, particularly in the Palestinian areas, were people shepherding sheep. They might have been talking on their cell phone when they're shepherding sheep, but nonetheless, people shepherding sheep, and you'd see a shepherd out there with them.

Now here was a tomb that they had on the property, and I'm pretty sure this was made kind of in replica form, but at least you get the idea. Here was a tomb, they would have a round opening, not necessarily large, So when it remarks specifically that the stone in front of Jesus' tomb was large, as opposed to this kind, which would be fairly common, a small round stone. You can see Nancy having to kind of bend over to come out. Inside they would have various places, like you see here, to place the bodies. The stone was over the front to keep animals from coming in and disturbing the body and dishonoring the dead, if you will.

One of the things that was there on the property was a watchtower or guard tower. Now it's interesting, as they bought the property, they didn't know what they were buying. They just knew it was close to the old city of Nazareth. What they discovered was that there was, during Jesus' time, a guard tower on this property. So they reconstructed the guard tower right where they found it. They also explain one other thing, and that is that this farm being right next to the town of Nazareth, this farm being right next to this, Jesus himself may have stood watch at this guard tower as a part of the duties that he had. in his growing up years or sometime later. Luke 14, which we'll get to in some months from now. For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it?

Here was a place in the rock where it was carved out for ritual purification. That was fairly typical where they'd carve out an area for ritual purification. We would call it baptism, right? And so the Jews would carry out this ritual purification as a standard, you know, practice before, for example, going to the synagogue, going into a temple area, and that sort of thing. One of the things we saw at the Western Wall was they had even just right outside some fountains and they had little cups that you would put the water into and you pour it over your hands. You see, the rabbis have said it's not good to just put your hands underneath the faucet. You need to put it in a container and pour it over your hands.

Then you're ritually clean, right? Now, here is an olive crusher and I'll ask Nancy the come up here and share some about this. Okay. This was very impressive to me. You can see this log that goes through it and they would have an animal or a person could do it. They would push it around and it actually goes around.

So they would place the olives in the center of the large bottom stone and then crush the olives there. Then they would take the olives and put them in a wheel shaped basket There's another olive press there. They would put them in a wheel-shaped basket and place them on a stone, and they would take another large stone with a lever system and press it. They pressed the olives three times. The first press was the first fruits, and that was oil that was taken to the temple for temple use.

Deuteronomy 18.4 says, you shall give him the first fruits of your grain, your new wine, and your oil, and the first shearing of your sheep.

In 1 Corinthians 15.20, Paul says, but now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits who are asleep. He's the resurrection, and he is the guarantee of our resurrection. The oil from the second pressing was used in cooking and in medicine.

Jesus said in John 6.35, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will not hunger, and he who believes in me will never thirst. Now, we always think of bread, we think of the grain. But oil, the olive oil, was a significant part of that bread. So the oil was a key ingredient. The oil from the third pressing was used for household goods, for using in the oil lamps, as one suggestion.

And Jesus spoke to them in John 8.12, and said, I am the light of the world.

He who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. When we moved into the synagogue, Tali, this young woman, you can just barely see her here, she was our tour guide, just a sweet young lady, she pointed out that Jesus, when he was in the Garden of Gethsemane, and Gethsemane means olive press, that he prayed three times that the cup would be removed from him. He knew that he was about to be crushed for us, And that, you know, putting together his prayers with the three pressings of the oil just really struck me that he was willing to go through this for us. That we would have life and light and that we would have the promise of the resurrection.

Thank you. By the way, this is the way I thought I would be dressed in Jerusalem. I was in black. Yeah, because it was colder than expected, right? Okay. One of the other things that we noticed in this Nazareth village demonstrated that, you know, we think of a window, and of course our windows even here go down, you know, to the floor, and we think of it as fairly large, but if you don't have glass, then that changes your practice. And so the windows, just about universally, were small and often higher up in the wall. So typically, the inside of the house would be fairly dark, and if you lived in an area where they had black basalt rock to build with, it was especially dark.

