A Cessationist Straw Man

Introduction

The first thing I want to say is that I am a cessationist. I believe that the sign gifts ceased at the end of the apostolic age. Therefore this is an in-house critique. It is an important consideration when arguing our position that we should not use invalid arguments to do so. 

So what is the straw man that has prompted this missive? It is this. The suggestion/demand made to continuationists that if they truly believe that God is really speaking to them they should take what was said, write it down and staple, glue or otherwise affix it to the back of their Bibles. The tacit accusation here is that the continuationist does not believe in a closed canon. While I am sure there are those that believe in an open canon I am fairly certain that if you ask any continuationist if they believe in a closed canon they would answer in the affirmative. I was one and I certainly would have done so. 

This is a rather shallow jibe made by my cessationist brothers and I would respectfully request that they stop saying this. There are good arguments from Scripture against the continuation of the sign gifts, and some good historical points can be made as well. Let us stick to those and cease making accusations that are for the most part untrue and rather disingenuous to those who in many cases are actually brothers and sisters in Christ. 

So why do I think that the continuationist need not add their prophetic utterances (or those of others) to the current canon of 66 books?

The arguments

I have three arguments. 

1. Not all the words of Jesus were written down as Scripture
2. Not all prophecy was written down as Scripture.
3. Modern prophecy does not meet the test for canonicity.

Jesus 

I think it is fair to say that every word that Jesus spoke was from God. Because Jesus is Himself God every word He spoke could rightly have been recorded in Scripture and been considered Scripture. However we can be sure that not everything Jesus did and said is recorded in Scripture. John 21:25 says “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

Only the words the Holy Spirit inspired the Gospel writers to remember and write down became part of the Bible as we know it today. So if many of the words of Jesus Himself were not chosen by the Spirit to be part of Scripture why should the prophecies of, say, Beth Moore be worthy of inclusion? 

New Testament Prophecy

Both cessationists and continuationists would agree that the gift of prophecy and the office of prophet existed in the New Testament church. Acts 21:9 indicates that Philip has daughters who prophesied. Agabus is called a prophet and is mentioned twice (Acts 11:27-30 and Acts 21:10-14) as having prophesied things that later came to pass. No prophecies uttered by Philips daughters were recorded in Scripture. Yet the Scriptures indicate that they prophesied. Two prophecies of Agabus were recorded but I am loath to think that this was the sum total of the prophecies that he made. Thus at least one and possibly more direct revelations from God that were brought through Agabus did not find their way into the canon of Scripture. If genuine prophets in the New Testament did not get all their prophecies canonised why should we presume that modern day “prophets” must have their words added to the canon?

Canonicity 

Anyone who has studied canon knows that the books we accept as Divinely inspired were not picked from a list based on a set of criteria. And no, Constantine had nothing whatsoever to do with the compilation of the canon. What we do know however is that by looking at the books that ARE canon we can see attributes that these books have in common that show their validity in the canon of Scripture. 

Modern day prophecy does not fulfil any of the criteria that are indicate the canonicity of the books we have in Scripture. 

Since there are no living apostles today the prophecy could not have been made by an apostle or someone close to an apostle. 

The prophecy is not widely accepted as from God by a majority of the churches. 

The prophecies in most cases are not widely attested to by the churches. And so on and so forth. So even if you assume that the prophecies are truly from God and are accurate, they fail the test of canonicity and thus cannot be tacked on to the back of anyones Bible. 

Conclusion

So by applying three simple criteria we can safely conclude that none of the prophecies of the so called modern day prophets qualify for inclusion in the canon, and even if they are true and accurate they have only limited temporal application and have no bearing on the body of Christ in general. 

The arguments for the cessation of the apostolic sign gifts are solid. We don’t need straw man catch phrases to ram home our point.

Let us as Christians always take the high road and use the best arguments and catch phrases to argue and illustrate our position and leave the straw man arguments to those who have nothing better in their arsenal to combat the awesome truth that is found only in God’s Holy Word.  

Stop Calling Providence a Miracle

Stop Calling Providence a Miracle 

Introduction

I think I need to leave Facebook. Or at least start unfriending people who post drivel and sensationalism on my timeline. 

Case in point. A video was linked to a post on my timeline. The text used to encourage people to go watch the video is this: “Dr from Shofar Worcester prayed for dead patient who came back to life after 50 minutes. Watch her testimony here!”

Now based on the comment what would one logically conclude. This person was dead for almost an hour, a doctor who is part of a church in Worcester prayed for her to rise from the dead and thats what happened! Awesome miracle! Praise the Lord!

Is that what the video interview says? Is that comment accurate as pertains to the facts of the video commented on by the poster?

A disclaimer of sorts

Can and does God still do miracles? I believe, yes! Can and does God do these miracles sometimes in direct answer to prayer? Yes! Is there anything we can extrapolate based on miracles that seem to happen in response to prayer regarding the Charismatic/Pentecostal doctrine of the continuation of the apostolic sign gifts today? No I do not believe so. However for the sake of this article I am going to assume that the doctrine is accurate and the sign gifts do indeed continue and I will even concede that all Christians can have access to these gifts. I do not personally believe this anymore but I will concede it for the sake of the point I wish to make. 

The video

First, watch the video (http://shofaronline.tv/videos/testimonies-20141112-shofar-stories-herma-hugo/)

It is a great story. I do not know this person but I have no reason to doubt the veracity of her testimony. I also have no way to verify it. That does not matter to me. I believe that her retelling of the facts in this testimony are accurate. First a few thoughts and questions. 

1) The doctor starts the video by saying that miracles happen every day but we seldom recognise them for what they are"

• Thus the doctor seems to think that what she is about to narrate was a miracle. Is it a miracle? Or just good doctoring? Or divine providence? 

2) The woman in question was at the hospital. 

• It is a known fact that many, even very serious injuries can be dealt with if the victim can get to a hospital quickly. So it stands to reason that if something happens to you IN the hospital you have a much better chance of surviving. 

3) The woman was being given CPR for 50 minutes by a team of medical staff. 

• This is interesting. I would assume that all involved were properly training in how to do CPR. Why did they keep at it for 50 minutes? I have no idea. A quick search on the internet is inconclusive but there was a WebMD article that gave the indication that 38 minute plus sessions of CPR can improve the patients chances of not having brain damage when fully revived. (http://www.webmd.com/heart/news/20131116/giving-cpr-for-more-than-30-minutes-may-be-worth-it?src=RSS_PUBLIC) Its one article. Is it true? Maybe. Maybe not. 

4) The doctor prayed for the woman.

• She is a Christian. She sees a person in dire straits. It stands to reason that she would pray for her. What did she pray? Please heal her? No. Please raise her back to life? No. The doctor indicates what she prayed for. She prayed for her soul. Since she stated seconds before that what she was unsure of what to pray because she did not know if the patient was a Christian or not, one can safely assume that when she says she was praying for her soul she meant that she was praying for the patients salvation. Yes it is an assumption but I think a valid one. Then she mentions she was praying in her tongue. What does that mean? Well it means that she was praying in her own personal prayer language. I have never really believed in this doctrine of the personal prayer language because it is not taught in Scripture and the verses used to justify it are taken out of context and twisted out of proportion to justify the doctrine. So in layman’s terms she was quietly speaking gibberish that she believes was an angelic language but which does not conform to any definition of a language. Is this a valid reason to infer that her prayer raised the dead? No. 

5) “She had signs she was brain dead”

• What does that mean? I am not a doctor. Could she have been brain dead? I have no idea. Could brain death at that point be a misdiagnosis? Possibly. Is there anything in the video testimony to indicate that the doctor in question or any other doctor involved was SURE that there was brain death. No. There seems to be none. And if there was no brain death, then where is the miracle? 

What is a miracle?

Before I comment further is might be useful to ask the question, “What is a miracle?”. 

