Chill Bump Moments in Israel 6 of 6

View of Jerusalem from Mt of Olives

Words would never do justice to our last day in Jerusalem.  We began in the morning on the Mount of Olives with an incredible view of the Dome of the Rock, overlooking the KIdron Valley.  The Dome of the Rock sits on Mt Moriah, at the place where Abraham took his son Isaac to sacrifice. It is also the place where King David bought the threshing floor and built an altar to the Lord  (2 Sam 24).  It was also the place of Solomon's Temple that was eventually destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar and rebuilt by the Jews following their Babylon captivity. And it was the place of the temple that Jesus cleansed. Overwhelming to even think about all that.

 The Kidron Valley was the place through which King David fled during the rebellion of Absalom. The same valley that  Jesus crossed so many times when he left Jerusalem to go to the Mount of Olives and Bethany.  The same KIdron Valley where blood flowed from the lamb sacrifices at the Holy Temple above it.  And we thought about what it actually meant that Jesus, the Lamb of God, waded through the blood as he made his last trip through that valley before coming back to the city to be the ultimate sacrifice.    Although the temple now is a mosque, we know there will come a day when a new temple will be built there. We know the Mount of Olives was where Jesus stood when he wept over Jerusalem and He had to be referring to all the whitewashed tombs you can see from that mountain when he compared the hypocrites to those tombs in Matthew 23.   The Mount of Olives is also the place where Jesus began his triumphal entry to Jerusalem riding a donkey - and also the place, according to Luke 24, where Jesus ascended to heaven after the resurrection.  There are no words or description of chill bumps that can describe being there.

Garden of Gethsamene

We walked down from the Mount of Olives, past the cemetery and into the Garden of Gethsemane. As we gathered our wits and attempted to control our emotions, we learned about olive trees that are still standing after thousands of years.  We know that the olive tree brings rich imagery to the Bible. Its very deep root system and its ability to live in very rocky terrain is not just a fact but symbolically astounding when you think of it in Biblical terms.  The many shoots that spring continually from the root system are compared to the children of God ensuring that the family of God will never die.  Job compared human beings to the olive tree noting that it did not die when it was cut down but sprang again to new life.  The Bible is an amazing book.  No man could have made all this fit together, that is for sure.  We looked at those trees that were very likely there when Jesus went with his disciples to pray before his crucifixion.  It was in this garden that the disciples slept while Jesus prayed and where Judas betrayed Jesus by bringing in a “detachment of soldiers and some officials of the chief priests and the Pharisees. “( John 18:3.)  And where Peter cut off the ear of Malchus, the servant of the high priest. Again, we were amazed to even think we were standing in the place where all this happened.  I have no idea how to write about what we experienced there.  Chill bumps are as prominent as olives in Israel, that is for sure.

Golgotha

The Garden Tomb

We then walked the Via Delorosa, which is the way of the cross. Although that road is not the original road Jesus walked with the cross (the original has to be below it), it was still an incredible experience to walk that path and even to think about what Jesus went through in His final hours.  The Via Dolorosa is full of shops on both sides and is very commercialized  but we were reminded that when Jesus walked that path it probably was much like that. They would have paraded him through the streets for all to see.  We finally arrived at The Church of the Holy Sepulcher that was built in the 4th century and contains the traditional places of the two holiest sites in Christianity - the site where Jesus of Nazareth was crucified at a place called Golgotha or Calvary and Jesus’ empty tomb.    Although maybe it was a little of a let down to see how this was all presented, it was all rectified when I saw my wife and her sister both with tears in their eyes as they kneeled and touched the stone that is said to be the place they laid Jesus’ body after they took Him off the cross.  

Afterwards we then began the most emotional and moving time of the entire trip.   We visited another place that fits all the Biblical descriptions of Golgotha, the Place of the Skull.   It is just “without the gate” that is now called the Damascus gate. It is a rocky, quite bare hill about 50 feet high and a distance of 500 feet from the city wall and is over 100 feet higher than the sacred Rock of the Temple. When you look up at the hill, the skull is plainly seen.   In the 1800s it was discovered that a Jewish Tomb existed on a smaller knoll to the west. The fact that this tomb is so close to that hill and so far from other tombs has led many experts to believe this is the where the crucifixion and resurrection actually took place.

Either way, I really don’t know.  And i suppose it does’t matter.  But what I do know, when I looked at that hill, I could hardly speak.  And when I entered the tomb a few minutes later, I was almost overwhelmed.  When I heard the different Christian groups scattered throughout that place singing and worshiping from all across the world, even as we began to do the same - well there are no chill bumps that could do that justice.  Our time visiting,  worshiping and taking  communion in the place of the Garden Tomb was one powerful moment in my life.

I left Israel very tired but believing still with all that is within me that what t I have been taught all my life is really true.  I have been asked since I got home,  "Did going there increase your faith?"  My answer is, "It surely didn't decrease it - that is for sure!"   I am convinced that the stories I have read in the Bible really happened and that book is indeed the inspired Word of God.  It all just fits together like a symphony.

 I can also say that the culmination of God’s grace and provision for all of us can be found at that Garden Tomb.  I can also tell you with 100% certainty that He is not there.   Because of HIs death and resurrection I will live forever.

 And because of that truth,  I want to love well and finish well here.

"Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.  And love your neighbor as yourself."