Here was one of the other things they had demonstrated, a carpenter using the tools of the day. And in this case, he's working with a chisel. And for both sharpening tools and sandpaper, they would use rocks. Not sandpaper, but just rocks. And he'd use that to work the wood and smooth things out. They also would use a plane, and that's what Tali is holding up there and demonstrating to shape the wood and smooth it out.

And then guess what this is? This is a drill, right? So you'd have a piece of wood and it would have a groove around the outside and the middle, and so you would take the stick with the cord that goes around there and go back and forth, and that's your drill, right? So Talley told us that's a cordless drill, right? Okay. Okay.

Then another thing they had there was a weaver and of course you're starting from the beginning with, you know, we've got the wool or in some cases the flax and then you have to go and spin it. Once it's spun, it's all kinky and so they have to wrap it up in balls for about a month and let it sit and let the kinks work themselves out. They also demonstrated dyeing the wool with various colors and using different things to do that.

We moved into the synagogue and it gave you a real sense this would have been similarly constructed to the one we saw only a part of, the floor of, in Magdala. But this would have been a typical synagogue. You'd have areas to sit down, often benches built into the side. You'd have columns supporting a roof area. And again, the windows are high up and not that big. And so this would be a typical synagogue environment.

And so then we got an opportunity, of course, to read from the scrolls. And Courtney is particularly pleased at this opportunity. You can tell. All right, so as we move from Nazareth to Megiddo, it was an exciting place to cross from Nazareth to Megiddo. Nazareth is on the north side of a valley, and Megiddo is on the south side of the valley. This is the Valley of Megiddo.

This is Armageddon. This is where that last and final battle will be initiated here. Right here. It is also a place historically where there have been a great number of pivotal battles right in this valley. As we've shown previously, here is the Valley of Megiddo up at the top part. The modern port name is Haifa. That's number one here.

And so we went here in this area, which will be the beginning of the Campaign of Armageddon. And the area around Jerusalem will be the end of the Campaign of Armageddon. So between the two places, we saw some major locations in terms of the campaign of Armageddon, many of the events will take place in and around Jerusalem and in and around that valley. Really amazing to look at. Also to ponder, here is Jesus living in Nazareth looking over that valley knowing what the future is going to be for that valley. He lived there and saw it every day.

Once we got across the valley, we went to Tel Megiddo, its first mention in the book of Joshua. Because Joshua came in, and that's one of the places that was captured. Again in Judges, in 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, and the last time in Zechariah 12, 11. So here's Tel Megiddo.

Again, it was not a natural hill, but a hill built up from successive construction, layer upon layer. One of the seals that was found there, this is a seal of the servant of King Jeroboam II. So a significant find there. But there were also other impressive things that we saw.

Within the walls during the time of Solomon had the capacity for about 480 horses inside the walls. And so they had all the feeding troughs and watering troughs for all the horses that were kept there. It was a major defensive point for Solomon and his forces. Here is mud brick in the palace walls of the Canaanite King of Megiddo.

And I think this is one spot where it's good to see, okay, here's what it looks like when it's in fairly good condition. Several points of significance. One is the Jews spent several centuries making those kinds of mud bricks. So that's part one. When they were in Egypt, that was their assignment. Build mud brick like this. Make lots of mud brick. And then the other place that has significance is that's the kind of material that was in the walls around Jericho. This mud brick.

So it used throughout Israel and much of the Middle East. Here is a six chamber gate at Megiddo dating from the time of King Solomon. Solomon is said to have built up the defensive structures during his reign and Megiddo was one of those places. So the Bible has it described and there you see it. This is the upgrade to the defensive gate there.

We were unable to get into the park where Gideon gave a drinking test and 300 passed and he sent home the rest, right? So we weren't able to get there, but we did get an excellent, excellent lesson in Hebrew, okay? And signaling and those kinds of things, right? All right.

The last place on that loop that day was Beth She'an. Beshion is first mentioned in Joshua 17, 11, and 16, mentioned in Judges and 1 Kings and 1 Chronicles. It is exclusively an Old Testament city so far as being named. Its occupation went on into New Testament times.