Baker says “Event which may seem contrary to nature and which signifies an act in which God reveals himself to man.” Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary says “MIRACLES, SIGNS, WONDERS Events which unmistakably involve an immediate and powerful action of God designed to reveal His character or purposes”. Or Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, "Extraordinary events that manifest divine power, that are wonders to human understanding, and therefore what human beings perceive as signs from God”

So the definition of a miracle is something that God does that are wonders to human understanding. Does this testimony rise to that definition. I would have to say and I hope the reader would agree that it does not. There is good evidence that this lady survived due to good doctoring and all the medical staff involved are to be commended. Could God in His providence have decided to keep this woman alive even though she was so near death? Yes. I believe that is possible. It is clearly a miracle that CANNOT be explained in any other way. Most certainly not. 

When Jesus healed the dead son of the widow, he immediately got up. When Jesus raised Jairus’s daughter the mourners laughed at Jesus for saying she was sleeping for she was clearly dead. When in 2 Kings the men dumped the body they were carrying into Elisha’s tomb the body came back to life. Immediate and unmistakeable. No subsequent period of convalescence until full recovery. There is nothing similar in this testimony. 

Faith or credulity?

Someone might ask at this point, “Where is your faith, man? Why won’t you accept that God has done something miraculous you cessationist, you!”.

I would throw the question back by asking, “Why are you so quick to believe that it is a miracle, in spite of the facts to the contrary?”

I remember being in a church service where a video was shown about the plan to eventually implant everyone with a microchip for buying and selling re. the mark of the Beast from the book of Revelation. I heard later that many in that service were very worried because they thought it was going to happen VERY soon! How many times have we Christians (especially Charismatics) received an email link to an article about some dire threat to Christendom that 10 seconds at snopes.com would have revealed to be a hoax. When it comes to Charismatics and miracles I think the problem is worse. If you believe that God still does signs and wonders like you read in the Bible and you see that they are NOT everyday occurrences you may be temped to see any unusual event as a fulfilment of the belief in those miraculous signs. Faith is not blind. Faith does not ignore evidence. Credulity however believes in spite of the lack of evidence or even in the face of contrary evidence. 

Is the evidence in this specific case enough to warrant the claim of a miracle? No it is not. Should we praise God for this woman’s recovery? Absolutely. Should we praise God for giving us these doctors who performed their jobs admirably? Yes, yes and a thousand times yes! 

Conclusion

I would like to ask simply that we reserve the word “Miracle” for actual miraculous events. Do they happen? I believe they do. To use the word for things that are due to the normal operation of the universe or simply divine providence makes a mockery of the word, our witness for Jesus in the world and most importantly it makes a mockery of the God we serve. When He does a miracle we will KNOW it and even the critics will have to admit it. The Pharisees of Jesus’ day never doubted His miraculous signs. They killed Him anyway. Lets call a spade a spade, and a duck a duck and get out there and actually preach the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ instead of looking under every doorknob for a miracle and then making videos about it to post on Facebook. Lets not follow the sensationalism of our time and rather be known as those who do not color the truth but tell it as it is!

Soli Deo Gloria 

Start spreading the news....

I'll start with the old joke, "I just flew from Cape Town to New York and boy are my arms tired..." Yes its lame and, yes its not my arms that are tired. Everything else is.

For those of you who don't know, I flew Turkish Airlines to New York with a stop in Istanbul. I decided to stay awake the whole flight to Istanbul and only managed to get +- 5 hours of sleep on the Istanbul to New York leg. And that sleep was fitful and uncomfortable. And it was not my width that was the problem. It was my length. Sure Turkish Air is cheaper than the competition but there is reason for that. No legroom at all. Technically its better than SAA because the inflight entertainment is MUCH better than the rubbish SAA delivers for more money, but no leg room is still no leg room. I tried to order a seat with more leg room. No dice. At least Delta lets me upgrade to a Economy Comfort seat which has more leg room. So the San Fran leg of my journey will be much more enjoyable. I hope :)

So can I write a decent blog post while VERY tired? My body is craving sleep but I want to watch the first episode of the new season of Franklin and Bash which is at 10pm New York time so I must wait! And since my computer is telling me that its now 2:48am Cape Town time on Wednesday 6th June you can calculate how much sleep I have gotten over how much elapsed time (Cape Town time) and then imagine how my body must feel about that! Well my dear reader. I will let you be the judge!

I am very excited to be in New York. It has been a dream of many years to come here and now that dream is starting to become a reality. I think some people must have looked at me askance today and I had a smile on my face all the way into Manhattan. Seeing the Manhattan skyline for the first time was truely awesome. What was most fun was that I could even pick out some of the buildings. Not many but a few.

On our way into Manhattan I saw something else I actually had not expected. There is a scene in Men in Black 1 where Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones track a bug alien to Queens. The scene in question plays out when the bug tries to get away in one of the space ships that has been left at the site of a previous close encounter with extra-terrestrial life. J and K as they are called fire their weapons and bring down the ship whereapon it crashes through a huge steel structure that represents a globe of earth. This is what I saw on the way to my hotel. And I liked it. We also drove past Madison Square Garden which was  one of the sets for another New York based movie Godzilla. Caught a glimpse of the building where supposedly Jonah Jameson had his newspaper, the Daily Bugle. It was also the site where Neal Caffree of White Collar base-jumped after replacing a painting he had stolen with a forgery.

I remember someone mentioning (possibly also in a movie) about how there seems to be a Starbucks on every corner in New York. Well I went looking for a DVD this afternoon and walked down one street and saw four Starbucks coffee shops. Four. Two of them were even within line of site. And I only walked about a kilometer and a half. Thats alot of coffee! I also got the very strong impression that these coffee shops are really all about coffee. There really isn't much else on the menu. Our own home grown product Mugg and Bean at least has a diverse menu that allows you to enjoy a good cup of coffee (or used to do so) AND have a meal if you so chose. Not here. I still need to find a place to eat breakfast. I have one option available so far. They do pancakes and potentially other things as well. At least my breakfast needs in San Francisco will be taken care of! More about that later :)

T-Mobile can only give me Edge connectivity on my really cool iPhone 4S ( :( ) but it is much better than nothing. And Google Maps is a Godsend on the iPhone when you need to plan your routes around a unknown town like New York. Well its unknown to me at any rate :)

Well rather than ramble on forever I will close off by saying I am really glad to be in the Big Apple finally and am looking forward to all the sites I will see tomorrow when I venture out on my first unassisted day of touring. Time Square here I come....

Sir, we would see Jesus

Hermeneutics is the study of the rules for interpreting Scripture. The importance of these rules CANNOT be overstated. If you do not have a set of rules or principles for interpreting Scripture how can you be sure that your interpretation is accurate? "Does it matter?" someone may be heard to ask. Well let me phrase the question this way. Does it matter if for us to know what God actually said instead of what we think He said or what we want Him to say? Jesus said "If you love me, you obey my commandments" John 14:15. Well if we don't know what His commandments are, how can we obey them. Which of course implies that if you truly love Jesus you will endever to know what His commands are so that you can put them into practice.

The reason I bring this up is that I heard a sermon recently where a passage of Scripture was used and when it was cited my immediate reaction was "Did this interpretation come from the context?" At that exact moment I was unable to answer this question as I wanted to continue listening and I didn't have all my tools at my disposal. The text in question was Psalm 32:8 and was quoted from the NKJV as follows:

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;

I will guide you with My eye."

The next verse was also added.

Do not be like the horse or like the mule,

Which have no understanding,

Which must be harnessed with bit and bridle,

Else they will not come near you.

Now according to the preacher, the point of this passage is to tell us that God wants us not to be like the horse or the mule that must have a bit or a harness before you can guide them. Don't be stubborn. Let God guide you with His eye. Be so in tune with Him that He only needs to look in the right direction and you will be off doing what He wants you to do. Sounds good right. Lets look at it more closely. What is the context of the psalm itself.

Verse 1 and 2 talk about how Blessed the man is whom God pardons of sin! In verses 3 to 5 David tells us how when he refused to confess his sin, God's hand was heavy upon him, and then how when he confessed it God forgave him. Verse 6 starts "For this cause..." leading on from the end of verse 5 in which David tells us that God forgave his sin. Then follows prayer and praise in verses 6 and 7. Now comes verse 8. Question one. Who is speaking here? Commentators are divided, on whether David is speaking himself, or if he is quoting the words of God Himself! Of course if David is speaking then the interpretation given above is completely out of court. However the majority of commentators agree that God is speaking in verses 8 and 9. Is the interpretation thus vindicated? Well we haven't exhausted our options for analysis so let's look a little deeper.

Firstly if we look a little bit closer at verse 9 we see something interesting. The bit and the bridle are not used in this context to guide the horse where you want it to go (to do as you command) but simply to get the horse or mule to "come near you". One could interpret verse 9 as saying "Don't be an idiot that I have to drag near me." In the broader context of the psalm which talks about unconfessed sin and the joy of forgiveness at confessed sin it would seem to me that verse 9 is saying that if you hide your sin you are like a horse or a mule without understanding that has to be pulled closer to the master.

Hmmm. Our interpretation is breaking down. And we haven't even brought out the big guns yet. Lets look further. What does the word "guide" mean. No not in the English. In the Hebrew. From the lexicon we see that the word translated "guide" actually means counsel or advise. Now you may say to me, "Dude I don't have all those lexicons. How am I supposed to know what the text means if I don't know the Hebrew?" Good question. However if you had been in my hermeneutics class you would already know the answer. The simplest way to check a translation is to compare it with other good translations.

NASB: I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go;

I will counsel you with My eye upon you

ESV: I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;

I will counsel you with my eye upon you.

NIV: I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;

I will counsel you and watch over you.

HCSB: I will instruct you and show you the way to go;

with My eye on you, I will give counsel.

Here are just four examples. Most translations (though not all) render the verse similarly.

Notice the repeated use of "counsel". Also notice the "with my eye UPON YOU" All the commentators I have consulted agree with this rendering of the verse. The Tyndale Old Testament Commentary has this to say about the alternate rendering:

"But the well-known rendering in AV, ‘I will guide thee with mine eye’, which suggests our

responsiveness to his glance, is not accurate, although there is a similar thought in 123:2,

where the servant watches for the master’s signal. The point here is God’s vigilance and intimate

care, … with my eye upon you; our response is in verse 9."

Now if you remove my lexicon lookup and also ignore the Tyndale Commentary reference you still have the argument of context and the argument of parallel translations that even the newest Christian can apply to correctly interpret this passage. And the conclusion is that it does NOT mean what the preacher says it means.

This is one of many errors in interpretation that I found in ONE sermon. Another one was a misuse of Romans 1:21 where the argument was made that it is a lack of thankfulness (in general) that causes our hearts to be darkened. The problem is that the passage is talking about the ungodly who most importantly do not honor God AS GOD! In fact in the original language the emphasis of the verse is not on their thanklessness but on their lack of acknowledgement of God as God!

Now the church that the preacher is a part of does teach Biblical hermeneutics. AND they teach the very principles that I have just used to analyse these texts. So why does the preacher not use them? And more importantly, why should the congregation apply correct hermeneutical principles when the leadership refuses to do so? This is a recipe for disaster! Paul commands Timothy to be diligent to show himself approved of God a workman who need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth. Well this preacher OUGHT to be ashamed, because they did not rightly divide the Word of Truth!

Now why would someone who should know better do this? I think it is because they are more interested in what they have to say than what the Bible really says. Instead of getting their truth for the pages of Holy Scripture they get it from their own minds and then use Scripture wrongly to back up their own ideas. I am very concerned for them. James tells us not to want to be teachers because they will receive a harsher judgement. And I would not want to be in this preachers shoes for all the tea in China.

But there is a bigger problem here. The sheep are being misled. They are having bad Scripture

interpretation modelled for them every week. And worse than that, they will then apply that bad method to their own reading of Scripture. Which means that nine times out of ten they will not be hearing a word from God when they read Scripture, they will be hearing a word from themselves. It will not be God speaking to them, but their own hearts. And the Bible tells us that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

What do I want? I want the people of God to hear a word from GOD! Not me. Not the preacher. From the God of the universe. That is why I harp on hermeneutics so much and that is why I am so critical of preaching that does not apply those basic and simple rules. I heard a story of a pulpit in a church where a sign was hung that only the preacher could see before he ascended to give his sermon. It said something to the effect of, "Sir, we would see Jesus" And that is my prayer. That preachers would wake up and let the congregation see Jesus, hear from HIM, and put HIS words into practice in their lives. That they would thus learn to know Him more and love Him more for the marvelous work He did on Calvary.

Preacher! Let them see Jesus!

Please be patient, we are attending...

You may be wondering where's the jolly blog today. Well my usual blog time was spent packing so no blog at present. I will see how the day goes. If I can't get to it before I will write on the 9 hour trip home. Then I can upload the result with my Vodacom sim when we reach Joburg.

Good night from Israel.

-- Post From My iPhone

Coming to a close...

Yes one is beginning to feel that the tour is reaching it's conclusion. That and one of my roommates keeps reminding me.


Yes this was our destination for the day. The Israel museum. And the Shrine of the Book. At least I can now say I have been inside. Not being able to take pictures is annoying. Something I just realised now is that there is no justification for preventing photo's in the museum except for greed. You must buy the book. No you say, the flash might damage the documents. Not actually. Most of the documents there are copies. Faximilies. Fakes. So no damage would occur. And if it did it would be easy to fix. The model of Jerusalem they had just inside the entrance was very good. The model was of Jerusalem in the second temple period just before it was destroyed by the Romans in 70AD. The temple conpound is huge. It takes up a significant portion of the city. Herod's palace was on the other side of the city and one theory puts Jesus' trial before Pilate there. This would mean that they would have only needed to march Jesus across the courtyard to take him to Herod instead of across the city. They had an arrow on the wall to indicate where the modern Western Wall where the orthodox pray is. Isn't that nice of them :)

Was able to pick out the name of God from the Isaiah scroll. Facsimilie. Fake. Yes I am just a little annoyed. I bought a book at the shop called "The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English" with not a biblical scroll in sight. Not one of the biblical scrolls are included. Fortunately I bought a critically marked up version of the biblical scrolls in English. So it was not a total loss. I am more offended over the title than anything else.

Our next stop was the Anglican International School in Jerusalem.


It was a hospital first. But as in Zefat the Jews did not want Christians ministering to sick Jews so they built their own. So it was changed into a school. There was a pulpit in the waiting area of the hospital and people who came in got to listen to a gospel presentation while they waited. Much better than the usual magazines I think :) We were given a short message on evangelism to the Jewish people with a few moving testimonies by the head of Shoresh tours. He was also so kind to give me back my baggage tag. So considerate of him. Thanks we have done all we can now it's your problem. Not that it's actually their fault. They did what they could and technically it was above and beyond so I guess I can't complain. Guess I'll have to put in an insurance claim. See if this global travel insurance is all it's cracked up to be. They had better not want to take anything from me at the airport this time. You will be reading about me in the news if that happens. Nuff said.

I guess shopping was not completely banished from the menu for this trip. The bus driver had the rest of the day off and so we had to walk back to the hotel. Not too far but we had two shopping options. Didn't want either but had to choose one as I would be walking either way. Had food at MacDonalds again. Actually tried Burger King but the service sucked so badly that I rather went to Mickey D's.

Took a leisurely stroll back to the hotel.


Took a short detour into the Jaffa gate as you can see :)

The longer the tour continues the more I realise going on your own, even when part of a tour group, is not for me. It's not that the other group members are nasty to me but there is a distance. Each person has someone close to them experiencing the tour with them. I feel like the extra wheel. It is a feeling I am very familiar with but it still sucks. And no Terri that doesn't apply when you are with me, just in case you were wondering. ;) Next time I take a cheaper ten day tour and bring someone along. Even if I have to pay. It's worth it :). Well enough pity parties. No one likes them anyway.

After that it was a beer at the hotel and a very insightful article about the whole Ergun Caner debacle that is about to break. Ask me later.

Then a trip to the turkish bath. Big mistake. It's unisex. So lots of barely clad young ladies pouring water on themselves and rubbing themselves down with some weird sponges. I felt similarly when I went to Clifton beach for the first and last time. Decided the empty jaccuzi was a much better prospect. Which it was!