And one of the things you might notice here is there's an area of the tell, it looks like a hill, right? And then there's a larger area off in the flat. And so what happened is initially, everything was built around the tell, but then it expanded out into the flat area as time went on. Really an amazing place. This is looking down from the tell, down on the city, and there's quite a bit of really impressive architecture there.

Now, here is one, I'll ask Courtney to come up and give us some explanation here. As much as last week was emotional, looking at those things and seeing the picture at Beth Theda, which meant a lot, the other thing I got excited about was water features. You know, I'm a water guy. So they had to put up with me. Oh, look at that. That's water related. Can anybody tell what this is? Anybody know what this is? Maybe unless I've told you already. It's a steam room.

This actually, they put a false floor on top of all these little pillars. So they put rock floors on top of all those pillars. They built fires underneath. You could either have a sauna, if you didn't put any water on the rocks, or on the floor, or you could put water on it and make your own steam room.

So this was an actual steam room at Bashian. There's also at Masada. We didn't get up there, but I'd seen pictures of this when I walked up. It's a steam room! Just realize this is several thousand years ago. It's a steam room, a sauna, and then it would go to a hot bath, and then down to a cool bath. So this is a full service. They said massages, everything. This was 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. So whatever you see at 24 Hour Fitness, they had it 3,000 years ago. So this is a sauna. Again, they put a false fluoride burn, fires underneath it, and you could either have a sauna or a steam room. Now, the next one probably has a little... Oh, this was...

The theater there had room for 7,000. The more expensive seats were here. The cheap seats were up here, just like today. You pay for it, I guess. I don't know. You have cheap seats on the basalt. But this was an actual theater, still very much intact. So when you have a lot of people, 7,000 people gathered for a theater presentation, what do you need? Oh, right here. You can guess by our positioning what this is. 7,000 people.

You need a toilet. You need several toilets. So this, actually, is a public bathroom at Michigan. And I've seen one of these before, too. Very public, mind you. There aren't dividers in between here. You know who's circumcised and who isn't, right? A lot of different things. We could go in a lot of different directions. I'm not going to go there.

The cool part of this is, you think 3,000 years ago, here's, you know, public toilets. And there's actually three walls of these things, so you could see everybody, howdy doody, you know, and they had an intermission, everybody went to the bathroom. The cool part about this, and we think how smart we are, underneath this, and you can kind of see it over here, are channels, water channels, that had running water. So they had basically flush toilets 3,000 years ago.

The water, you had your business, and it washed out and went down and flushed the toilet basically. It just had running water through there. The other kind of more TMI probably is this channel by your feet. I don't know if you can guess what that is, but back in those days they didn't have Charmin. So, you would use your hand. Not a very sanitary thing, but This was a channel of which water would go through, so you would wash your hands in the channel of water that went by your feet.

So they had flush toilets with washing your hands 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. Pretty cool. We think we're so sophisticated, they had it figured out back then. So that was cool. They also had all sorts of drain pipes and drainage stuff that, you know, I go to people's houses now and they don't know about their drainage. They knew it 3,000 years ago.

So some of the other, we'll quickly go through it, some of the other water systems. I got excited when we saw any of the water systems. You can go ahead. These are these excavations. You can see the big excavation. These are inside these fortresses or these walled cities. Vern maybe said last time that you didn't want to go outside to get a pail of water when you're being attacked. Some of these siege walls or ramps there take forever to build them, so you could be a long time while they're attacking you. You'd run out of water.

What they did, which was cool, they dig these shafts down in there, down several hundred feet to get groundwater. They had groundwater hydrologists back then. My job's been available for thousands of years. So these are these, go ahead if you want this, different ones that all the different major fortress cities, they had the water so you could be inside being attacked and not have to go out. They'd have their own water source.

We didn't get in this one because of high ground water, go figure. And then another one, these are in most of these tells where you go down and some of those, I think the last slide, Oh, this is another one going in. Keep going. I think this kind of shows how they do it. They'd excavate down and they'd go down several hundred feet or a hundred feet or more down on the shafts to hit groundwater in these pools. These are significant.