Supper and then bed!

Tomorrow is a church day so lots of walking and covered knees.

-- Post From My iPhone

Tunnels

Here we sit in traffic in Jerusalem. We have had a very early start. I am not completely awake yet. We are headed for the Western Wall tunnel. And we seem to be taking the long way round.



This is the view of the Mount of Olives from the bus.

Time warp. We are at the end of the day. I sit here on my hotel bed listening to some music and feeling my legs. Boy did we walk a lot today. But I am sure you want to hear all about it :) Well at least I hope so. However once all is told you will understand why a blow by blow option would not work!

Back to the bus. Early morning traffic. Well fighting that meant we got to the Dung gate early. The line to enter the Kotel was very short and we got to the Western Wall without much of a fuss. But that was not our destination yet! We were going under the ground. The Western Wall tunnel. I am still amazed at how Herod managed to get those stones in there. Inside the first building we looked at a model of the Temple Mount. The mount was then modified to show what Herod did to expand the hill itself. The temple was then placed on the platform. Then of course it was removed and replaced with nothing to indicate that it had become a rubbish dump. And then last of all the Dome of the Rock was placed on the model. Now we had a view of how the temple mount had changed over time. Then as is common in Jerusalem we began our descent. I can never get over the fact that to see back in time to what was built in a previous era we have to dig. And not a little bit either. We looked at a few underground arches that had been above ground once. We went down to Herodian times and even lower to the time of the Hasmoneans. Who were they you ask. They were a Jewish kingly dynasty that was set up for a time after the Maccabean revolt. So they predate Jesus.


We were shown to a model of the temple mount that was more ornate than the one at the entrance. It had a remote that controlled the lights so that one could light up sections of the mount to point them out. Yes the area we were in at the time was a little dark. So some creative tricks had to be pulled to get decent photos. Which of course explains why there are no iPhone shots. Not enough light for the poor camera. :( One particularly interesting thing we saw before reaching the tunnel was a mikva that was two small for anyone to wash in. They suspect it was a ritual bath for dishes. Weird huh?

Now it was time to face the tunnel. It took us all the way along the wall away from the Kotel. There were some places where it was fairly low and the authorities had kindly provided cushioning so that one would not hurt ones head. We headed for the surface through what looked like a water cistern. We heard how the Muslims had kicked up a fuss when the extention was build claiming that the Jews were trying to undermine the foundations of the mosque. Which was nowhere near the tunnel. But it started riots that ended in many deaths. Which were reported as "Those horrible Israelis suppressing the peaceloving Muslims" Yeah right.

Our exit was surprising. It was surprising because I recognized where we were. Outside the entrance to the Church of the Flagelation on the Via Dolorosa. Since it was still early we encountered little pedestrian traffic in the city. Heck most of the shops hadn't opened yet. One Arab seller who didn't buy our excuse that we were coming back later (we were in a hurry) started to say that "all South Africans are liars" I called back to him that he wouldn't get much business from us by calling us liars. Anyway. We did a quickstep all the way back to the Kotel. Through the metal detectors yet again! :). Now we had twenty minutes to look around before our next stop. Since today was not the Sabbath I could take photos for which I am very grateful. I think I got a few good ones. It was very special for me to wear Dad's kippur on the temple mount. I wish he could have been there with me! Even now I cry just thinking about it. I think he would have really liked being there. Today was a special day as many boys were having their Bar Mitzvas. So there was a lot of rejoicing and singing and dancing and such. Quite a few broadcast quality video cameras on the scene too. All the moms were at the dividing wall between the men and women looking over the partition watching their boys go through the motions. I even took some video. I'm sure you will want to see it :) In many ways this iPhone really has been useful for this trip. Will have to upload all these videos to Youtube as well. Just need some editing. I also got the priviledge to go into the synagogue at is right at the wall. Got a few pictures there too.


After all that writing one would think we were done. It's only 9am. So we leave the Western wall plaza to climb temple mount. Problem. By this time the line to go to temple mount has gotten rather long. We enter that line but before long Shela our guide is jumping out of line. As David one of my fellow travellers noted later, one hour in a line is a really bad idea when you are on a schedule. So we changed our plans and went to the excavation museum


( I forget the name) and check out some of the excavations made at the one corner of the Western Wall. Here again there was violence in the past as the Muslims maintained that the work was undermining the Al Asqua mosque although it is more than 70 meters away. John told us that he was at that stop when an Al Jezeera reporter was telling lies about the site while looking at it and knowing she was lying in front of all the other media outlets. He called her on it and her attitude was how dare you tell me what to report. Anyway we see again an example of how the land has risen over time. After much digging they actually found rubble from the Romans destruction of the temple. It was depressing to look at actually. Here was visible proof of the fullfillment of Jesus' prophecy. Here was something of interest. High on the wall there was some Jewish graffiti from the Byzantium era. One problem. There was no Jews allowed near Jerusalem at that time. Except for two years when one of the emperors who hated Christians tried to encourage the Jews to rebuild their temple which would prove a prophecy of Jesus false. Poor bastard. He was assasinated and the next guy in charge was not anti-Christian but anti-Jew and the window was closed. They think the graffiti happened in those two years. Near the corner you can see what is left of Robinson's arch. It must have been magnificent when whole but there is little to see now. It led to one of the entrances to temple mount that was closed up. Following along the wall we came to a set of steps on the south side of temple mount. There were two entrances to the mount here. It is believed (And I concur with this idea) that the pouring out of the Spirit at Pentecost happened here on these steps. The street below the upper room would not accomodate 3000 people let alone more but the steps outside the temple would. Also it says they were in the house and one name for the temple was "The House" Possible. I think so :) We then went to the museum on the site which houses old coins, ancient artist impressions of what they believed the temple looked like and another model of Jerusalem.

Lunch was now fast approaching so we left the museum and walked up to the Jewish Quarter and made use of the excellent options there. I settled for a burger chips and a coke for R108. It was a big burger :) Kosher pizza didn't appeal to me as that means vegetarian pizza. Remember that kosher means no meat and dairy and cheese which is an integral part of pizza is dairy. Found some free wifi which was handy for downloading a few things. Checked out a bookstore but there was little that appealed to me so I didn't buy anything.



Guess where I was. :) yes I was on Temple mount. We waited in a much shorter line after lunch and made it to the mount. This is where I received a most unwelcome phone call informing me that El Al cannot find my stuff. So that is a flash and battery charger down the drain. I am really angry about that. Not sure where to go from here.

So we explore temple mount, get a view of the mount of Olives and discuss various possible sites for the temple. Now we have to rush to make our next appointment at the City of David site and we exit the Temple Mount from a different place to that which we entered it from. Again we find ourselves in the heart of old Jerusalem and again we hurry. :) We end up back at the Kotel, cross it quickly and exit at the dung gate. We pick up our wet gear at the bus and walk a block to the City of David excavation. This is on the site where Davids original Jerusalem was outside the walls of the city of today! We look at various ruins but are distracted by a rowdy bunch of school kids. They make it reaaly hard to hear our guide and so we miss much of what is going on. The wet gear was for Hezekiahs tunnel. Boy was that a long dark walk. That place was not made for someone as wide and tall as me. But I got through ok. Where we finally exited the tunnel we reached the Pool of Siloam. This was where Jesus told the blind man to wash the mud off his eyes. I really enjoyed seeing and photographing the pool. This concluded our day in Jerusalem. On to the bus and back to the hotel.

Here since my legs were really sore I decided to make use of the jaccuzi and a massage. Both felt wonderful. Then to dinner and to bed. I finished the last few drops of my wine tonight. Ah well, it was good while it lasted!

Now with sore legs I will bid you all good night and look forward to seeing the Dead Sea Scrolls tomorrow. Sweet dreams.

This is Robert le Clus reporting from Jerusalem, Israel!

-- Post From My iPhone

On the way to Jerusalem

This morning broke with a beautiful sunrise as we bid adue to our home for the last few days.


I was able to download a whole hour of James White this morning and had a good time listening to it on the bus ride.

The main event for the day is Neot Kedumim. However you spell that. I saw at least three spellings. One on the itinerary, one on the map and another on the street sign. No matter. At the biblical garden as it is called we learnt a few things about the time of the Bible. Did you know that there are seven native plant kinds in Israel. Olive, fig, grape, pomegranate, date, barley and wheat. Did you know that there are some interesting similarities to the dress of the high priest in the temple and the coverings and related paraphanalia associated with the Torah scrolls in the synagogue? We were shown how threshing, sifting and all these processes of getting the wheat out were done.


We also met a scribe hard at work copying the Torah. He even sang/chanted while reading the scroll. Yes I have video :) The scroll was supposedly five hundred years old. Not sure if that is true since it was outside and not in a museum. Could have been an embelishment for effect.


The metal device sticking out the side was for pointing at the appropriate place as he did not want to defile the scroll by touching it. The passage is from Exodus where Miriam sings her song after the destruction of Pharoahs army in the Red Sea. Some very interesting processes for fixing a mistake in a scroll. The scribes name is Zechariah and he comes originally from Yemen.

At the date palm we were told about date honey which has nothing to do with bees. This I found very interesting.

By this time we were hungry and so we went for lunch. The lunch was subsidized and we paid only 10 shekels. Well I always say you get what you pay for and we sure got our moneys worth. Remember that most of our lunches were in the region of $10. We got a shepherds lunch. Half pitas with humus, sour cheese, and two other strange things as well as pieces of cucumber. Well I had paid my money so I ate. One pita. While fighting the flies and boy were there alot of them! Had two cups of mint tea. One without honey and one with two teaspoons of it. The honey mint tea was very good. A highlight of the meal was the dessert. Plain yogurt with date honey. Excellent. I nearly went for seconds but we had to catch the bus. Didn't even have time to finish my watermelon piece. Then on to Jerusalem! We took a short detour to a place that overlooks Bethlehem. It was one of the front lines of the 1948 war. We walked over the trenches. Hectic. We walked past a memorial that has three very tall pillars with two live olive trees growing on top. One interesting thing that we learnt there was about the shepherds that the angels met to announce the birth of Jesus. They were no ordinary shepherds but worked for the temple and were raising lambs for sacrifice. So what the angels were actually saying was "Good News. You're fired!" Donald Trump would be proud! The Lamb who takes away the sin of the world has come!

Well our day was fast winding to an end. We stopped at a lookout point for five minutes to see the Old City. Then it was on to the hotel. Turns out our three person room had only two beds. But we sorted them out but quick! The wifi was not free, mores the pity but this we can also manage.

Took a short walk on my own towards the old city which is very close to the hotel. Had to turn back as it was getting close to supper time :( well we will see her tomorrow God willing.

Time for me to go to bed now as it is an early morning as our visit to the Western Wall tunnel starts at 7:40am

Good night for Mt Zion Hotel in Jerusalem!

-- Post From My iPhone

In a mirror...

Today was a day of reflection. We didn't actually do that much. A 9am start meant we could sleep a little later than usual. On the bus we had a summation of the Galilee leg of the trip, the good the bad and the dodgy.

Since this is a CMJ tour we stopped the bus at Beit Bracha which means House of Blessing. It is a retreat center and guesthouse run by CMJ as an outreach to the local community. They are situated in Migdal the town from which Mary Magdelene came from. The guesthouse is self sufficient and thus does not depend on outside funding to operate. If you remember from the first day in Jaffa we went to Beit Immanuel. This place is similar.

From there we took the drive up to Mt Arbel. This mount is famous or should I say infamous because many Zealots were thrown off the cliff here by the Romans. This part of the blog I am actually writing from the summit. From here one gets a good view over the whole Galilee area and is an appropriate place to sit and think over this part of the tour.


One amazing featur of the device I have in my hands is that with the map program and all the places I have geotagged over the trip so far I can immediately establish where everything is in relation to where I am now. From where I sit I can see Zefat in front of me with Migdal below. My biggest problem at this moment are the flies and the miggies. Small little blighters but very irritating.

From here it is on to Tiberius. More on that when I get there.

So here we are in Tiberius.


Since we only get just over an hour it is little more than a lunch stop. Had some of the obligatory MacDonalds which has become a tradition for me. When you do something once it's revolutionary, when you do it the second time it's tradition. Or so the rabbinic sages say. Big Mac meal. Costs R60 but it was worth it!

Took a short walk through town. A lot of high fasion shops, the odd appliance shop and one or two toy stores. Not much else where I was walking anyway. Saw a cool little shop. Full of radio controlled devices. Almost bought one. But since I dare not take it through customs I decided against it. Maybe when I get back. I sit here at the meeting point waiting for the others to arrive and it hits me again that this tour is fast coming to a close. Not long from now we will be on our way back to South Africa. Tonight is packing night. It has been good to stay at one hotel for so long even if Galilee got a bit much at times. Next stop Mount Zion hotel!

How I am looking forward to Jerusalem.

As I type we are on our way back to the hotel. If all goes according to plan I will finish yesterdays blog before bed tonight and then I will finally be up to date. Then God willing you can get the blow by blow account of Jerusalem!

Tomorrow is the Biblical garden place which should be interesting!

And with this entry I am finally up to date! Yay! So tomorrow evening God willing you will learn what I did yesterday!

Good night from Ramot Resort Hotel in Galilee Israel!

-- Post From My iPhone

Stuck in Galilee

Don't get me wrong. It's great to be in Galilee. But too much of a good thing... I really want to go to Jerusalem. And today we have been informed that we are spending one less day in Jerusalem and one day more in Galilee. I am so excited! Not! One gets tired of old ruins and Talmudic sites.

In all my homiletics training I have been taught to be careful when talking to a congregation about the original langauges. Don't give people the impression that their translation is useless if they don't know the original langauges. Our tour leader did that the other day and I saw today that it through some people. Which is just what I had been learning. Glad I didn't do it.

Small interlude. As I sit here writing in the lobby of the hotel I find myself listening to some 90's music. Brings back the odd memory. I guess they like American music in Israel too. Small interlude complete.

Back to the tour. The day was spent in the upper Galilee. Our first visit was the center of Kabalism in Israel. A place called Zefat. The actual name in Hebrew is pronounced like spud except replace the d with a t. Sort of. I am not the Hebrew perspective. Here we learnt an interesting piece of history about CMJ. They had a place here that was a hospital. The Jews there did not want Christians in contact with sick Jews so they built a bigger hospital across the road. So CMJ turned their hospital into a school. They sold the building to a Scottish mission society for £1. The problem with this was that they did this in good faith but in the end it ended up in government hands. The place is now rather delapidated and falling apart.

Having never been in a synagogue before (that was't a ruin :) ) our next port of call was facinating.


I got my first opportunity to wear my dad's kippur. I think he would have approved. We learnt a few things about Kabbalism specifically that you cannot begin to learn it unless you are over 50, have a very good knowledge of Torah and are invited. I don't think Maddona or Britney Spears have any of these qualifications. But it makes them look good and that's all that counts these days especially in Hollywood. They also claim some truths similar to Jesus' teachings as their own. In that part of town we saw many men in the very traditional orthodox garb. The whole nine yards. The only other place I have ever seen it was at the Wall where we will hopefully be going very soon! From the synagogue we did some quick shopping for lunch and then hopped onto the bus to reach our next destination. Well you don't expect us to walk there do you? :)


In case you weren't sure that is a ruined synagogue. What's so special about it. Well it's the best preserved ruin in Israel. Joy. We stopped there for a teaching on the parable of the sower. We were told that the parable of the sower has links to rabbinic teaching concerning types of disciples. The comparisons were tenuous at best. Here is another example of using the Talmud as the hermeneutic for interpreting the Bible. Bad bad very bad. After that we had our lunch and were on our way. I didn't eat lunch as I hadn't found anything at the shop I recognised. I found a shady tree to lie under and read a bit. This turned out to be a mistake as when I was on the bus I felt a pain in my neck and discovered that a rather large ant had decided to munch me. Ouch!