You know, basically like this one, 28 by 80 by 13, that's about 215,000 gallons of storage, water storage. So again, they had to figure it out and it would replenish itself. It was, it was groundwater fed. They kind of said they don't know where it comes from, but it's groundwater. So, Anyway, very cool, lots of water, old historical ones, like I said. Got excited about the emotional and all the other stuff. Yeah. Okay, good.

Okay, so as we've shown these things, we've taken you to the place where Abraham offered up Isaac. This was in what's now called, it's under the dome at the Dome of the Rock. And so we've taken you there. We've taken you to the valley where Samson lived and spent most of his life and where he defeated a lion. And even at that very place where we stood, they found a seal that depicts a man with long hair battling a lion at the mouth too, by the way. We've taken you to the fortress. where David actually was, overlooking the valley where David fought Goliath.

We've taken you to the tunnel that is called Hezekiah's Tunnel that reroutes the spring of Gihon down to what is now known as the Pool of Siloam. And so we went to those places, all of those significant from the time of Solomon, into the time of Hezekiah, into the time of Christ's ministry, where he healed a man who was blind at the Pool of Siloam. We've taken you to Tel Hazor, which is the largest tell in Israel of the more than 200 of them, a place where Joshua went, and a place that Jeremiah prophesied about. We've taken you to the Tell at Jericho, where the final destruction of this, what is marketed as the world's oldest city, was ended with the attack of the Israelites, where God miraculously caused the walls to fall out.

We've taken you to Beth Shean, where there's all sorts of interesting developments, including just evidence that this was indeed a watchpoint, a military watchpoint during the time of David and Solomon, and existed on into New Testament times. We've taken you to Tell Megiddo, which is overlooking the valley where Armageddon will be, the last battle. We've taken you to the Watchtower, right there in Nazareth village, a place that Jesus himself may have stood watch over the agricultural area down below.

We'd taken you through the various things that were done there, including the carpenter's work and the olive press. There's a place that we got through with that tour, and we were all grabbed by it. We'd taken you to this place, the Dome of the Rock. You weren't allowed to go in, but even thinking, okay, just on the outside, We got to stand on places where the priests used to do sacrifices. We got to stand in the area where Jesus said, well, that widow who gave these two little coins gave more than these others. And we got to look around and to walk in some of those areas where Jesus had taught in the colonnade around the perimeter.

Also saw the places where the temple was taken apart and the remains of the temple were still there. It could still be seen. And just the magnitude of the destruction and loss of that temple is just rather stunning. We saw the place where the Jews even today pray and hope at this wall, the closest place that they're allowed to get. to this rock. This rock which is the place where Abraham offered up Isaac. The closest place they can get to where that temple once was. And many of them hope that it will be again. So as we took you through this, I think one of the things that this does is it also gives us as believers a place to look forward to.

We went to the Garden of Gethsemane and looking up from there we went to the places where Jesus was beaten and crucified at Golgotha. We went to a place where you could look up at the Mount of Olives where Jesus ascended You could look up at the Mount of Olives and know from Zechariah chapter 14 that that's also where he will return. There. And we looked up from the Garden of Gethsemane to see the Eastern Gate prophesied by Ezekiel, Ezekiel 44, 1 through 3, that it would be shut. And believe it or not, it was the Muslims who shut it and thus fulfilled prophecy. But it will not be opened again until Jesus goes through that gate in a day yet to come as close as seven years from today.

Thank you for the opportunity to go and to see these things. It's been life-changing and so I appreciate that. Let's thank the Lord. Lord, we thank you for these places where we have confirmation of the truths of things in Scripture. We also have context We can see ah, this is what it's talking about and we saw it firsthand and we thank you for that Thank you for the the privilege that we have we even saw the places where we were identified with you in your death burial and resurrection and ascension and Lord that's just rather amazing to ponder and We just we thank you for the heavenly position that we have that we see with the eyes of faith and We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.