Our last stop for the day was Mt Meron. Why did we go here? Cos it's a nice nature walk. And it was. Although our tour leader needs to study the correct definition of flat. He seems to have got it wrong the whole trip so far. Got to see the border to Lebanon and our two previous stops from that height. After a lecture I gave to one of my fellow travellers on the use of the P setting on her camera and how to adjust exposure in that mode we reached the bottom.

In the bus and off to the hotel. I was too tired and decided to forego the pool. That afternoon we had a repeat of the teaching on Torah that was done on the summit of mount Sinai. This was of course for us lemmings that didn't make it to the top. Again some good points were made mixed with some Scripture twisting. This is never fun. I was too tired to ask a question.

Had a nice glass of wine before bed. Really enjoyed my sweet dessert wine. Will continue the tradition till the bottle is empty.

More in the next post!

-- Post From My iPhone

Golan Again

We still find ourselves in the Golan. First stop, Qasrin.


So what is the biblical significance of this site. Well none actually. It is another Talmudic site and gives us insight into the life of Jews in the second century which should give us a look into Judaism in Jesus' time. The more I hear this stuff the more I tend to disbelieve it. The Talmud was codified post-Jesus. That much is clear from our visits to Zippori and Beit She'arim. Was the codification an accurate reflection of rabbinic tradition in Jesus time? Who knows. Supposedly the Dead Sea Scrolls provide the answers. Well I have a good book on the scrolls now so I will let you know. But as I have stated before I am concerned that non-inspired writings are being used as the all encompassing hermeneutic for interpreting the inspired text. This is not good!

One thing of interest that I did learn is that the second century Jews were midgets. Most of the doorways required me to duck to enter the very small dwellings. I missed much of the teachings inside as having twenty people in such an enclosed space where I could not stand upright made me a little claustraphobic. I did learn about the roller they used to flatten the roof of their houses and rabbinic rulings on what happens when your roller falls off the roof and kills someone. The decision they came up with was nothing new as any modern exegete can come to the same conclusion by just applying the Bible to the problem without consulting the Talmud. Another thing that came up was that when your child married and then came to live with you with their spouse an extra room would be added to the house. This was then applied to "In my Fathers house there are many rooms. I go to prepare a place for you". As if God is unaware of how many rooms he is going to need and makes a new one when someone gets saved. How ridiculous.




Yes you are looking at another ruined synagogue. Boy there are a lot of them! One interesting thing I learnt here was that in an earthquake the columns fall in the direction of the epicenter of the quake. This helps archeologists to track which earthquake caused which ruin! There was also a lens at the site that when you look through it it puts a roof on the ruin. A little gimmicky but fun none the less! And yes I have a picture. As long as those morons at the airport don't confiscate it I can show you!

And now for something completely different. Wine. We went to the Golan Heights Winery. No there is no historical significance except of course it could not exist when Golan was part of Syria. They don't do wine.


We were given the standard tour. When you come from wine country it's same-old same-old but at least we got to see it. The lady leading the tour mentioned that the wine needs to be kosher. Not sure what she meant by that and forgot to ask. I was starting to feel a bit under the weather at that point so I was not thinking straight. We also has the obligatory wine tasting. We had three wines. One white, one red and one dessert wine. The white tasted good, the red didn't strike my fancy and the dessert really hit the spot. So much so that I bought one.


Not really sure what to do with it. Don't want to take it home. Too much pt. So I will need to drink it before I leave. Will have to share. :) Tastes amazing though:)

They even gave us a free gift of a bottle opener. Very handy tool!

Now we were ready for lunch. We made a quick stop at a museum to give us an introduction to the afternoon program. This was interesting because Josephus mentions this place called Gamla and tells of what happened there. It was one of the Jewish strongholds that the Romans destroyed in 70AD. I would actually like to read his account and since I have it on my computer I might just do that.

At this point my stomach was really bothering me so I skipped lunch and made do with a coke.

The drive to Gamla after lunch was not long and we made it there in one piece.


Just before we started our walk to the lookout point over the site, we encountered a small whirlwind. Very interesting. The site of Gamla is on a steep hill. The buildings were so constructed that the roof of one was the porch of the upper one. Thos caused the Romans some problems as their weight with armor and all was enough to colapse the roof killing many of them! They eventually succeeded in sacking the town and noone save two women were left alive. One other feature of Gamla is it's birds of prey. Particulary a vulture. It is believed by some that the passage where those who wait upon the Lord will rise up with wings like eagles, the eagles were actually in reference to these vultures. While the Hebrew word in that passage can be translated as such I am unconvinced that this is the correct translation in this case. But who knows? The darn birds would not comply and come closer so we could only see them from afar at the vulture lookout. There is a waterfall at the site that some wanted to walk to. Since I was not feeling 100% I decided to wait behind. I was not the only one. The excessive heat of the day scared off many of the others. It was a small group that made the journey. A beer and a bunch of photos of small birds later and the intrepid adventurers had returned. After that it was onto the bus for the ride back to the hotel.

Since as I write this a day later I have fully recovered so there is nothing to worry about. Tomorrow I will tell you about yet another synagogue we visited. Oh Jerusalem how I long for you!

Good night from Galilee.

-- Post From My iPhone

Bunny Donkey

We went to the upper Golan Heights. The finger of Galilee. Or the panhandle of Galilee. Interesting factoid. The hotel we are currently in is actually on the bottom end of the Golan Heights. So were it not for the Six Day War I might be in trouble.

We had a long bus drive as we were traveling to the upper part of Israel. In fact in one place we were within a literal stones throw from the armistace line. We took a walk in the Tel Dan nature reserve.


The water was flowing much stronger than the last time I was there. Very beautiful. The story we heard was not. The tribe of Dan didn't like their alotment and killed a whole bunch of people to get the land where we were. There was much idolatry there and it got worse in the time of Jereboam. We saw the remains of a pagan Jewish altar. Pagan because it was made with cut stone. Jewish because it had four horns. One interesting feature we saw later was the place the king would sit at the gate of the city to listen to the cases of the people. Davids son Absolom used that seat to undermine his father.

From there we did the short hop to the Banias waterfall.



Then we went on another short hike similar to the one we did earlier. What I didn't know at the time was that our destination was the other Banias site where all the idols are. Last time we took the bus from the one to the other. This time we walked. What was really cool is that we walked through a palace ruin of Herod Agrippa 2. Who was he? He was the Herod before whom Paul made his defense. We had a teaching at the site based on the passage where Jesus makes his confession. Again I heard things I don't like. Jesus did not ask the question he did ("Who do the people say that I am?") to learn something. God does not ask questions to gain information. He asked to make a point to us. Adam where are you? As if He didn't know. Why why why. I seem to be stepping from one false teaching to another.

Anyway. It's not all bad. We had lunch at the same place at the extinct volcano lake. $10 for a small snitchel pita and coke. Not cheap. I was so tired I bought it anyway. After lunch we took the trip back to the hotel. On the way we stopped at the lookout point into Syria below the listening post. We got back to the hotel early enough so that a swim was possible. It was very refreshing. Then off to supper and bed! Not an incredibly informative day but we sure did a lot of walking.

And that's all I have to say about that!

-- Post From My iPhone

Hey, Old guys...

I have been trying to catch up on blogs but still find myself two days behind. So instead of telling you what I did today I need to tell you what I did yesterday. Trouble is we have long busy days and I find myself increasingly tired. By lunch time I am yawning so much I think I might have swallowed half of Israel by now. So I can hardly think let alone write. Which of course means that I can about one and a half(if I am lucky) entries in per day and thus I am still behind. Hopefully however you still find the entries useful. Sometimes I wonder if anyone is reading the blog when I see the comments standing at zero. But at the very least I get to make a record of my exploits and it helps me to remember what I did. Sometimes however I need more help. In preparation for this entry I was going over in my mind what we did yesterday. I remembered Nazereth and Zippori but where on earth had I been in the morning. Couldn't remember. So I pulled out my camera and started to look through the pictures. When I got there it was obvious. Kfar Nahum or Capernaum. Today we had a later start time. 9am. This meant we could sleep till 6 am Cape Town time! Yay! Then we were off to the ruin that was Capernaum.

The trouble with starting later of course is that you hit all the other tourists that started later as well. The early bird catches the worm and all that. But we made it there and it wasn't too bad :) It is interesting how the guide's can differ on the details. The last one was convinced that an earthquake had swallow the town in fullfillment of the curse Jesus spoke over it. Our current guide was not so confident. I suspect the first guide was right in this case. Unfortunately I say that because I am biased towards the first story. It sounds better. More research is required here. The synagogue ruin is not from the time of Jesus but is built on a previous ruin that possibly dates from the time of Jesus. People over the centuries were forever demolishing things and little has changed today. So in my photo's you will see many ruins. What fun!


Other than that we had another Bible reading from Mark I think and another teaching. And just like that we were off again. For some odd reason I wanted to take a picture of the Peter statue again. Had to wait because there were a ton of other people who had the same idea. Terri, if I take you to such a place I will not be taking a picture of you posing at some statue or artifact. Just so you know up front:) I do not understand peoples preoccupation with such things...

On to Zippori. Why? Cos it's there... Well I guess that would be one reason. Another is that this was where the Mishna was codified. The Mishna is part of the Talmud and explains how Torah should be applied in practice. Again this gives you insight into the Jewish mind. Something here that was startling for me was that in the mosaic on the floor of the synagogue there was a pattern of the signs of the zodiac and other Greek mythology. It was weird to see how they had incorporated paganism into their worship. But is this not the story of Israel from the beginning. "This is Yahweh who brought you out of the land of Egypt" they said of the golden calf. At Zippori we also looked at an amazing water storage system. I am asounded at what the ancients were able to do without the tools we take for granted today. Sorry, no pictures here, all on the main camera!

Last stop for the day, Nazereth. And where do we go? That abomination called the church of the annunciation. I really dislike that church. We took a walk through a market to get to it. It felt like Jerusalem :) I took no pictures. Went in and came out as quickly as possible. Waited for everyone else to ooh and ahhh over the place.

Some people like to spend money on things one can get cheaper at home which is just as good so we made a stop at a nougat shop. No comment. Then we went to a shop of a friend of the bus drivers. Best shop in Nazereth, we were informed. I hope not. The place was full of useless trinkets. Would never buy there. Didn't even have a book section.

On the way out of town we went to the place where supposedly the people of Nazereth tried to throw Jesus off the cliff. Had a great view of the Jezreel valley from the other side. Using the iPhone I could locate Mt Carmel and Megiddo. That was fun! We had a reading from Luke 7. The story of the widow of Nain. Jesus raised her son from the dead. It is interesting that Nain is very close to Shumen where Elijah did a similar miracle.


Next stop, home. Well at least the hotel. And it's been quite the day for walking...

More tomorrow!
-- Post From My iPhone

The lament of David

We had a lot of ground to cover so early morning it was again. One thing to note about all this is that Jerusalem is currently an hour ahead of Cape Town. So if the wake up call is at 6:30 am it's actually 5:30 am on our body clocks. So one gets rather tired after a couple of days of this. Leads to a heck of a lot of yawning. But we press on!

First stop was Beit She'arim. This is a not very well frequented tourist site as it is not biblical. It dates to the second century AD and is a Talmudic site. So why go there. Well one reason is to get perspective on what Judaism became after the destruction of the temple. Remember that these were Jews who rejected Jesus but no longer had a temple to worship at. Never forget that Jesus was Jewish and his life did not exist in a vacume. There was a culture around him that we need to understand. One of the most interesting features of this site is the tombs.



There were on some of the tombs depictions of animals. This is strange as the Torah forbids the making of graven images. This indicates a corruption of culture due to outside influences. However a carving of a minora is also there. Here I discovered that the small chair we brought along to sit on also makes a good makeshift tripod. Got some good shots in the darkened tombs as a result of that.

We spent a little time at the section above the tombs themselves which was put there for the services when people were entombed there. We received some teaching on John 3. This was the interaction of two rabbi's who were equals in many ways. We were taught that in Judaism at the time there were 5 ways to be born again, your bar/bat mitzva being one of them. Jesus was adding a sixth. So from that perspective Nicodemus was not asking a stupid question but was saying "I have experienced all the possible born again experiences in Judaism". The only possible option left is going back into the womb. Whether I agree with that will have to wait upon further research but it does sound interesting. We needed to hurry along and while there were many questions we needed to get to our next destination. Mount Carmel. Last time I was there the church was closed. Not this time. I actually got to see the Elijah statue in the courtyard and got some good pictures of it. We had a reading from the story that took place here which was the killing of the 450 prophets of Baal by Elijah when Baal could not bring fire but Yahweh could. Then we went up to the viewing deck and looked out over the Jezreel valley. With the aid of my iPhone maps and compass I was able to place many important events. Discovered that Ahab had a summer palace in the area and this is where many of the events recorded in scripture took place. I could almost see Jehu driving his chariot like a madman to go kill Jezebel!

Came down from the platform and bought a great panoramic photograph of the valley, with key places marked on it for $3. And then on to Megiddo.

Har Meggido. Armaggedon. A place of battle, past present and future. This was where King Josiah was killed by the army of Pharoh Neco. This is the staging area for the final battle before Jesus returns.

We stopped for lunch first, visited the museum and then acsended the Tel. For the most part it was the same old same old.


What was interesting was how they added these wire frame horses at the stable ruin to help visualize them as they were. There was also a wireframe chariot. I posed for pictures there :)

I also got a very good picture of the underground tunnel that led to the water source outside the city. You will have to wait till I return to see it, as it requires a long exposure that the iPhone does not excel at :)

From Megiddo we went to Beit She'an. Part of the reason we went there was because John, our intrepid tour leader had to make a trip to the Jordanian border to pick up his bag which he had left at the Petra Palace Hotel. Well actually the idiot porters were more interested in strong arming him for an extra tip than getting his bag onto the bus. Since this site was close to the closest border post we stopped here to wait for him. This site was where Saul's body was taken to display on the walls for the sport of the Phillistines. As you may recall, the men of Jabesh Gilead rescued the body from the walls and saw to his proper burial as he had saved them from Nahash (the snake) all those years ago. This is where the title of my blog entry originates. I was asked to read the lament of David when he heard of the death of Saul and Jonathan in 2 Samuel 1. The site itself houses the ruins of a Roman city. It is supposed to be one of the best excavated sites in Israel. Turns out the guy who organized the dig had some clout politically and got the government to do his bidding in this respect. There are some interesting features such as a theatre, an intact road, bathhouses and even a few communal latrines. Nice.


After we had explored the place for a while we waited for John to arrive. This he eventually did, with his bag in tow. All in all a good ending to an interesting day.

-- Post From My iPhone

The wheels on the bus...

We leave the Dead Sea area. From sea to shining sea as the song goes. We are on our way to Galilee. Galilee of the Gentiles. The land of Zebulan and Naphtali. Jesus' stomping grounds.

So we drive up the Jordan valley. We learn some interesting historical facts about the region and it's relation to the country of Jordan that is ever on our right hand side. It is interesting to note that we are traveling through the West bank, which the Israeli's took partially as a barganing chip for peace. There is a small island in the Jordan river, that was given to Jordan. This island was a meeting place for families who had people on both sides of the river as it was much cheaper to get to Jordan on the island. This arrangement ended after a group of Jewish school girls were shot at by a Jordanian guard killing nine of them. The king of Jordan when he heard of it immediately got into his plane and flew to Israel and sat with the families. If an election had been called then he would have won it. Unfortunately his son who rules now is not quite the statesman that daddy was. Or so they tell me. So now the island is closed.

Since we left early and Israel is no bigger than the Kruger Park, we reached the Sea of Kineret/Tiberius/Galilee by before 11am. Stopped at a shop that specializes in dates, or so they say! For thos who are interested it is just above Yardinet the baptismal site at the exit of the Jordan river from the sea.

We had to travel swiftly from here to make our boat ride on the sea. We went to the usual boat ride spot just beyond Kfar Nahum or Capernaum, and quickly jumped on the boat.


This particular boat guide ran the SA and Australian flags up the mast and played our respective national anthems. Then we had a Bible reading and a time of reflection on the boat. What was interesting here is that we did not return to the same jetty we left from. We docked at the Jesus boat museum at Nof Ginnosaur. Was great to see that place again as I have many fond memories of being there before. The museum tour was abreviated and the food expensive. A banana for a dollar is too much. I'd rather go hungry.

Almost bought something at the bookshop but was able to resist the temptation.

Next stop. Mount of the Beattitudes or so I thought! Well we did go to the mount. And we could see the church over the fence. But we did not enter it. It was decided instead that we walk down the mount and thus experience something more of how Jesus and his disciples would have experienced the mount. This is a good thing. We stopped at a small
monument under a tree and had a teaching on the semon on the mount. While we had had this sermon before it was interesting to hear again.


From there we climbed down the mount to the road and went to the church of the primacy of Peter which was just down the road from there. It is called this because this was supposedly where Jesus restored Peter in John 21. We went to the beach there and after reading from John 21 we had a short teaching on the passage. Something I had not noticed before was that the fire that Peter used to warm himself at (John 18) was a charcoal fire. The fire Jesus made on the beach was also a charcoal fire. Almost as if Jesus was trying to recreate the scene of the betrayal at the place of the restoration. We then had a few minutes of quiet contemplation at the waters edge.

This is one thing I appreciate about this tour. We actually spend a lot of time in the Bible. When we get to important sites we actually crack it open and read. Sometimes we even have a short teaching. This is how a tour should be!

From this church we again walked down the road to the church of the loaves and the fish. Last time I was there I spend all my time at the pond there photographing the koi fish. Not this time. I ignored them and went straight to the church itself where there is a very famous mosaic at the altar that I had not seen the previous time as I had not been in the church at all. Here my 250mm lens came in handy as I could not get close to take the picture. I got a few good ones I hope :)

Our last stop for the day was the hotel with a quick side excursion to a shop for supplies and an ATM for those who needed it. Then it was supper and the wind down to bed. All in all an excellent day!

And yet there is so much more to see and we haven't even reached Jerusalem!

-- Post From My iPhone

Location:Israel

Old, new and muddy

Another day breaks in Israel. I find it interesting being the only non-couple besides the tour leader. Makes me wish that I could have my girlfriend with me. Ah well.

Early morning breakfast and on the road again! To Masada we go. I was actually glad when I discovered that Masada was on the itinerary and disappointed when it was added back. That was the tour guides fault. We came to the site and an executive desision was made that we would all take the cable car. We took the standard tour but I bowed out of the tour early on. One of the ladies on the tour had already been there four times so she also wasn't keen to go again. So we sat at the entrance and chatted till the rest had completed the tour.



The view from the top. Unlike the last time we did not linger there. We got off the cable car at the bottom and jumped straight onto the bus!

Next stop was Qumram which interestingly enough was very close to the kibbutz. Again I had been there before but I was able to get a few more pictures and learn more about the scrolls themselves. One interesting story was that of the first scrolls. They were found in 1947 just before the British mandate ended and the archeologist who wanted to buy the scrolls from the bedouin who found them had one hour to do it. He made it but only just.


Found two great books at the bookshop there. One was on understanding the significance of the find and the other book contains English translations of all the biblical scrolls with notes on what parts were missing, how they compared to the LXX(Greek translation of the OT), masoretic text and others. Very detailed and incredibly useful for text critical studies! Didn't buy any lunch there as the options were too expensive.

Mud. That is what I encountered next. It was so bad I nearly lost my shoe. Let me explain. Kalia is at the top of the Dead Sea.


This is important. The kibbutz has it's own beach front. So after Qumran and lunch we went there. The entrance is far from the beach so we changed there and then made the long trek to the water. Now I expected salt crystals on the sea floor which is what I had last time. Mud. Sticky gooey mud. The salt content at the top is also much less than at the bottom so you are less boyant. Yes it is different from a trip to the Med but not quite the experience I had expected. So I tried to avoid the mud on the bottom and float for a while. What was fun was the shower afterwards. Tried one shower and it was so weak it wasn't funny. Walked closer to the entrance and the pressure improved. Got quite a nice massage from the shower higher up. Eventually had to let go but it was fun while it lasted. Had a Gold Star local beer while we waited for everyone to finish up and then back to camp.

Got back in time for a swim in the pool. Yes two swims in one day. I must admit I liked the second one more! No mud! Met a young lady at the pool. She was the lifeguard I guess, and I mention this specifically because she was carrying an automatic weapon. At the pool! She is an IDF conscript and as such must carry her weapon at all times when on duty. Nice duty sitting at the pool! :) She wanted to know where we were from and then said she wanted to visit South Africa once she had finished her service in a years time. Interesting experience.

After that is was the usual getting ready for supper and the off to bed. Since we were leaving the following morning we also needed to pack.

Good bye Kibbutz Kalia. Hello Galilee. Stay tuned tomorrow for the next exciting installement of "Away in an Israel" :)
-- Post From My iPhone

Whata lota Musa

Musa who? Well Musa is the Arabic for Moses. And we had a lot of Moses today. While mostly a traveling day we did pass Wadi Musa on the way out of Petra. We had an early morning breakfast and then on the road. Wadi means valley so Wadi Musa means valley of Moses. There is a spring in the valley that is called the spring of Moses. This not because Moses had anything to do with the spring but since he had been in the area they named the spring after him. One of the reasons we left early was because there was a potential problem with the Allenby Bridge crossing and we wanted to ensure that if we couldn't cross there we had enough time to get to one of the other border crossings. Our first stop was Madaba. We went to a Greek Orthodox chruch that had a biblical map of the Holy Land done in mosaic art. Very interesting. I also found it interesting that when the pope visited in the 60's he refused to call Israel Israel. He called it the Holy Land. Fortunately things have changed in that respect.

Lunch. I had a banana and a coke for lunch. And free wifi. When one has been off grid for two days you take free Internet whereever you can get it. Someone did't want their tinkie so they gave it to me. I did not complain :) I also discovered on the way back to the bus that the Mesha Stela that I have taught about in Bible school was found in the area. Unfortunately I would have to go to Germany to photograph it :( The Mesha Stella records the revolt of Moab against Israel which is also recorded in Scripture.

From there we took the bus to a mosaic factory that makes many of these mosaics into very many uses. Table tops are fairly common. One of the Australians was wondering where to get rid of his dinars and I told him to wait for this spot. He ignored me and later when we got to this point I heard him lament that he could have gotten rid of his cash here. No comment.


They usually employ disabled people who then live off the work that they do. Not my scene though.

We started the day with Moses and we ended our Jordan visit with Moses. We went to Mt Nebo where Moses saw the promised land before he died.


The site was in a similar state to the last time except that there was much more construction scaffolding on the site. The small chapel that I took pictures inside was closed. The day was even more hazy than the last time so there was little to see. We didn't stay long. I noticed a picture of the Mesha Stela that I had not noticed the last time and I took a picture.

We're off to see the border, the wonderful border or Jordan. Yes, we got the paper we needed and could cross at the border we wanted to. Drove down the pass to the border post and encountered a place where the magnetic field of the earth allow it to pull the bus up hill while it is in neutral. That is unless it's a trick :) Who knows?

The border was a piece of cake. It was what I had come to expect from my previous trip. We then went straight to Kibbutz Kalia which was our rest stop for the next two nights. We had dinner at the usual time and it was a decent spread. Nothing has yet beat Nof Ginosar for food but it was very good none the less. We had a good evening chat outside one of the rooms before bidding the place a good night and making our way to bed.

On the flash business I was told that the airline had no idea where my flash was because I had not reported it as lost property. Which it wasn't. Seems the baggage tag I was given wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. I really hope the travel insurance will cover it because I hadn't had time to insure it myself. I doubt I will see it again. El Al are a bunch of theives. I hope I can get the chief of security arrested when I get home but I doubt it.

More tomorrow!

-- Post From My iPhone